UUA View from Berkeley

Doctrine of Discovery

2012-01-27T11:12:00.000-08:00

Fifth in a series of posts about the January UUA board meeting

Quick -- under whose authority did Columbus lay claim to the New World?

a) Elizabeth I of England
b) Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain
c) the Catholic Church
d) the U S Supreme Court

If you answered b and c, you were right -- but strangely enough, a), Elizabeth I, and d) the US Supreme Court, are involved in this drama as well, though after Columbus' "discovery" of inhabited lands.

The Spanish monarchs believed they had a god given right to seize lands and Christianize the inhabitants, forcibly if necessary, because of a series of decrees starting with Pope Urban II that decreed non-Christian lands "empty" (Papal Bull Terra Nullius ) and therefore subject to being seized by Christians. This was strengthened by Pope Nicolas V in 1452 with the Romanus Pontifex, which declared war against all non-Christians throughout the world and authorized the taking their nations and territories. By the time Columbus showed up in the "New World", this "doctrine of discovery" was well established and used by many Christian nations to create and subjugate colonies in far-flung areas of the world -- think British Empire, as well as the work of the French, Portuguese, and Spanish. In fairness, later papal edicts denounced slavery and inhumane treatment of indigenous people, but the damage was done.

And the US Supreme Court? The Doctrine of Discovery was codified in US law in 1823 in Johnson vs. McIntosh, and given an American twist with John L. O'Sullivan's coining of the term Manifest Destiny (do we teach this in schools any more?):

".... the right of our manifest destiny to over spread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty… is right such as that of the tree to the space of air and the earth suitable for the full expansion of its principle and destiny of growth."

It was used to justify the breaking of treaties, and taking of lands, as recently as 2001. According to Professor Robert Miller, the doctrine of discover underlies US "Indian law" today: Congress has very broad authority in Indian affairs, which diminishes tribal authority.

The Doctrine of Discovery has been repudiated by most members of the United Nations, excepting Australia, Canada, and the United States, as has the Episcopal Church. The UUA has been silent, despite a number of attempts by various groups to bring it to the floor of the General Assembly.

A resolution about the Doctrine will be on the Phoenix agenda, primarily because our allies and partners in our Justice GA have asked us to do so. It is a good reason to educate ourselves about how this ancient concept continues to impact our "vision of beloved community".

Animals and children

2012-01-24T09:29:00.001-08:00

Fourth in a series of posts about the January 2012 UUA Board meeting

My seat mate on the New Orleans to Houston flight was a 30ish man who looked liked the volunteer fireman he once had been in the small town north of New Orleans where he had lived all his life. Engaging, proud of his wife and two kids, self-deprecating about his “hick” rural accent, he said Katrina hadn’t really impacted him much.

Except – he stopped and drew a breath – psychologically.

With Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) skills, he immediately volunteered and was in New Orleans two days after the levees broke. He lasted four days.

“It wasn’t so much the work”, he said. “We were basically pulling bodies. It was the way they were all treated….” His voice trailed off and he continued. “And nobody seemed to know what they were doing.”

The first day he was sent about 35 miles out to “pull bodies”. The second day his crew sat around on a log – no one knew where to send them. The third day they started again, but were quickly pulled in “because the government was doing something we had to wait for – no one knew what.” The fourth day he was back “pulling bodies” – “mostly animals and children”. That was enough.

The conversation shifted. His family had lived in the same area since 1806, when they bought the land as a land grant from Spain. They “raised cattle – and owned slaves”. “My great grandma was a dress-maker, so she said they would let her know when the ship was coming in with the slaves and concubines.”

Concubines? “Yeah. They would take the prettiest, maybe 13 to 17 years old, and they would be sold for concubines. They would rub them with butter, and my great grandma would dress them up so they looked real pretty. The person who bought the concubine would usually take the dress too. She said she could make two bits on each one.” Their family album includes very old photos of pretty dark girls in colorful dresses.

Rubbed them with butter!? Excuse me?

He paused and said softly “they thought of them like cattle”.

Animals. And children. He went on.

"You know, my 8 year old boy didn't know what slavery was. He plays with all kinds of kids, all colors -- we are a pretty integrated place now. So a few days ago he asked me what a slave was. I had to explain it to him, and he just couldn't understand how..." here his voice cracked and dropped lower, "how anyone could treat a human being that way."

Next post: Do you know where your mineral rights are?

Raw emotion in sacred space

2012-01-23T12:09:00.000-08:00

Third in a series of posts about the January 2012 UUA board meeting

Eight of us met on Saturday afternoon with North Shore Unitarian Universalists in Lacombe, LA, about 50 miles outside of New Orleans (and over a v-e-r-y long bridge). Currently lay-led, I was struck by our welcome: their board members first met us in their “feng shui garden”, where we assembled and lit the chalice in a beginning ritual, then walked into the sanctuary with lovely music playing softly (which turned out to be a recording of their choir), setting sacred space.

North Shore was the “lucky” church – their beautiful new building was essentially unscathed by Katrina and its aftermath. Yet each person in the room had a story to tell: losing homes, friends, half of their church members, with a mortgage to pay. Piled on top of the trauma of the storm, was also a story of betrayal. In addition to Katrina, the congregation lost a long time minister to charges of misconduct. Those of us who have gone through this gut-wrenching event know how devastating it can be – add to that the personal trauma of the disaster, the high need for pastoral care at such a time – and two subsequent ministers who were unable to fulfill their charge and left in a very short time. This was a hurting congregation – and the raw emotion was still evident in their voices, their eyes, their faces. They feel both grateful and let down by the UUA – for providing funds and support, though not quite enough and not always the right kind.

“You don’t know how important it was” says worship leader (and frequent board president) Terry Van Brunt, “to have human faces on Unitarian Universalism. The people who came down to be with us.” The generosity of the congregation in light of their own struggles is inspiring – they give away the first Sunday plate, have helped and supported other congregations with more recent disasters, and are active in a variety of social justice projects in their community.

Together later that evening, each board group had a similar story to tell. Stories of gratitude to partner churches across the US that sprang up spontaneously to sent people and money to help. Elated that $3 million in relief was raised through the UUA and UUSC – and crushed when most of it went outside the walls of the three UU congregations. Community Church, which sat under 8 feet of water for three weeks, was bull-dozed. If you look up that address on Google maps, you see an empty lot. Three and a half feet of water on First UU’s first floor destroyed everything but the brick walls and a single hard drive computer. As board members – some of us on the board when this happened – we are saddened that we let them down. They were encouraged to combine, but unwilling to do so, believing they could be more effective in three locations. Out of that tension has come a strong partnership between the three, including the Center for Ethical Living and Social Justice Renewal.

Community’s new, beautiful church stands at the corner of Fleur de Lis and 38^th. The stained glass window from pre-Katrina days that had been in storage is installed in First UU, and their kitchen finally restored. A labyrinth, laid by members and volunteers, gleams in the floor of the sanctuary. I walked it each night I stayed at the Center, the path flowing softly in the light of the newly installed exit signs.

And there is so much more to be done, both in the buildings and the souls of those who survived. You can help by sending contributions (of any amount) per the instructions found here. A small amount from a lot of us could make a huge difference to these congregations.

Next post: Children and animals

If you have come to help, you are wasting your time

2012-01-22T13:32:00.000-08:00

Second in a series of posts about the January 2012 UUA Board meeting

The Center for Ethical Living and Social Justice Renewal, a program of the three Greater New Orleans congregations, is located on the second floor of the First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans. It is a big building for a small congregation, yet the dreams it houses are proof that Margaret Mead was right. It started its work a few days after Katrina.

Ten women trustees from the UUA Board shared the "girls dorm" for three nights, 3' by 6' bunk beds packed in a small room, our gentle snoring making me glad I brought ear plugs. (I understand the "boys dorm room", with seven of the board's men, was substantially louder.) Each group shared one indoor shower (the women also shared with a group of volunteers from Wellesley), and three outside. We were more than aware that such accommodations would be a privilege in many parts of the world.

From this base we split up and worked with a partner organization, sometimes two, in some part of the city each day: pulling weeds in the garden of the African American museum or North Shore Unitarian, chopping switch grass in a nature preserve, serving meals in homeless shelters, cleaning out food pantry (walk in) refrigerators, packing oranges, painting, and "power washing" the exterior of houses. We quickly discovered the "power" for the latter was supplied by our hands firmly grasping scrub brushes.

What struck me was that the organizations we came to spent so much time showing us the history, the operations, and their vision. For most of the groups I joined, there was as much education as work.

Education. For us. So that we are changed and understand our own role in creating a better future. The last line of the quotation in the title (sometimes attributed to Lilla Watson , sometimes to a "tribal elder") is on the wall of the center:

If you have come to help, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.

Next post: Raw emotion in sacred space

New Orleans Bound

2012-01-14T09:01:00.001-08:00

First in a series of posts about the January UUA Board meeting

I have never been to New Orleans -- my stereotype of jazz, booze, and lots of food in the French Quarter has not been a strong pull. In the past few years -- ever since Katrina -- it has represented something else for me. Shame. My own.

There appeared to be a negative undercurrent to all those laughing faces in the tourism ads. Poverty. And the crime associated with desperation. In 2005 families in my Berkeley church opened their homes to those who had lost them -- and co-minister Barbara Hamilton-Holway asked us "why am I willing to open my home to Katrina survivors, but not to those from our own neighborhoods?" There is an undercurrent everywhere -- and many of us choose not to see it.

The Board meeting starts Wednesday, so many of us are going a few days early to work with the Center for Ethical Living and Social Justice Renewal. I expect to spend several days weeding, serving, and cleaning, or whatever needs to be done. I am a late-comer to this particular service project -- many UUs across the country have already walked this path.

The Board packet can be downloaded here. Agenda items include selecting the candidate(s) for moderator, finalizing the agenda for General Assembly, reviewing progress towards our Ends (including the perceptions of a sample of nearly 1300 UUs of how well we are doing this). linkage activities, meeting with the Commission on Social Witness, the Doctrine of Discovery, work on a long term vision, and a request from the District Presidents Association. I will be covering these -- and more -- when I return on the 23rd.

Current and future generations

2011-11-05T11:37:00.000-07:00

Seventh in a series of posts about the October UUA board meeting

The Steering Committe of the organization-formerly-known-as-Continental-Unitarian-Universalist-Young-Adult-Network met in Boston at the same time as the board. Several of us joined them at lunch to talk about the future of their organization and the UUA. The timing was interesting -- the board had just had its conversation about the scope of the organization.

I have heard both dismissive and earnest comments about Young Adults whose congregations are the conferences they attend -- dismissive by those who think you have to sign a book and show up religiously on Sundays, earnest by those who think we need a much broader definition of what it means to be in covenant. Not surprising, the Young Adults we met with were in the latter camp, talking eloquently of what it meant in their lives to be Unitarian Universalist. Many of them were also active in their home congregations, but not all. Rather than attempt to convince anyone that Young Adult "cons" did not compete with traditional congregations, this group embraced it, renaming themselves "Conference Attending Young Adult Network" (CAYAN, pronounced like the pepper).

A 1960 Harvard Business Review article by Ted Levitt about organizations defining themselves too narrowly (is our business about railroads or about transportation?) comes to mind when we talk about congregations. I personally do not think one can be a Unitarian Universalist in isolation -- for one thing, it is too easy, especially for someone who may define Unitarian Universalism as believing whatever you want. That said, is the only option signing the book in a congregation, whether bricks and mortar or a sanctioned virtual one like the Church of the Larger Fellowship?

Paraphrasing Ted Levitt, is our mission about congregations, or is it about covenant? I welcome our Youth and Young Adults to help the rest of us figure that out.

Our covenant

2011-11-05T09:32:00.000-07:00

Sixth in a series of posts about the October UUA Board meeting

My board orientation in 2007 included getting a copy of the Board covenant in our binder. Somewhat put off by what appeared to be a cavalier attitude toward covenants, we six newly elected trustees complained.

In typical fashion, Moderator Gini Courter gave us the opportunity to readdress the covenant in the next board meeting, which we did. This included a survey that showed differences in how we perceived our adherence to the covenant, depending on whether or not you were a Person of Color, young, or new. Not much has been done by the Board with the covenant since, in spite of adding several new trustees.

Until this board meeting. In addition to creating a covenant, from scratch, we agreed to start each board meeting by reading it together. I am copying it below in its exact form, though we did agree we needed to clarify our intent about the bridges:

We promise to:
....listen deeply, speak boldly and keep an open mind, balancing views of self and others authentically
....be humble, prepared and present and focus on governance as the board's essential role, while taking the long view, and maintaining accountability for anti-racism/anti-oppression/multi-culturalism
....have respect and affection for each other, assuming the best of intentions and honest needs and building new bridges and bridges that are broken
....remember our sources and whose we are, giving space for faith
....learn and grow, practice self-care, laugh and sing!

Occupy Boston

2011-11-03T16:00:00.000-07:00

Fifth in a series of posts about the October UUA Board meeting

Knowing I spent years as a senior corporate executive, a friend asked me last night how I felt about the Occupy movements.

I support them. I may cringe sometimes at what I perceive as naivete - a lot of good things are enabled by corporations' abilities to raise and invest money, leaving me decidedly NOT anti-corporation. But I am anti-what-many-corporation-have-become, where the profit motive has outstripped psychological, ethical, and moral contracts.

