March 2010 Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes

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First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin, Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes

Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 6:30 p.m.

First UU Church of Austin, 4700 Grover, Austin, TX  78756 in Room 13

In Attendance:

Trustees:  Nell Newton, President; Eric Stimmel, Vice-President; Luther Elmore, Treasurer; Chris Jimmerson, Secretary; Sheila Gladstone, Immediate Past President (Ex-Officio); Margaret Borden; Derek Howard; Aaron Osmer, Youth Trustee; Brendan Sterne; Michael West; Laura Wood.

Executive Team:  Janet Newman, Interim Minister (Ex-Officio); Sean Hale, Executive Director (Ex-Officio)

Staff Present: Brent Baldwin, Director of Music

Visitors Present: Kathleen Ellis, Stephanie (Canada) Gill, Kae McLaughlin, Jeanette Swenson, Daesene Willman

Call to Order

The President called the meeting to order at 6:30 p.m.

Adoption of Agenda

The Trustees present adopted the agenda (Appendix A, page 2).

Motion: Brendan Sterne– Adopt the agenda.

Second: Michael West

Discussion: None

Vote: All affirmative

Reading and Lighting of the Chalice

The trustees read the board covenant (Appendix A, Page 1) in unison and the President lit the high-tech chalice.

Visitor’s Forum

Daesene Willman thanked the trustees for being servant leaders and for supporting freeze nights.

Stephanie (Canada) Gill presented the YEW GROVE Pagan Interfaith brochure (Appendix B) and announced the Ostara Ritual & Potluck on March 21 at 2 p.m. She also announced the Grand Re-Opening of the library that will include a book sale and potluck on Saturday, April 17. Book donations will be accepted from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. and the sale will begin at 11 a.m. and go until 2 p.m.

Consent Agenda Items

The trustees had read the consent agenda items prior to the meeting. The President explained that the board would begin following a new procedure for the consent agenda to begin practicing some of the governance procedures from the recent board training on governance and to leave more time on meeting agendas to hold intentional discussion and exercises regarding governance. She noted that:

  • Consent agenda reports will be due to the secretary by noon on the Friday 11 days before the board meeting (one week earlier than they have been due)
  • Trustees will read the reports and direct any questions for clarification to the authors of the reports. Any policy issues brought up by the reports should be communicated to the President and the Secretary.
  • At the actual meeting, the consent agenda items will be adopted but not discussed.

Motion: Chris Jimmerson – adopt the consent agenda items.

Second: Brendan Sterne

Discussion: A trustee asked that if a policy issue were raised by a report in the consent agenda whether it would be put on the discussion and action section of the agenda that month. The President replied that it would depend upon the urgency of the issue.

Vote: All Affirmative

Discussion and Action Items

Nominations Committee: Jeanette Swenson from the Nominations Committee presented the slate for trustees being nominated for the next board year, as well as the Nominating Committee’s suggestion for board appointees of committee chairs (Appendix C). She noted that the Nominations Committee had taken an expanded role this year by conducting leadership training. This seemed to lead to more candidates and those candidates being more prepared and enthusiastic. There were more candidates than positions available. She urged the continuation of leadership development and noted that the openness of the nominating process had also helped.

The Trustees discussed the process for the appointment of the Youth Trustee. The current Youth Trustee noted that no choice had been made yet and that the Youth Trustee process is separate and occurs in September.

Treasurer: The President informed the Trustees that she had accepted the resignation of Luther Elmore as Treasurer due to personal reasons. She thanked him for his amazing work as Treasurer, as did the other trustees. She noted that Kae McLaughlin, Treasurer nominee for the next board year, had agreed to serve as Treasurer for the remainder of the current board year should the board appoint her.

Motion: Brendan Sterne – Appoint Kae McLaughlin as Treasurer for the remainder of the current board year

Second: Chris Jimmerson

Discussion: None

Vote: All Affirmative

Review of New Financial Statements Format (Appendix A, Page 18): The Executive Director (ED) gave an overview of the financial statements in their new format, noting that the summary page provides key information at the top, followed by more detailed notes for those who prefer them. He gave an overview of the balance sheet and the Profit and Loss Budget Versus Actual Summary, noting that the workbook sent to Trustees also contains a sheet with more details for those who want them.

A Trustee noted a concern about plate collections being lower than anticipated and referenced an article that addressed “skimming” of collections within churches. The ED expressed that pledge collections were higher than anticipated and that more church members may be marking their plate donations as going toward their pledges. He also noted that there is always more than one person involved in accounting for plate collections. Luther Elmore also noted that collections for non-profits are separate now rather than split from one collection and that this has worked well but would keep the non-profit out of the church collection numbers as it had been in prior years.

A Trustee asked about whom to address any question about the Financial Statements. The ED responded that such questions should begin with him.

Discussion with Kathleen Ellis, District Ministerial Settlement Representative: The President welcomed Reverend Ellis, who summarized and highlighted information in materials she had brought regarding the settled minister search process (Appendix D). She highlighted the following from the materials:

  • The MSR Report Form I will be due soon from the President.
  • Begin thinking now about the salary and housing package for the next minister.
  • Begin assembling search committee and let them know it can be upwards of 400 hours of work each.
  • Appoint a negotiating team: 1 search committee member, one board member, and 1 church elder. They should create a draft letter of agreement or contract.
  • Establish a budget for the search committee.
  • The search committee will need to plan a retreat, usually a Friday evening and a Saturday.
  • Establish a budget for the Installation Ceremony for the new minister.
  • Establish criteria for search committee members (examples on pages 5 and 6 of materials).
  • The draft agreement must be sent to the transitions office before interviewing can begin. Due October 31 with candidate records seen in November.
  • Create a congregational profile and what it wants in a minister. Be honest in profile.
  • Search committee will need to be web savvy.

Michael West, charged with assembling the search committee, sought advice from his fellow trustees on making the selection process as transparent as possible. He suggested several methods for inviting applications including an article in the church newsletter, several weeks of announcements and putting the invitation into the Special Notes. He noted that due to timing issues, doing some of these could delay the selection process.

Reverend Ellis noted that the search committee could be assembled as late as May.

The consensus of the trustees was to utilize all of these methods and to have a relatively short deadline for applications once the various announcements have been completed.

Dates, Times and Locations for 2010 Board Retreat and Values/Mission/Ends Retreat: The Vice-President asked the trustees to mark their calendars for May 22 for a retreat at U Bar U and to plan to arrive by 11 a.m. and stay overnight. The costs will be $30 each, which includes meals and housing.

The Secretary asked the trustees to mark their calendars for the values/mission/ends session on June 12, 2010 from 9 am to 4 pm in Austin, location to be announced.

Executive Session: The Trustees entered into an executive session to discuss a personnel matter and those who were not trustees left the room.

Governance Discussion:

Nested Bowls – The Secretary reviewed the nested bowls diagram (page 33 of Appendix A) from the policy-based governance training materials wherein values represent the largest part of our chalice, containing within them the mission, which contains within it the ends statements. He noted that flame of the chalice represents linkage with those we as trustees represent. Good board governance lies within these areas, and policy-based governance would result in four kinds of board policies:

  • Ends
  • Executive Limitations
  • Relationship with the Executive
  • Board Processes

These polices will start at the broadest level and work toward the more specific until the board feels comfortable that the Executive could make any reasonable further interpretation of them. The Executive will make any policies beyond that point. To make time for examining governance during board meetings, the board will need to begin delegating policies that are clearly not within the four above, setting any limitations as needed.

Policy Governance the What and Why – Brendan Sterne facilitated a brainstorming session on why we are considering policy-based governance and what it entails both to help trustees clarify the concepts for themselves and to serve as way to begin educating others about it. The trustees brainstormed the following:

Policy Governance, Why?

====================

– Clarify accountability, authority and responsibility

– Staff empowered to do their work

– Board focus on the mission

– We are a growing congregation

– Full board meets 3 hours per month; Executives work 40 hrs+ per month

Policy Governance, What?

====================

– Board creates policies

– Board sets limits

– Board focuses on Vision / Strategy, not administrative details

– Board monitors Executives

– Board deals with policies, *not* individual cases

Policy Agenda Exercise – The Vice-President facilitated a discussion of what items on an earlier board agenda (page 35 of Appendix A) might be delegated to the Executive and which not. The trustees were in consensus that the agenda items involving personal days, pay periods and the rental policy could be delegated. There was some question regarding a proposal for a memorial and how exactly the consent agenda would be handled (would it need to be adopted at all?). The trustees will seek clarification on these from the consultant for moving toward policy-based governance. An agenda item regarding an internal audit committee might be a part of monitoring under policy-based governance.

Linkage – The Secretary facilitated a discussion of how the board could conduct linkage (definition on page 36 of Appendix A) with its moral ownership (definition also on page 36). He noted that the board is clearly accountable to the church members but that at a later time the trustees will discuss that the moral ownership might be even larger. The trustees discussed the following ways to let the congregation know about linkage opportunities and to provide such opportunities:

– “Bridge to our Future” / AI Process

– Senior Lunch

– Board member announce, “Available to chat after service”

– Broadcast emails from individuals

– Holiday events

– Get linkage ideas from the congregation (ask them!)

