BOARD PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

November 2009

Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I’d like to see you in better living conditions. – Hafiz

Oh, do we ever live in a time of anxiety. Can we do this, or should we wait? How will we be in the coming world? What will an economic recovery look like if it ever comes? Will it be sustainable? Can we and our institutions become sustainable? How will our families do amid the for-sure changes? What do we imagine our lives to be like? Can we live within our means until our means improve? Will our means ever improve?

We are looking at the Scottish Rite Temple property at 13th and Chambers as our new home; maybe not a dream home, or could it be? We question whether it’s prudent to assume higher operating budget. Even though we have been assured, by our (experienced, competent, regionally respected) finance consultants that we can reasonably expect a capital campaign to be successful, I look carefully at whether…

We are living in a time of economic anxiety, and a time of change. Indeed, some sort of major changes are inevitable, and change = opportunity, and all that, but will we be able to pay our bills? I am increasingly convinced that the answer is yes, many times yes. I have come to believe that to be the sort of church that welcomed me/my family nearly twenty years ago, who we hope, and yearn, and wish, with our varying degrees of fervency and involvement, change is inevitable and to be welcomed, change is opportunity and that the unexpected is often my friend. And change makes me anxious sometimes. The legendary Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times,” comes to mind. “Interesting” can mean difficult, challenging, and change-filled.

Last spring I was confronted with uncertainty, anxiety, my feelings of responsibility, and my fears, as the church budget process unrolled. Fiscal not only fiscal responsibility, but responsibility for the good of the church, the individual welfare of each and all of us when faced with uncertainty, responsibility, and anxiety, it is not uncommon to become more controlling, more rigid, more focused on what we believe we can control, and more attentive to what we fear we may lose, instead of to attend more to what we still have and what we may yet receive.

A different and far more pleasant point of view—

I enjoy myself and others in this church far more from a slightly different angle- one of the three hundred and sixty various points of view around any situation - looked as what is, and defining the future in terms of hopes and dreams.

Hopes: expanded rental opportunities, enough RE room for children who take up all kinds of space, far smaller carbon footprint, central, public transportation, all parts of town fairly accessible to all our members.

Our future depends on the families and children who cannot find room in our crowded RE, to the groups and like-meetings of searchers.

A big kitchen- hosting big enough meals for all of us and then some, rental opportunities, dreams, dance floor- another evening like the Hawaiian night we had at the Vet’s club years ago – more dances, more FUN, more gatherings, of us, and of our allies and of those who could become our allies.

Working from a position based in fear, anxiety and control is not particularly helpful or self-attractive.

We are a compassionate, welcoming community that promotes spiritual growth, ethical living, and social justice in our church and in the world.

I have taken great strength from our mission and values. We, as a religious community, have declared ourselves to be welcoming, committed to social justice, to ethical living, and to sharing our values, our liberal religious commitment, and our love with a larger community.

I am proud of our church and our values.

There are too many people doing too many good things for me to afford the luxury of being pessimistic. ~Utah Phillips

We are about to meet to vote on a new-to-us building. I share with many of you some financial anxiety. We will stretch to purchase the building. And we will have to pay larger operational costs, even after we pay for first necessary (accessible bathrooms, walls to create RE space) and then vitally desirable (windows, skylights, landscaping and more) remodeling. We know we are in a recession and all we really know is that the future will not look like the past. Still, I believe that hope is sustainable and replenished. I believe in us: in you and me and all the ones who believe and will do the work that keeps our beloved community going and thriving.

With a move to a new location, we can open our doors to both new and older families. We can open our doors to more children (now impossibly crowded downstairs). We can offer larger and more varied RE for children and adults. We can show movies and throw potlucks. We will have an awesome dance floor and commercial kitchen available for rental. We will have the option to do many more activities and more interesting things with all ages, all inclinations and activity levels, and respond to so many yearnings. In a different neighborhood, we will have options to reach out across class and social divides. In a new-to-us building, we can demonstrate our commitment to reduce/ remodel/ reuse. Being closer to downtown, more centrally located and on the routes of public transportation, we can reasonably believe that more people will find us, perhaps more will be inspired by us and our welcoming philosophy.

I dream of beginnings at the church age of 100 years, dreams of a big inclusive church with a community presence, offering liberal religious values, spiritual growth, and just living to a community that does not even know what it has been missing.

