Adopted May 18, 2025

Who we are:

Founded in 1956, The Compline Choir, a ministry of the Diocese of Olympia and Saint Mark’s Cathedral, is a unique community of laypersons with diverse beliefs that seeks to express musically a concern for the nurture and care of the soul—spiritual nourishment. The Compline Choir sings the office of Compline every Sunday night at 9:30 PM Pacific time, and the service is broadcast live and via internet stream.

The Compline Choir is a Washington state non-profit corporation and registered charity and is classified as a 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization under Internal Revenue Code.

The mission of The Compline Choir is to:

• Perform and record liturgical and religious music for the edification and enjoyment of listeners
• Promote and perpetuate ancient, traditional, and contemporary musical forms of worship
• Minister to the spiritual needs of the community

What we value:

• Experiencing the numinous
• Being in community
• Maintaining continuity

This strategic plan incorporates input received at both the England pilgrimage debrief in September 2024 and the annual meeting of members in January 2025 and was adopted by the Compline Choir Board of Governors on May 18, 2025.

Experiencing the numinous

We seek to experience awe each week as a choir as we chant the office.

• We will consistently attain a high musical and liturgical standard in chanting the office.
• We will continue to sing a balanced and varied repertoire and seek opportunities to commission new works for the choir on appropriate themes, provided donors fund them.
• We will continue to create commercial recordings roughly every 5 years.
• We will explore orders of service with more contemporary and gender-inclusive language.

Being in Community

We journey together as a choir, we hold space for our congregation, and we strive to deepen our relationship with partner organizations.

Within the choir:

• We will maintain a high level of professionalism and discipline in rehearsal and performance.
• We will explore increased digitization to better organize our music library.
• We will create a new covenant for members of the choir that reflects our values and vision.
• We will form a group interested in visibly greeting the congregation in the narthex before or after the office.
• We will provide opportunities for musical and liturgical refreshment, discovery, and learning.

With our congregation:

• We will create and regularly monitor channels for prayer requests from our congregation.
• We will continue to podcast the office and encourage the cathedral to continue livestreaming; we seek ways to further engage our online congregation.
• We will actively maintain our social media and artist pages, post regular content, and create a rotation of volunteer social media managers from within the choir and congregation.
• We will formalize how we interface and support the cathedral’s hospitality ministers and livestream hosts.

With partner organizations:

• We will streamline relationships between The Compline Choir, Women’s Compline Choir, Hallock Institute, Saint Mark’s Cathedral, and the Diocese of Olympia.
• We will cultivate deeper relationships with the Bishop’s office and Classical KING.
• We will continue to reserve two to four summer Sundays per year for Women’s Compline and will consider reserving additional Sundays in 2026 and beyond.
• We will grant budget capacity to the Women’s Compline Choir in support of their work ($750 in 2025 and at least that amount in years following).
• We will seek to articulate our relationship with the Women’s Compline Choir.
• We will explore a combined Women’s + Men’s Compline service once every other year or so, with a target for a first combined service sometime in 2026.
• We will deepen our connection to the cathedral community by singing at additional cathedral liturgies and by collaborating with other choirs of the cathedral.

Maintaining continuity

We are deeply connected to our roots at Saint Mark’s and beyond.

• We will explore hosting workshops on the history of compline and chant technique.
• We will play an active fundraising role in the cathedral’s capital campaign.
• We will celebrate our 70^th anniversary as a choir in 2026 and invite the participation of alumni.
• We will deepen our relationships with inactive and honorary members by finding meaningful ways to stay connected.
• We will continue to make pilgrimages to places of spiritual significance every 5 to 6 years. We will lay the groundwork for our next pilgrimage in 2030.
• We will work with all vested interests and ministry partners to ensure the director is adequately compensated from sustainable sources.
• We will make plans to ensure the choir continues to thrive when and after the current director retires. We will outline the search process for the III Director of the Compline Choir, involving all vested interests and ministry partners.