– Newsletter item announcing new board

– Use specific subject lines in emails

– Phone calls by trustees — gather input

– Phone calls on member’s anniversary of membership

– Board members host house parties

Kitchen Remodel: Michael West stated that a member of the congregation had approached him who might consider providing up to $50,000 in matching funds (not currently budgeted by the church) for a kitchen renovation. He asked if a kitchen had been included in the plans for a potential new RE wing in the future. The trustees recalled that the plans did not include a full kitchen but advised checking with the building committee.

The trustees expressed enthusiasm over the possibility of such an offer and a renovation of the kitchen.

With no further business, the President adjourned the meeting at 9:25 pm.

Respectfully Submitted,

Chris Jimmerson

Secretary

Appendix A

Note: Appendices B, C and D will be scanned and made available here shortly.

Environmentalism and a Culture of Caring – An Earth Day message

by Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Mark Skrabacz, Sermons

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Mark Skrabacz

Pastor – UU Church of the Hill Country

April 18, 2010

One morning, long, long ago—in fact, 120 million years ago, something incredible happened here on Earth: The first flower ever to appear on the planet opened up to receive the rays of the sun. Prior to this momentous event, the planet had been covered in vegetation for millions of years but none had ever before flowered. I imagine that this first flower probably didn’t survive for long, since conditions were not quite yet favorable for a widespread flowering to occur. One day, however, such conditions came about.  A critical threshold was reached, and our planet became filled with an explosion of color and scent.  It was an evolutionary transformation in the life of plants and all life.

Much later, flowers would come to play an essential part in the evolution of consciousness of another species: us!  Think about it: over the years, flowers have provided inspiration and insight to countless artists, poets, teachers, and mystics.  In the New Testament, for example, Jesus, himself, tells us to contemplate the flowers and learn from them how to live. And the Buddha is said to have once given a “silent sermon” during which he held up a flower and simply gazed at it.  After a while, one monk began to smile. It is said that this monk was the only one who had understood the sermon. According to legend, that smile (which has been interpreted over the years as “awakening”), that smile was handed down by twenty-eight successive masters and became the origin of Zen.

So it is no accident that flowers are included in so much Buddhist art.  Seeing the beauty in a flower can awaken humans, however briefly, to the beauty that is an essential part of our own innermost being, as the Buddha called it, our original face — our true nature.

This is one of the reasons why many of us like to garden and work with plants. They are serene and their energy is infectious.

This is all described by Eckhart Tolle in his book, A New Earth.  Tolle raises the possibility that important religious teachers like the Buddha and Jesus were some of humanity’s “early flowers,” so to speak. That is to say, they were our precursors. They were rare and precious beings who were as revolutionary in their day as was that first flower 120 million years ago.  And when they appeared on Earth, conditions were not yet favorable for widespread comprehension of their messages.  This, argues Tolle, is because humanity wasn’t evolved enough, hadn’t yet reached a critical threshold of understanding to grasp the teachings.  Thus, these great teachers were largely misunderstood by their peers.

This raises the question:  are we more evolved now, some 2,000-2,500 years since the Buddha and Jesus were alive?  How many of us think that we are?  Although this evolutionary growth of consciousness has seemed to come in fits and spurts—and even seems to regress at times.

In these days of population growth and climate change, of industrialization and shrinking natural habitats, the question becomes whether or not are we evolving quickly enough to preserve life as we know it?

I want to be clear: this is not going to be a doomsday Earth Day sermon.  Rather, I want to share with you this morning why it is that I am feeling hopeful in spite of the many problems threatening the health and future of our Mother Earth.

Let me start with the assertion that we already possess the technical knowledge, the communication tools, the ability to educate our fellow humans about population control, and the material resources to grow enough food, ensure clean air and water, and meet the rational energy needs of all of us.  We have everything we need to survive and thrive for generations to come. Everything, that is, except for the required shift of consciousness that will inspire us to implement changes on a global scale.  Many of us are still plagued by the old habits and understandings that have caused the mess in which we now find ourselves.

“The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.” Thus began the famed astronomer Carl Sagan’s majestic 1980 television series, Cosmos. The epic grandeur of Sagan’s Cosmos—suffused with “billions upon billions” of planets, stars, and galaxies—captivated the imagination of viewers everywhere. But despite the almost sacred reverence for existence that permeated the series, some still took issue with its strictly scientific bias, finding little room for the numinous or the transcendent in Sagan’s naturalistic worldview.

Fifteen years later, the integral philosopher Ken Wilber issued an 800-page response to concerns such as these. Titled Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, Wilber’s grand tome argued for a more holistic conception of the universe—one that would honor the profound revelations of science and religion alike. He called the Universe “the Kosmos” (with a “K” from the Greek). So when some use the term “Kosmos,” with a “k”, it’s not only to affirm our appreciation for Sagan’s extraordinary universe but also to restore the spiritual depth and transcendent mysticism that the ancient Greek philosophers, who coined the word, duly acknowledged and revered.

Perhaps a more realistic synthesis of the two comes from renowned systems thinker Gregory Bateson,

“If you put God outside and set him vis-a-vis his creation, and if you have the idea that you are created in his image, you will logically and naturally see yourself as outside and against the things around you.  And as you arrogate all mind to yourself (Arrogate, from the latin arrogatus defined as claiming or seizing without justification.) Continuing with Bateson: as you arrogate all mind to yourself, you will see the world around you as mindless and therefore not entitled to moral or ethical consideration.  The environment will seem to be yours to exploit.  Your survival unit will be you and your folks or conspecifics against the environment of other social units, other races, and the brutes and vegetables.  If this is your estimate of your relation to nature and you have an advanced technology, your likelihood of survival will be that of a snowball in hell.  You will die either of the toxic by-products of your own hate, or simply of overpopulation and overgrazing.” Sounds daunting and all to familiar.

Here is the good news: although still relatively small, there is a rapidly growing percentage of humanity that is experiencing a shift in consciousness that many deem necessary if we are going to survive as a human species.  Some associate the shift to the theories and proofs of quantum physics.  Others attribute it to the emergence of the internet—which has brought connections and ideas into our homes from all over the world — our global village. Still others see it as a natural result of the end of imperialism or of the 2500 year epoch of the dark ages.  I personally think that all of these things are having their impact.  Just go to any bookstore and you’ll to find a number of books on the subject, some written by notable scholars such as Joanna Macy and David Korten.

These two writers differ greatly in their fields of expertise—Joanna Macy is a Buddhist scholar, and David Korten is an expert in business and economics.  But both are currently telling us the same thing: that we are now living in a defining moment in the course of our history. That the era of cheap oil is ending, climate change is undeniably real, and economies can no longer rest on the unsustainable foundation of financial and environmental debt.  Out of necessity, they tell us, we are collectively entering a new era.  We are moving away from the life-killing political economy birthed by the Industrial Revolution and we’re moving towards a sustainable, life-enhancing political economy that exists in harmony with the Earth.  They both refer to it by the same name.  They call it “The Great Turning.” Perhaps you’ve heard of it.

Simply put, this concept of The Great Turning encompasses all the actions currently being taken to honor, care for and preserve life on Earth these days—and there are lots of them.  But it is more than these, too.  It involves a new understanding of who we are and what we need to be happy.  In large numbers, people are learning the falsehood of the old paradigm that there is an isolated, competitive, solid self.   In its stead, we are beginning to embrace a new paradigm in which our selfish and solid separateness is seen for what it really is: an illusion.  We are discovering our inter-connectedness to everything, our mutual belonging in the web of life.  So despite centuries of mechanistic Newtonian conditioning, we are slowly learning to name, once again, this world—and everything in it—as sacred, as whole.

Whether these understandings come through Gaia theory, systems theory, chaos theory, or through liberation theology, shamanic practices, the evolutionary theology of UCC minister Michael Dowd, engaged Buddhism,or even Unitarian Universalism, such insights and experiences are now freeing growing numbers of us from the grip of the industrial-corporate-growth society. They are offering us nobler goals and deeper pleasures. They are redefining our wealth and our worth, thus liberating us—finally—from compulsions to consume and control everything in sight.

To me, I view this trend as a natural emergence of the Feminine (or Yin) Principle in a world that has been strongly skewed toward the Masculine (or Yang) Principle.  But however you view it, there is no denying the fact that something is sparking a transition around the world and it is giving me hope!

That’s because one of the best aspects of this shift is that there is less room for panic or self-pity.  No, with these new understandings of who we really are, it is gratitude that generally arises, not fear.  We become grateful to be alive at this moment, when—for all the darkness around us—blessings and awakenings abound. The Great Turning helps us stay mindful and steady, helping us join hands in community to find the ways the world self-heals — like our Sanctuary Garden and Hands on Housing.  The present chaos, then, doesn’t doom us but becomes a seedbed for a better, more sacredly connected, future.

