Dear Ones,
This past month has been a big one in your transitions process! Your collaborative history odyssey came down in the sanctuary, seeds of things you value about this congregation and what it’s added to your life began to go up in the foyer, and you selected a ministerial search team. You’re deep within your interim transitions process (see my April article for a recap of your interim goals and questions).
At the same time, the Ministry Council, Board, and staff have begun discussing hospitality and welcoming at WUUC. Our discussions started based on feedback we’ve received from visitors and things members and staff have noticed as they’ve engaged with the interim process. Those who attended the town hall on April 28 heard some of the musings that are beginning to emerge from our discussions
Work that’s emerging to make WUUC a welcoming, hospitable place for newcomers includes making street signage more visible, creating connection teams, developing WUUC’s social media presence, and developing programming around inclusion and radical hospitality. If you’d like to be engaged with this work, please let Karen Hyams or me know.
As we continue working on strengthening community and sharing our joy and strengths, some of you will recall the roller coaster of change that I shared with several gatherings in the Fall. Many people put dots on it to show where they were then on the roller coaster. And so I wonder, where are you on it now? Does where you are on the roller coaster of change depend on what part of the transition you’re focusing on? Maybe you’re on several roller coasters? As we explore the theme of Curiosity in May, I invite you to share your place on the roller coaster with me and with others.
We also held a workshop for existing small group facilitators at the end of April and will be working on expanding that work before the next church year to strengthen small groups. And WUUC’s new LGBTQIA+ Welcoming Congregation renewal team has begun its work.
Roller coasters can be uncomfortable, especially when you’re on several that are going at different rates and have different paths. Personally, I find that when there are changes around or within me sometimes one of my first, ingrained reactions is to question why it’s happening or to react against it. What I’ve learned helps me more with responding to and interacting with change is to take the energy of that first reaction and turn it into curiosity. How can I be genuinely curious about what’s happening? How can I be curious about what others are perceiving and experiencing?
And so, as we explore curiosity this month, how can we all be curious about our own and other people’s experiences? How can our curiosity help those seeds on the foyer walls – the seeds of what you value about WUUC – grow?
Love and Blessings,
Rev. Diana