Dianna Perrine

Throughout the coming Lenten season, we will be following two Organizing for Mission (OFM) team leaders from two congregations in the Episcopal Diocese of Spokane. Lent, beginning March 9, 2011, and ending April 23, is a period of penitence, alms giving, and spiritual discipline.

For Dianna Perrine, OFM Team Leader at St. Andrew’s Spokane, participation in OFM was an opportunity to express her faith with action. She says, “It just grabbed me from the beginning. It would be a perfect thing for a Lenten discipline, I thought. You can’t go wrong with feeding the hungry.”

She said that when Tracey Waring, OFM Logistical Coordinator, approached her about becoming team leader for St. Andrews, it was a bit of a surprise. But through prayer, she ultimately discerned a spiritual calling: “I prayed about being involved, and thought, this is what God wants me to do.”

Ann Winters, OFM Team Leader at Christ Church in Zillah, Wash., says that OFM has produced an opportunity for their congregation to reach out to others in their small community of just over 2,000.

Christ Church built a relationship with Toppenish United Methodist Church, which led to that congregation sending some of its members to participate in OFM with the Diocese of Spokane. “Already through OFM, our relationship with Toppenish United Methodist has become stronger,” she says. “We can branch out and form relationships with other churches.”

Both Winters and Perrine say their congregations have met challenges as they begin work in OFM. “OFM training was good, but it was overwhelming,” she says. “It was a little intellectual, but by the end, we figured it out, and we were fired up and ready to go. The trainers really knew what they were doing.”

Ann Winters was also a Peace Corps volunteer, pictured here in Mongolia.

For Perrine and Winters, OFM comes down to a singular experience: Sharing the stories that make them, and their congregations, who they are. Through the process of Public Narrative (a way of sharing stories to influence people to action), they are in the first stages of discovering that their stories have the ability to persuade others to give, helping to relieve hunger.

Both team leaders say their teams have risen to the challenging work of creating and presenting their Public Narratives so central to the Organizing for Mission model.

“Public Narrative is a great tool. It’s a structured process to motivate people. It’s a struggle at first to develop that story,” Winters says. “Already we’ve seen themes of God’s Kingdom, and compassion for human beings in the stories we are writing about ourselves. The process of writing Public Narratives has been extremely helpful because it has given us focus.”

While Winters and the team at Christ Church have yet to give their public narratives, starting the process of educating and fundraising for hunger, Perrine’s team gave their narratives in January, soon after completing training. She says her team was energized by the experience, and ready to get to fundraising for hunger relief: “People are looking forward to when OFM really gets started!”

Return in the coming weeks as we continue to follow Ann and Dianna in their journey to address hunger locally and globally. For more information about OFM, visit the Organizing for Mission page on SpokaneDiocese.org.