This is a very exciting time to be alive: we have so much potential; we can make such a difference!  Of course that’s not to say that these coming years will be easy.  One can always expect resistance to change, especially when it affects profitability and patterns of dominance.   No, we are now encountering times of great suffering and uncertainty.  And at times our grief will seem overwhelming—like the type of grief so many of us are currently feeling about war, and genocide, and natural disasters, and over-population, of species extinction, and so many more disasters.

But like living cells in a larger body, it is natural that we feel the trauma of our world. So today — this Earth Day — we offer some balance to the paralysis of analysis and its intense anguish that we might be feeling these days.  These responses arise from the depth of our caring and the truth of our interconnectedness with all beings. After all, “to suffer with” is the literal meaning of compassion.  And this world could use a lot more compassion.

What if we were to understand our relation to nature and our environment in sacred terms or poetic terms or, with Emerson and Thoreau, in good old American transcendentalist terms, but there is no broadly shared language with which to do this. So we are forced to resort to what is, in fact, a lower common denominator: the languages of science and bureaucracy. These languages have broad legitimacy in our culture, a legitimacy they possess largely because of the thoroughness with which they discredited religious discourse in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But many babies went out with the bath water of religious dogma and superstition. One of these was morality. Even now, science can’t say why we ought not to harm the environment except to say that we shouldn’t be self-destructive. Another of these lost sacred children was our very relation as human beings to the mystery of existence, as such. As the philosopher G. W. Leibniz famously wondered, “Why is there something rather than nothing?”

For St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century, this was the fundamental religious question. In the place of a medieval and renaissance relation to the world that was founded on this mystery, we have a mechanical relation that is objective and data driven. We no longer have a forest; we have “board feet.” We no longer have a landscape, a world that is our own; we have “valuable natural resources.” Avowed Christians have been slow to recall this sacred relationship to the world. For example, only recently have American evangelicals begun thinking of the environment in terms of what they call “creation care.” We don’t have to be born again to agree with evangelicals that one of the most powerful arguments missing from the 21st century environmentalist’s case is reverence for what simply IS. One of the heroes of Goethe’s Faust was a character called Care (Sorge), who showed to Faust the unscrupulousness of his actions and led him to salvation. Environmentalism has made a Faustian pact with quantitative reasoning; science has given it power but it cannot provide deliverance. If environmentalism truly wishes, as it claims, to want to “save” something—the planet, a species, itself—it needs to rediscover a common language of Care.

Here’s a valuable learning: you cannot defeat something that you imagine to be an external threat to you when it is, in fact, internal to you, when its life is your life.  The truth is, these so-called external threats are actually a great convenience to us. It is convenient that we can imagine a power beyond us because that means we don’t have to spend much time examining our own lives. And it is very convenient that we can hand the hard work of our resistance to these so-called externals over to scientists, our designated national problem solvers.

Environmentalism should stop depending solely on its alliance with science for its sense of itself. It should look to create a common language of care (a reverence for and a commitment to the astonishing fact of flowers and plants and existence) through which it could begin to create alternative principles by which we might live. As Leo Tolstoy wrote in his famous essay “My Religion,” faith is not about obedience to church dogma, and it is not about “submission to established authority.” A people’s religion are “the principles by which they live.”

I’ll close with this: The establishment of these principles by which we might live would begin with three questions. First, what does it mean to be a human being? Second, what is my relation to other human beings? And third, what is my relation to existence as such, the ongoing “miracle” that there is something rather than nothing? If the answer to these questions is that the purpose of being human is “the pursuit ofhappiness” (understood as success, which is understood as the accumulation of money); and if our relation to others is a relation to mere things (with nothing to offer but what they can do for us); and if our relation to the world is only to “resources” (that we should exploit for profit); then we should be very comfortable with the world we have. If this world goes to perdition at least we can say that we acted in “good faith.” But if, on the other hand, we answer that there should be a greater sense of self-worth in being a human, more justice in our relation to others, and more reverence for existence as a sacred Whole, then we must either live in bad faith with market-driven capitalism and other systemic “givens,” or begin describing a future whose fundamental values and whose daily activities are radically different from what we currently endure. The risk I propose, as our choir sang, is for us to rise to the nobility of a star. We should refuse to be mere functions of a system that we cannot in good conscience defend. And we should insist on living a new story, one that re-cognizes the mystery, the miracle, and the dignity of things, from flowers to frogs to forests to our fellow humans, simply because they are.

Happy Earth Day!

February 2010 Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes

by Posted in Uncategorized

First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin, Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes

Tuesday, February 16, 2010 at 6:30 p.m.

First UU Church of Austin, 4700 Grover, Austin, TX  78756 in Room 13

In Attendance:

Trustees:  Nell Newton, President; Eric Stimmel, Vice-President; Luther Elmore, Treasurer; Chris Jimmerson, Secretary; Sheila Gladstone, Immediate Past President (Ex-Officio); Margaret Borden; Derek Howard; Jeff Hutchens; Brendan Sterne; Michael West; Laura Wood.

Executive Team:  Janet Newman, Interim Minister (Ex-Officio); Sean Hale, Executive Director (Ex-Officio);

Visitors Present: Phil Hastings, Dale Bulla, Pat Bulla

Call to Order

The President called the meeting to order at 6:35 p.m.

Adoption of Agenda

The Trustees present adopted the agenda (Appendix A).

Motion: Luther Elmore – Adopt the agenda.

Second: Michael West

Discussion: None

Vote: All affirmative

Reading and Lighting of the Chalice

The Interim Minister read the opening words and the President lit the chalice. The President noted that, based upon conversations she had experienced with a board member from another church, our church is often willing to take on challenges that many might shy away from.

Visitor’s Forum

There were no visitors present when the board reached the agenda item for visitors, so the trustees began the consent agenda items discussion outlined below; however, when visitors arrived, the trustees returned to the following presentations.

Dale Bulla presented data on the church electricity bill (Appendix B) that demonstrated that despite the record heat in the summer of 2009, the solar panels appear to have reduced electrical usage and costs compared to previous years. He discussed the rates that the church pays for electricity, depending upon the amount of electricity used. He noted that our current contract expires in 2011 and we will need to establish a new one to avoid a substantial increase in rates.

Phil Hastings noted some suggestions regarding Sunday services and agreed to meet with the Interim Minister to talk over the ideas. He thanked the minister for wonderful services.

The Trustees thanked Dale and Phil for their presentations.

Consent Agenda Items

Minutes from Prior Meetings:  The trustees had reviewed the minutes from the December 2009 and January 2010 meetings (Appendix C) and had no additions or corrections.

New Members and Resignations:  The following new members had joined since the last meeting: Gail Sutherland, Susan Mestier, Jynne Rivera, Joy Nelson, Bart Farar. No members had resigned.

Reports:  The Trustees had reviewed the consent agenda items prior to the meeting.  These included:

Interim Minister (Appendix D)

Executive Director: Sean Hale (Appendix E)

Director of Religious Education: Lara Douglass (Appendix F)

Director of Music Programs: Brent Baldwin (Appendix G)

Treasurer: Luther Elmore (Appendix H)

The Interim Minister noted that the Meet and Eat that was occurring the next evening would be to welcome new members. She also reported that Gini Courter, Chief Governance Officer and UUA Moderator, would be visiting the church on Wednesday March 10 and that the church would have a special Meet and Eat that evening at which Ms. Courter would be speaking. The trustees noted that the visit from Stephan Jonasson, Director for Large Congregations for the UUA, had been extremely informative and helpful.

The Treasurer and Executive Director agreed to work together to determine how many network stations are needed for the accounting software and therefore how many licenses need to be paid.

The Treasurer noted the information contained in the fund balances handout (last page of Appendix H) and discussed the difficulty and confusion that had resulted from the difficulties created by wording in the Financial Assets Management Policy (FAMP) and provisions of the FAMP that do not meet current best practices. This has led to various funds owing other funds and special notations needed to track “due to and due from” among these funds. The Treasurer and Executive Director are working to correct some of this moving forward.

Motion: Michael West – accept the Consent Agenda Item Reports.

Second: Derek Howard

Discussion: None

Vote: All Affirmative

Discussion and Action Items

Reminders on Upcoming Activity Dates and Circulation of Board Calendar: The Secretary reminded the trustees of the upcoming training session on Policy Governance on February 26 and 27 as well as several other important functions over the next two months. He circulated the board calendar for signing up to read the special notes during services and great visitors and members before and after services. He noted that all of the upcoming dates of note were listed on this calendar and available at http://www.austinuu.org/wp2013/category/board-docs/board-calendar/.

Interim Minister Search Process:  Michael West reviewed the process for the next Interim Minister search process, which will be very much like the previous year’s search, though the work to be completed in the second transition year will be different and will be focused on “turning” – largely working towards furthering the great progress we have made so far and implementing much of what we are just beginning now. The trustees discussed the following key issues:

  • The search committee will need to be established and begin work by the next board meeting so please suggest candidates to Michael. We will need about 6 members.
  • Persons with some experience with the church community are needed and persons interested in serving on the board might be excellent candidates.
  • The current minister is an important window to the world of ministers.

