Stemming from a series of challenges over the course of the last twenty years, the congregation of the First Congregational Church has developed a survival mentality. Beyond the common goal of surviving the latest turmoil, the First Congregational Church does not have an articulated sense of who they are as a community of faith. Most recently, this lack of a communal understanding of identity led to a division in the church. With a long-term vision of combating this survival mentality, the short-term goal for our congregation is to articulate the identity of the congregation in a clear and understandable way. With this identity articulated, the foundation for congregational visioning will be in place, and the healing of a community broken over these divergent understandings of the church can continue. This article argues that a church broken by a split over divergent understandings of congregational identity needs to be centered on a newly articulated core ideology that states, clearly, a common understanding of values and purpose. Furthermore, this article claims that the process of discerning and articulating this ideology, using a bottom-up model in the framework of appreciative inquiry, can be in itself a healing event for the church as a whole. The goal of this project is not only to develop a core ideology that will enable corporate visioning and start our progress away from survival mentality, but to use that development process as a source of healing and restoration to aid in the reconciliation of a broken community.
