BOARD PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

July 2010

     Transition and preparation for transition seem to be the dominant theme at our church these days. Committees and the board are saying good-bye to some members and welcoming others. We have said farewell to rev Ames and look forward to the arrival of our interim minister, Rev. Alicia Forsey. Her arrival in September will mark the beginning of a 2-year interim period that will itself be one long transition time, at the end of which we hope to be well established in our new location with a new settled minister.

     During this past church year, the board and COCM worked hard, with the assistance of Pacific Northwest executive District director Janine Larsen to resolve the problems that eventually led to the end of rev Stephen Ames’ ministry with us. During the course of this year, we came to understand that we at UUCE have work to do in order to be ready for a successful settled ministry. Rather than offering a laundry list of areas where we need to improve, I prefer to offer you some thoughts for reflection. The board will be reading and reflecting on these and other things, as we enjoy the summer and await the start of the new church year and the arrival of Rev. Forsey.

     At our most recent board meeting, I gave each of our board members a copy of a wonderful book by Dan Hotchkiss entitled Governance and Ministry. And I would like to offer you a thought from that book and a question. Who owns a congregation? Is it the members? Hotchkiss says no. It is the mission. (from page 85) “The congregation’s job is to find the real mission it belongs to, the real owners for whose benefit the leaders hold and deploy resources. Any effort to improve the gov-ernance of a congregation begins by recognizing that its primary measure of success is not the bal-ance in the bank, the shortness of board meetings, or the happiness of congregants. A congregation's "bottom line" is the degree to which its mission is achieved.”

      As you ponder that question, I offer the following frame of reference, taken from the Alban Institute’s weekly of May 31:
     “Congregational leaders who embark upon change efforts develop contrasting images of the qualities they seek in their congrega-tion and of the characteristics they hope to shed, transcend, or avoid. They aspire to become what we call visionary congrega-tions, those that most effectively develop, nurture, and apply powerful, widely shared, and widely understood visions of the sacred community. In contrast, they distinguish their communities from what we call func-tional congregations, those that may excel at performing discrete functions that satisfy their consumer-members but tend to fall short of genuinely achieving an integrated sense of sacred community.”
You can find the entire article at www.alban.org/conversation.aspx?id=9079

      The characteristics of a "functional" congregation include: consumerism (a “fee for service” arrangement, segmentation of programs, with little interconnection among them and resistance to change. In "visionary" congregations, on the other hand, a shared vision infuses all aspects of church life. The parts are related and interconnected, such that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. There is a participatory culture, where people of all ages, both lay and professional, engage in the work of creating sacred community.

     Of course, no congregation ever achieves perfection. But I invite us to embark on the journey towards a greater vision for the future of UUCE, one that is more than the sum of all of our programs, and that will embue our lives with meaning, and spur us to acts of greater service and generosity within and beyond our immediate church community.

     Have a wonderful and relaxing summer! There will not be a president’s message in August. See you in September!

Your Board President, Mary Otten