Settled Minister Search Process: Michael West then presented the process for the settled minister search as outlined in Appendix I. This process will need to begin soon also. He noted some key steps. The trustees discussed the following:

  • We will need to establish a budget for the search committee.
  • The bylaws specify 9 members appointed by the board; however, a process involving congregational input may be desirable and would be possible.
  • Kathleen Ellis, Ministerial Settlement Representative, will give the sermon at the church on March 14 and meet with the board on March 16.
  • The compensation for the settled minister will need to be determined in the next budgeting process.

District Compensation Representative: The President introduced Walter Pearson, District Compensation Representative (DCR). Mr. Pearson explained that DCRs are trained volunteers appointed by the district boards who work on behalf of the church board. He outlined the following services he can provide:

  • Use of a Fair Compensation Questionnaire to establish fair salaries for all church staff.
  • Establishing functioning personnel committees.
  • Assistance with personnel policies and procedures.
  • Assistance with a detailed and specific process on how to structure the minister salary and housing compensation using a set of rules that will allow us to be advantaged in the settled minister search process.

He noted that we would not appear in the best list within the UUA settlement system unless our salary and housing meet minimum standards.

He outlined the following standards:

  • Compensation is based upon salary plus housing.
  • Ministers have to pay both sides of the social security payroll tax for the housing portion of their compensation. Offer additional salary to offset this.
  • Pay ten percent of salary into the pension plan.
  • Budget a professional expenses allowance equal to 10% of salary and housing.
  • Pay individual health insurance premium equal to 80% of the costs for the UUA health insurance plan.
  • Pay for disability insurance (through UUA it is about 1% of salary and housing).

The minimum standard for our church would be an annual salary of $66,500 for salary and $89,865 for the salary and housing total compensation. Mid-point for our church would be $87,900 salary and $117,560 for total salary and housing compensation. The highest total compensation in our category would be $145,000.

He noted to be mindful of what is on the church webpage, as some potential ministers will begin by looking at it soon.

The trustees asked several questions. Those questions (Q) and Mr. Pearson’s answers (A) to them are outlined below:

Q:            Should we post a specific salary and housing amount or post a range?

A:            Post the salary and housing you can offer, not a range

Q:            Can you also help with the process of establishing the Interim Ministry compensation?

A:            Yes.

Q:            How is it to our advantage to post one level of compensation that is pre-decided rather than post a range and then base actual compensation on the experience skills, etc. of the person actually hired?

A:            You want the decision to call a minister to be based upon a relationship you build and you do not want to begin that relationship based on conversations about money. I can assist you with establishing what compensation amount will be expected based upon what you are looking for in the minister.

Q.            What would be the negative consequence of posting a range?

A.            You put an element into the negotiations that is not to your advantage. Most ministers will negotiate how compensation is divided and other issues, not the total amount. Why put questions into the relationship from the start? Take money off the table.

Q.            What is the distribution of minister compensation for churches similar to ours?

A.            They tend to be clustered around the midpoint with none at the highest level and a few between the minimum and the midpoint.

Q.            How are the compensation guidelines established?

A.            The UUA looks at your geographic region and factors related to it. For instance, housing costs are high in Austin. They also look at compensation for ministers of similar size churches, as well as similar positions in non-profits and such in the region.

Mr. Pearson noted that a lot of good information related to this is available on the UUA website.

The President thanked Mr. Pearson for attending and providing such good information.

New Financial Reports: The Executive Director suggested delaying this discussion until the next meeting when there would be more time to dedicate to it.

Reserve Calculations: The Treasurer provided more detail on the calculations used to determine the amount transferred into the Memorial Savings fund, noting several sections of the FAMP that had lead to confusion. The Treasurer highlighted a provision of the FAMP that requires that the balance of the operating checking account be held to between one quarter to three quarters of average monthly expenditures. The secretary stated that this does not match current best practices for non-profits that generally call for from 4 to 6 months of operating liquidity. The Treasurer stated that he believed that there were still enough in funds that could be accessed in an emergency to be ample.

Interim Ministry Appraisal Recap: The Secretary and Interim Minister reported that they had met and compared their notes from the in person appraisal meeting and found that they were very much in agreement. The UUA system requires that both a representative from the church enter the appraisal information into online system and that the Interim Minister do so also. The Secretary stated that entering the information made him more fully aware of how much progress the church has made. He noted that the UUA sent an acknowledgment stating that it appeared that great things are happening at our church.

The Interim Minister noted that she had not been able to share all of hers thoughts on the various questions during the in person appraisal meeting but that she would put them into a Word document and send them out. She reminded the group that we will do another appraisal in June.

Rental Contract Exception Requests: The President outlined an issue that had come up with new rental contracts wherein several of the 12 steps groups that meet at the church would be paying a much higher rate per meeting than they had been even with non-profit and other discounts factored in (see Appendix J). The Trustees discussed the following issues:

  • There are a range of types of non-profits that rent at the church. The 12 steps programs are self-supported by their members.
  • This may be a ministry decision rather than a policy issue.
  • Many other churches in the area provide meeting space for these groups but we do not know what they charge them for the space or if they do charge them.
  • Some of the smaller groups might be forced to leave, as they might not be able to afford the new rates.
  • Space is tight in the church and some of these groups meet during some of the busiest times.
  • It might be possible, if we offer a discounted rate to steer them toward meeting in less high usage time periods.
  • Most of the groups have not specifically said that the increased rate would be a hardship but two have asked for the lower rate. Overeaters Anonymous did say it would be a hardship.
  • There is competition for space. Equity between these groups and other non-profits may be a policy issue.
  • There is an expectation in recovery groups of taking responsibility. Would offering them a lower rate than everyone else be denying that responsibility?

A trustee called for a vote on the first issue, which was whether the board should offer an additional discount rate beyond what is already in the rental contract for non-profits.

Vote: 4 affirmative, 3 Negative, 1 abstain (Laura Wood)

The Trustees then discussed how such an additional discount should be implemented. The trustees discussed how many such exceptions should be made and how much of a discount might be offered.

Motion: Brendan Sterne — The First UU board of trustees hereby authorizes the Executive Team to negotiate and grant special rental rates above and beyond the standard discounts as described in the FUUCA rental policy, up to a 75% total discount.  They may extend the special rates to 12 step groups and other non-profit groups based on hardship or their alignment with the First UU mission, vision, and values

Second: Michael West

Discussion: There was no further discussion

Vote: Affirmative – 7, Negative – 1

Potential Parking Lot Rental: The President informed the trustees that the Executive Committee had authorized Stephan Windsor to negotiate with a restaurant developer who was interested in a long-term parking lease with the church and paving the grassy area of the parking lot. She assured the group that Stephan was aware of all of the potential advantages, disadvantages and issues involved. A real estate attorney would be consulted if the negotiations were to reach a point where a draft contract was developed.

Motion: Chris Jimmerson – extend the meeting for 15 minutes.

Second: Jeff Hutchens

Discussion: None

Vote: Affirmative – 6, Abstain – 2 (Laura Wood and Derek Howard)

Executive Session: The President called the meeting into Executive Session to discuss a personnel matter.

Following the Executive Session and with no further business, the President adjourned the meeting at 9:45 p.m.

Respectfully Submitted,

Chris Jimmerson

Secretary

Appendices (Supporting Documents)

Excellence in Ministry

by Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

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Rev. Don Southworth

Executive Director

UU Ministers Association

March 28, 2010

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

READING

From Why I Am a Unitarian Universalist

by Jack Mendelsohn

Who is a Unitarian Universalist minister?

A person who is never completely satisfied or satisfiable, never completely adjusted or adjustable, who walks in two worlds-one of things as they are, the other of things as they ought to be-and loves them both.

A UU minister is a person with a pincushion soul and an elastic heart, who sits with the happy and the sad in a chaotic pattern of laugh, cry, laugh, cry-and who knows deep down that the first time the laughter is false, or the tears are make-believe, his or her days as a real minister are over. UU ministers have dreams they can never wholly share, partly because they have some doubts about those dreams themselves and partly because they are unable adequately to explain, describe, or define what it is they think they see and understand.

A UU minister continually runs out of time, out of wisdom, out of ability, out of courage, and out of money. A UU minister is hurtable, with great responsibility and little power, who must learn to accept people where they are and go on from there. UU ministers who are worth their salt know all this, and are still thankful every day for the privilege of being what they are.

The future of the liberal church is almost totally dependent on two factors: great congregations (whether large or small) and skilled, effective, dedicated ministers. The strangest feature of their relationship is that they create one another.

SERMON

It is a joy to be with you this morning! I want to thank Janet, your excellent interim minister, for inviting me to be with you today and for the assistance and support of our service leader Valerie Sterne. Valerie told me this was her first time but I think she was just saying that to make me feel good because this is my first time in this pulpit.