So there I was with the rest of the UUA Board, wandering between tents, stages, and humanity at Dewey Square. Some of us (trustees) washed dishes in the mess tent, some of us held signs, and others talked to the people who had been there for several weeks. This includes Andy Coates, one of the UU "protest chaplains" who can't do a lot of blogging without wi-fi right now. Among the crowd I encountered Katherine Allen, the young woman from Minneapolis I sponsored at General Assembly last summer; Lucas Hergert, who serves our Livermore (CA) congregation; and a long time (non UU) friend from Boston.

The mood was festive, peaceful; a drumming circle at one end; Marshall Ganz and Noam Chomsky at the other. Ganz encouraged the crowd not to give in to the calls for organization, clear goals, and clear leaders. He cited the story of David and Goliath: David tried on the armor of a "traditional" warrior, and it didn't fit; he went on to fight (and win) his own way. Food was free, clothes were free.

Otto Scharmer, on the faculty at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, likens the current corporate system to a cancer -- it has grown out of control, and its primary goal in life is to feed itself, not caring if it is destroying the system around it. His proposals around Capitalism 3.0 are interesting, as is his work with some of the more enlightened corporate CEOs.

Like Scharmer, I am not quite ready to give up on capitalism. So in my next life I may become a corporate healer. In the meantime, Occupy community members are making some very important points about income disparity an a system stacked against the 99%.

Governance: turnng a corner?

2011-11-03T12:21:00.000-07:00

Fourth in a series of posts about the October UUA Board meeting

I doubt it is any secret that the transition to Policy Governance® has been a somewhat rocky one for the UUA. Part paradigm change, part culture shift, and part stand-in for other issues, the board (including me) and the staff have managed to talk past each other quite successfully.

This meeting was different. According to Carver, monitoring reports are mostly part of a consent agenda – unless there are issues, you really don’t need to talk about them.

This time we didn’t need to talk about them. It was the second year for most of them, the staff used a format that was easy to understand and evaluate, and there really weren’t any issues other than a lower than acceptable number of trustees doing the evaluations. So we addressed the latter in a constructive way that will help us as trustees to be more compliant.

I went from the UUA Board to one the following week I just joined that is not under Policy Governance. It is a well run, sophisticated organization with a member database to die for. We (happily) met for two days from 8 to 5, which tells you it is a very different board from the UUA Board.

What really stood out for me in terms of this board’s financial reporting were the very detailed reports on investments and audit statements that had the familiar glazed look from most of the board members – these are smart people with strong backgrounds, including finance and business, but it struck me that what we really wanted to know about our new investment manager did not require a long presentation. Few of us have the experience to judge the wisdom of post initial hedge fund tenders, the 20 year median OAS, or the OECD CLI. We didn’t even get the headline “Twisting in the Wind” joke referencing the Fed’s Operation Twist (I wonder if they were taking bets on that?) What we really wanted to know was who are these people and how do we know we can trust them with our money?

That is at the heart of Carver’s philosophy – non-profit boards are typically not financial wizards and shouldn’t have to be, fiduciary responsibility not withstanding. So how does management know their records and decisions are sound? What proof do they have of that? This is a very different approach from showing board members all the data and expecting them to figure it out.

A big thanks to the UUA staff for answering the right questions.

Next post: UUA Board at Occupy Boston

Who are we? Part II: the Association

2011-11-01T15:13:00.000-07:00

Third in a series of posts from the October UUA Board meeting

As discussed in earlier posts, the Board and UUA President are sponsoring Gathered Here, an Association-wide inquiry into what connects us to our faith, and what differences we want to make in the world. This is in partnership with a growing list of UU organizations. There are two simultaneous paths for the inquiry – one for congregations that helps them identify their own goals and outcomes, and one that builds up to districts and an Association-wide shared vision roughly a year from now.

An interesting thing happened in the very first planning team meeting for Gathered Here last February.

Gathered Here is a combination of congregational and community events and one on one Appreciative Inquiry interviews. One of the commitments from the UUA Board is that these interviews would include more than those “typically at the table” but also the “historically marginalized”. This led to a conversation about Young Adults, mostly raised UU, who still identify as Unitarian Universalists but do not belong to a congregation. Would we include them?

The answer was yes. To some degree this flies in the face of the UUA Board’s strong position that we are an “Association of Congregations” (italics mine), though the by-laws proposal from the board last summer opens the potential for congregations to be other than bricks and mortar “fellowship” and “churches”. When we look forward to what Unitarian Universalism is/shall be for our children’s children, is that enough? Is an “association of congregations” more than the sum of its parts? Are we a “movement”? Are there institutions other than our congregations that are or should be in mutual accountability within that “movement”?

There questions form the basis of a year long conversation with our congregations and other key stakeholders about who we are, starting with the District Presidents Association on November 4. What comes out of these conversations will impact how we define Unitarian Universalism.

Next post: Governance: turning a corner?

Who are we? Part I: the Board

2011-10-30T17:21:00.000-07:00

Second in a series of posts about the October UUA Board meeting

A turnover of 41%* would be considered substantial in any organization. Yet through a combination of term limits, in-term resignations, and trustees deciding not to run again, that is the change in the UUA Board. In my opinion, this is for the better, not because any of the trustees who left were bad trustees and were not loved dearly by those of us left, but because this is a more diverse board.

Four trustees (plus the Youth Observer, who sits at the board table) identify as Youth or Young Adult – the highest number since I joined this board in 2007. Five identify as Latino/People of Color, and 10 are ministers. Slightly over half (52%) are men, and at least four identify as BGLTQ. This is the last board that will be elected geographically, and it should be noted that because most of our congregations and members are located east of the Mississippi, so are our trustees (12 of 19 districts are primarily east of the Mississppi).

We bring varied backgrounds: IT (information technology), corporate America, small business, the law, teaching, the military, long time UU ministers, and a former nun, to name a few. This typically means an initial struggle, as we learn to understand and accommodate each other’s values and working styles. Our new trustees have already learned that the pace of the board meetings is brutal – a New York Times article about “decision fatigue” was making the rounds during the meetings, and we all identified with it. Yet we are all culpable, asking the moderator to add “one more thing” to the agenda, and have fairly diverse opinions about what agenda items are most valuable. I am more hopeful this time that we will change it.

It’s all good.

*I have included everyone who is elected and normally "sits at the table" and participates in the discussions: this includes 23 trustees, the Youth Observer, the Moderator, the Financial Advisor, and the President.

Next post: Who are we? Part II: the Association

A new beginning

2011-10-20T18:38:00.000-07:00

First in a series of posts about the October 2011 UUA Board meeting

It felt different from the beginning. Ten new board members, a change in tenor from many of us returning. I was very conscious coming to this meeting that I have "only" 20 months left as a UUA trustee. I am not the only one who has a sense of urgency around leaving a board structure that has the support and clarity it needs to function -- knowing full well that each new board that comes after us has to do some of its own definition.

My positive feelings about the ten new board members have only strengthened -- it feels like the learning curve has already been shortened for them, and we are discussing real issues with a deeper level of understanding that I would have expected at this time.

This year's every-other-year retreat was led by the Rev. Margaret Marcuson, a Baptist minister who serves as a spiritual advisor to a number of UU ministers. She is low key, thoughtful. She gives the board space - and time - to sink into our own questions. She names some of our elephants. We create a covenant -- we begin to identify our work over the next few years, a task that will be picked up and amplified over the next few days: governance, shared vision, and annual plan, ministerial credentialing, and reducing the administrative load of the board (including roughly 250 committee appointments). Saturday's items are moved around to allow the board to join Boston's "Occupy Wall Street".

It's going to be an interesting meeting. Read more about it through my posts over the next few weeks.

Cansado

2011-08-23T12:57:00.000-07:00

It is the third Wednesday of the month, and I am standing in front the the West County Detention Facility with about 75 people. Our numbers have steadily grown over the past few months, starting with 20 at my first one in May. This facility is one of the top 30 in the country in deporting non-criminal immigrants -- nearly 600 in a little over a year with no criminal record other than not having papers. How many families does this represent? how many children whose parents have been taken away?

This evening we hear two stories -- the first from a man anxious and struggling to read his story about being detained by ICE in a 5:30 am raid, flown to Phoenix, and released after significant money changed hands. He is still undocumented and fears where he is. He is seeking "una vida mejor, para mi y mi familia" -- a better life for him and his family.

The second is a woman who has papers -- but her husband did not. He had applied for sanctuary shortly after fleeing to the United States 20 years before, from threats on his life because his father was a high-ranking official in the Guatemalan government. He had stopped to pick up his children at school, and was over the no parking line. "Give him a ticket!" she yelled as they took him away. "Give him a $15 ticket!". He was deported, and before he could make his way back to the US, he was murdered.

"Now I have two children who have no father -- for a parking ticket."

These are the complicated stories of immigration. The man who just wants "a better life" -- can we throw open our borders to everyone in the world who wants a "better life"? Maybe not, but we can treat people with respect. And sanctuary? I do wonder about the relative chances of someone from Guatemala versus what some might consider a more "desirable" ethnic background.

Worst of all is the fear -- fear of picking up your children and being stopped, fear of someone pounding on your own door in the early morning. As I posted earlier, these fears are not strong enough to stop people from crossing the border -- but what causes them should be strong enough to violate our own sense of moral justice.

A poet steps up the the microphone. With soft guitar strumming in the background, he reads his own poem "Cansado (Tired)". Tired of being afraid, tired of running, tired of being stopped for being brown, tired of being treated like dirt.

Singing hymns

2011-06-29T10:56:00.000-07:00

Second in a series about General Assembly 2011 and the UUA Board meeting

Forty-nine fully credentialed off-site delegates from 39 congregations were part of this year’s General Assembly. It was a total thrill to watch their virtual banners in the opening banner parade (Susan Lankford from the UU Church of Berkeley is to the right), see the chart with their votes, hear their voices in the plenary hall. On Sunday, delegates overwhelmingly voted to allow offsite voting and electronic signatures.

I have been part of a “virtual team” that met by phone every week this year, and every other week between September and December of 2010. Including members from the General Assembly Planning Committee, GA Staff, UUA IT department, the UUA Board and the user community, this team has been a joy to work with even though we did not meet face to face until GA. Five more technical support volunteers joined the effort for GA, and brought the same spirit of fun, cooperation, and dedication to the effort.

A similar dynamic was going on with the virtual delegates. The Virtual Plenary Hall included a chat site – old friends were becoming reacquainted during training sessions, and a vibrant community sprang up during the plenary sessions. Said one virtual delegate when GA closed: “I really choked up when it was all over and felt the loss of a neat community.”

Acknowledging the limitations of the electronic world, I often say that nothing can replace the experience of being in a hall with thousands of other Unitarian Universalists, singing “Spirit of Life”, so I was struck by one of the stories from the plenary sessions.

Off-site delegates were encouraged to call into an audio bridge and mute their phones during votes to insure that any time delays in the streaming video would not confound the vote. Hearing some background sounds from one delegate’s line, tech support Laura Randall moved to mute it – then realized what she was hearing.

It was one of our octogenarian delegates, singing the hymn along with the plenary body. She had applied to be an off-site delegate because at 87, she could no longer travel, but really missed being part of GA. This year, she still was.

Trust

2011-06-28T16:01:00.000-07:00

First in a series of posts about General Assembly 2011

In providing the position of the UUA Board on its own reduction in size from 23 trustees elected mostly from districts to 11 elected at large, trustee Susan Ritchie said "you can do better than us". I concur. That does not mean I think we have been a bad board, or that we are not qualified to sit at the 25 Beacon table.

The greatest impact of this General Assembly on me personally is the passing of the resolution to downsize the UUA Board. Just re-elected at the June Pacific Central District Assembly, this means I serve a second term of two years, rather than four.

Standing in line at Starbucks in the convention center, a woman about my age asked how the board members felt about the change: “how did it feel to be identified as “less than”, that those of us of a certain age and color were somehow not good enough to serve on the board?”

I ached for her. She had just been passed over in her job for someone younger. This is not what happened in the position taken by the UUA Board.

I am proud of the contributions I have made to the UUA through my board service, and just as determined to have the next two years be even more meaningful. And I am also aware of the privilege that allows me, a 61 year old white woman who is financially independent, to serve this Association. “Be the change you want to see”: I want to willingly step aside to allow other voices as the table. Will they have the life experience, or the knowledge of institutionalism, or the skills I have assembled from leadership positions in corporate power structures? Some will, some won't, but I don’t think that is what matters most. What they will have is a different life experience, and will bring that to bear in all its richness in how we shape our future.

As I walked through the hall after the affirmative vote on downsizing the Board, I ran into several delegates from the district that elected me—each said to me “this is about trust” – trust in the board to follow through on commitments made.

This board does not take that trust lightly. I would like to know what that looks like to you -- a year (or two) from now, what will this board have done that makes you feel really good about the delegates' decision?

A smaller board vs. greater democracy?

2011-04-21T15:59:00.000-07:00

Third is a series of posts about the April 2011 Board meeting

During the November District Presidents meeting, as the presidents were struggling with several difficult issues, I heard several express understanding of the UUA Board's need to be smaller -- they were struggling with having substantive and complicated discussions with 19 around the table -- how do you do 26?

When I first joined the Board, the Finance Committee played part of this role -- in a more relaxed environment, with fewer people, we often had the kind of discussion that would have benefited the entire board, but instead created a situation where some board members had more information than others. But setting efficiency aside, can a smaller board be more democratic?

My dictionary defines "democracy" as a "system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members, typically through elected representatives". A look around the Board table might suggest that we do not fully represent "all eligible Unitarian Universalists" -- we are mostly of a "certain age" and class, and nearly all Caucasian. Our current district selection process does insure geographic diversity, an important factor, but at the unintended cost of other kinds.