All is beautiful, all is more beautiful, and life is thankfulness.
~ Igulik Eskimo song

Sarah Hendrickson
President, UUCE Board of Trustees

October 2009

Your UUCE Board of Trustees had our annual Fall retreat last month. The event was self-catered (a potluck) in our backyard and a generally jolly time was had by all. The Board agreed on projects and priorities for the year and all board members took on specific responsibilities. We spent a day and a half thinking higher, and then distilling our bigger thoughts into tasks and subcommittees. How do our priorities compare with yours?

The most exciting thing happening is the building at 13th and Chambers: Pure Potential! Whatever the outcome of this process and the congregational vote, the entire board would like to share our vision and enthusiasm with you. A larger church in a larger building, increasingly a program church, centrally located and offering a wider welcome: this is part of what we see in our future.

The prospect of a new building leads immediately to consideration of finances. Everyone, led by our valiant treasurer Jean Coberly, will be keeping a close eye on the budget this year. If receipts or expenses vary from our projections, we intend to jump on it early. Mary Otten will lead a group dedicated to invigorating our fund-raising committee, trying to raise money from outside the usual sources. The capital campaign committee headed by Kay Crider and John Wagner has been working behind our scenes for some time and is very active now. The
excitement about a possible new building is palpable!

Ann Fuller has accepted the task of convening, with Mary Brau, the Personnel Committee, which has been less than active for a few years. We have some great professional staff—how do we work with and manage them with professionalism and right relations?

The board hopes that more of you can be inspired in social justice efforts. Mary Otten and Alex Crider-Philips are taking this on; you can expect to hear from them. Already, in September we engaged with interfaith groups to provide four days of meals to families in transition at First Place Family Shelter. You will be hearing more social justice opportunities. 

Doctor Doug (Turvey) will spearhead disaster planning. The first action was to discourage hand-holding at services on Sunday morning, to slow the spread of infectious disease (for which read influenza). When, and if, major troubles arrive, from accident to natural disaster, we will have a planned response.

Building community in a larger church: How do we stay connected when there are so many more of us? All of the board is “on board” with this project. We want to offer opportunities in a “spiral of engagement” that encourages everyone’s involvement in this community. The spiral metaphor recognizes that people have different ability and desire for involvement depending on the time and energy they have available, their stage of life, family situation, health, work and financial circumstances, and so on. Different parts of the church mission and program resonate at different times in one’s life. How can we provide options that might fit you?

Improving relations between the board, minister and congregation is a high priority. A PNWD (District) team is working with our COCM (Committee on Congregational Ministry) and the board to facilitate improved communications and behavior. I regularly exercise my new mantra, “Trust the Process.”

We want UUCE to be intergenerational, family friendly, and welcoming. We offer so many activities: shared ministry groups and Thundereggs, poetry and prose authors, men’s groups and sister circles, Green Sanctuary and SJUUCE, CUUPS, Worship Associates, Caring Committee, Facilities Council, and so on and on. Let’s all try to be even a little more intentionally welcoming and intergenerational in our activities, and encourage new members and friends to participate. What activities are particularly appreciated? Are there areas where people participate and feel good? Where and how could we offer better opportunities? What other groups are there who would find common ground with our activities?

Board members will take turns being available in the library between and after services the first Sunday of each month. Also, we have agreed to wear a ribbon on our name tags, so we will be more visible on Sunday. We want to hear your thoughts, concerns, ideas, appreciations.

Sarah Hendrickson
President, UUCE Board of Trustees

September 2009

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another. ~Anatole France

Our church has existed in Eugene for one hundred years, and we are ready to grow into another hundred. We have a history of change and growth and we now face exciting possibilities. Where is all this change coming from? Who asked for all this? We did!

We are here, now, making these choices because of our Congregation’s Mission: We are a compassionate, welcoming community that promotes spiritual growth, ethical living, and social justice in our church and in the world.

We make these choices while applying our Fifth Principle: “The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large.”

In the spring of 2007, our congregation voted by a wide margin to find a new location. We committed ourselves to “a serious, vigorous search for a location in accord with our values, which include that it be centrally located and accessible to public transportation, bicycles, and pedestrians. We expect to build or remodel with “green” principles in the forefront, including but not limited to energy efficiency and use of environmentally and socially benign materials. We expect to look at lifespan costs and efficiencies.”