As Valerie mentioned I am the Acting Executive Director of the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association. I bring greetings and tidings of hope and anticipation to you from over 1600 active and retired Unitarian Universalist ministers from around North America. As I have read your newsletter the last few months I want to affirm something that Stefan Jonasson told you in January. Many of our UUMA members will be watching you in the next few months as you continue to do the work to lay the foundation for your new minister. I expect your search committee, when the time is right, will be hearing from quite a few of them.

The UUMA’s purpose is to support and nurture excellence in ministry through, mainly, continuing education and collegiality. I have the good fortune to serve, advocate for and occasionally lead those people who – in Jack Mendelsohn’s words – are “never completely satisfied or satisfiable, never completely adjusted or adjustable, who walk in two worlds-one of things as they are, the other of things as they ought to be-and loves them both.”

While I am not sure that all of us UU ministers, always love both of those worlds, I do know that Mendelsohn has one thing absolutely correct. “The future of the liberal church is almost totally dependent on two factors: great congregations (whether large or small) and skilled, effective, dedicated ministers. The strangest feature of their relationship is that they create one another.”

This morning I want to explore with you what happens when great congregations and great ministers create one another, or, to put it another way, what needs to be in place to enjoy excellence in ministry. Excellence in ministry – what might that be?

The Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association continues to develop and strengthen programs, training, expectations and standards of conduct to nurture excellent ministers but I hope you noticed that our purpose is not to support excellent ministers but excellent ministry. Because we know – what Jack Mendelsohn and I suspect most of you know – ministry is not something that is only done by ministers; excellent ministry takes ministers, of course, but it also takes all professional religious leaders and congregation members to make it a reality.

My late colleague Suzanne Meyer wrote, “A congregation is a cooperative institution; everyone is expected to participate in the creation of community and to share the load. The operative question is not what I can get out of this, but what of myself can I give? Faith communities exist not to serve us, but to teach us how to serve.”

Ours is a shared ministry. The word ministry, in its most ancient form, simply meant to serve. Gordon McKeeman, former president of Starr King School for Ministry, claims that ministry is a quality of relationship between and among human beings that beckons forth hidden possibilities and that it is inviting people into deeper, more constant, more reverent relationship with the world and one another. If we hold his words and the original definition of ministry to be true, ministry is to serve and bring forth the best in each other.

Defining ministry is easy; at least when we compare it with defining excellence. In December 2008 the UUA convened a summit on Excellence in Ministry. Ministers, educators, denominational and lay leaders were invited to reflect on the issues and challenges we face in achieving excellence in ministry. Daniel Aleshire, Executive Director of the Association of Theological Schools, told the group that excellence was a hot topic among religious denominations and seminaries representing every theological perspective. He said in his keynote address, titled The Tyranny of Excellence, “Being committed to excellence doesn’t make excellence into tyranny, of course. But if these many different schools, with their very different capacities, visions of the world, and strategies for theological education, can all use “excellence” as the descriptor of their identity, then it must have a very plastic definition. That is the tyranny. I have decided that “excellence” is one of those terms that everybody affirms because nobody knows what it means.”

We all know what mediocrity in ministry means. Hopefully we have not experienced it very often. But excellence, excellence is a little bit harder to define. Perhaps defining excellence is akin to what the Supreme Court declared when they were asked to define pornography decades ago. We known it when we see it. Or in the case of excellent ministry, we know it when we experience it. When we connect with something greater than ourselves, when we are transformed by serving others, when we find meaning and purpose and create a world with more compassion and love.

In the early 1980’s Tom Peter’s book, In Search of Excellence, was a rage in the corporate world. Six million people bought the book and I was one of them. Peters was recently asked to define excellence in a time when so many businesses in this country are falling apart, he responded, “The 1982 excellence was a static experience. But real excellence is always a moving target.”

Knowing that excellence always is a moving target, a target that we never really know we have reached and knowing that excellence in ministry is usually found in places which cannot be measured – our hearts, minds and souls; I offer you some lessons I have learned about co-creating excellence in ministry with the congregations I have served the last ten years. As you prepare for your new minister I hope you find them helpful.

The first lesson is that the mission and health of the congregation is the most important work and ministry that ministers and congregation members must be about. -. I am pleased to see that you are are doing the work of revisiting your mission and asking questions such as “what is our saving message?” Too often our congregations, ministers and religious professionals forget the mission of the congregation and focus too much on individuals and not enough on the health and well-being of the congregation’s mission. This is one of the reasons that we have not grown as a religious movement and is one of our greatest causes of conflict in our congregations. Ministers need the freedom and courage to challenge congregations into living the church’s mission and congregations need to expect their ministers and their members to pay attention to the mission of the congregation more than their own satisfaction.

My colleague Julie Ann Silberman-Bunn says this well. “A church is not a place where you are catered to and pampered. Our congregations are religious communities, sanctuaries for those in need, safe heavens, and respites from the chaos of the world. Churches neither expect nor guarantee satisfaction.” Excellence in ministry and mission aren’t about satisfaction they are about transformation – in ourselves, in our congregations, and in our communities.

Lesson #2 – A congregation must always remember they are both a sanctuary from the world and a sanctuary for the world. Every congregation is first a place for people to come to heal, to rest, to connect with something greater than themselves. The world is often a difficult place and we all need a place to come home to where we are known and loved for who we are and not what we do. But once we find a religious community like this we must not forget that we are not simply a sanctuary from the world but we are a sanctuary for the world as well. Congregations spend far too much time dealing with internal challenges and issues and far too little time reaching out to the world. A healthy congregation will not only have a care team for its members but will have a care team for the members of its community; a vibrant congregation will not only have a membership team to assist and integrate new people into the life of the congregation, they will also have a team and strategy for how to serve more people outside the doors of the congregation.

Reaching out to another is at the core of the religious life. Being in community with other congregations, other faith traditions does not only add new perspectives and learning to the congregation, it gives congregations the joy of serving and teaching someone else.

Lesson #3 – Remember that we are Universalists too. In 1961 two religious traditions came together as one. Our new name put the Unitarians in front of the Universalists and for most of our congregations Unitarianism is the primary theology and the main identity they carry. We call ourselves Unitarians far more than Universalists. In most of our congregations we seem to value the intellectual stimulation and rational debate of our Unitarian heritage far more than the heart centered passion and love of our Universalist faith. But excellence in ministry, especially in the multi-cultural world of the 21st century, must speak to the body, mind and spirit. Marlin Lavenhaur of All Souls in Tulsa Oklahoma, Senior Minister of one of the largest and most diverse congregations in the country, says he is not sure if Unitarian Universalism will survive the 21st century but he knows Universalism will. If we truly want to be more diverse and reach out to more people with the saving message of our faith Universalism will be far more attractive than Unitarianism. Embrace mystery, redefine God, language and worship that unites and moves the heart and the head.

Lesson #4 – Covenant is not optional. To build the beloved community and practice excellent ministry, we must make promises to each other about what we value and how we wish to be with each other. We are a covenantal and not a creedal faith. If we are to grow in our spiritual and emotional maturity we must agree on how we will be together. Every thing does not go. Being part of something larger than ourselves means that sometimes we must sacrifice something for the greater good. Covenants are not rules of behavior; they are promises about how we will be in relationship with another and how we wish to be challenged and comforted into being better selves and a better community.

Covenants – when done right – create and nurture trust; and trust, or rather lack of trust – is one of the shadow sides of Unitarian Universalism that too often quietly destroys the morale and connections of a congregation. We do not trust our leaders and our leaders do not trust us. Instead of assuming best intentions we fear and criticize those who are paid and volunteer to lead us. When we speak about the benefits of building and taking part in a religious community it is easy to get carried away with the ideals of what a community can be and forget the realities of how difficult building, and taking part, in a community truly is. But nobody said that congregational life – or excellence in ministry – would be easy. But it is worth it.

Lesson #5 – Be more religious and be more spiritual. To be religious – by definition – is to be bound together. It is to be aware of the sacred and to be willing to manifest the holy more fully in our lives. It means participating in a community and learning how to be guided and how to teach on the path of life. Spirituality is a commitment to embracing and enhancing spirit – literally, the breath of life. Religion without spirituality is community, rules and tradition that become meaningless and even lifeless. Spirituality without religion can become self-centered and bereft of connection and caring for the world around us. The words in your vision – “as an inclusive religious and spiritual community” – tell me you understand this. Of course, the challenge is to keep on living it.

Lesson #6 – Spiritual practice is foundational to Unitarian Universalism and congregational life. Spiritual practice is the regular act of doing something – hopefully every day – that connects us with the spirit, the sacredness, the joy, the depth that lives within and outside of us. Ministry – and especially excellent ministry – demands we have a deep well to draw from. Spiritual practice, drinking from the springs that quench our thirst, is essential. Two fundamental spiritual practices are gratitude and generosity. There are many ways to acknowledge and celebrate these two both in our lives and our congregations but I have seen that the congregations and individuals who are able to cultivate and create these spiritual practices live happier, more meaningful lives. Regular spiritual practice and sharing the fruits and techniques of that practice with others in your congregation should be an expectation of membership and if it happened would transform not only every life but every congregation as well.

