This past Sunday in worship, we thanked the 2018-19 Board of Trustees, acknowledging some of the important work they’ve done this year and also that together, we made a few mistakes. (Your ministers serve as non-voting members of the Board.) This can be uncomfortable to do-to admit that we sometimes fall short of our aspirations. But it is a great antidote to perfectionism which is one of the characteristics of white supremacy culture. Others in the congregation have also made mistakes or fallen short or didn’t follow through with something this year. It is part of life.
Generally, folks don’t intend to err. Yet, the impact of our actions sometimes results in missing the mark. Anti-racism work invites us to focus on our impact rather than hide behind our intentions. Impact happens in multiple directions, often unintentionally-both pain and joy can spread. This year’s Annual Focus of Ministry (AFoM) encouraged us all towards holy curiosity and getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. And lots of folks leaned in to learning and stretching.
The second part of the AFoM is to recognize the barriers to building beloved community. One of those barriers that recently surfaced was the availability of information in a timely fashion as articulated by the bylaws. We are going to put some additional practices in place to help us stay a bit more ahead of deadlines to see if that helps remove that info barrier. We need your help in this, though. If the Board sends out information or requests, please read and respond. Use the dry erase Boards to engage with the Open Questions there. (The Board will create new Open Questions at their retreat in August. Open Questions are one of the ways to stay in conversation about the direction of the congregation. They are open questions, because no one person or small group could effectively answer them alone.) If there are forums, attend them or send your questions if you can’t attend. This will help us know what information is getting across, what is needed, and to assess what none of us knows yet.
The third part of our Annual Focus of Ministry this year was to collaborate more with one another. The Communications Team and the Investments Advisory Committee worked hard on policies to recommend to the Board, with the assistance of the Governance Advisory Committee. The Oversight Advisory Committee created a process whereby each Advisory Committee and each Ministry Team shared its work with the Board as part of the oversight and monitoring function of policy-based governance. The Strategy Advisory Committee worked with the Anti-racism Team (ART) on the Chalice Challenges to grapple with Open Question 1 on dismantling white supremacy culture. The Adult Faith Development Team has created a process to help connect some of the long-term programs and also working with the ART and Green Sanctuary Team to create book discussion groups and with Ernie Hall on the UU history class. These are just some examples of collaboration this past year.
And there has been so much more good work done. The Annual Report is scheduled to be published in August and you can learn more about what has been accomplished this second year of the governance shift.
Big shoutout to the Fun for UUSS Team and all the volunteers and staff who helped make the year-end picnic so much fun!
In faith and with gratitude,
Rev. Wendy and Rev. Lynn