This is why the Board is submitting a by-laws revision that would change the current process of 19 trustees elected by districts plus 4 at large to 11 at large on a slate of 11 from the Nominating Committee. The suggested by-law includes language that says:

The Nominating Committee shall endeavor to nominate individuals so that the membership of the Board of Trustees and each elected committee reflects the full diversity of the Association, especially in regard to historically marginalized communities, but also balancing amongst size of congregation, lay and ordained, geography, age (including youth and young adults), and gender, among others. The Nominating Committee shall consult with groups and organizations including those traditionally underrepresented in Unitarian Universalist leadership, to help inform the nominating process.

So to coin a phrase (or quote a president), a smaller board vs. greater democracy is not only a false choice, but depends on the methodology to select the smaller board. The full set of recommendations also includes shorter terms for trustees, and a transition plan that starts in 2013. I will be running webinars for all Pacific Central District delegates in early June that will provide the entire text of the by-laws recommendations and a chance to discuss them.

Next post: a shared "shared vision"

A Shared "Shared Vision"

2011-04-21T10:46:00.000-07:00

Third in a series of posts about the April 2011 UUA Board Meeting

Several thousand Unitarian Universalists contributed to the current UUA "shared vision", or ends, first through Open Space Technology at GA 2007 in Portland, and then through Appreciative Inquiry at GA 2008 in Fort Lauderdale. The initial draft was vetted in 25 smaller meetings across 12 districts, with 85% of those in the meetings saying the ends capture "almost all" or "most" of what our members wanted to happen. The Board made the most common recommended changes, and we have been working with this set of ends since April of 2009.

In light of our Unitarian Universalist value that says everything is open to question, this vision too is subject to change. The stakes are higher now -- 12 districts have either adopted these ends as their own, or are in the process of doing so. The "ends" have been shared between UUA Board and the UUA President, and now the district boards.

This is one of the reasons "Gathered Here" is such a powerful concept. Using Appreciative Inquiry as the underlying mechanism, there will be hundreds (thousands?) of conversations over the next 18 months that identify what is important to us, and what differences we want to make in the world. These will be both one-on-one, and in congregational settings, including voices that are not always "at the table", such as Young Adults who identify as UU but may not currently be congregation members. Common themes will be identified across congregations, clusters, and districts -- by fall of 2012 we expect to have enough information to consider revisions to our current shared vision.

Making Progress -- April 2011 UUA Board meeting

2011-04-20T09:26:00.000-07:00

Second in a series of posts about the April 2011 UUA Board meeting

There was a lot I liked about this board meeting. It was still our version of the Boston marathon, but at least there were fewer 7:00 am meetings. More importantly, it felt like some of the changes we have been attempting to make in governance over the past few years were finally starting to happen:

the Shared Vision, or Ends, of the Association moved from esoteric rhetoric to something alive and guiding our efforts
we considered new ways of looking at old issues, such as the Ministerial Fellowship credentialing process
financial processes put in place to protect us when things are not so great, such as the policies of the Endowment Committee, and the formula used for the payout, are working
a Justice GA that was exciting and truly different was taking shape in front of our eyes
we were able to come to agreement on the grubby part of by-laws changes that would downsize the board while strengthening democracy
we began tackling something we had been admiring from afar since the Summit on Excellence in Ministry: is there mutual accountability between the Association and our two "identify schools", Meadville Lombard and Starr King?

I will be posting on these -- and more -- over the next few weeks.

Springtime in Boston

2011-04-06T19:03:00.000-07:00

First in a series of posts about the April 2011 UUA Board Meeting

Next week's UUA board meeting includes finalizing several resolutions to put before delegates this summer, and some deep discussions about critical issues. In the latter category is a discussion on Thursday night about funding theological education, on Friday morning ministerial credentialing, on Friday afternoon the strategic view of ministries put together by the UUA staff, and on Saturday night the vision for GA 2012. Thursday afternoon also includes a 3 hour workshop on "right relations training" in preparation for GA 2012. There is also significant time devoted to reviewing the content of the President's "Ends" Monitoring Report, essentially the "state of the state" for how we are doing on meeting our long term goals as an Association.

By-laws proposals involve reducing the size of the board, eliminating Actions of Immediate Witness (at least temporarily), and the details of the selection process the board will use to nominate the moderator.

At various times we will be joined by the GA Planning Committee, members of the GA Accountability group, and leadership from our two theological schools.

These topics -- and more -- will be covered over the next few weeks. You can download the packet here.

Insult to Injury

2011-01-25T16:45:00.000-08:00

Fifth in a series of posts about the January UUA Board meeting

Cesar Lopez is no ordinary community organizer. Though come to think of it, I have not met many ordinary community organizers. His combination of passion, knowledge, and humility enables him to provide a compelling case for what he believes in.

Cesar was one of our hosts at Tierra y libertad organization (TYLO), along with Imelda and Teresa. He clearly had more organizing experience, but was coaching and mentoring the two younger women, supporting them as part of the leadership of the organization. Radio Station KPFA (Berkeley) was in Tucson at the TYLO house at the same time we were to interview Cesar as part of their nationally syndicated program Flashpoints -- you can hear that interview here. Cesar starts 17 minutes into the one hour program, but it is all worth listening to, including the interview with two Tucson high school students about the elimination of ethnic studies.

Signed into law last May by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, the law makes it a crime to "promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, promote resentment of a particular race or class of people, are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals." According to the interviewed teens, the popular ethnic studies courses at Tucson High had made a huge difference in the lives of those who took them, significantly increasing standardized test scores and almost doubling graduation rates. The interview also contains a conversation with a teacher of ethnic studies who has refused to stop teaching them, and has been arrested along with several other teachers.

Next post: what else the UUA Board discussed

Building a Bridge

2011-01-22T11:38:00.000-08:00

Fourth in a series of posts about the January UUA Board meeting

Saturday morning included discussion with members of Puente (Spanish for bridge), a grassroots community-based groups devoted to justice, non-violence, interdependence and human dignity. We heard about success in boycotting the Diamondbacks and Budweiser, and how Sheriff Joe Arpiao, who had targeted North Phoenix with massive raids prior to the July 27 Day of Resistance, had not tried one since. Puente's organizers have been going door to door, signing up voters. They are filing complaints against the school that has allowed their children to be harassed by authorities looking for undocumented people, setting up English schools so they can defend themselves.

We also heard from 3rd Space, an immigrants rights group which is helping undocumented BLGTQ youth know their rights, and Tupac Enrique Acosta, from Tonatierra who is working to "create and sustain a Cultural Embassy of the Indigenous Peoples that will support local-global and holistic indigenous community development initiatives in education, culture, and economic development in accord with the principles of Community Ecology and Self Determination". All were moving, and I found Enrique Acosta's mix of spiritual presence and empowered defiance particularly eloquent.

One of the common themes from all of our speakers in the past week has been heightened expectations for what Unitarian Universalists will add to this effort. This is not just about a "Justice GA" in 2012 in which several thousand UUs parachute in, do stuff, and then go home. We have started something -- our partners are stretched even thinner than our local congregations and UUA staff are. They -- and our UU partners from traditionally marginalized groups -- are looking to us to fulfill the promises we painted in May and July with hundreds of yellow T-shirts. We have begun to build this bridge -- do we have the will to strengthen and use it?

How we are with each other

2011-01-21T21:00:00.000-08:00

Third in a series of posts on the January UUA board meeting

One by one they stood up, giving their names, congregations, and when they had been arrested. Several talked about their strong conviction that this was a justice issue, how they could not NOT do it. There was a realization that being white made it easier, but mostly what made it easier was that there were at least 7 or 8 others standing on the sidewalks for every person who was arrested.

They knew they were not alone.

These were, of course, the Unitarian Universalists who were arrested in connection with the July 29 demonstration against SB 1070 in Arizona. Coming from across the country, those arrested included Arizona UUs, several from our district (Pacific Central), as well as President Peter Morales. Most of their charges have been dismissed.

This was Day 5 of a very different UUA Board meeting. The morning included meeting with heads of various activist organizations, including Somos America and ministers from other denominations who said to us "you don't know how much it meant to have you here. We have been discouraged. We have felt alone. All those yellow shirts told us we were not. You have inspired us."

In the evening the Board, GA2012 Accountability Committee, and members of the GA Planning Committee were joined by the board of the Pacific Southwest District and members of local congregations. We broke into small groups and talked about what made the idea of GA2012 different: it was a real chance to make a difference, to work together, to do something different. Yes, some people who normally came would not, but there would be space for others who had not attended before, especially our youth and young adults. And one by one we stood up to say what we needed to make this work for us: media attention, money, accessibility concerns in 120 degree heat, interfaith coalitions, singing, impeccable logistics skills, support to bring in youth and young adults, support for an immigration ministry, and opening our capacity for love: "we need a little bit of knock down roll around love".

And my favorite was the person who stood to say "this has the potential to be transformational or a failure. The difference will be how we are with each other".

Amen

Me llamo Lourdes

2011-01-20T20:29:00.000-08:00

Second in a series of posts about the January UUA Board Meeting

Her name was Lourdes. We met her at the comedor (eating area) in Nogales, where she was spending her third month, first as a deportee, then as a volunteer. She was desperate to get back home.

"Home" was California, where she had a 9 year old son and 14 year old daughter. She had lived in California for nearly 20 years -- without documentation. An aunt was caring for her two children.

Hers was one of many stories we heard in this border town, where hundreds of people are deported daily from around the United States. The couple from Guatemala, who would try again to cross that very night, the woman whose 8 year old daughter had been sexually abused, the 60 year old man who had lived in Chicago since he was a child.

Between UUA Board members and local Tucson congregation members, over 40 people spent two intense days talking to migrants and various groups who worked with those migrants -- No Mas Muertes, a ministry of the UU Church of Tucson; the Samaritans, who left food and water in the desert for those who crossed; Tierra y libertad organization, "dirt-roots" organizing for the barrios in South Tucson, and the hard-working public defenders who described the inhumanity and indignities of Operation Streamline. Operation Streamline is our tax dollars at work, designed to wage "war on terrorism" by prosecuting border crossings with mandatory jail sentences, under the illusion that this will deter someone whose children need food, or whose mother needs medicine. Currently over half of all Federal prosecutions are small scale immigration offenders -- nearly all of them are solely for crossing the border without papers. This means prosecution of serious offenses like violent crimes, forgery, larceny, and theft have decreased as the courts are clogged with migrants. And the cost is astronomical -- $7-$10 million per month in Arizona. In Texas alone the incarceration costs since 2005 have been $1.2 billion.

The beneficiary of this is the Correction Company of America, who is building the prisons and according to our hosts, helped write Arizona SB1070.

Most striking to me was the dehumanizing of migrants as the "other". We heard Border Patrol referring to them as "bodies". Operation Streamline runs 60-70 people through the court together, in chains at their ankles, waists, and hands. They show up in the clothes they crossed in, without showers, days or weeks later. Having eaten little, and with shoelaces and belts taken as standard procedure, it is not unusual for a migrant to approach to bench and lose their trousers -- and their dignity. Immigration attorneys are assigned as many as 80 clients at a time, leaving them little opportunity to do other then tell them their basic rights.

And it is not working. According to Heather Williams, who runs the Public Defenders office in Tucson, 30 days in jail is not about to scare people who brave robbery, rape, or death in a desert crossing.

There were several posters on the wall of the comedor, warning people not to cross. It included the one at the top of this post -- each of the red dots is where a body -- not alive -- was found.

Walking North

2011-01-12T14:05:00.001-08:00

First in a series of posts about the January UUA Board Meeting. A similar version of this post is appearing on the UUA Board blog.

On Monday, January 18, 14 members of the UUA Board of Trustees will walk across the border with other UUs and members of the group No Más Muertes (No More Deaths, a ministry of the UU Congregation of Tucson) to Nogales, Mexico, where we will speak with migrants and just-deported migrants. The afternoon includes a panel discussion with human rights and immigration rights activists, and the next day will find some of us in court, observing the deportation process, and some of us back in Nogales, serving the same groups of people we saw the day before. On Wednesday we return to Tempe and the start of the January Board meeting, part of it joint with the 2012 GA Advisory Team. Chaired by (Rev.) Leslie Takahashi Morris, this team was convened to represent many of the stakeholders in a “justice GA” and reports to both the board and the GA Planning Committee.

The Board meeting includes time with several immigration rights groups and local Unitarian Universalist congregations. The events in Tucson of January 8, in which 6 people were murdered, and a US representative is still in critical condition, add both deliberation and urgency to these meetings. Many of our local congregants knew Representative Giffords and other victims of the shooting, and worked on her campaign. We all shared the shock expressed by President Peter Morales that day.

The immigration issue has become more and more personal for me. As posted previously in this blog, reading “The Death of Josseline” forced me to abandon my own “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding many of the service people I come into contact with. Many of them are illegal, including one who is college-educated from El Salvador, fled because her father and his family were targeted by crime gangs, and spent 10 days in jail when she was caught crossing the border to the United States illegally.

When they let her go, she kept on walking north.

Next post: how we expect to spend 60 hours in Board meetings

The Death of Josseline

2010-11-09T16:27:00.000-08:00

Sixth in a set of posts about the October UUA Board meeting

Like many UUs around the country, I am reading The Death of Josseline by Margaret Regan, a reporter from the Tucson area who has done border reporting in Arizona for the last decade. The Board's January meeting will be in Phoenix, with many of us coming early to Tucson to meet with some of the groups that Regan mentions in her book, including the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tucson, which adopted the group No More Deaths (No Más Muertes) as a ministry in 2008.