Lesson #7 – Cultivate and develop leaders. To practice excellent ministry, to create the beloved community, the congregation that transforms lives, that makes a difference in the lives of those in the larger community demands strong, compassionate, competent leadership. Leadership development, training and support is not an optional practice it must be a fundamental priority of any congregation. To serve in leadership, to assist and support your leaders, paid and unpaid, to spend money to make sure people get the best training they can is what every member and every minister must to be committed to. It is not okay for nominating committees to have to ask 20 people to find one who will serve, it is not okay for congregations to elect members to serve on boards and not give them the skills and tools to be effective, it is not okay for religious professionals to not be held accountable to leadership and spiritual development plans and/or not being given the budget to do them right.

Lesson #8- Ministers are not your friends so treat them better than that. The congregant/minister relationship is a unique one. Intimate without being very close; formed in large part by past experiences and projections that have nothing much to do with who the minister really is. Whoever you call next year to be your new minister, they will have some of the stuff that delivers excellence in ministry and so will you. And you both will have stuff that gets in your way. The challenge will be what will you do with and for each other to bring out the best in both of you. Shower your minister with gratitude and generosity and most importantly the gift of telling him or her your truth. Don’t expect her to be your friend – do expect him to tell you the truth – as they see it – and not only the truth that will make you feel comforted all the time. Take a risk. Give cards and presents even when it is not a holiday or birthday. Be more generous and give more money so that your minister – and all your paid religious professionals – know you are as serious about this place as they are. And most importantly create a congregation that enables and supports excellent ministry in all its glorious forms.

Good luck in your work. May you know the peace, joy and transformation that ministry, especially excellent ministry, can bring into your life and the lives of others. May it be so. Amen.

Governance Resources Page

by Posted in First UU Governing Policies

First UU Austin is in the process of an intentional examination of our governance with the help of Joe Sullivan of Unity Consulting and through the lens of policy-based governance. This page contains resources for that process and will be updated as often as possible.

All good governance starts with Values, Mission and Ends.

Frequently Asked Questions about Policy-Based Governance at FUUCA.

Read about our Philosophy of Governance at FUUCA.

Message from the Board President on Committee Structure and Communications within the Church.

An overview of our board plan for communicating intentionally on mission and ends with the congregation (linkage plan.

First year linkage plan

Documents from the Sept. 26, 2010 Session on Policy Based Governance with the Church and All Council:

Documents from June 12 Board Session to Discern Values, Mission and Ends:

Bridge to Our Future Files:

Other Files:

Links to outside resources:

  • UU University Governance Track Page
  • Unity Consulting
  • Unity Consulting Materials on Governance Principles and Monitoring and Assessment
  • John Carver, Ph.D. John Carver’s Policy Governance® model.
  • List that contains a wealth of materials on policy‐based governance UUs have found useful.
  • Who owns your congregation? — A congregation’s owner isn’t its board, minister, or members; it is its mission. By Dan Hotchkiss From UU World
  • Articles from the UUA
  • Ideas Gathered from the UUA Governance List

Policy Governance email list:  A UUA email list dedicated to the discussion of the Policy Governance model of board governance in UU congregations, its implementation, variations, and challenges. This list is for anyone including ordained ministers, lay leaders, and members of all sizes and shapes of UU congregations with an interest in Policy Governance. List co‐managers are Gretchen Dorn, and Marge Keip, .

To SUBSCRIBE to this list, send the following command in the first line of the message to  (you can leave the subject line blank, as listproc will ignore it):

subscribe PolicyGovernance‐L YourFirstName YourLastName

Freedom with responsibility

by Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

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Rev. Kathleen Ellis

Co-minister of Live Oak Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin

Ministerial Settlement Representative

March 14, 2010

Thanks so much for your warm hospitality! I’d like to express special appreciation to the Reverend Dr. Janet Newman and the Worship Committee for turning the pulpit over to me this morning. Together you have learned a great deal, you have been through tempest and storm, and you look ahead to further challenges in ministry. It’s an awesome task, but the rewards are great.

I am also grateful to the Rev. John Weston, Transitions Director, who has provided much of this information and excellent training for representatives like me. We are fortunate to have him as a guide for the search process. As for me, it is a real pleasure to be here, just across town from my home.

You have been through incredible transition and upheaval over the past year or so, yet here you are, poised on the threshold of still more change. The process for calling a settled minister has been honed through generations of experience for the benefit of congregations and ministers alike.

[Describe the difference between the search for a settled minister and the selection process for an interim. Clarify that I will be neither of them-just a guest preacher; just a consultant.]

The freedom we enjoy as Unitarian Universalists extends to multiple areas of congregational life. We are free to follow our spiritual paths where they may lead, free to decide whether and how to support the church with our resources of time and money, and free to call our own ministers. Other congregations and denominations revolve around holy scripture, sacred creeds, and lectionaries that recommend the readings and themes for worship. They seek a spiritual depth that comes when the ongoing study of familiar text sinks into one’s psyche over time and this is a great spiritual practice. Have you ever fallen in love with a poem and read it over and over until it seeped into your very bones? That’s the spiritual depth I’m talking about.

Traditional churches have doctrine to defend their beliefs and practices. They have bishops and hierarchies of authority to whom the minister is responsible for what he says, as well as how he conducts himself. Unitarian Universalist churches have very few of these controls. We have the freedom and the responsibility to govern our own affairs plus plenty of traditions of our own!

Some of you may wonder about Unitarian Universalist headquarters in Boston, our District Executive Susan Smith, your consultants Peter Steinke, Stefan Jonasson, Walter Pearson, or even me, your Ministerial Settlement Representative. Do we represent authority and control? Actually, we represent service to you, a member congregation of the Southwestern Conference and the Unitarian Universalist Association. You have autonomy and independence, but also the good sense to call in consultants as appropriate.

As for ministry, there is no external control over the content of sermons or the religious education that goes on here. Only the most out-of-bounds ethical behavior by a minister that is brought to the attention of the Ministry and Professional Leadership Staff Group, will warrant any attention.The Unitarian Universalist Association works for you, more like a trade association that forms a network for the benefit of its members. You the congregation have the power and the authority!

A great deal hangs on the choice of a minister. Your minister has enormous power in setting the tone and direction of worship, and even the tone and direction of the congregation. And you, the members of the congregation, have an opportunity to call a minister who best fits your mission and vision. The minister serves at your pleasure for as long as he or she remains in covenant with you. It is a sacred trust you hold for the people who are not even here yet. Ministers come and ministers go, but the congregation remains.

All of us are called in one way or another to serve the highest ideals we can achieve. Some of us are called to serve as professional ministers, with an intention to forge a bond with a congregation over the long term. You as a congregation will have a chance to call a minister presented by your search committee after hours of careful deliberation. I know that Austin in an attractive place to live and this is the largest UU congregation in town, so I am fairly confident that the search committee will consider a dozen or more ministerial prospects.

Settled ministers may have the good fortune to bless the children, then the grandchildren; celebrate their coming of age; officiate at their weddings; stand at the threshold of dying and death; partner with you in the ministry of the church. The letter of agreement between minister and congregation is open ended, to allow for the fullness of relationships to develop over time.

Jack Mendelsohn once said “The future of the liberal church is almost totally dependent on two factors: great congregations (whether large or small) and effective, dedicated ministers. The strangest feature of their relationship is that they create one another.”

Your Search Committee of 9 members will represent you as a congregation, selected with the greatest of care. Basically, you will want people who represent the congregation as a whole, not just special interests. In other words, you want Senators instead of lobbyists who advocate for one program like religious education for children or a particular social justice cause. You want people who are thoroughly steeped in Unitarian Universalism. You want people who have the time to spend.

Committee members can expect to work hard-about 400 hours over the course of a year-although someone told me recently that 400 hours is an understatement. But however daunting their task, a good Search Committee will reap spiritual benefits along the way. It’s an opportunity that comes along only rarely. If you are interested, find out from your Board about the application process.

Once the committee is in place, the rest of you will want to support its work by answering questions, filling out surveys, sharing your dreams for ministry, and preparing the way for new leadership. On rare occasions a committee decides not to make a recommendation according to their original timeline because they have not found the right match. However, the greatest risk is to call someone who is not a good match for who you are and where you hope to go.

A secondary risk follows when anxiety about the process gets the upper hand. Anxiety can generate risk-aversion and self-doubt to the point of paralysis. Look on this as an adventure! The committee will have wonderful ministers to consider and their challenge will be to narrow the field.

The Search Committee as a whole should get to know the congregation as thoroughly and intimately as possible so that they become a microcosm of the congregation. When they do the work of culling through ministerial records, when they conduct interviews of interested ministers, and when they meet ministerial pre-candidates in person, the gifts and qualities of Search Committee members will stand in for the congregation, as though all of you were in the room.

You as a congregation will benefit from this kind of representation. Your trust in the Search Committee will become a healing balm not just to the committee, but to each other and to the congregation as a body.

