a moment of progress

A couple months ago, we found ourselves in a flurry of chaos and anxiety, with the whole Board and 2 Committees confused about their roles and how to respond when a member has an idea they'd like to see implemented.  In response, we took a moment and worked out a policy we all agreed to for how to deal with these situations in the future.  Yesterday, another idea came forward - and instead of finding ourselves back in the flurry, they referred to the policy, and things are calm and good and thoughtful.  It could still return there, of course, but for now, just want to mark the moment as a little progress in boundaries and health in the system....

Ember Day Letter, Ingathering - On Community Formation

Dear Nancy,
My letter continues.  In this letter/post I want to tell you about community formation, which I mean to include, mission clarity and orientation, cohesion, conflict-management process, immunity to negativity, healthy leaders and processes....you get the idea....

• Culture and Covenant:   We have talked about the congregation as both transforming something that has existed (culture change), as well as starting as if from the beginning (church plant).  This combination continues.  There is so much that we engage as if for the first time.  And yet we also are beginning to uphold the congregational history we inherit, to put into view all the voices and lives and perspectives - and hours of service - that brought us to this point.  This is good.  We are learning to tell the story whole.  Everyone is sensitive to their part being included and wondering if it will not be. We are learning about forgiveness and learning and creating space rather than singularity. It's not one voice, one narrative that lives here, but many, and we are learning how we can create a community that can hold them all.  We are inviting in fuller participation, finding ways that we can minister to people through their service, aligning their roles with their gifts, their joy - I think much of this is coming through the LDC model.  It's just beginning, but it is hopeful.  We are at a fragile place in our culture, but there is more love on Sunday mornings, more love in our gatherings, more love growing amongst us - love in all its covenantal meanings and possibilities.  And so I am hopeful. 
•  Congregational Identity:  There remain many questions about our mission and vision and their relevance and meaning for the wider congregation.  We will probably turn our attention this year toward the vision, as the Board feels drawn to this as a comfortable place to begin.  There are questions about if we can (or even should) grow beyond our upper-income-white age 60+ majority membership.  There is an important sub-group of younger families, but these haven't become fully integrated yet. I do think we'll have 2 families join us in membership by November, but still the large majority on Sunday morning are retirement age.  I hope a newly forming Membership Committee can help address the underlying reasons.  I think partly, it's early and we have yet to see what will materialize.  But also, I am surprised we haven't seen plenty of returners from last year.  We need to focus in on this.  There are many opportunities for ministry around our understanding of race, class and multi-culturalism, and our call to engage these things in our own hearts and in our community.  I am thinking of this year as an opening our hearts to these questions, perhaps even beginning the questions.  It will be a long process - the congregation exists in a highly stratified area - along the valley we find working class one one end, billionaires on the other - and value judgments abide along side these class designations.  How do we begin to be a voice of healing, of wholeness - we are so much a part of it all, and so benefiting from it in our success already? These are not easy questions to contemplate.  And yet they will determine a lot of the congregation's external and internal identity in the years to come. 
• Relationship with and understanding of professional ministry:   Though there has been some anxiety in small circles around the move to my singular ministry, in the wider congregation, this is not the case.  We are already leaps and bounds ahead of where we were in the Spring in terms of systemic trust and understanding.  Slow as it was, it was so good and important these conversations around the Letter of Agreement over the summer.  There are people who would like me to be more central and visible; there are people who would like me to be less involved in all ways.  I think that all of these voices exist and none are the singular narrative is a good indication.  I've been reaching out actively to meet with 3-4 different members every time I am there, often for 2 hour or longer visits.  These are intense, but so important.  I am getting to know them, and them me.  I can only imagine how we will feel by the end of the year.  Which reminds me, there is already anxiety about who will come after me, and I can only assure them that we will figure it out, and that they don't have to do it alone. I talked to the Board at the Retreat about my intent to go into search; they understand we will likely conclude our work together in May.  And yet already we both have a sense that another year might not be a bad thing.  I can only say I am open to whatever my call brings. 
• Care and Connections:  The LDC Chair, the Board Pres and a member of the LDC are enthusiastically looking to initiate covenant groups by mid-year, which we believe will address issues of community formation and sense of cohesion and belonging.  The Board Retreat brought up a number of possible shared projects that could help grow our community identity - we will see if these are taken up.  It's a big year with a lot going on, and not quite enough solid volunteers to yet make everything happen.  Also, it looks like we will be starting a Pastoral Care Team model - replacing our Caring Committee.  We have a great potential lead for this in an area Hospice Chaplain who is also a member of TRUU.  She and I have been meeting regularly as she looks to grow her Unitarian Universalist identity and formation and prepare for board certification (associates level).  We have hopes of forming a geographically dispersed pastoral care team who could serve our geographically dispersed congregation, who would then coordinate their service through this leader.  The leader would then meet with me monthly for routine care, and then be in touch more often for emergencies.  It feels very promising to be able to create this kind of caring structure for our congregation as it grows. 

This gives a good overview of things I am thinking about in terms of community formation.  In the last post I'll turn to faith formation....

Ember Day Letter, Ingathering - Governance

Dear Nancy,

You probably know, the Episcopals have this practice where during Ember Days (Weds, Fridays, and Saturdays following the first Sunday in Lent, Pentecost, Holy Cross Day - Sept 17th, and December 13th) a new minister sends the bishop a letter reflecting on the changing nature of your call.  This continues until ordination, maybe beyond.  It's not our tradition, but I'm envious of it.  And so I'm going to borrow it as a mode for writing about what's happening at Two Rivers (oh, and you're the bishop, in case you weren't sure).  I wonder what our Ember Days would be? Ingathering, Yom Kippur, Advent or Solstice, Martin Luther King, Holy Week/Easter, Annual Meeting? Something like this will be my pattern for the letters.  Framing these conversations in this way helps me remember it is ministry, not management, learning not result, covenant above all.  It helps me reflect on my own continuing formation as a minister, my own learning and spiritual path.  And, it helps me stay on a routine process for writing. 


