Our Board of Directors

Like every non-profit organization, our temple has a board of directors—members who are elected by the membership at large and charged with the administrative oversight of the temple life.  The spiritual and education needs are directed through our supervising minister.  We stuck to the financial and administrative work.  And, once in a while, we look up as a body and say who are we, who do we want to be and how are we going to get there?

We s spent the last half of 2015 developing a strategic plan for our temple’s future.  We participated in two retreats and received feedback from important Temple groups on our initial draft.  The 20/20 Vision for 2018 is now complete and we will begin a 3-year process to implement the plan.  We will not try to accomplish these goals in one year, so please don’t anticipate that change will happen at such a rapid rate. And because we know things will continue to change (remember that impermanence lesson?) we will revisit and adapt our plan each year.   But here’s what we have in our pocket at every board meeting now:

Resident Minister:  We anticipate recruiting a resident minister in the next 3 years. We will try to create a new, contemporary model for VBT resident minister.  A team will scope our needs and goals before beginning a recruitment process.

Buddhist Education: We will continue to expand Buddhist education by offering more classes and more meditation. Outreach will be important in bringing awareness in the community of our Buddhist education program.

Temple Building and Grounds:  We will make a greater investment in improving the Temple building and grounds to catch up on the deferred maintenance, upgrade the kitchen, and improve the Temple grounds and gardens.

American Buddhism:  We will evolve our Buddhist practice to embrace contemporary Buddhist practices that our Sangha has requested and will enjoy. We will establish a team to examine ideas including more meditation, engaged Buddhism discussions, and relook at how to preserve our Japanese tradition and cultural heritage while revisiting our mix of the Japanese and English languages.  Before we make any changes, it will be imperative to listen to a broad cross section of Sangha voices and opinions on this matter.

Financial Security:  We will continuously examine existing and new activities for raising funds to keep the Temple financially secure with the necessary resources to accomplish our goals and grow.  This will include an ongoing analysis of our current activities including the Hanamatsuri and Obon festivals.  We will also ensure that our existing financial assets are both secure and well managed with growth in mind.

Not every idea in the plan is  new or “out of the box” creative.  We have effectively embraced change in recent years, which has been an important element in our success. The new 20/20 Vision Plan is just a more formalized process to manage change and achieve our future goals.