Freedom and liberation and the term “liberal” flow from the same stream. A liberal education gives us a broad appreciation for literature, history, public speaking, music, philosophy, and mathematics. Liberal arts and liberal religion have been closely related. Both of them aim to crack open our minds to new possibilities, new horizons, and escape from narrowness of vision, ignorance, and prejudice.

When I was a young woman, the best thing that could have happened to me was to participate in an international Girl Scout encampment in North Carolina, then to move from a southern upbringing in Shreveport to college in Missouri. My liberation from childhood had begun.

The late Rev. Forrest Church points out that the Church as an institution is conservative by nature. It forms boundaries, maintains traditions, and in association with other churches, provides a stabilizing force in society. On the other hand, it models and incorporates liberal values such as “hospitality, neighborliness, forgiveness, compassion, and tender loving care.” [from God and Other Famous Liberals, p. 122]

You would do well to select a minister who is generous in spirit and deeply immersed in the task of being and becoming a whole person. Technical expertise is not enough. To know how to preach a sermon or facilitate a group; to excel in scholarship or organizational development; all these are elements of ministry-pastor, prophet, rabbi, preacher, storyteller, midwife, juggler. But ministry is even more about the whole person, knowing what it is to be human and recognizing the humanness in others-that everyone is a juggler!

As you get to know your new settled minister, you will grow in the depth of your relationship. The minister may challenge your preconceptions and call you to account, and both of you will grow spiritually over time. With the right chemistry, your spiritual growth will be an inspiration to your minister, who will be the better for it. The congregation and the minister will shape each other.

Ministers are called to serve their Higher Power and to serve their congregations with their entire being. It doesn’t matter so much whether they are theists or atheists or any other theology; their task is to honor yours and to help you reach your fullest potential. To paraphrase Peter Lee Scott, ministry requires scholarship, yet it must be grounded in people’s lives. It is a social profession, yet often a lonely one. It involves finding meaning and making meaning; acknowledging human frailty while trying to rise above it; providing a shoulder to cry on, yet sometimes being the one who cries. Ministry is what you will do-together.

The ministerial search process has come about through years of experience in best practices, and in the past decade the process has also become much more open, thanks to technology. Both ministers and congregations prepare a record that is posted on the web. Every UU minister who reads your profile and is interested in checking you out further can indicate interest with a simple click on the keyboard. In the old days, the Transitions Director had to consider all the congregations and ministers looking for each other, play the role of matchmaker, and send a list of potential candidates to the congregations.

Now it’s more like “Match.com” or “EHarmony.com.” You are free to present yourselves as honestly as you can, and nothing stands in the way of a minister who likes your profile. Likewise, every Unitarian Universalist minister in search must answer a series of questions through the settlement web site such as why they are seeking a ministry and what kind; how they wish to work with staff and volunteers; and a mistake they have made and how they approached it.

Here’s a typical timetable: Once the search committee is formed, they will go on a retreat for team building, bonding, understanding each other’s personalities and skills, and deciding on a process for making difficult decisions. Then they will launch surveys and group meetings to find out what you want in a minister. Alas, no minister can walk on water or leap tall buildings, so you will need to set priorities. Remember the good qualities of your previous ministers as well as characteristics that seem important for the next decade or more.

The search committee will absorb all this information and post a congregational record on the web by Oct. 31. While they are waiting for interested ministers to indicate interest in serving you, they will put together a packet of information about you, various aspects of congregational and spiritual life, lots of photographs, and info about the City of Austin. This is typically ready by the end of November.

At that point, the process enters a phase of confidentiality. The committee will start reviewing the Ministerial Records of prospective candidates, exchange packets with the most promising ones, conduct phone interviews, and narrow the field to 3 or 4. Each of the pre-candidates will meet with the search committee for a weekend of interviews and a sermon at a neutral pulpit. The committee will sift through all available information, check references, and receive an interpretive summary from the Transitions Office that reflects everything in the minister’s file. In this way, any important information that is known to the UUA will be provided to the committee.

The committee then will decide on the one minister who is the best match for this congregation-someone with solid experience, a good track record, and a religious leader who can work with you toward your dreams. Ministers want a place where they themselves can learn and grow in spirit and where they can have a positive impact.

Be forewarned, however: No minister, however well qualified, can do this work alone. You need a mission and you need commitment. Unless you as a congregation, along with your minister, understand why you are here and what you are called to be, the best ideas and any amount of “busyness” will keep you static and uninviting. Then you need to own that mission, take responsibility for it, and carry it out into the world.

That’s what will get you excellence in ministry. The quality of worship, education, care and outreach will rise accordingly. Remember the idea of Jack Mendelsohn-that great congregations and great ministers shape each other. May you travel this transitional year with high spirits and a healthy sense of humor along the way.

Amen

House Rules for our UU Game

by Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

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Corinna and Dale Whitaker-Lewis

February 28, 2010

Readings:

Dale: We have two short readings. The first is from William Butler Yeats…

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity

Corinna: And this, from the instructions on a box of cards..

Fluxx, a perfectly simple card game for 2-6 players.  Simple? Fluxx has but one rule: “Draw 1 card and then play 1 card.” What cards could you play?  Well, you could play Time, or War, or perhaps Love. I shall play Chocolate. It is a fine thing to have Chocolate.  What’s this? You have played the card “Play 2.” Well, then, play a second card!  Don’t you know the rule of Fluxx? It is this: “Draw 1 card and then play 2 cards.” Well, that’s what it is NOW.  Perfectly simple.  The goal of the game?  Oh, I’m terribly sorry. No one has played a Goal card yet.  Enter the World of Looney Labs Games.” (Now that’s a fitting name, isn’t it?)

Corinna: Good morning everyone!  My name is Corinna Whiteaker-Lewis,

Dale: and I’m Dale Whiteaker-Lewis, and we have been coming to this church for almost 20 years.

Corinna: We have two daughters who delight and challenge us every day, Audrey who you just heard reading the children’s story, she’s 13, and Bridget’s here as well, and she’s 10.

We hope we will live up to Janet’s expectations today –we are very honored she asked us to speak, and also quite a bit daunted! Please forgive our need to read quite a bit of what we will say to you today.

We have reflected much over the years on this church, this congregation, this religion called Unitarian Universalism.  Having been raised without a religious tradition, this church is the only one I’ve ever known, so it’s all new to me.  We found this church in 1991 because we wanted someone to marry us, but leaving it at just that felt wrong.  We needed to make a connection here, and we did – we made good friends and have left sermons feeling recharged for the week ahead.

Dale: I grew up attending an Irish Catholic church in Cedar Falls, Iowa.  I didn’t connect strongly with the faith or rituals of my parents, and came to hate being forced to attend.  Millions of people have gained purpose and direction from that religion.  But, I came away as a teen bitter and—except for my love of a good hymn—feeling like I had escaped something unpleasant.  When we started coming here in ’91, I overcame my childhood resentment with a bargain.  I would be OK attending church if I: A. Don’t have to dress up –and— B.  Don’t have to “remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.” I could miss a week or two.

Corinna: And for a while, that was all we needed—inspiring sermons, a casual dress code and no truancy policy. But, our family’s participation in the life of this church has also really waxed and waned, waned and waxed over these last 18 years.  Some years, we maybe came to service once a month. The old bargain didn’t make our church life meaningful by itself.  But seeing that you all accepted our approach made this a safe spiritual environment for us.  In the vocabulary of logic, this was a necessary condition of our growth, but not a sufficient one.

Dale: We sometimes fell back on that basic bargain, but over time both our involvement and our unconscious expectations grew. Over the years we have taught in summer camps, chaired the Social Action Committee, helped form an Amnesty International group, served on the Board of Trustees and worked on the church’s computer network.  My resentment of religion faded, and we enjoyed most of our church activities.

Without thinking about it, though, our expectations grew: for a cleaner RE wing, for support of our personal causes, for a well-oiled volunteer process, and the like.  So, our minimum requirements for church life expanded, but I can’t say that we ever spelled out the new bargains clearly, even to ourselves.  At the same time, we often didn’t know what the church and its members expected of us, and so we weren’t always very engaged.

Corinna: Looking back, the inconsistency of our attendance seems strange to me.  I guess there were reasons why we didn’t come much some years: newborns, new houses, new jobs. So, while I think an expressed tolerance and acceptance drew us to this place, the absence of a request for commitment kept us from making one. Asking for a commitment would have meant this church would have to know itself, and be able to describe that to us.  And then tell us what our role, as church members, would be.  Because to ask us to figure out what this place meant to us was waayy too much work, I mean that’s just waayy too many choices.

Does that mean we were lazy? Does that mean we were not good UU material? I mean, this is all about everyone finding their own truths, right? I think it’s a lot to ask someone new to our church to do on their own, though. I mean, it’s just the kind of work you join a church to do together with others–developing relationships and, dare I say, some rules. I am one of those who work better with constraints than without, and I wonder if that doesn’t have something to do with it. I mentioned this to my friend Natalie, and she talked about how some of the most creative costumes she’d ever seen were for the black and white ball in San Francisco.