Our Strategic Planning committee, talented and dedicated volunteers, conducted a series of congregation-wide “ Dream Catcher” meetings, followed after our vote to move by yet another set of listening group opportunities for members and friends.

We were asked to consider:

     • What are your hopes and dreams for the next chapter of the church’s history?
     • What aspects or qualities of our church do you most want to see us hold onto?
     • What in our church do you love that you think we will have to leave behind as we grow and move?

These were our answers:

Hopes and Dreams for the Next Chapter of UUCE:

          1. To be a presence in the community , a “conspicuous beacon.”
(social justice, activism, interfaith work, civic leadership)
           2. Location (visible, central) is important (“church for the larger community,” public transportation)
          3. Sense of community and connections
          4. Diversity and intergenerational opportunities
          5. Our major programs and sufficient space for them(Religious Education for both children and adults; choir and the music program)
          6. Sufficient staff for what we want to do, and space for them
          7. About the Building:
                    • Aesthetics (art, building design)
                    • Sufficient space for all we want to do and be (many, many examples in the notes)
                    • Connection to nature
                    • Green values
                    • Accessibility

We are here, at this centennial year, because of the connection that we have with others in this congregation, who share liberal religious values, though we often differ widely in belief and practice.

We have this choice of a larger, more central location because we have chosen to become more welcoming, to carry our message of tolerance more widely in our community.

With the possibility of the 13th and Chambers site, the prospect of a larger identity.becomes far more real. Every one of us, regardless of our abilities or imperfections, has, and should continue to have, a place in this changing church community, and each of us can have a part in the planning for and preparing for these next, exciting years. We can provide a very needed religious alternative in central and west Eugene.

People of faith take the long view. We know that a community survives and thrives not merely in space but also through time, extending backward through memory and tradition and forward through vision and legacy. I am thankful, and grateful, to be part of this loving, caring, more involved and more significant UUCE.

“We gather to celebrate life, to minister to one another, to shape a community that hears all our voices, honors each search for meaning, and reaches out to enrich the world with caring. Thus we live our covenant, one with another.”

Sarah Hendrickson
President, UUCE Board of Trustees

For us, life, freedom of expression and belief, community, human compassion, service, and peace are things that are of highest value and worth, things that we strive for.
~Rev. Cynthia Cain, minister,
Unitarian Universalist Church of Lexington, Kentucky

June 2009

The past few months have been budget season at UUCE.  It has been quite an experience, and I want to share some of the journey with you. UUCE’s Budget Committee has put in enormous amounts of hard work: our treasurer, Jean Coberly, and our past treasurer, Marta Powers, and Elizabeth Weber and Doug Barab have again and again attended meetings and crafted spreadsheets. Their families and friends have missed them as they’ve called for and sometimes chased after input from committees, programs and staff and then amended the spreadsheets.  In pursuit of a balanced budget, they and many of you have presented ideas, offered to reduce spending, and prepared data.

In order to arrive safely at the other side of the next fiscal year, we should not plan to spend more than we can reasonably expect to have.  But what is reasonable?  What can we really expect to receive next year?

Our first tries at balance generated ugly financial proposals: 20% plus cuts in all staff and more from committees and programs!  This process has prompted many musings and (occasionally non-P.C.) moods regarding stewardship, and our relationship to this church community  What is my financial responsibility, personally and as an elected leader?  This struggle with the coming year’s UUCE budget has been a parade of moods for me.

“Moods have an inhuman quality. In old tales they appear as foxes, fairies, trolls, and angels, whose energy and purposes are disproportionate to our realm and condition.”
                            John Tarrant, The Light Inside the Dark

Last month, I was seeing UUCE’s budget gulf from a one-sided point of view: from only this troll-ridden shore, where the weather is a bit iffy and the fiscal waves are crashing all around.

