by WUUC | Feb 21, 2020 | Announcements
By Alaine Owsley Davis
One of the ways we care for each other in this church community is by sharing food together. Food is an essential, visceral way that we demonstrate our love for one another. Going out for lunch, cooking together, having friends over for dinner: These are all ways that we deepen our bonds.
WUUC is a pick-up site for Full Circle Farms,
a local organic farm that participates in Community Supported Agriculture
(CSA). Anyone can purchase a weekly (or bimonthly) CSA subscription and get
their fresh, organic produce delivered to a local site like our church. In
exchange for being a pick-up site, WUUC is granted one free CSA box per week,
and we pass this box on in a rotation, with members selected to receive a box,
for example, the first Thursday of each month and someone else the second
Thursday of each month.
One such individual had been receiving the box
for a while and decided it was time to let someone else enjoy it. This person
wrote me a letter that reminded me of why this church exists, why I choose to
be a part of it, and how some of the small things we do can make a big
difference for others in our community.
Dear Alaine,
I think it is time. I
am now working every day and feeling like life is going to work out eventually.
It is time for me to thank you for the farm boxes and let someone else
receive that bounty.
I would like you to
know how much more than just the veg this has been for me. I was
profoundly shattered and definitely not buying fresh items because of
their cost – and the sadness of the change to cooking for one in a tiny
apartment kitchen.
These boxes brought me
into my happy cooking place, creating healthy bakes and soups and such to eat
and fill my freezer. But much more than that, they were a manifestation of the
care I felt from the WUUC community at a time I was bereft. It was basic human
sharing. So special, so meaningful. Each box was both a hymn and a hug.
Thank you so much for
being a part of the path out of darkness, a path paved with carrots, fennel and
leeks!
by WUUC | Feb 21, 2020 | DRE Blog
Stewardship season is upon us again. It is the time in the church year when we are thinking about our pledges, our resources, what we want to give to the church, and what we feel we can afford. It is also the time of year when we plan our annual church budget, which is a true reflection of our values and what we deem important as a congregation.
And so, it seems to me, that it makes sense that we review where we are focusing our money and energy, and what values are being reflected by our choices. As a community, we are doing a lot of wonderful things, but it has everyone spread pretty thin. I feel that acutely in the Religious Education (RE) program. Parents, students, teachers, volunteers and leaders are all juggling so much. It is difficult for anyone to commit more time to anything, including religious education. This has resulted in smaller attendance numbers and fewer volunteers.
In order to best utilize the resources that we do have, the Religious Education Committee has come to the decision to scale back the Sunday morning RE program through the end of May. This means that there will be two Sundays per month in which the children will experience the worship service with the community rather than going to class. (Nursery and pre-school RE will continue every week.) I look forward to the community bonding that we can experience by sharing more worship services with our children.
And even though we are cutting back the number of classes, we
are still in need of more volunteers. As you review your commitments to
WUUC, perhaps you can make a small sacrifice and volunteer to help with one RE
class between now and the end of May. Just one Sunday morning would
reflect that you value the religious education of our community’s
children.
Thank you for all that you do to make WUUC a special and sacred
space.
Peace,
Bridget
by WUUC | Feb 21, 2020 | Announcements
By Jean Fowler
The Woodinville Unitarian Universalist Church became a “Welcoming Congregation” in 1998. This status now needs to be renewed annually and, over the past year, your Welcoming Congregation Committee has successfully completed the renewal tasks.
The Five Practices of Welcome Renewal are five benchmarks
that every congregation will need to integrate into congregational life in
order to ensure that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, asexual,
two-spirit, genderqueer, non-binary, and the like feel fully welcomed,
centered, and embraced in our Unitarian Universalist congregation.
This past year our congregation has:
**Included Welcoming Worship into our annual calendar such
as recognizing LGBTQ+ PRIDE, and Transgender Day of Visibility
**Observed and celebrated Annual Welcoming Days such as Stonewall
Riots Anniversary, National Coming Out Day and Intersex Awareness Day.
**Held the Preemptive Radical Inclusion Workshop by CB Beal.
**And supported TRUUsT (Transgender Religious Professionals
Unitarian Universalist Together)
Additionally, our congregation has celebrated with the hanging of our LGBTQ+ flag on the front of our church.
Your Welcoming Committee members are: Erika Jackson Kirkendall, Jessica Belmont, Jo Raymond, Emma Rockenbeck, DD Hilke, John Hilke and Jean Fowler.
by WUUC | Feb 21, 2020 | Announcements
By Carol Taylor
Stewardship Chair
As we embark on our next journey with a new minister in the coming year, it’s important to build a solid financial footing to launch our ship. Your contributions are vital to the financial viability of WUUC.
Our annual pledge drive runs through March 15. That’s when we’ll know if we have sufficient budget to extend an offer to a ministerial candidate of our choice. We encourage you to make your pledge today at wuuc.org/future.
by WUUC | Feb 13, 2020 | Announcements
By Donna Johnson
The WUUC Worship Team is committed to ongoing evaluation and improvement. At our retreat last fall we talked about the limitations of what we had been doing for evaluation and developed a new approach. We determined that the overall purpose of our evaluation was to optimize the quality of our worship. Team members developed an evaluation template that asks:
- Were there opportunities for emotional response,
spiritual connection, deepening, and transformation?
- Did the service elements combine in a cohesive
flow?
- What worked? What might be? What should be?
The Worship Team schedules an evaluator from the team for each week. The evaluator uses the evaluation template to draft comments about each element of the service. After the service the evaluator, Worship Associate and others who were involved in the service meet to discuss the things that went well, things that could have been changed, and any lessons learned that can be applied to future services. After the post-service meeting the evaluator finalizes the template, and it is stored on google docs. The whole team reviews the completed templates at our monthly meetings and note important take-aways in the meeting minutes.
We started this process in November 2019, and so far, the team is pleased with how the process is going. Worship Associates appreciate being able to talk about the service with colleagues when the experience is fresh. The team’s monthly discussions seem more helpful and focused because there is a designated person to lead the conversation about each service, and the completed templates are a great way to capture things that might be forgotten if we just relied on our memories.
