Bill Warner, Board Member
For visual accessibility, I’m a white cis gendered male in my mid-60’s, balding with a short grey beard & glasses wearing a blue shirt and UUCCH Tshirt.
Today we mark the anniversary of the founding of UUCCH and the 200th anniversary of the American Unitarian Association. And with our exploration of Interdependence this month, it’s certain that Interdependence has been one of the values – values put into action that helped both communities establish, evolve and thrive.
You’ll hear more about the legacy of American Unitarianism in a few minutes. And I’m not going to talk about the founding of our church. But I’d like to spend o few minutes reflecting on just a few parts of our recent interdependence. Some of the stuff helping us thrive now.
Different perspectives, even conflicts are part of being human. So, at least in terms of human-to-human interdependence, aligning goals and priorities is crucial. And at UUCCH, we’re an active church. We have dozens of committees, teams and affiliation groups. Its’ easy to get siloed. Recognizing this, several years ago we formed our Leadership Council. Through the Leadership Council, we hold a time for all these groups to be represented, share ideas, team together on mutual projects – and gain a robust awareness of our dynamic interdependent community.
And the Board would not be effective without needed input from others. It’s been a multi-year process and the Board has nearly completed our review and updating of the church policy manual. The Board could not do that alone. Much of the legwork was done by the Governance Advisory Committee (affectionately, the GAC!). In order for the GAC to draft good policy, they often needed input from various teams and other stakeholders. GAC and Board members may be experts in some things, but we’re not experts in Everything UUCCH. So, thank you leaders and team members for your indispensable roles. We now have a clarified, thorough and up-to-date policy manual! Interdependence at work!
As our Board President Jennie Stone said last week, a plan for needed infrastructure upgrades is part of our Vison of Ministry this year. HVAC, roofs, software upgrades? Where to begin? Understanding our priorities and often the technical and engineering reasons for various choices was made so much easier due to the hard work and expertise of our Infrastructure Advisory Committee.
Over the next few weeks, the Board hopes you’ll take advantage of both our interdependence and our democratic process. You’ve already heard about it, you’ll hear and read about it again. We’re holding a budget forum next Sunday to give you, if you will, another look into our own web of interdependence. You’ll get an overview of the budget and our long-term financial strength. For more details, refer to your Order of service and the Newsgram.
That budget forum is also important because the following week, June 8, is our annual meeting. And that’s where you’ll vote on the budget, our slate of LDNC & Board candidates and the infrastructure endowment distribution Jennie talked about last week. Your voice is important to our democracy and our church, it’s the interdependent thing to do!
So that’s just part of UUCCH’s internal interdependence. I’d like to talk about the interdependent web of all existence, or even on a smaller scale how UUCCH and our surrounding communities are interdependent. But as a good interdependent sort of guy, I see we have other – and better food for your soul coming next. See you at the budget forum and annual meeting!