I certainly knew there were deaths connected to the attempt to reach the United States, but not until I read this book did the magnitude hit me: in just the Tucson sector, 262 miles of border, nearly 600,000 are apprehended each year, over 200 found dead (emphasis on "found"). And one of the lines from the book haunts me: how far would you go to feed your children?

Many of those who cross (or attempt to) are not aware of how dangerous it is -- a walk of "just a day" described by the coyote (people smuggler) turns into 3 or 4, people from places like the Guatemala highlands unused to 110+ degree heat. If they cannot keep up, they can be left behind to not endanger the rest of the group, with hopes that they will be found by the Border Patrol in 90,000 square miles of rugged terrain . But many of them are aware of the danger, and try multiple times.

I break from the book to check on the work I am having done on my house, appreciative of any chance to practice my Spanish. One of the men walks right out of the book.

Roberto tells me his first language is K'iche', a Mayan dialect. He is from Sololá, near the houses I worked on several years ago with Habitat for Humanity, near Lago Atitlán. He has been here two years, and crossed the desert with his sister. Es muy peligroso - it is very dangerous - pero gracias a Diós estamos aquí - but thanks to God we are here. The rest of his family is in Sololá, including his wife and two children. According to the Guatemala representative for UNICEF, half the children in Guatemala are chronically malnourished - in indigenous areas, like Sololá, chronic malnutrition of children under 5 can reach 80%.

How far would you go to feed your children?

The Regionalization Question

2010-11-02T13:05:00.000-07:00

Fifth in a series of posts about the October 2010 UUA Board Meeting

Friday morning (all of it) was labeled as a "Report on the Districts (Terasa Cooley) and future direction on regionalization". Terasa had no "report" but rather opened up the space for a wide-ranging discussion on current and future regionalization issues. As reported here before, there are two very different aspects of "regionalization", governance and service delivery, though they tend to be conflated in districts (like my own, the Pacific Central District) where the governance boards are heavily involved in both.

Terasa and Peter addressed the service delivery side. From Peter's perspective "it is hard to underestimate the problems co-employment caused… we are really tripping up over that arrangement… [we are using] a one room school house model." Teresa gave the example of Mountain Desert, which has 4 staff members, and 54 congregations spread across roughly a million square miles, compared to more compact districts. Are we serving the Mountain Desert congregations in a way that does not discriminate because of their location? Sara Lammert gave the example of program consultant Tandy Rogers from the Pacific Northwest District serving as the interim director for the Youth and Young Adult office. Tandy is co-employed -- though the right thing to do, sorting out the financial and other implications is not simple.

This coming weekend the District Presidents' Association will be meeting to address the governance side. Three UUA board members (plus the board liaison and moderator) have been invited to join. As one of those UUA board members, I am also attending to discuss the linkage done recently by the UUA board, and invite the DPA to collaborate with us on whatever linkage we do next.

These are not easy issues. I do not think the same structure used for service delivery is necessarily the right structure for governance, could suggest eliminating co-employment as one of the steps in decoupling them.

The UUA Board does not have a grand governance plan for districts which both protects and damns us. The district boards need to determine their own fates. But thinking about governance takes me back to linkage -- what would our member congregations and other accountability groups answer to classic linkage questions like the following?

What do you see as the role of the district board?
If districts did not exist today, for what reason(s) would we create them?
If this were 2020, and we were looking back over the past ten years, what would you like to be able to say is different within our congregations because the district was here?

Appreciative Inquiry

2010-10-29T11:44:00.000-07:00

Fourth in a series of post about the October 2010 UUA Board Meeting

The interviews described in the linkage work above were based on Appreciative Inquiry (AI), a powerful methodology that is based on some interesting assumptions:

In every society, organization, or group, something works.
What we focus on becomes our reality.
Reality is created in the moment, and there are multiple realities.
The act of asking questions of an organization or group influences the group in some way.
People have more confidence and comfort to journey to the future (the unknown) when they carry forward parts of the past (the known).
If we carry forward parts of the past, they should be what is best about the past.
It is important to value differences.
The language we use creates our reality.

From the Thin Book of Appreciative Inquiry

Sue Annis Hammond, Thin Book Publishing Company, 2nd Edition, 1998

What if, instead of interviews with 65 congregations, we could create an environment where hundreds of our congregations were having deep conversations about what is important to them and how we can work together as a whole? What if a natural part of that process was then meeting with other congregations to uncover common themes about what has worked, and dreaming together about what could be?

This was the proposition brought to the board by President Peter Morales, Moderator Gini Courter, and Amanda Trosten-Bloom, a noted AI expert who also happens to be a member of Jefferson Unitarian Church. Originally conceived as a staff effort, the power to impact the Board's work as well was quickly realized by Peter and Gini, and brought to the Board. Here was a way to involve congregations directly in created our Shared Vision, also known in Policy Governance® parlance as "ends".

Congregations were heavily involved in the creation of the current set of ends -- through hundreds of their delegates to General Assemblies in 2007 and 2008 (also based on AI), and subsequent discussions with dozens of congregations and district boards in early 2009. Yet the finished product had almost no sense of ownership from our member congregations. The fact that not a single congregation mentioned their GA delegates as "representing the congregation" in the linkage interviews may have something to do with it.

This effort is just beginning, and involves collaboration with more than Board and Staff. It has the power to do so much more than come up with revised "ends" (though that could be a by-product). AI is not only about dreaming, but the transformation we go through to make that dream happen.

May it be so.

What were they thinking?

2010-10-24T14:05:00.001-07:00

Third in a series of posts about the October 2010 UUA Board meeting

Who would I talk to if I wanted to talk to a “member congregation”? What in that conversation could move both of us to the kind of connection and mutual appreciation that would ultimately result in “one strong body”? What differences do our congregations want us to make together, and are they similar to the goals that were established by the Board after two years of input from various UUs and groups across the country? And can anyone believe – really believe – that these goals are not merely aspirational – that together we really could make them happen?

These were some of the questions the UUA Board explored in 64 conversations with randomly selected congregations over the past 8 months. This intentional selection of a statistically valid sample congregations was a way of using a smaller number of personal, real time interviews to get a sense of the whole.

Some of the findings were surprising, some not – for example, I expected that elected and called leadership would primarily be “who speaks for the congregation” – but not that there would be such a hunger for real, two-way conversation. I expected healthy relationships would be built on things like trust and respect – but not necessarily that mutuality and common goals would be cited. And I did not expect that so many congregations would describe themselves as feeling alone.

And most interesting was the shift in possibility that many of us felt in the conversations. We started from a place where there was significant “us” and “them”, congregations feeling isolated with little recognition of any relationship with “the UUA” other than staff, to excitement about what it could be like to be part of a strong Association with common goals. Together we sing "We Would be One", and recognize in our worship services the power of being part of something larger. Sometimes we blame "congregational polity" for the fact that we often are not working collaboratively with other congregations or within the Association, forgetting the part about covenanting together. And many of us no longer use the term "herding cats" with pride.

We can be one. It starts with recognizing that it is possible -- and for some brief moments in these interviews, we did.

I will post a link to the summary report as soon as it is posted on the UUA website, which includes the recommendations that came out of it.

An Internet Highway to General Assembly

2010-10-21T21:05:00.000-07:00

Second in a series of post about the October UUA Board Meeting

Last June a small group of volunteers at General Assembly (GA) in Minneapolis created a novel way for 11 GA delegates to watch two plenary sessions, participate in the plenary conversation, and vote (tabulated but not counted). What made this "novel" is that the delegates were in the state of New York; Athens, GA; Brewster, MA; Key West, and Houston. Using existing technology, duck tape, and baling wire, the trial was universally praised by its participants, and proved that the idea just might work.

And why would we want to do it? There is clearly no way that an "off-site" GA will capture the richness of experiences that singing, worshiping, and discussing with several thousand Unitarian Universalists brings. Yet the UUA Board is keenly aware that delegates typically do not represent our diversity of membership -- it is difficult for many people with family and job responsibilities, financial limitations, and/or physical limitations to take that much time and money to attend. Add to that lingering concerns about safety in Phoenix 2012, as raised in the responsive resolution from the Youth Caucus.

The Off-site Planning Team (co-led by myself and Mark Steinwinter) submitted three motions to the Board on Sunday, which were all approved:

Implement a complete technology and process solution for Off-site delegate participation in 2011. Votes will be published but not counted for decision-making until 2012. The solution will address: 1) allowing offsite delegates to watch, listen, and speak during plenary session, 2) allowing offsite delegates to watch, listen, and speak during mini-assemblies, 3) queuing of offsite delegates who wish to speak, and 4) secure credentialing, voting, and tabulation for offsite delegates
Place the following (non-C) by-laws change to Section 4.5 on the GA 2011 agenda: “Subject to procedures and guidelines adopted by the Board of Trustees, delegates not physically present at General Assembly may be deemed present in person to participate in and vote at General Assembly by means of remote communication.”
Authorize expenditures for GA 2011 for off-site delegate work up to $75,000. Pursuant to policy 3.2.7.c, these funds may be taken from the General Assembly reserve fund.

Additional team members include board members Lew Phinney, Eva Marx, and John Hawkins; Christopher Wulff, who came to us through the Continental UU Young Adults Network (CUUYAN), Rev. Randy Becker, one of the original delegates; Tim Brennan, Don LaPlante, and Lynda Shannon Bluestein as liaison to the General Assembly Planning Committee. We will likely add more people to specific parts of the project. Interestingly, though the Board needed to approve the project, taking it forward is really staff work under Policy Governance®, so the 4 board members are wearing volunteer hats. It is an interesting experiment, with high commitment from team members. We will limit Charlotte to 250 delegates, focusing on congregational sites. Look for more information through multiple channels, including a dedicated site on the UUA website, and the opportunity for your congregation to participate -- if you can't come to Charlotte!

The Antidote to Exhaustion

2010-10-19T13:59:00.000-07:00

First in a series of posts about the October 2010 UUA Board Meeting

The October UUA Board meeting was significantly different than the first full board meeting I attended in 2007, though just as many hours – 60 hours of board activities spread over 5 days. A full year into Policy Governance®, we still struggle with detail that may not entirely be board work - for example, we have over 20 board committees and 4 working groups, which are probably a bit more than John Carver had in mind. Still, we are focusing in much different topics than we were when I first joined the Board.

Topics from the Board meeting that will be explored in more detail over the next few months include the conversations held over the past 8 months with member congregations, regionalization of service delivery, plans for a Justice GA, potential by-laws changes, how the Board holds itself accountable, and some exciting approaches to further conversations with those we are accountable to.

What is emerging amid the liaison and committee reports and the hours spent within those groups, are some deep and important discussions that give me a glimpse of what it is like to focus on values and the future more than the past – and that make me hunger for more of it. Never have I been so keenly aware of the opportunity cost of “the way we do things around here” – the hours (within the board meetings and beyond) spent by board members (UUA and District) and so many other volunteers that keep us incredibly busy – and may or may not be moving us further towards what we are longing for as a faith.

On Wednesday night, board member (and the Reverend) Will Saunders quoted an exchange between poet David Whyte and Brother David, an Austrian monk who was a friend of his. Whyte had been working non-stop with a non-profit and finally hit a wall, bursting into a meeting to ask “Has anyone seen David? I need to speak with David.”

There was only one David in the organization – himself. After a moment of stunned silence, everyone in the room laughed – except Whyte. He had been serious – and was exhausted. Later he said to Brother David “Tell me about exhaustion.” His friend replied “the antidote to exhaustion is not necessarily rest… the answer to exhaustion is whole-heartedness”.

I have mentioned before in these posts the strange combination of tired and alive that comes out of these meetings. One of the things that sustains this board is the underlying worship that goes with it. We started the Board meeting this past week with more than usual - and we all felt the impact. Share part of it with us by clicking here and on the video link on the right to see (the Reverend Doctor) Susan Ritchie's vespers that preceded Will's recounting of the story above.

I could be illegal

2010-06-01T16:55:00.001-07:00

I was running late.

It had taken longer than I expected to drive from Goodrich, AZ, to the State Capitol, where I planned to park my car, and take public transportation to the beginning of the rally to protest SB1070. Just as I saw my bus drive by, I saw three cars with people piling out carrying signs -- planning to do the same thing as I.

I asked if they were going to the rally -- yes. Could I have a ride to the train station? Sure! That is when I realized that 4 adults, a child, and a wheelchair were all going into the Vega - plus me. I thanked them profusely, and said I would wait for the next bus, but they were happy to pile all of us into the Vega - "just like college", said David, the driver.

We drive carefully to the train, alternating in Spanish and English. David works in Admissions for Arizona State University, heading an outreach program for k-12. His love for what he does is clear. Saul works at a local Spanish language radio station, producing and presenting a program on basic economics for his community. Katarina is David's sister, wearing a back brace, obviously in pain, but determined to be part of the march. Patricia and her daughter Daniela, part of Katarina's fiance's family, speak only Spanish and may or may not be undocumented. I don't ask.

We are joined by Sergio as we wait for the train. Sergio is undocumented -- "I am giving my best", he says in Spanish. "I work hard and am part of this country." As we board the train, more and more people join on the way to the rally and march. One of the first people I see on the train is Neal, minister from Reno. It is good to see him and the energy he has brought to his new congregation now part of this march. "Ask me for my papers" says one sign: "I'll show you my degree from ASU". Another sign shows three figures in cap and gown furtively crossing the border.

