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.
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