Planting seeds requires patience

By Debra Donohue, Creating Connection Director for Canada West

If you’re a gardener, you understand the value of patience. Long before your plants or trees bear fruit, you spend time weeding, feeding, watering, and lovingly caring for them. Without this consistent effort, your plants may wither and die.

The same principle applies to the work we've been doing with Creating Connection.

For the last three Community of Christ World Conferences, I’ve had the opportunity to help lead the Creating Connection Lunch and Learn sessions. Each year, the room was filled with excitement and enthusiasm. People were eager to participate in a worldwide Creating Connection initiative. But after each World Conference, interest tapered off, with only a few groups choosing to participate independently.

Still, we continued nurturing the seeds we had planted. We kept showing up, presenting Creating Connection at every World Conference, and sharing our message with anyone willing to listen.

Now, we’re beginning to see growth. We’re currently collaborating with a group in Australia that has a similar program, exploring ways we can support one another and move forward together. We’ve also been asked to translate our CreatingConnection.ca website into French so more people can access our resources.

Earlier this month, at the 2025 Lunch and Learn, we had to add chairs in the aisles to accommodate the crowd. People arrived an hour early and stayed half an hour after the scheduled time. Thankfully, I had video clips from previous presentations ready to share, and we opened the floor for questions. We easily filled two hours with rich conversation and information about Creating Connection.

It feels like our trees are finally bearing fruit—and it’s incredibly rewarding. I was tempted to say the hard work is over, but that wouldn’t be quite right. The patient work may be behind us, but now it’s time to roll up our sleeves, harvest the fruit, and ensure we keep this momentum going.

Look for Creating Connection presentations at reunions this summer and be sure to check out our refreshed website at CreatingConnection.ca. We’re adding new content every week.

One last thing—a request. If you have a story of connection from your community, congregation, camp, or retreat, we’d love to hear it. Please share it with us in the blog section of our website. Your success stories inspire others!