But then, with help from many of wonderful you, a much, much bigger view of our possibilities emerged:    I am not usually a believer in supernatural intervention; the religious powers of hope and hard work are about as “woo-woo” as I can manage. However,  somehow, angels have appeared this spring.  Our church community manifested the several angels who sparked and fueled the $20,000 matching grant. We are all the angels who have increased pledges and gifts. There was a special angel looking over our lower-wage employees, who guaranteed they would not suffer layoffs or a salary cut.  Our office staff angels brainstormed how our fundraising income might be boosted with their help.  Angels are stepping forward to help with fundraisers: with the garage sales, auction, book sale, concerts, e-scrip, and more.  Angels continue to appear during many projects around the church: dinners for the homeless shelter, building gardens, celebrating our anniversary, coffee on Sundays, building and grounds care, childcare, little and big favors, and good deeds reaching out to one other and to our many connections with the network of the larger us.

Wow. I am yet again privileged and grateful to be part of this miraculous Universalist Unitarian Church. We are so fortunate in our companionship with and care for each other.

The budget is not completely out of the red; we’ll all need to pitch in this coming year to keep us balanced with our gifts of time and treasure. Whatever the difficulties we face, however, we will persevere and prevail. With love and effort, sharing both sacrifice and joy, we will still be our beloved community.

We are each of us angels with only one wing, and we can only fly by embracing one another. 
                                          ~ Luciano de Crescenzo

Sarah Hendrickson, UUCE Board President

May 2009

CONGREGATIONAL VALUE
Value is measured in more than dollars. A wise rabbi told us, where your treasure is, there also is your heart. A look at a recent credit card statement, or the itemized deductions on my tax return, tells me something about where my heart is, as opposed to where I would like it to be.

This church is worth a lot to me. This church, and you, fill my heart. How much of my treasure is invested here alongside my heart?

The church budget for the coming year will need and welcome special contributions from many of you. We celebrate the members who have increased their pledges despite economic uncertainty. We treasure those who, though feeling the pinch of unemployment or adversity, are maintaining at last year’s level. An effort to establish challenge grant funding is afoot. The stewardship committee is completing the “wrap-up” of this year’s campaign. Our church is a treasure of inspiration and fellowship, encouragement to spiritual growth, ethical living, and social justice, music, children’s and adult religious education, and more. We honor those who put their financial treasure to the support of this beloved community.

The total budget for the year we are completing, 2008-09, was about $407,000. The previous year, 2007-08, our budget was $360,000. We are in the midst of preparing next year’s budget. Last month’s best estimate from our hard working Stewardship Committee, which has nearly completed calls and contacts, was $330,000, leaving a considerable gap. Many are working to close it. Without generous increases in giving, however, we are looking at deep program and staff cuts in every part of our organization. Several principles will guide the board and budget committee. Our budget must balance. We can’t spend money we don’t have. Our budget must be sustainable. We must have a program that we believe we can maintain over time. Are we correcting a “bubble,” or will giving rebound? Is Oregon’s economy about to improve later this year, next year, or the year after? Last year we added staff: assistants in the office, in RE, and music. Our size and our programs clearly need this paid time. How can we maintain our programs? We have asked committees to scrutinize their missions, their budgets, and their operations to help answer these questions.

Committees and programs, however, are a small part of our budget. As in many churches and nonprofits, the most expensive item in the budget is staff compensation. Cuts here will be very difficult. We are working to mitigate the pain. All your help, advice and assistance will be gratefully received.

Work on the budget continues this month. The figures provided here are provisional. All of our targets are moving. You, our congregation, will be voting on next year’s budget at the Congregational Meeting on June 7. At the Congregational Meeting on May 10, members will elect new officers and board members. I’ll see you at both meetings, with hope and anticipation of positive news!

Sarah Hendrickson, UUCE Board President

March 2009

We, this UUCE, are an awesome organism- look at our schedule of offerings for each week: Worship, Education, Service, Witness.

We are solidly here and moving out and up. Individuals come and go, buildings and locations change, institutional organizations and names change, challenges and kerfluffles and enthusiasms arise and are met, or we re-think, and move to our future in some yet-unpredicted manner. But our spirit of community continues.

As wonderful as all our activity can be, just think, we are one hundred years old! Only a few of us individually are even approaching that number of years of experience, yet we are a centenarian group.

You are the wonderful folks and groups who make up this church organism, building spirit and mind, protecting and preserving our community, human and plant and (other) animal. We will keep working to live our principles and help others, through service and work parties and play parties, with coffee-making, dishwashing, casserole bringing, ushering, through activism and organizing, spiritual growth and humanist development. And we will continue to discuss, and discuss again, the relative merits of this action or the next.