There are hundreds of Unitarian Universalists, including 80 clergy, UUA President Peter Morales, and Moderator Gini Courter. Local members walk among us at the beginning, dispersing muffins, water, and frozen citrus. Water is offered free all along the route. We walk in gold t-shirts, dispersed among several banners proclaiming "Standing on the Side of Love". I walk beside many of the people I know, former interns, congregation members, and ministers, glad to see them all. I fall in next to a woman I don't know, dressed entirely in white, long sleeves and hat nearly covering her dark skin. Together we sing "Marching in the Light of Love" - camina-a-ndo en la luz de Dios... I wonder why we find it easier to sing about God in Spanish. Both of us are delighted that we know the words in three languages. The heat doesn't matter - like little frogs, we started early in the coolness of the desert, and let our temperatures rise with our surroundings as we walk the 5 miles (my iPhone says 6) to the State Capitol.

I wonder how Katarina is doing in her chair. I wonder about Patricia's future. I am grateful to David for including me in his family for that brief connection.

I wear my button "I could be illegal", knowing it is highly unlikely that anyone will ask - ever.

Who speaks for the congregation?

2010-05-18T12:01:00.000-07:00

The UUA Board's primary authority comes from its member congregations -- and we in turn are accountable to those member congregations. In my last post I talked about the kinds of conversations should be having in my UUA trustee role. But who, exactly, should I be having them with?

For many UUA trustees this has traditionally been with district boards, delegates at district assemblies, and/or the most vocal members of various congregations. All of these are welcome and valuable, but do not exactly fit the description of a "congregation" -- and brings up the potential for listening to the best known and/or loudest voices, and not necessarily the most representative.

This is why the UUA Board choose a random sample of 100 congregations across the United States to ask questions like "who speaks for your congregation?" and "what does a healthy relationship between organizations look like?" Interviews have been going on in person or by phone for the past few months, and will be reported out at General Assembly. The UU Church of Stockton was the only one selected in the sample from the Pacific Central District, so I have been having these conversations in other districts as well.

Our hypothesis was that the Board president and called minister(s) (if there are any), would speak for the congregation. That has been true (so far) a little over 60% of the time -- sometimes it is the church administrator, sometimes another board member, or sometimes the person with the most knowledge or greatest set of communication skills.

"Who speaks for the congregation" is most clear once a year -- during General Assembly when it is that congregation's delegates. Yet many of those delegates do not feel empowered to vote on behalf of their congregation. So we have delegates empowered by the by-laws of the Association to direct resources of the Association, but often doing so without being empowered by, or speaking on behalf or, their own congregations.

One of the responses I hear is "delegates don't do anything important anyway". That is probably true if you look at "important" as the kind of urgency that will be in place this summer with the vote on where GA 2012 will be held. And to some degree it is a self-fulfilling prophecy -- as a board member I want to be directed by a thoughtful body of delegates that has worked through the implications of what they are doing, and bring the force of their own congregations with them. Is that too much to ask?

Staying in touch

2010-05-17T09:49:00.000-07:00

I always find meeting with congregational leaders, as I did Sunday at Mt. Diablo Unitarian Universalist Church, a really interesting and enjoyable look at what is on their minds in terms of the Association. A list of questions collected prior to the meeting gave me a great chance to reflect on the past three years and try to put some perspective on it -- particularly this one:

How do you, as PCD trustee, stay informed about the needs and interests of the 38 congregations? How much time do you spend with them? How often, on average, do you receive inputs from the average congregation? What kinds of issues or problems do they bring to you?

I still struggle with this one. One of my goals as trustee is to have a substantive meeting with each congregation in the district, "substantive" meaning an opportunity for two-way dialogue with congregation leaders. I have met with a little over half, many of them more than once, so will continue with this quest. What I have come to realize, though, is the need to think of what we talk about and who I am talking to.

Most UU members, if interested in "the UUA", are interested in the services that are provided by the district and national staff. In my first year as trustee I distributed lists of resources available from the UUA and instructions on how to search the website to find what you were looking for.

I realize now that's not my role.

Talking about "what the UUA can do for you" is a conversation with someone in the customer role, the receiver of services. That is not a bad thing - it is one of the mains reasons the UUA was created. It is the appropriate conversation with UUA staff.

And there is another role, best described to me in congregational terms by then Board President John Cahoon when I joined the UU Church of Berkeley: "the next time you walk into this place, walk into it as if you owned it, because now you do." He went on to describe being a property owner, landlord, and employer as part of the church membership. "Owners" care about what is being delivered as services, but also about the long term viability of the congregation as an institution. We want the church to make a difference in the lives of more than just ourselves. We picture a future world where we have made an impact in our communities, on our children, and continue to offer a different kind of salvation to people who need to hear that message. What impacts do we want to make? This is the conversation I want to have with our member congregations as a UUA board member.

Next post: who speaks for the congregation?

Apologies from a not historian

2010-05-10T12:21:00.000-07:00

With thanks to Larry Ladd for his information and graceful way of providing it and apologies to Gini for misrepresentation

Sometimes when one is not familiar with the details of a situation, they are still able to capture its essence with the key facts being correct. And in other cases they -- well, don't.

I did not, in summarizing Gini's comments at the governance change workshop at the PCD District Assembly. Though history is always open to interpretation, I misrepresented some key facts about our early formation:

Districts WERE originally set up for service delivery, not to elect trustees. In fact, trustees were elected at large until 1969.
As Gini mentioned, districts were pre-dated by Unitarian area conferences and Universalist state conventions. These conferences and state conventions often had their own source of money. The new UUA leadership's task was to combine them into districts -- whether that was "gerrymandering" or paying attention to "identity, money, and jobs", as Larry suggests, depends on your point of view. My understanding is there is a substantial difference in perspective between those who came to our faith as Unitarians versus those who came as Universalists.
Per Larry: "The important point here is that the muddled mixture of funding began in 1961-64, far earlier than the blog indicated and for very different reasons." He goes on to describe a complex set of negotiations in terms of where the funds from the existing conventions and conferences would to (which Gini also described). "So when the financial problems of the UUA emerged in 1969-70 many districts already had their own sources of funds (I served on the Connecticut Valley District Board during that period and we were glad to have the Connecticut Universalist Convention money!). The reduction in direct UUA support certainly created incentives to raise more funds but not a lot could be raised by the churches, by and large, were in decline during the 1970s. Ironically, the financial problems also led to the creation by the UUA of InterDistrict Representatives [the field people mentioned by Gini], who were regional service delivery people very similar to the structure that is emerging now (except that now there’s more money and staff)."

One of the Board's "Sources of Authority and Accountability" is "the heritage, traditions, and ideals of Unitarian Universalism". This is a living example of why that is important, and how historical context needs to inform our decisions.

By the time we get to Phoenix...

2010-05-07T15:40:00.001-07:00

Report from the May 6 UUA Virtual Board meeting

Ever since SB 1070 was signed by the Arizona governor, the UUA board emails have been non-stop, primarily among ourselves, but also lobbying from various groups urging us to boycott Phoenix, site of the 2012 General Assembly. At least four districts who have had assemblies in the past few weeks have passed resolutions asking the President to "re-examine the decision". [Note: per the by-laws, the decision is the Board's.]

The reasons are compelling. The lack of welcome if not downright fear for the safety of our Latino/Latina community has given all of us a right to question our presence there. Yet many of us (myself included) were reluctant to just walk away, and it was not about money.

The cancellation costs could be as high as $615,000, assuming no mitigation with the hotels. More important were our values, and reasons for boycotting. Is this about sticking by our principles and showing the world what we believe? or is it about overturning this draconian not-yet-law? or both? or something else?

One of the values of the UUA identified by the Board, then-president Sinkford, and the two presidential candidates a few years ago was "transformation". What acts will move us away from fear and reaction towards the Beloved Community? Van Jones' words kept ringing in my ears: prepare to govern, prepare to engage -- you are so good at being against things. Prepare to lead.

The call had a wide-ranging discussion, with excellent input from the staff and a number of Arizona members. In the end, the Board decided to turn the decision over the the General Assembly this summer, recommending that we move General Assembly. The Board's role is to govern between general assemblies, and this was the kind of substantive, values-packed decision that the Board wants more of for assembly delegates. We envision a full discussion of how we both engage and make our values clear, raising the money not only to defray any cancellation penalties, but also support Standing on the Side of Love in Arizona. To that end, the Board also decided to move either the October 10 or January 11 board meeting to Phoenix.

Here is the full text of the resolution that will be considered in mini-assemblies at GA:

Whereas the state of Arizona has recently enacted a law—SB 1070—that runs counter to our first principle, affirming the worth and dignity of every person;

Whereas the Association stands in solidarity with allies using a widespread economic boycott of Arizona as leverage for Love against this hateful legislation;

Be it resolved: we will not meet in a state of fear.

Accordingly, the Assembly hereby:

• Directs the UUA General Assembly Planning Committee to recommend to the Board of Trustees an alternate location for General Assembly 2012 at a location outside the state of Arizona;
• Pledges to generate from Member Congregations the amount sufficient to cancel arrangements in Phoenix for GA 2012;
• Pledges further to generate an equal or greater amount to fund ongoing efforts to Stand on the Side of Love in Arizona.
• Pledges to renew and redouble our efforts to become a multicultural, anti-racist Association; to live as a people standing faithfully in opposition to systemic racism in our congregations, local communities, and in our own lives.

What does this have to do with us?

2010-05-05T11:51:00.000-07:00

Second of a series of posts about district governance

"How will this help the PCD?", the PCD board member asked. Gini Courter's response was not necessarily appreciated.

"It's like health care," Gini answered. "We have a lot of people who are happy with what they have, so are unwilling to change a broken system because what they have is working fine for them."

If I had been able to come up with a brilliant set of reasons why the PCD directly benefited from governance changes, I would have done so a long time ago. I have combed through the reports, looking for inequities in how our congregations are served, and although I don't have access to a lot of the data, I find no glaring disparities that would suggest we are not getting our "fair share". Sure, I would love to have more staff, who could then go deeper into their expertise and not need to do it all (not to mention not have to work 24/7, which our staff appears to do), but that is more a function of being one of the smaller districts. Then I decided I was probably missing the point.

What we are doing in this district is not sustainable in the long term if the entire Association is not healthy. Just like health care, there are systemic issues that need to be fixed to have a viable denomination. I am not looking for just a church with a great worship service that attends to my pastoral needs (though I have that) -- I am looking for something that connects my faith to something much larger, to really make an impact on the world around me.

I have friends who view people without health care as somehow bringing it on themselves -- I wonder sometimes about the parallel when I hear a certain smugness about how membership in New England, the bastion of 25 Beacon and all that represents, is declining.

Should I care if their side of the boat is leaking?

A Governance Detour

2010-05-04T09:56:00.000-07:00

A slight (but important) detour into governance from a district perspective

The round up of "what have you heard" in a late evening Saturday workshop at the Pacific Central District Assembly was fascinating: the representation of congregations will shift, the money is in the west [while] the people [members] in the east, there will be a huge Western region, extending from Hawaii to the Rockies, technology will replace a lot of face to face, [the opportunity to develop] personal relationships will be eliminated, regionalized staff will be centralized... Joined by UUA Moderator Gini Courter, who came over for the evening with former UUA Board Trustee at large Tamara Payne-Alex, Mary Ellen Morgan (our district president) and I led a lively discussion with an audience whose most vocal members were PCD trustees with no desire to change the current governance structure, which from their perspective was working well at a district level.

In fairness, PCD has consistently had one of the highest rates of attendance as a percent of membership, district assembly participation, general assembly participation, and fair share congregations. Why tinker with that? We even increased slightly in terms of membership this past year, though we have one of the highest percentage of congregations that are decreasing in membership, and it has been a long time since we have added any congregations.

Even more interesting were some of the underlying assumptions expressed in the workshop: the plan has already been put together (what about that map?), what may work in the rest of the country won't work here (and "we" have the courage to say it), and a great deal of confusion between governance and service delivery.

The "plan" has not been put together. Attempts at changing the governance structured inherited from 50 years ago have crashed and burned a number of times. "That map" that shows a western region extending from Hawaii to the Rockies is an informal arrangement for service delivery, put together by staff, not governance of the Association put together by anyone doing governance. This workshop was part of a discussion that started with the District Presidents Association (DPA) and the UUA Board last November. What started as a conversation about how the President can most effectively hold co-employed staff accountable led to some district presidents questioning why districts existed at all. [PCD disclaimer: Mary Ellen was not one of them, though as the president of the DPA this past year she has gracefully maintained her role as a non-anxious leader creating space for the conversation.]

Gini led us through how we got to where we are: districts were initially created to elect trustees to the newly formed UUA board, with the boundaries gerrymandered to insure control by Unitarians. Existing boundaries were not created for effective service delivery, because that is not what they were set up to do. In the early 1970s, the financial crisis of the UUA led to essentially all field staff being laid off. Concerned about the resulting lack of services to congregations, districts decided to raise their own money and hire their own staff, in a number of cases forming 501(c)3 organizations to do it. If you raise money, you need someone to oversee its collection and use, which led to district boards that in many areas became more and more involved in not just the oversee, but also the delivery of the services themselves, as working boards, much as many of our congregations' boards do. The result is two "fair share" asks to our congregations (one from the UUA, and one from the district), co-employed staff, and a complicated set of funding mechanisms that have wide disparity between districts. Per the January 2008 "Congregations Come First" report:

In the Southwestern UU Conference, a large geographic district, two full-time professional staff members and one full-time equivalent administrative position serve 76 member congregations and five emerging congregations. In the relatively smaller and more compact Joseph Priestley District, six professional staff (four full-time, two half-time) and two administrative (one full-time, one half-time) serve 64 member congregations and four emerging congregations.

