It all started with a vision. A big, impressive - maybe even audacious - vision.
At a weekend retreat, the vestry and leadership cast a vision for All Saints’ Beverly Hills.
The vision-casting technology we used defines vision as being the difference All Saints’ was created to make in the world. In a day-long, Holy Spirit-filled process, we were guided to this vision:
A WORLD TRANSFORMED BY JESUS.

A CALLING

At this same time, Rector Rev. Carol Anderson and then-Senior Warden Andy Carmichael were becoming convinced that God was calling them to start the All Saints’ Association. They were struck
by the fact that while contemporary evangelical churches were well served by ‘churches teaching churches’ via conferences and consulting, there was very little of this kind of service specifically for liturgical churches. Yet there was clearly a demand, based simply on the number of calls from other Episcopal churches asking us to share our experience.

“We realized that there was a link between the vision and what God was calling us to do with ASA,” recalls Carmichael. “A world transformed by Jesus became a bit more realistic when you reach not just one congregation, but as many as 7,400 Episcopal churches and their congregations - let alone
all the other liturgical worship churches, in the US and overseas!”

WE DON'T HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS

ASA doesn’t claim to have all the answers or to have done it all without help from the outside.
“Ever since Carol came to All Saints’, she’s made a point of encouraging out-of-the-box thinking
and of exposing us to innovations from the larger church world and from business,” explains Andy Carmichael, now President of ASA. “But even with all this innovation – or maybe because of it - some of our ministries are still a work in progress. We don’t claim to have all the answers, but we have a very clear idea of where we want to be, we know how to get there and we’re able to provide advice
to other churches that we would have found invaluable a short while ago!”

All Saints’ has a leadership team that’s remarkably open to change. . . but is also highly selective. Whenever a new idea is under consideration, we’re very intentional about ensuring that it is in line with both mission and vision – in other words, that it’s really ‘us’. If it passes those tests, it is carefully customized to be a comfortable fit for All Saints’.

THE ANNUAL GREAT CHURCH CONFERENCE

Every new idea or program at All Saints’ is part of the Becoming a Great Church plan.
“It became clear that God was calling us to transition from being a ‘good’ church to
being a sustainable Great church,” explains Carol Anderson. “In addition to being much better at fulfilling our mission and vision, a major component of that plan is to help other churches become Great as well.”

The progress we’ve made on this initiative, along with feedback from delegates to prior ASA conferences, led us to create (what else?), The Great Church Conference.