Your Board will keep working on our bylaws and policies, trying to keep our governance up to date with all the activities and demands of our busy church, working with budgets and accountability and responsibilities for all our church’s treasures.

We will keep supporting the PNWD who supports this church back again (several of us attended the district meeting in Salem in February), participating in Eliot Institute family camps and UUSC projects around the world, and maintaining links with our like-minded fellows through the UUA. Eventually we will locate a new building home.

I expect that our numbers and our pledges and our commitments will grow. But whatever we do, through all of the thick times and the thin, with the seven fat cattle and the seven lean, we will support each other and our communities.

At the recent PNWD district meeting in Salem, an old friend reminded us that “all relationships exist to help each other be the best possible person.” At our best, we encourage one another to gratitude and to appreciation and even to “yet another fluffy learning opportunity.” I am reminded, over and over, that I, and all of us, are very human. I rest often in the realization that we are all perfectly imperfect beings, at the same time both ideal and flawed, coming to our lives through many different human stories.

I am learning (again, and yet again) that Paying Attention is the most basic form of love. Attention can hold us in any circumstance: of our lives, our relationships to one another, of our future, of the changing present. In this attention I am reminded to return to emotions that touch my heart and my brain: awareness, recognition, gratitude. I am beginning to get the idea that this moment, this now, is itself life. This IS that life that happens while we are making other plans.

So, thank you all for being part of us this human endeavor. Thank you for participating in this church community. Thank you for being here, together with us all in this most wonderful NOW.

I’m glad we’re all together!

Sarah Hendrickson, UUCE Board President

February 2009

January 2009

November 2008

"I have learned two lessons in my life: first, there are no sufficient literary, psychological, or historical answers to human tragedy, only moral ones. Second, just as despair can come to one another only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings."
                                                                ~ Elie Wiesel

Your UUCE Board is full of hope, and enthusiasm, for the business of this Beloved Church. Our world and community are full of anxieties, and distractions; we are grateful to be serving the mission of UUCE: “…. a … community that promotes spiritual growth, ethical living, and social justice in our church and in the world.”

Our agendas include: working with the Building Project Oversight Committee to further our search for a new home, reviewing this year’s Stewardship and Budget processes, consideration of how the Coordinating Council might be structured to offer more learning opportunities for church leaders. Several of us helped with the big project of the hiring of our new Office Manager, “Hutch.”

With the Financial Oversight Committee, your Board has been looking hard at a Proposed Fundraising Policy that would encourage us to think less as a congregation of "53 autonomous committees and groups" and more as if we were an integrated, coordinated church ministry and programs*. Upkeep of UUCE: the telephone, copier, heat, janitorial services, staff salaries- is the largest share of our yearly budget, with smaller amounts going to specific committees.

Should fundraisers for specific causes also be asked to contribute to the church as a whole, through a share, perhaps 10%, to the general fund?

Relegation of "non-UUCE" groups to the outside porch during the holiday season was a response last year to the crowds of people and tables in our tiny social hall, and to the many requests that we receive from our members and from outside the church for "good causes" during the season. Only a fundraising effort that has received sponsorship by a UUCE group or committee is invited to come into the warm and dry social hall.

(Aside from a new and bigger church,) how might we craft a policy and process that is at once fair, simple, and shared? Please give us your thoughts at the Board's open email address - uuceboard@uueugene.org

We have been watching your budget carefully, too! (especially Jean Coberly, your new and diligent Treasurer.) For several years, childcare has been provided for Religious Education and all-church events. There is as yet no “official” church policy that childcare will be provided for all committee and other meetings and events. Your Board would like to commit to providing all needed child care, as a matter of principle, and as an important access issue to UUCE programming for young families. However, childcare, like many other services, costs money Alas, the amount budgeted for childcare is not going to be adequate to the needs that we have seen even so far this church year. If your group or committee needing childcare is able to meet on Monday or Wednesday evenings at church, when childcare is already being provided for the choirs, that will help. If you have thoughts and ideas, please let us or your committee head know of your concerns and suggestions.

Sarah Hendrickson
President of the Board of Trustees

*"Voluntary associations can contribute more IF they go beyond simply being collections of self-interested individuals linked by contractual ties, and generate a sense of real cooperative activity, group membership, commitment to a common project, sense of obligation, etc." ~ Tocqueville