The ratio of district staff members per congregation ranges from 1:11 to 1:45.
The amount that our UUA reimburses districts to support their offices ranges from $23,000 to $78,000 as a result of financial agreements dating back as far as 1982.
-- On a "dollars per congregation" basis, the reimbursement ranges from less than $500 to over $1,600.
-- On a "dollars per member" basis, the reimbursement ranges from less than $4 to almost $12 per member.
While some districts are hiring additional specialized staff, another is requesting a line of credit from our UUA to pay its one staff person.

Next post: what does that have to do with us?

Landlords of the UUA

2010-04-29T14:27:00.000-07:00

Fifth in a series of posts about the April 2010 UUA Board meeting

I find most of the Carver style "ends" established by congregations, districts, and the UUA Board (that's me) rather "fluffy" -- who could disagree with "our congregations are intentionally multi-generational and multi-cultural"?

It took me awhile to realize they are supposed to be that high-level -- it is the President/CEO who makes them "real" by coming up with an operational definition that you can touch and feel. It is part of the latitude given to the President -- as long as this definition is "reasonable", it is good to go, even if it wasn't precisely what the Board thought it would be.

That's why I was disappointed in the operational definitions provided to the Board at the last meeting. Saying the ends were too interrelated to interpret separately, the board was given a strategic plan that appears to have little if any foundation in ends. It is not necessarily a bad plan, just one that makes it very difficult for the board to say "yes, we are moving toward these goals, and holding the president accountable to them on behalf of those who are the source of the Board's authority." For example, how exactly does the President operationalize "multi-generational" (a sore point around youth leadership, and the only place where this is addressed in the ends) and what programs is he providing that will insure we get there? The resulting conversation between the board and staff on these issues was pretty direct, and resulted in the president requesting more ongoing collaboration with the Board to get a greater meeting of the minds. The Board appoint three people to do this -- Nancy Barlett from Mid-South, Donna Harrison from the Southwestern Conference, and me.

Is this just about format, or something deeper? Since I often do my best thinking by analogy, I tried it in terms of a landlord/tenant relationship. Assume I have a house you want to rent, and we decide to express the rental relationship in Carver terms. I have certain values in play around the property: insure the value of the property is maintained, the neighbors are not disturbed by the you the renter, and the rent is paid on time. I could make sure all these happen by direct inspection (walk through the house annually, check with the neighbors) but what if that is not an option? What would I need to know from you to be comfortable that my values were not being violated, to insure what I thought was good renter behavior? So we start with operational definitions: rather than me providing a long list of dos and don'ts, you could tell me what you are willing to do to maintain the property value (for example), and I can decide if it is reasonable to me. I may find you are willing to do improvements to the property that never occurred me, that give you better living space and me a more valuable asset.

What would not be acceptable is a list of all the good work you are doing, and not tying it back to my values-based list. I don't need a list of the parties you have thrown, but rather the precautions you have in place to insure they do not get out of hand, and a good word or two thrown in by the neighbors.

There is a paradigm shift between classic staff reporting and Policy Governance modeling reports that can be subtle and exasperating. A classic report gives a litany of all the things that have been done to address a certain issue -- a monitoring report asks "what systems do you have in place to know if what you are doing is working?" We are not monitoring the activities -- we are monitoring the accountability of the President, and how he knows something is or is not working. I am not suggesting this is easy, or that any of us have all the answers. But I do believe it is worth working through to really allow the staff the latitude that comes with the accountability. We need both.

[Please note there will not be any more posts until next week after the Pacific Central District Assembly.]

The Observer

2010-04-28T11:22:00.000-07:00

Fourth in a series of posts about the April 2010 UUA Board meeting

I moderate posts to my blog, and other than the daily "spam" about wonder drugs and adventurous women that clog blog comments as much as they do your email, there are very few I do not publish. But clearly my comment about an observer with a "single minded pursuit of justice" hit a nerve. I am not going to publish the comments in response from bloggers who have been his target. I would like to explain why.

This blog is not about his claims, and will not include any judgment from me about their validity. I do not publish his comments unless they are relevant to my posting. If I publish the comments protesting my description, it does not seem fair to ban his inevitable response. It becomes a very long rabbit trail.

The Board typically meets in working groups on Friday -- when "the observer" showed up for the Board meeting, a helpful person directed him to one of those groups, which happened to be the "Excellence in Ministry" Working Group. He attended the meeting, and by all accounts was respectful and relevant to the conversations at hand, as he was at the Saturday and Sunday board meetings. He was accorded the same hospitality as any observer would, including recognition to speak to the Board, which he did concisely and in my opinion with respect and relevance to the topic(s).

Those of us who blog know him as a person who posts inflammatory comments on UU blogs about his treatment by a minister many years ago, condemning most of us (and Unitarian Universalism) with strong words. I have learned to check innocuous comments for hyperlinks to his own pages. Yet I thanked him after the meeting for the dignity he showed throughout the weekend.

What all this brought to mind was the powerful John Murray Distinguished Lecture at General Assembly last summer by the Rev. Nate Walker. Walker is the minister at First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, which was at the center of a storm over the church's rental to a "racist, homophobic, [anti-immigrant], hard core band". Local anti-hate groups and Unitarian Universalists all over the country demanded to know why the church would allow the band in the church. But rather than unilaterally banning them, Walker met with them. After a fascinating discussion detailed in the lecture, the band decided to cancel the show: "You have shown us respect so we’ll respect the church.” Walker goes on to say:

We use our imaginations to picture ourselves in another person’s shoes. We observe how misperceptions are born and how fear is fueled. We imagine the pain that has built up over time with those who have been in conflict for over a decade... Imagine but a simple truth: “hurt people hurt people.” To imagine is to empathize, to sympathize and to understand. And while understanding need not imply agreement, understanding is necessary in order to heal the poison found in a heart bound by fear and to heal the poison found in a mind bound by judgments. The discriminatory mind is healed when we imagine ourselves as the other, which leads me to close by reflecting upon the nature of pride and to pose a final question.

You would need to read Walker's lecture to fully understand his question:

Who do you save from the fire? Everyone. Why? Because we are all worthy of being saved from the fires, even the ones that we helped to create.

Healthy Relationships

2010-04-26T18:28:00.000-07:00

Third in a series of posts about the April 2010 UUA Board meeting

What happens when 25 UUA board trustees start making "cold calls" to UUA congregations to ask about healthy relationships between the Board and their congregation?

Well, they are not all "cold calls" -- but the random selection of 100 congregations for this project means many trustees are calling congregations outside of their districts, in addition to the face to face meetings between trustees who know the leaders of the congregations they are meeting with well. We intentionally choose a representative sample of congregations, not members, so half of the congregations we are interviewing have less than 100 members (as do half of the UUA member congregations).

The interviews are not completed, but an early, consistent, and not surprising finding is that most congregations we have talked with feel they have no relationship with the Board, good or bad. When they think "UUA" they think staff. Congregations are appreciating the contact, as are the trustees. The interview process is based on Appreciative Inquiry, which asks people to identify some of the best of the past, so that it can be part of a bridge into the future. We are getting a number of concrete suggestions for how we create a future healthy relationship -- we will be providing a summary at General Assembly, and I will post more here when the interviews are completed.

What I am most struck by though, is how many of the conversations really do end up painting a picture of a UUA with fully engaged congregations achieving things that matter. Asked how she would feel if we really were able to work together to accomplish what had been identified, one interviewee simply said "I would cry".

Next post: The Observer

Commission on Appraisal Funding

2010-04-25T21:03:00.000-07:00

Second in a series of posts about the April 2010 UUA Board Meeting

In the end, the Board restored most (but not all) of the Commission on Appraisal (COA) funding for next year, as well as restoring part of the funding for the Commission on Social Witness (CSW). Because we require a balanced budget, about 40% of it came directly from the Board of Trustees budget, and 60% from the Administration. Before I left for the Board meeting, someone jokingly asked me if the COA wasn’t using their entire budget by attending the Board meeting. Aside from the “which budget year” timing issue, to their credit the Commissioners who came did so on their own dime, wanting to appear scrupulous about how they spend the money entrusted to them.

The COA is one of those committees that does not fall neatly into operational versus policy categories, as their recommendations over the years have fallen into either category. They are specified in our by-laws as an independent body, and are elected by General Assembly delegates. Since the Board is charged with conducting the affairs of the Association between GAs, we decided the funding decision was in fact the Board’s.

More fundamental though is the question of the purpose of the COA. Trustee Susan Ritchie, who teaches history and UU identity at Starr King, gave an excellent history of why the COA was formed in the 1930s, in an atmosphere of mistrust of the American Unitarian Association (AUA) administration, which had its own business meeting, separate from the delegates. There was no place to take issues when the board itself had no independence from the administration. Teed up, but not to resolution, is the question of whether or not there is a need for the commission going forward.

Assuming the existence of a COA, which we do until and if the by-laws are changed, I personally have two question:

1. What is the best way to get input on Commission areas of inquiry? The budget is almost entirely the travel expense of the Commissioners. When asked about electronic versus face-to-face meetings, we were told that face-to-face is necessary because not everyone is comfortable with technology. What is the trade-off between accommodating those who can physically attend a hearing (which I understand is seldom more than 50, and often less), and casting a wider net with those “willing to use technology”?

2. How do we insure that we are not duplicating effort, especially in difficult financial times? My understanding is that the Commission has chosen “ministry” as its focus this year, which topic has current ongoing efforts in the administration, the UUA Board, the Panel on Theological Education, and the UU Ministers Association. Acknowledging that the Commission is independent, to what degree are they willing to collaborate with those already engaged in these efforts?

The COA has played a valuable role throughout the history of the UUA. Its commissioners spend long hours of volunteer time. I am very grateful to the COA for taking on the Article II examination, as they could have said no to this required review. They did not, and in the end the Article II rewrite was defeated, with even some Board members voting against it. This would not feel like a "reward" (or much support, for that matter) for taking on something because the Board asked them to.

Next post: Linkage Update

April 2010 Overview

2010-04-24T19:20:00.000-07:00

First in a series of posts about the April 2010 UUA Board Meeting

The UUA Board is not necessarily one that relishes conflict, but this time it seemed inevitable: there were two topics on the agenda that had the potential for generating a fair amount of it. Three members of the Commission on Appraisal attended in person, with more by phone, to appeal their cut in funding. And three meetings into our monitoring schedule, we appeared to be at an impasse with the President in how we monitored our ends. Add to the mix an observer who is relatively well-known to most UU bloggers for his single-minded desire for justice. These topics, along with information on the UUA Retirement Plan changes, UUA finances, what the board is hearing in its direct conversations with congregations, my own AR/AO/MC journey and other topics will be posted over the next few weeks.

Next post: Commission on Appraisal funding

Ted Koppel, Glenn Beck, and the Little Red Church on the Hill

2010-04-10T13:39:00.000-07:00

I love The Interdependent Web, a weekly round up of Unitarian Universalist blog posts by Chris Walton at UU World. It provides a brief description and intro into interesting posts by UUs everywhere -- if you are intrigued, you just click and follow the link to read the entire post.

I recently followed one of these threads to a video by Glenn Beck about President Obama's early childhood experience under the influence of his maternal grandparents, who were members of "the little red church on the hill". It reminded me of a presentation I recently attended by Ted Koppel, whose condemnation of most of today's media was pretty strong (NPR excepted). He encouraged the audience to take the time to read/watch what was going on out there, rather than sit back and blissfully watch only "ours". He made connections to the complacency of Germans in the 1930s, or other societies who just could not believe that anyone took "those idiots" seriously until it was too late. He predicted that Sarah Palin would be a serious presidential candidate, and could win.

As Unitarian Universalists, we are fairly good at not taking our freedoms for granted. And we are not so good at seeing/reading/talking with those we really disagree with, without dismissing what they believe in -- and why.

April 2010 Board Agenda

2010-03-31T18:06:00.000-07:00

Major topics for the April Board meeting include the pre-GA meeting with District boards, a discussion with UUA Director of Communications John Hurley on board communication, the role of committees and task forces in future governance, the President's interpretation of the UUA "Ends", the approval of next year's budget, and learnings from conversations with congregations across the US. The April Board packet can be found here.

As part of our continued effort to be more transparent, and allow more access by more people, parts of the Saturday Board meeting, dealing with the Commission on Appraisal and Commission on Social Witness, will be online. The Board held a highly successful online board meeting in February, with 100% of 49 people who responded to the survey saying that based on that experience, they would do it again. Contact Nancy Lawrence if you would like to participate in the online portion.

A number of Board members have been contacted by advocates of the Commission on Appraisal, asking that we restore their budget, which was cut significantly. These are not isolated cuts, as the COA's budget is mostly travel. Travel is being severely cut throughout the UUA budget, as we are attempting to rely more on access through technology in these very difficult times. Are our congregations better served by face to face or electronic hearings? This also raises questions about role, as the President sets the budget within the constraints given by the Board, and about the ongoing role of many UUA Committees and Task Forces.

The Next 50 Years

2010-02-07T15:24:00.000-08:00

[Note: I am postponing the post about immigration reform because I do not yet have some material from one of our speakers -- this will happen in late February when I return from an extended time away from email, phones, and civilization.]

