Dear Fellow Presbytery of Genesee Valley Members,

Over the past several months, members of the Presbytery of Genesee Valley leadership have been meeting with leaders from our nearby and neighboring Presbyteries including Western NY, Geneva, Cayuga-Syracuse and Lake Erie. During this time, we have been sharing, dreaming, and sometimes grumbling about the many ways in which our churches and presbyteries have changed over the past several years.

This time has allowed us to see the many commonalities that we share at the Mid-Council level, as well as those shared from church to church. Each of our presbyteries individually as well as collectively is discerning how we can best serve our communities during this time and into the future. We have been gathering smaller groups of committee leaders from across these five presbyteries to collaborate on training, resources sharing and more. In order to engage our entire membership in this collaboration we need to gather some information. The survey (link below) has been designed by members of each presbytery for the purpose of getting information and perspective from across a broad range of our members. The same survey will be shared across these five presbyteries.

We strongly encourage as many people as possible to complete this survey. The survey is very comprehensive, at 37 questions long, so you should plan to set aside 20 minutes to complete it fully.  

To take your survey online, simply visit this web address: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/5PresbyteriesSurvey using the web browser you currently prefer (Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge,  Safari, etc.)

We ask that each person take the survey for themselves. We want to hear each person’s unique perspective. If you have multiple survey takers in your household, please close your browser window after one person takes the survey and open an incognito or in-private window for the next person. This will avoid getting a message that the survey has already been completed.  

We want as many people from as many congregations to take this survey (not just one representative per congregation), so as an incentive, we are offering:

  • $250 toward a Session-designated ministry for the congregation with the most surveys returned
  • $150 toward a Session-designated ministry for second place
  • $100 toward a Session-designated ministry for third place

We thank you in advance for sharing your unique perspective with us.
Gratefully,
Lea Kone, PGV Moderator