Dear Ones,
How does your past influence who you are today and who you might become in the future? How does it affect what you love to do, who you connect with, and how you want to engage with the wider world? How do the high points, the low points, and the level points affect that?
Many of us grapple with these questions in our own lives. They’re big questions that stir up our hearts and minds. And they’re key questions for congregations during their interim ministry. In fact, that first question is the one we’ve been working with together for the past eight months.
Now that you’ve spent two months together putting information and photos on your history odyssey and having conversations together in small groups, in community conversations, and in conversations with the minister, it’s time for your history odyssey to come down. And this is an opportunity to engage with those questions in a new way that looks at the present and toward the future!
Eight months into your interim ministry this congregation has been working hard on your focuses for this first year of interim ministry. These include:
- Understanding your heritage, particularly through storytelling about your past, and how your heritage influences what kinds of relationships members have with each other, with
ministry , and with your minister.- Based on this work, beginning to understand your mission and discovering a new identity. This is work that will continue well into your second year of interim ministry, as will all of your
first year work.
- Based on this work, beginning to understand your mission and discovering a new identity. This is work that will continue well into your second year of interim ministry, as will all of your
- Building internal connections, trust, and communication.
- Your work on covenant and expanding covenantal communication the past several months has been directly related to this focus.
- Building connections with the UUA to support search and for General Assembly, which will be in Spokane from June 19-23. Understanding and strengthening WUUC’s other connections with the external community.
- Understanding your current organizational systems and governance, your desired relationship with ministry and ministers, and then beginning to develop your desired organizational structure and governance.
In the coming months I’ll be beginning to work with this congregation on exploring those key questions in more detail:
- How does your congregation’s past influence who you are today and who you might become in the future?
- How does it affect what you love to do, who you connect with, and how you want to engage with the wider world?
- How do the high points, the low points, and the level points affect that?
As we explore them, we’ll be working toward generating some answers to questions the Board and I have identified as key ones for your interim ministry:
- What kind of relationships do the members and friends of WUUC want to have with each other?
- What kind of relationship does the congregation want to have with its minister?
- What is WUUC’s governance approach? Do policies and procedures support that?
- What is the identity of WUUC (how much focus on inward community, how much focus on transformation, outreach, and justice work)?
- How can members of WUUC hold space for difference while maintaining communication?
Stay tuned for information and invitations to work on these questions. In the immediate term I’ll be holding another informal group conversation with the minister on April 7 at 11:45. Please come join us to begin this discussion.
Love and Blessings,
Rev. Diana