In June the Unitarian Universalist Association will celebrate its 50th Anniversary. We essentially have the same governance structure we inherited at merger, where many compromises were made to address issues that are no longer relevant. What should governance look like for the next 50 years?

Last Thursday the UUA Board held their first "virtual" (using Internet and telephone) board meeting, a special meeting called to consider the language crafted for a motion on governance transformation that the board had supported in concept at the San Antonio meeting. A small group of trustees agreed to follow up that meeting with crafting language and supporting materials, getting input from trustees on various drafts before presenting the final version on Thursday.

This motion put the UUA board on record as working with other leaders across our Association to transform governance at the Association, General Assembly, and District levels. Materials for the special meeting can be found here.

Quoting the supporting documentation:

"Over the last forty-nine years, at least five separate task forces have studied governance in our movement. These task forces have all described the same basic condition: our governance is too complex. They have observed that we elect leaders but do not authorize them to do their jobs, that the Board of Trustees is too big to be effective, and that General Assembly is too expensive -- especially when many delegates are not accountable representatives of the congregation's priorities. In short, these task forces have observed systemic brokenness in the governance of our Association. "

The board starts with working with other leadership to significantly reducing its size, inviting other leaders to continue the conversation started with the District Presidents Association on the shift toward regionalization during General Assembly 2010, continuing to hold Board meetings outside of Boston, and insuring we include the voices of traditionally marginalized groups in our discussions.

Immigration Reform

2010-01-27T19:57:00.000-08:00

Fifth in a series of posts about the January UUA Board meeting

She had graduated from high school at 16, and college, with a degree in biology, at 20. Smart, articulate, funny, she had been told by her parents that she had been born in the United States shortly after they immigrated. The parents became naturalized citizens, but by some series of mistakes, she did not -- which was discovered when she applied for a job and could not prove her citizenship.

Now she is being deported -- to a country and people she knows nothing about.

Maria told her story, along with two other people with similar family-wrenching stories, to the UUA Board at an interfaith meeting in San Antonio. These stories are not that uncommon. According to Nina Perales, head of the Southwest Region of the Mexican-America Legal Defense Fund (MALDEF), who met with the UUA Board in San Antonio, nearly 13% of the people in the United States were born outside of it -- 43% of that number are naturalized citizens. Of the remaining, the Department of Homeland Security estimates about 11.6 million undocumented immigrants in 2008, of which about 7 million are from Mexico. Undocumented immigrants typically work in the least desirable jobs, such as meat packing, housekeeping, or poultry processing, and are constantly under the threat of being turned in. They do not qualify for educational aid, food stamps, healthcare, or housing subsidies. Because they cannot get a drivers license, in many cases they are forced to break the law just to be able to get to work.

What does this have to do with us? Every time we buy a cut of meat at the grocery store, eat chicken for dinner, eat in a restaurant off a plate washed by an undocumented immigrant, get a recommendation from a friend for cheap labor to do construction or repairs, sleep in a hotel bed made up by an undocumented person, or have such a person cleaning our house or watching our children, we are perpetuating this system. The 11-12 million people working illegally are "propping up the economy, making possible the American way of life" (Nina Perales, presentation to UUA Board, January 15, 2010). I have a "don't ask/don't tell" policy with Emelia and Miguel, who clean my house, and I am ashamed of my role.

Along with the increased attention on immigration has come increased racial violence directed at people who might -- based on appearance -- be undocumented. Nina read a letter she had recently received: "Go back to defending all these criminals, killing, raping, robbing innocent Americans. Fix your own defunct country, we will take care of ours... for hundreds of years, Mexico did not improve their quality of life for their people. You have natural resources, you have oil, an ocean." She is told, in harsh terms, to go back to Mexico, and gets calls for her citizenship to be investigated.

Nina was born in New York of Puerto Rican heritage, and is a life long UU.

Though we typically think of segregation in terms of Jim Crow laws aimed at African Americans, Mexican Americans were not allowed in many restaurants, pools, and schools throughout the Southwest until well into the 1960s and 70s. Even today, as long as "illegal" prefaces the term "immigrant", there appears to be permission to use racist terms. Polls show that Latinos and African Americans both perceive significant discrimination against Latinos, while Anglos do not. Sound familiar?

Gini Courter recently asked the board "given the lead up to the Selma march in the 60s, what would that Board have wished they had done before it happened?"

What will we as Unitarian Universalists wish we had done in the immigration debate?

Only now there is still time.

Why you should care about Article XV

2010-01-27T12:29:00.000-08:00

Fourth in a series of posts about the January UUA Board meeting

Article XV is one of those by-laws sections that is on the surface even more uninteresting than most -- it describes how to amend the by-laws, as well as mandates a periodic review of Article II, our Purpose and Principles.

When our U and U fathers (mothers appeared to be in the background on this) created the merged organization we affectionately call the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, they designated set up a specific process for amending Article II, which makes it somewhat more difficult to change. The procedure to amend the Purpose and Principles includes a) it is a two year process, b) a simple majority the first year will move the suggested changes to the second year, which then c) requires a 2/3 vote. What has given people pause is that d) the proposed changes cannot be amended on the floor of the delegate assembly, even in the first year, but must be accepted or rejected in their entirety.

The 2009 GA delegates rejected the changes, in spite of the fact that there appeared to be energy around some of the suggested changes, just not all of them. What is currently being considered is whether or not to remove the prohibition against amendments from the floor during the first General Assembly consideration.

On the surface this seems reasonable -- a classic "don't through out the baby with the bathwater". What this would do, however, is open up the deliberative and cohesive work of a commission that has ostensibly consulted with hundreds of congregations, to any floor amendment proposed in the heat of the moment. Those of us who have watched this process will want to consider it carefully.

Next post: Immigration

Remember the Alamo

2010-01-20T19:12:00.000-08:00

Third is a series of posts about the UUA January Board Meeting

I do remember the Alamo – both the version I was taught in grade school (lost battle, deaths of many American heroes) and the one that came later about the United States seizing Mexican land. But why did the Americans want the land?

According to the Sunday sermon by President Peter Morales, the answer provides an interesting link between the two largest “minority” groups in the United States: in the early 1800s, Texas was a great place for growing cotton. Cotton was labor intensive, and the cheapest labor was via slaves. As Americans followed their “manifest destiny” by moving west and into Texas (illegal immigrants into Mexico, as Peter points out), they brought slaves with them. One of the problems, however, is that Mexico prohibited slavery. Though this may or may not have been the only reason for the Mexican-American War, I suspect it was significant, as Americans have always been good at economic self-interest.

Unitarian Universalism has a long history with African Americans, as documented beautifully in the book The Arc of the Universe is Long, one of whose authors is the Rev. Leslie Takahashi-Morris from our Mount Diablo congregation. For that reason I should not have been so surprised that our diversity efforts seemed to be mostly black and white. That is obviously changing, helped by the leadership of our current president.

I would hope this is not viewed as a zero sum game -- does more time on Hispanic culture and issues of undocumented immigrants mean less time for the concerns of African Americans? One of the most powerful concepts I have found is that of white privilege (or straight privilege, or able-bodied privilege, or….) which forces me to look in the mirror, rather than check out the color of the person across from me -- and transcends racial and ethnic boundaries.

Next post: Why you should care about Article XV

Revoking the Fifth Principle

2010-01-18T09:38:00.000-08:00

Second in a series of posts about the January 2010 UUA Board meeting

At last summer's General Assembly, former UUA Moderator and widely respected Denny Davidoff threatened to introduce a motion to revoke the Fifth Principle if the General Assembly delegates does not pass significant reform of their meeting.

Why?

“General assembly” is defined in our by-laws (Article IV, Section C-4) as “[e]ach meeting of the Association for the conduct of business”, which go on to say “General Assemblies shall make overall policy for carrying out the purposes of the Association and shall direct and control its affairs.”

Note that there is nothing here about workshops, exhibits, or meetings of other UU organizations, as these were apparently not envisioned by our Founding UU Fathers. That does not mean these things are not important, or could not meet on any schedule that made sense to the mission of the Association. I have blogged before about my concerns about delegate selection -- since the UUA Board takes direction from the General Assembly, I would like to believe that the majority of delegates there are truly representative of the makeup and views of their congregations. I am even concerned with those congregations with excellent deliberative processes in choosing and informing their delegates, but do not fund the costs of attending. Many issues come to the floor and delegates must often vote their consciences -- if those consciences are mostly white, well-educated, affluent, and over the age of 50, we will perpetuate our own stereotypes.

So what exactly is this Task Force recommending?

True or false? The Fifth Principle Task Force is recommending:

meeting as a national body every other year
reducing from approximately 5000 delegates (of which about 2200 attend) to 2000
subsidizing delegate expense in whole or in part
allowing delegate status for one settled minister per congregation
removing the automatic delegate status from UUA board members

1 and 2 are false. The rest are true.

1 was a trick question. The Fifth Principle Task Force recommends moving General Assembly to every other year, but has no specific recommendations for the other activities normally associated with later-year General Assemblies, other than the potential for a program extension to the General Assembly as an alternative.

And while the 2000 figure shows up in the report, it is clearly meant as an example. I personally think that is still too many delegates, mindful of the comment by Tim Brennan, UUA treasurer, that if the United Church of Christ had the same proportion of delegates to members as what 2000 delegates would be for the UUA, they would have 10,000, rather than their current 925. This issue came up in the context of subsidizing delegate expenses. It is essential to our values that our faith’s delegates are not only those who can afford the time and money to attend. For the record, UCC, the American Episcopalians, American Presbyterians, and Reformed Judaism pay 100% of their delegate costs, but have proportionately and numerically far few delegates.

So here are the actual recommendations:

A. Biennial Delegate Assembly in odd years:

· Content is governance-focused. The Assembly is for delegate teams, UUA Board & Administration.

· 2 ½ days over a weekend in August

· Smaller number of authorized delegates with delegate teams fully or partially subsidized by the UUA

· Settled ministers (one per congregation) part of the delegate teams

· Delegates elected and certified by their congregation or board serve in an accountable relationship with geographically neighboring delegate teams and with UUA trustees

· Some at-large delegates are selected by regions (clusters of districts)

· Teams can include alternate delegates without UUA subsidy

· Non-delegate observers pay a registration fee

· No delegates from associate member organizations or from the UUA Board of Trustees

B. Same as “A” except that the 2 ½ day delegate assembly is immediately preceded or followed by a 2-day program assembly:

· Content of the program assembly similar to current GA programming

· Non-delegate attendees pay registration fee without UUA subsidy

· Delegate’s registration for program assembly is paid by UUA subsidy. Delegate subsidy for room & board covers the delegate assembly only, not the program assembly.

The entire report starts on page 46 of the January Board packet.

Next post: Remember the Alamo

Bienvenidos a San Antonio

2010-01-18T09:17:00.001-08:00

First in a series of posts about the January 2010 UUA Board meeting

It’s the first time in recent memory that the UUA Board has ventured outside of Boston for its meetings, other than June’s General Assemblies. San Antonio, 9^th largest city in the United States, with 61% Latino/Latina or Hispanic inhabitants, was a conscious choice. At 15% of the US population, Hispanics are now the largest ethnic "minority" in the United States. About a day and a half of the 4 day meeting was devoted to a deeper dive into Hispanic and San Antonio culture, and the complex issues of undocumented immigrants. We spent most of Friday with Julio and Elsa Noboa, faculty members from the University of Texas – El Paso, and Nina Perales, head of the Southwest Regional Office of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) (all Unitarian Universalists). Saturday included a meeting with two San Antonio interfaith organizations who were working on comprehensive immigration reform – and the heartbreaking stories of three people impacted by its lack. I will be blogging on these experiences – plus the report of the Fifth Principle Task Force, election proceedings, Excellence in Ministry, monitoring reports, Youth Leadership, Section XV of our by-laws, and the continued reshaping of the governance of our Association – over the next few weeks.

Next post: Revoking the Fifth Principle

The Agenda: January 2010

2010-01-09T14:59:00.000-08:00

Second in a series of posts about the January 2010 UUA Board meeting

The January Board Packet, which can be found here, is smaller this time -- and the meeting is shorter. Rather than face to face Finance and Working Group meetings, that normally take an extra day, many of us have been participating in multiple conference calls, that have been effective. The Finance calls have used Persony, a combination desktop display and conference call, that insure we are all looking at the same number(s).

Hot topics for January include our conversations with the DPA and how our two groups might partner, what to do with Article II (Purpose and Principles that were voted down at GA, but there are some that want a resurrection of at least part of it), Youth leadership development at the national level, monitoring reports on Policies 2.6 (benefits for related organizations) and 2.10 (asset protection), and the recommendation from the Fifth Principle Task Force. The last item concerns what General Assemblies might look like if they were focused on governance (per our by-laws), rather than the current "workshop and tradeshow" production that accompanies (and for many people supplants) the plenary sessions, which are ostensibly the purpose of General Assemblies. I am not opposed to workshops and tradeshows -- I understand the power this has for many GA attendees, but as expressed before, have major concerns about the lax nature of how congregations choose their delegates and hold them accountable.

Friday, still in formation, will be a multi-cultural experience. We are also spending most of Saturday with a number of congregations in the San Antonio area, a combination of "linking" (dialogue between boards and their "sources", what Carver calls "moral owners"), social action, and a fiesta.

