[Access] notes from the Co-ordinating council meeting

[David Gilmartin]

Cindy,

Hope you will not mind that I'm forwarding this to some of the members  
of the CC giving consideration to the cluster groupings and issues. I  
feel it has some relevance to their work, too, and want to put it on  
their plate, so to speak.

True, our vision/mission goes beyond what we were discussing for the  
next year or so. (And we want to add to our goals and activities for  
this year and next, and be able to do so, though I felt we set a  
fairly ambitious agenda last Tuesday.) And I thoroughly hope that what  
we're working on will develop, change, evolve. My thinking was that as  
the committee develops more of a social justice practice that the  
committee might move into a different cluster; I could live with that.  
But I'm remembering a discussion -- somewhere -- in which I tried to  
push the concept of increasing accessibility in the greater Eugene  
area as one possible kind of UUCE social justice work (though probably  
tried conceptualizing it as "community ministry," and felt as if the  
idea just plopped. I don't know if my vision wasn't well communicated,  
wasn't understood, wasn't accepted, or what. But it seemed to get no  
traction at all. And I will say I was discouraged by that.

I value and am fascinated by categories. (I just re-found a list of  
categories for analyzing worship, hopefully in ways that "help  
congregations talk about worship without getting caught in  
conversation about individual preferences." Craig Satterlee,  
"Characteristics of Christian Worship," Alban Institute website: http://www.alban.org/conversation.aspx?id=5510) 
  I've been trying to think of a set of categories that would help  
those in our congregation think and talk about what our church does.  
The set I like most is about what the church does in terms of various  
ministries, e.g., worship, care and concern, spiritual growth, social  
justice, accessibility, etc. Looking at the Alban website for  
resources in this area, I find a couple. One is a book, "Letting Go:  
Transforming Congregations for Ministry," by Roy Phillips (a UU  
minister). Another, an on-line article, "Every-Member Ministry," by  
Patricia Hayes, http://www.alban.org/conversation.aspx?id=2920  
contains a model for an annual spiritual checkup, which I thought was  
a pretty provocative list of categories.

Sorry if this overwhelms. I wanted to include links to resources that  
might help the cluster discussion.

David


On Jan 12, 2008, at 5:28 PM, Lucinda Pitcairn wrote:

> David Gilmartin wrote:
>>
>> CLUSTER DISCUSSION: In our work planning, at our last meeting, for
>> this year and next, it seemed to me that our goals had to do with
>> accessibility and welcomingness within the church building and
>> congregational life.
> This may be true for the coming months, but our goals, as outlined  
> in our committee proposal, go beyond that, to some degree. Secondly,  
> I did not come away with the impression from our last meeting that  
> we had done all the work planning for this year or next.
>> As far as the cluster descriptions go (from
>> January 12 agenda), I think this may be a better fit with
>> "Ministerial" than "Social Justice."
> I think we need better definitions of these two terms, something  
> that will no doubt be deliberated upon by the clusters task force.
>>  Social Justice, to me, carries the implication of doing something  
>> in and for the wider world.
> It does to me, too, but one could argue that making our church more  
> accessible in both the literal and figurative sense is also  
> practicing social justice.
>
> Cindy
>
>
>> On Jan 12, 2008, at 12:39 PM, Mary Otten wrote:i attended that  
>> meeting this morning, as did Mariah.   There is definite interest  
>> in our check-list, including some specific numbers
>> that will ensure that power wheel-chairs can be accommodated. It was
>> mentioned that having somebody who uses a wheel-chair go on site
>> visits
>> is a good idea, but there are ADA numbers as well, so I think it  
>> would
>> be good to get specific on the check list and include such numbers,
>> e.g. as pertains to bath-room access and meeting set up, aisles, row
>> spacing etc.  Sue Craig mentioned her concern specificaly with regard
>> to the upcoming service auction. she wants to make sure that they set
>> things up so that folks who use power chairs will be able to move
>> around. Since I doubt the check list will be finalized by the time of
>> the auction, it might be a nice idea if Cindy and Sue could get
>> together via e-mail or telephone or whatever to discuss that aspect  
>> of
>> things specifically as they relate to this event.  There is also
>> interest in having our check-list put together with Candee-s list
>> about
>> how to get child care, since lack of child care is also an
>> accessibility barrier, albeit of a different sort than what we deal
>> with directly.
>>
>> At the meeting, there was discussion about the committee clusters
>> idea,
>> and there was talk of putting us into the social justice cluster.
>> further work is going to be done on this whole topic; a
>> subcommittee./task force has been formed to do that work.  I can't
>> recall who volunteered for it, but I know Ken and Mariah are on this
>> list, and I'm sure one or both of them will be able to fill in. So if
>> anyone has definite ideas about this topic, contact one of the  
>> members
>> of that subcommittee and make your wishes known. I know one of the
>> folks is Sarah Hendrickson.
>>
>> We also talked about the issue of when its preferable to hold a
>> meeting
>> at church and when off site is ok, and I made the points that we
>> discussed at our last meeting, emphasizing that we were not trying to
>> dump guilt trips on people, but that we did expect that meetings  
>> where
>> anybody might be expected to come should be held at church, and that
>> off site locations of such meetings should be chosen with
>> accessibility
>> in mind. and there was some discussion as to just what that meant. I
>> hope I got the idea across that the bottom line is that, a: we
>> recognize that its not always going to be possible to hold all open
>> meetings at church; b: its not always going to be possible to have  
>> off
>> site locations be 100% comfortably accessible; but c: it is essential
>> that we try to make that happen, and that people know that the best
>> effort was made to make it so. Its a lot easier to take "no" for an
>> answer if you really feel like best efforts were expended.
>>
>> If Ken or Mariah want to add anythingh to my summary of acces-related
>> CC topics, please feel free to speak up.
>>
>> mary
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