A Message from the President: Beginning Fresh

This is my first message as your new president. I am finding that I have a lot to learn including paying attention to newsletter deadlines. This summer I missed my first opportunity to get to know you better in the July-August newsletter. Somehow the newsletter that coincides with our Ingathering Service Sunday seems an appropriate way to start. 

I am excited by this opportunity to lead the Board for the next two years. Following the strong leadership we have had, the church is in such a solid place to move forward. I am honored and grateful to be part of this community.

The Board held a day-long retreat on August 15th. We started by reviewing our Mission Statement, Covenant, and Affirmation to ground us in why our work is important. We each chose 5 words that spoke to us the most and then discussed them. It was fascinating to see the differences: some focused more on love and reverence, others more on community service and political action. Whatever the focus, the common thread was a profound respect for the values and work of All Souls Church.  

I know you are familiar with our covenant and we recently revised the mission statement in our revised by-laws. I’ll bet there are a number of you who have not heard our Affirmation. I think you will be inspired. It is beautiful. 

Love is the spirit of this congregation and service is its call. Let this be our covenant: to dwell together in peace, to seek the truth in love, and to help one another.

Then we looked at the Covenant of Right Relations that was adopted by the Congregation in March 2010. This document was in our Board Handbook just begging for more attention. It is a 19 page document full of careful thought. I felt it was important that we have common understanding as to how we relate as a board 

and that we honor the work those before us did. We did an activity with the 10 Principles of Right Relations. To give you a flavor the first 2 Principles are: 1. We practice courtesy and civility in our relationships.  2. We respect the worth and dignity of all persons, calling them to act in right relationship and take responsibility for what they do. In the covenant, each principle then had bullet points to elaborate, but we were only working from the brief statement. 

These were ten big, important ideas, but how do we do it? What would it look like if we were living the principles?  In our small groups we each tackled three principles to brainstorm how we would accomplish each one. We created our own bullet points or paragraphs to elaborate. We then shared and discussed our thoughts and looked at the elaborations from 2010. We all agreed it was a valuable discussion and we agreed to read the 19 page document as homework. Here it is if you would like to explore it: Covenant of Right Relations. 

While the morning of our Retreat was focused on big ideas, the afternoon was more practical, to decide on our goals for the year. As Leslie wrote in June, “Topics that are on our minds include history, landscape design, position descriptions, policy updates, data management, capital needs and the potential for a future capital campaign. Safety and security were previously identified issues as well as care of our building.”  We have some ambitious goals for the year. In addition to those mentioned in June, we will be coming up with a Sabbatical policy for our deserving minister and also ways to encourage community involvement. We can’t meet our ambitious goals alone, we need your help.  After our Ingathering Service and throughout the month of September, you will have the opportunity to find out about committees, teams  and task forces that you could volunteer for. Please consider joining one if you are not already volunteering. The Board would love to see more folks on the Building and Grounds Committee, and History and Archives Committee. We are percolating some ideas about ways to celebrate our history including how we might display historic pieces and, from Rev. Telos, sermons on our UU history and a UU History discussion series.  

I think one of our most inspiring initiatives will be to form a Memorial Team that will look at the many ways we can remember our dear members: ideas include a Memorial Garden, a Memorial Path, a Memorial Wall and more. The team will start by exploring all of the ideas, gaining inspiration from other church communities and ways that they honor and remember their own. 

Perhaps tied in with the Memorial Team is another exciting opportunity: the Landscape Team, which will look at the landscape plans that were prepared for us and make recommendations as to what makes sense to set as a goal. 

If either of these teams sounds exciting to you, please let me know at . 

You will hear more about our goals in the future, and I promise you not every message from the president will be this long. 

Norma Willingham, Board President