Multiple choices tend to stymie me, and I don’t think I am alone in this.  Dr. Barry Schwartz, in his book, “The Paradox of Choice, Why More Is Less” argues that too many choices can erode our psychological well being. He cites a study where shoppers will buy more jam when offered fewer varieties. He argues that after thousands of years working towards the simplification of providing for the necessities of life, the trend is reversing back to foraging behavior, as we are forced to sift for ourselves through more and more options in every aspect of life. I know that after shopping exclusively at little Wheatsville for a while, entering an HEB can feel like climbing Mt. Everest.

Dale: Fast forward to February of 2006, when our minister delivered the only sermon we’ve ever walked out of, about the responsibility for the 9/11 attacks.   The experience helped reveal hidden assumptions and expectations we had.  And, understanding those new expectations matters more to us now than what was said, or how it made us feel.  We had made new bargains and had new, necessary conditions for our church life.  We had strong expectations that weren’t being met, about what other church members believed or would accept.

I have been an alcoholic in recovery for nearly my whole adult life—I spent my 20th birthday in rehab.  The lessons of sobriety have shaped my whole life, including church.  I have been taught that, when I have resentments, it helps to look relentlessly at my own part in the matter.  This serves two main purposes, first to take the focus off the offender, since I’m never going to change them.  Second, it helps me see where—to quote recovery literature—I’ve made decisions based on self which later put me in a position to be hurt.

Corinna: After 2006 and through the dismissal to this year, we have thought a lot about our role in the hardship we now face together.   In the example of the 9/11 sermon, Dale and I found we had developed unspoken assumptions about how others must support us, about the type of sanctuary you were required to maintain for us here.  We had built the walls of our sanctuary well inside the walls of the church, and left a lot that we didn’t like outside those walls.  We both feel now that for our church to heal, we must come to see not just a part of the church as our sanctuary, but the whole church body.  Not doing so sets us up for disillusionment.

For example, if you are very in touch with the music program, or the RE program, or the Forum program, and that changes suddenly and drasticly, will you still find peace of mind and sanctuary here?  We were convinced that we personally needed to expand our concept of sanctuary, but we weren’t sure how to accomplish that.  So, we were both relieved and excited when Janet started emphasizing covenant, especially developing something like a “covenant of right relation”.   It seemed to provide an opportunity for us to look at our relationship to the church as a whole.

Dale: To us, it seems like creating a good covenant is a lot like deciding on how to play certain games among friends.   Preparing to play a game might start with months of training for a marathon, or a casual invitation to play cards.  Just so, our activities at church might be well-planned or impulsive.  In each case, though, a lot about what happens and how we experience it depends on the rules of the game.  The rules might all be agreed and well-known ahead of time, as with the marathon.  Or, they might be last-minute, the way kids often make up new rules for each backyard game.  More likely, there are some of each: “standard” rules and “house” rules.

Standard rules to tell us things like which of the 100’s of card games we’re playing with that same old deck.  And House rules to fit the game to the players or circumstance.   Maybe we have younger or inexperienced players that need a break, or less than the usual time to play, or maybe we just think our rules will be more fun, just as we might spice up an old recipe.  If we don’t agree on some rules, though, can we even play a game together?  Or, are we just in the same place at the same time?  Think of that tense feeling we all know from childhood, when a player tries to change the rules to his or her favor in the middle of the game.

Corinna: Our family has always enjoyed playing games together.  In BK times, before kids, we had a lot of fun playing the video game Myst with our friends Karen and Michael, Rod and Carol.  We also had way too much fun with a free CD of Boggle that we got off a box of Cheerios. (Geeks that we are.) The girls started out on these cooperative board games where no one actually loses.  Harvest Time! Let’s all help each other bring in our crops!  But there’s one thing we always do, and that’s set up some house rules.  Do-overs might be allowed.  You can start your turn before amassing 30 points.  Sometimes there are very strict time limits on (some player’s) turns!  Or, you can have all the time you want.

Dale: Amazingly, as you heard in the reading, you don’t need to know the goal to start playing the card game Fluxx! The goal comes in somewhere along the way, and often changes.  What makes it playable is that people sit down together and agree on a single rule, just to start with.  People walked in the door of this church.  It’s reasonable for a person to first experience this sanctuary and our services when they start coming here.  But it’s a church,we are the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin, so we don’t think of this place as a lecture hall.  It is a sacred space, for inspiration, for meditation, for transformation. And much of that transformation happens in the relationships between each other, as a people sitting here together, sharing life.

Corinna: I don’t think I was looking for spiritual growth, really, when I started coming here. I was just looking for a group of people who shared my beliefs, so I could feel good and comfortable about having those beliefs. I was tired of being the outsider, the one who isn’t like everyone else.  At 6’2”, as a lifelong vegetarian, as a liberal in Texas, I’ve been in the minority often enough.  Being different was something I long had turned into a strength and used as a defense mechanism.

It served me well for quite a long time, but ultimately it was an easy out, with no opportunity for change.  My spiritual journey now is to be the best person I can be, while contributing to something bigger than myself.  Something that is meaningful, uplifting, and a catalyst for good. So, I make a commitment to this community.  But to adhere to a commitment you make to other people is hard work, and you have to work at it.  It is not easy, but from that hard work comes growth.

Dale: To my mind, the most important rules for a covenant of right relation are the most minimal.  What standard of behavior can I, on my worst day, still commit to uphold.  If some morning I didn’t have time for breakfast, and I just found out a loved one was ill, and my shoes don’t fit right and my car is acting up and I’m late to church and you stop me in the hall to ask me about a problem with a church computer.  Then, what behavior should I tell you to expect of me?   That minimum standard of behavior says:  if I don’t meet even this, you are right to be concerned for me, and it is OK to be upset with me.   You should expect better, and you can and should help me to do better.   I may not be pleasantly receptive to your correction, but the heart of the covenant is that, even on those occasions where I miss the mark, I commit to stay engaged while I try to get my behavior back in line.

Corinna: When you are in community with other people, when you’ve shared a covenant on how to behave, the hardest thing is to call someone on not honoring it.  The fact that we don’t have a covenant yet makes it even harder, since we don’t even know if we agree on what’s acceptable.  I experienced this just recently. I had an exchange with someone here at church that made me feel uncomfortable and maybe even a little bit threatened. This person spoke very judgingly, told me I was wrong, raised her voice, and seemed very irritated and exasperated with me.  I remained calm, and restated my point of view, but ultimately did not let this person know how she was making me feel. I then turned around and talked to someone else about had happened!

Fortunately, my confidant gently let me know that my silence only allowed this person to think that the way she treated me was ok.  And on top of that, I was developing a negative opinion of this person without giving her any chance to explain herself. So, while I upheld a personal commitment to be polite, I also have the harder job of standing up for that value with someone who may not share it. This is the very difficult part of living honestly with other people, of being in community.  But, this experience would have been easier for me if I had known that we both agreed to a covenant, as members of this church, to be caring toward one another.

A covenant of right relation, or some agreed-upon house rules, allows us to leave our suspicions at the door, and have meaningful experiences in an environment that may strain or break our expectations about things that matter to us.  Having that commitment to each other about a minimum standard of my own behavior and yours, even helps me tolerate situations where the commitment is breached, because we have a standard to get back to that is a community standard that we can remind each other of.  Bringing this out of the realm of the implicit helps expose assumptions we have about “normal” or “acceptable” behavior.  And I make the promise here and now, before you all, that I will get up the nerve to speak to this person!

Dale: And, just to give you an idea of how disciplined we were in preparing for this sermon, a very timely article came in yesterday’s UU World magazine.  Written by a consultant with the Alban Institute, Dan Hotchkiss, it talks about covenant, mission, and vision.  When discussing who the board of a church must serve, he says they must serve, quote, “the congregation’s mission, the covenant the congregation has set its heart to and the piece of the Divine Spirit that belongs to it.” He then goes on to ask and what is the mission?  “The great management consultant Peter Drucker wrote that the core product of all social-sector organizations is “a changed human being.” A congregation’s mission is its unique answer to the question, “Whose lives do we intend to change and in what way?” …. Growth, expanding budgets, building programs, and such trappings of success matter only if they reflect positive transformation in the lives of the people touched by the congregation’s work,” unquote.

Corinna: You know, what we have here is such an incredible opportunity.  There are not many chances for a group of people to get together and determine for themselves how they want to be with another.  Like the children in Roxaboxen found, this is a freedom.  But it won’t happen; we can’t be healthy here, unless we are willing to be vulnerable and say that we’re not perfect and would like to change.We must start with ourselves.  And then dare to think that we might know what we would like to be, and that with each other’s help and love, we can get there.

Dale: In the meantime, come play some games with us! The Open Minds Covenant Group is hosting an all ages Games Night in Howson Hall this coming Saturday night at 7 p.m. Snacks. Drinks. Surprises. Childcare provided in the nursery (need to RSVP for that), but there will also be supervised games for kids 5ish and up. But you’ll have to follow the rules, and we know you will! We’ll bring Fluxx…