Leadership

At UUCC, as their developmental minister, we began with the covenant. I led five group meetings over an eight-day period staggering the times so that as many as possible could participate. We used the process that was presented at GA several years ago by Victoria Weinstein for creating a new covenant. From each group, I asked for a volunteer to join a team to craft a new covenant from the words and phrases that were inspired by conversations in the meetings.

The five team members and I met regularly to begin the work. After three months of meetings and working together, we were ready to present three options to the congregation. There was an obvious favorite when it came time to vote and the covenanting process was as important as the final product:

We journey together bound
in the interdependent web of existence.
We embrace diversity, own our conflicts,
and assume good intentions.
When we fail, we begin again in love.
Justice and compassion shall be our watchwords
and beloved community, our goal.

The next thing I tackled was the mission. It occurred to me that if I could guide the congregation through a process of writing an individual mission statement and then condense it down to one word, we might be able to discern the collective mission. I spent six months working on this with them and held a final luncheon/working meeting where they wrote their personal mission statement and then wrote their essence word on polished stone and placed it in a large bowl. Another small team of volunteers from the group worked with me to gather the words and put them together. I used the word salad app to create a colorful and artistic visual of the words that stood out. I think we had over ten to share with the congregation. They were able to vote on the one that they like the best. After that, we took the top three and went to work. Here’s the final product:

Our Mission at UUCC is to CARE:

Creating beloved community.
Awakening hearts and minds.
Resisting injustice and acting with compassion.
Embracing life and caring for the earth.

The visioning process has been taken seriously by the present board and they spent a Saturday together sharing ideas. The present stewardship campaign has been created around the outcome of that meeting. The theme is Tending the Flame; Gratitude for Our Beloved Community. The board has shared their hopes and dreams for the church’s future and the goal of ensuring that the church will be here for generations to come.