There are three areas I want to talk about in this first letter: faith development, community formation, and governance.  I'll post one section at a time, just so this doesn't go on and on....

Let's do this in reverse order, starting in governance.

• Board Development: To say the Board Pres and I talk often would be a serious understatement.  Through our relationship I am learning what it means to experience mutual transformation and growth in shared ministry.  We are true partners,  each with a strong sense of our roles and also our challenges in this work.  We hosted our first Board Retreat last Sunday, focusing on leadership, the role of the Board, visioning, and the communication flow amongst the empowered lay leaders of the congregation and to the Board.  Out of this Retreat came a number of important actions, perhaps most of all a named craving for deeper work within the Board to build relationships, to become in and of themselves, a covenant group.  Also, we worked out the beginnings of a plan for involving the congregation in a visioning process.  We did not, however, get to the process of naming shared values, which would be a very important next step.  Tensions in the air remain around leadership succession, volunteer recruitment, financial security, and ensuring we don't "get ahead of ourselves" without the necessary resources.  Fear remains, despite much evidence that might encourage otherwise. 
• Leadership Development and Shared Ministry: The Leadership Development Committee has begun its work, including identifying job descriptions for each Committee.  The LDC Chair led an important conversation at the Board Retreat about ways to grow our leadership development in the congregation.  My sense is by November most Committees will be functional, including the beginnings of a lay Pastoral Care Team, a Worship Committee, and a Membership Committee.  Social Justice is lagging but there are seeds for this being planted now.  Also Finance/Stewardship remains underdeveloped (see below). 
• Finance: It became clear to the Board Pres, the Treasurer and I earlier this year that the Budget would require significant revision, especially with the major programmatic changes we have been making (number and types of Sunday worship programs).  The Board Pres and Treasurer have worked together to bring the Budget to a clear presentation - this will go to the Board in the next few days.  It will be a meaningful change from the budget presented and approved at the annual meeting.  They created a narrative to go along side it.  There was an accounting error, however, which mostly makes up for the increase in the budget so at this point very little additional fundraising must be accomplished (less than $2,000 I believe).  The Board Pres is working to identify ways to get herself out of this process going forward - considering a Finance Committee or at least identifying another Board member who could focus on budgetary details with the Treasurer.  

On the next letter/post I'll turn to community formation....

Back to wrestling

We had this moment last night at the Board Retreat where just about everything felt possible, and perfect.  Then, this morning, it all started to come out again and I remembered Nancy saying to me once, "they're afraid they might actually succeed."  With this beautiful Peace Corps/Sept 11th Service, a room filled with 65 glowing faces, maybe 20 of them first time visitors, maybe more.  With this Board Retreat and a shared sense of vision and values emerging.  With our treasurer having nothing but love and graciousness for his work, and no anxiety at all about it and what will happen.  With the Committees beginning to take on more of their work and to love it along the way. I think that being afraid we might succeed is about right for where we are right now.

We have worries about the budget, where it is and why it isn't finalized and how come no one really knows about it.

We have worries about communication and who gets to know what when.

We have worries about management and business and who will make sure that things happen when they need to happen, the business of the church and isn't that what the Board's job is anyway.

We still hold these personal grudges for our time being misused, for feeling overused and overburdened, and we hang on and hang on thinking someone else better feel this pain once and for all - yes all that is there.

And then how we reach people and stay connected and who gets to be in charge, that question is still there, if we could just know once and for all, who is in charge!

emerging (after the board retreat)

Tonight at the board retreat, I saw these new things emerging:

• This sense of clarity, this sense of who we are, who we are supposed to be, what this work is supposed to be, and it was beautiful.  
• This shared sense of emerging vision, and even the will to get there, and feeling so good about what they have already done. 

I felt proud, and grateful.  I thought about all the times that Howell sat there and waited, and didn't talk, and I wondered why.  At this retreat, I practiced this, didn't talk even when I wanted to encourage them along.  Instead, I just waited.  And then amazingly, there, the group came to it, all on their own, discoveries made and this claiming of their path and their power and their potential.  Really, i loved them all and all of it a lot tonight.  And finally, I thought, this is something I could do for a long time.

Wrestling with....

Ingathering service this past Sunday, so much good reflected in the room, and so much excitement being there in the new space, overflowing already.  So good to have the kids in for the Water Communion, that was a very good decision.  

Out of the conversations this weekend, here are some active things I hear among us....

How we grow and share leadership and even, power.  When is the time to ask to serve, and what does service look like? How do we involve more people, earlier? How do we give people sufficient tools and information about who we are, our tradition, our vision - especially when we are still learning these things ourselves?

Still on the minister - whether to be minister-led, and what that means at pretty much every level.

How we minister to those who challenge us the most, and what the limits of our outreach should be. Is there a place for all, can we be a place that ministers to all, and how does that ministry vary according to the way the person bends and pushes on the limits of the community?

How do we communicate with one another, and what are the road blocks to easy communication? How can we release obstacles so that we can continue to grow fully and empower our leaders to engage more and more among us?

Pleasing people versus serving a mission, a vision...we deeply need to get our Board clear on this one so that they can better help keep this conversation full and rich in the conversation.  

God-led

I'm reading this great little Alban article about listening for where God is leading the church, and I think, here's the issue.  Without a sense of "God," however - even humanistically - conceived, how would we conceive of leadership except as one person's idea and then another's.  So then, this question of leadership is a question of faith formation.