Una reunión de la Tabla de Fideicomisarios en San Antonio

2010-01-09T14:38:00.000-08:00

First in a series about the January 2010 Board of Trustees meeting in San Antonio

Hmm -- I didn't even know I was a "fideicomisario", which sounds like a "commissioner of fidelity", which is not a bad description. Breaking tradition, the UUA Board of Trustees will be meeting outside of 25 Beacon in other than General Assembly.

Why San Antonio? My "guest columnist" for the explanation is Will Saunders, Trustee for the Northern New England District:

There are at least three reasons for this decision. First, as the Trustee from the Southwestern Conference has written, this “is a purposeful move by the Board to visit a city that is on the forefront of demographic trends impacting the whole country…/and/ with a distinctly multi-cultural flavor.” As President Morales has observed, it is critical that the UUA engage directly and respond robustly with these changes if we are to remain relevant in the coming decades. This meeting will include opportunities for the Board to explore multicultural issues in new ways. We are taking our lead from President Morales, once a resident of San Antonio and Donna Harrison, current resident of that city.

A second reason is to challenge widespread notions that the UUA is wedded to Boston. We take seriously the admonition that the past should have a vote, not a veto. We recognize that there is a widespread belief among Unitarian Universalists that all things Boston have too much sway, consciously or sub-consciously, on the life and work of the Association. We are determined to address these issues so that our movement may truly be national in both intent and design. The neighborhood of Boston, once an amusing third party in the Unitarian Universalist trinity, is no longer merely amusing. It is a subtlety which must be addressed. We meet in San Antonio to begin removing the shroud of all things Boston from our deliberations and our work.

A third reason is that, as the Board lives into Policy Governance, we must be intentional about linkage with our congregations. This has proved to be challenging; our initial efforts at linkage have been mixed. We are very much in a learning mode on how to link effectively. Our meeting in San Antonio is part of this effort and we look forward to spending time with leaders of UU congregations in the area. We approach this opportunity for linkage with learners’ mind, with hope and with a desire to be servants of our congregations.

I would like to add one more thought to Will's: one of the reasons for remaining in Boston was the easy access to staff. As the board shifts more towards doing their own (board ) work, and less time reviewing staff reports, it becomes more feasible to have a board meeting with fewer staff present. It doesn't mean we don't appreciate or need their work, but Policy Governance is giving both of us more freedom without losing accountability.

Next post: the agenda

Role of the UUA Trustee on the District Board

2009-11-18T16:10:00.000-08:00

Sixth in a series of posts about the October UUA Board Meeting

There is no single model for the relationship between the district board and that district's elected trustee on the UUA board. Some of us are "ex officio" with no vote and may or may not be expected to attend district board meetings, some of us are full voting members, and some of us are not on the district board at all. My biggest surprise when I was elected as the PCD trustee is that I was on the PCD board as well -- the time commitment I had made had just doubled (the PCD board meets more often, but the UUA board meets for more days).

This works for a semi-retired single person with minimal family obligations -- which may be why so many of us who serve on boards are semi-retired people with minimal family obligations. While I consider myself good at understanding and conveying a variety of viewpoints, I'd rather have a more diverse group. We have created a situation with unintended consequences.

In January all board members will begin formal dialogues with congregations that will add to all of our time commitments, though this is exactly the kind of work we should be doing. As UUA trustees, we are working diligently at letting go of staff work, only to see a lot of it resurfacing at district board meetings we may be attending - which may well be the mission of the board of that particular district.

District board members and the UUA trustee are elected by the same body: delegates at the district assemblies. Regardless of whether or not the district is operating under policy governance (the PCD is not), the two boards are accountable to a similar group, but technically not to each other. The District trustees are accountable to the congregations that comprise their district, and the UUA trustees to all member congregations of the UUA (the UUA Board has added additional accountability to its list of "sources").

So what is the relationship between the two boards? This is somewhat complicated by the UUA board's adoption of Policy Governance. Two of its basic tenets are that the Board speaks as a unit to the staff through the CEO. That would suggest that a single UUA board member should not be giving direction as a voting member to a district staff person who is (also) employed by the UUA.

What we do know is that District Boards are comprised of some of our best and most committed members. I value the relationships that started there. Whatever changes occur over the next few years, these boards need to be at the table as well.

UUSC Values in responding to humanitarian crises

2009-10-29T14:13:00.000-07:00

Fifth in a series about the October 2009 UUA Board Meeting. Today's guest post is by Nancy Bartlett, Trustee from the Mid-South District, who previously served on the board of the UU Service Committee. The presentation she refers to makes one of the best cases I have ever seen on why we should be giving to the UU Service Committee.

UUSC report as a demonstration of how we can live out our AR/AO/MC values in world

Our denomination‘s commitment to anti-racism, anti-oppression, and multi-culturalism (“AR/AO/MC”) permeates all of our work, from programs to policies to process observations at our meetings. This commitment became even more tangible on Saturday afternoon when we saw how strongly our partnerships with the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee reflect our AR/AO/MC values. Atema Eclai, UUSC Director of Programs, and Martha Thompson, UUSC Rights in Humanitarian Crises Program Manager, presented an evaluation of our joint UUA-UUSC responses to humanitarian crises resulting from the 2004 tsunami in Asia and Africa, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the 2005 Pakistan and Kashmir India earthquake. While our members generously contributed to these efforts, 5.5 million dollars, the most striking result was the way the money was used. The focus was marginalized groups, i.e., groups who traditionally are left out of relief due to their race, class and gender. Our goal in working with these groups was to help them access aid in ways that empowered them and to support them in addressing the inequalities they face. Examples of such groups included Muslim widows in Sri Lanka, Burmese migrant workers in Thailand, Dalits in India, and people from the 9^th ward in New Orleans.

UUSC’s programs use the Eye to Eye partnership model, which is founded on principles of equality. They form equitable relationships, listening to the people who need assistance and analyzing together what is working. This Eye to Eye partnership model, coupled with UUSC’s expertise in identifying marginalized groups and strategies for their empowerment, creates a unique niche for us in humanitarian crisis response. Disaster response requires immediate action and the report includes acknowledgement of the challenges we have faced and lessons learned, such as the need for consultants on the ground, better reporting systems, and improved communication with donors and constituents. Future joint UUA-UUSC disaster responses will require improved staff coordination structures and rapid communication about fund dispersal. For all the challenges, the work is real and the need is great, particularly for those groups who so often remain invisible to the television cameras and traditional aid organizations. By identifying and supporting these people, we cry out against racism and oppression and give substance to the values we profess.

Next post: Role of the District Trustee

Youth Leadership

2009-10-28T11:18:00.000-07:00

Fourth in a series of posts about the October 2009 UUA Board meeting

I first wrote about youth ministry on this blog in May of 2008, detailing the Summit on Youth Ministry in July of 2007 and the decision to dismantle the current continental youth organization known as YRUU (Young Religious Unitarian Universalists). Unfortunately, despite many good intentions and a number of planning meetings, there is no national structure that has taken its place.

Do we need one? UUA President Peter Morales made a good point at the last board meeting the youth ministry cannot be "done" effectively by the UUA -- it requires strong commitment and engagement at the congregation level, as laid out in the Responsive Resolution on Youth at GA 2008. What I am realizing is that "youth ministry" and "youth leadership" are not the same thing. Though the Board has a strong interest in both, its immediate interest in "youth leadership" is even keener -- where do we provide the kind of training and experience that ensures the voice of our youth is "at the table" in the UUA Board room, and the various committees appointed by Board and staff, with the level of expertise and grace shown by Nick Allen and Joe Gayeski, respectively our current Youth Trustee at Large and Youth Observer? Nick reminds us that we are losing an entire generation of youth as the planning begins again with a new administration.

The Board is currently wading its way through how we hold the President and his staff accountable for their role in addressing this, versus what the Board needs to address through policy. This will be a major agenda item in January, where the Board will take into consideration the following information provided by staff:

Chronology about what happened from 2004 on
Where are we now on District and National Youth Leadership?
Administration’s vision
What are the models of youth leadership in other denominations?

Reports

Text of Responsive Resolution on Youth (from GA 2008)
Consultation to and with Youth
Mosaic Report

Each board trustee will also be contacting youth leadership in their own districts.

What are our values around youth leadership? How should this be reflected in policy?

Next post: Guest post on the UUSC "lens" by Nancy Barlett, Mid-South District Trustee

So many policies, so little time....

2009-10-22T13:36:00.001-07:00

Third in a series of posts about the October 2009 UUA Board meeting

The monitoring process can seem daunting. My quick count of total policies in the UUA Governance manual was 20 "Ends" plus nearly 130 executive limitations. The high number of limitations is tied to our desire – two years ago – to not leave anything out and started with a compilation of our existing policies. A somewhat more educated Board is realizing the wisdom of establishing policy for only those items we think we as a board need to monitor, and will be reconsidering the need for some of our policies in that light.

And lest we think the Board is off the hook, we have nearly 70 policies on our own self-governance, not counting the multiplicity of alphabetical sub-points. As painful as that may seem, being explicit about these kinds of things is part of the power of Policy Governance: the Board also monitors itself. It forces us to keep asking ourselves questions about how well we are meeting our own criteria. According to The Policy Governance Field Guide, one of the top reasons for Boards "failing" at Policy Governance is the failure to monitor itself, along with a failure to adequately train new board members.

Next post: Linking with our Sources of Authority and Accountability

How do you eat an elephant?

2009-10-21T11:05:00.000-07:00

Second in a series of posts about the October 2009 UUA Board meeting

I spent nearly five years creating monitoring reports as part of the Coordinating (Executive) Team for my home congregation, so one would think I knew a lot about how to write monitoring reports.

I didn’t.

What the UUA Board and staff are learning (together) is a very different methodology that I find really exciting. It has tremendous potential for providing the kind of clarity and accountability promised by Policy Governance(R), the Carver model that has been adopted by the UUA Board, over half of our Districts, and scores of congregations. This methodology is also a relatively new development in the discipline of “Carver-land”, so few of us in Districts or congregations are actually doing it this way.

This approach to monitoring reports has four components: an interpretation by the President of what a particular end or executive limitation means, the rationale for why that interpretation is reasonable, how he intends to measure progress on whatever he has identified, and then the results of that measurement. The “ahas” for me were the realizations that a) “less is more” – you really do not need long reports, b) there is a good reason that the discipline around structure and format is a key part of the Carver model, and c) a reasonable interpretation could potentially be the steps that one takes to even get started on something.

Which leads me to the elephant. I am constantly reminded of a joke from my grade school days that starts with the question “how do you eat an elephant?”. This is probably because I often worked on projects over the ensuing decades that attempted to do so (symbolically). So what if the “end” was to eat an elephant? Forgetting beneficiaries for a moment (for all the PG junkies), it might be totally appropriate to point out that we have to catch one first and prepare it in a way that makes it edible before we can even start eating. If the President provided an interpretation that reminded us we really didn’t have an elephant yet, laid out the plans for trapping, with some supporting documentation on the prevalence of elephants and trapping experience, and a timeline that addressed roasting and eating, I would be highly likely as a board member to accept the interpretation and rationale as reasonable – and the report as compliant even though not a single bite was taken. The next year I am going to want to know how he is progressing on the plan he has laid out.

This is an important point, since presumably we do not yet have systems in place to measure many of the outcomes we want to make as an Association. I would expect our creative staff in the short term can come up with surrogate measurements that give a good sense of direction when an exact measurement is not possible. I also think there is a real market out there for some consultant to come up with a system of surrogate measures that congregations under policy governance can easily incorporate and use as part of their monitoring. I would love comments from any of you who have developed such measures.

And why are we doing this again? So that we (the Board) can be accountable to our member congregations and other "sources of authority and accountability" for progress toward the outcomes they worked with us over the past few years to establish.

And why was the elephant in the refrigerator?????

Next post: So many policies, so little time...

October 2009 Board Meeting

2009-10-21T09:30:00.000-07:00

First in a series of posts about the October 2009 UUA Board meeting

After several years of preparation, October was to be the “real” beginning of a new way of working with the President : a different way of holding him accountable, and a different way of the Board doing its own work.

It was. Aided by our Policy Governance(R) consultant Sue Stratton-Radwan, whose observations of our occasional floundering came at just the right time, it was an interesting preview of how we will operate into the future. Over the next few weeks I will be posting about how this change "feels”, along with posts about youth leadership, the role of the UUA trustees on their district boards, the move of the UUA Board out of Boston for their next meeting, and the AR/AO/MC “lens” of one of our partners that is making a real difference in lives around the world.

Next post: How do you eat an elephant?

Alligators and Congregation Board Presidents

2009-08-05T15:39:00.000-07:00

One of the primary tasks for a board is to "link" with our "sources of authority and accountability", referred to as "moral owners" (analogous to stockholders in a for-profit organization) in the Carver model. In a previous post I listed these sources and explained the UUA Board's decision to not use "ownership" because of the painful history of ownership and slavery in the United States.

Congregations are, of course, at the top of the list. After all, we are an "Association of Congregations". But who, exactly, do we talk to when we "link"? Far too often it is the most vocal ones who contact us, which is why the Board has created a "Linkage Working Group" to set up a systematic way to be informed and collect information that the Board can then act on.

I asked four people who the Board should be talking to in the congregation, and got four answers:
- Simple. It's the board president.
- Easy -- it's the minister.
- But of course congregations are represented by their GA delegates!
- Anyone who is elected or called.

This question then became the basis for "cafe conversations" (a cross between small discussion groups and speed dating) between eight UUA Board members and the District Presidents at the last General Assembly. It was a very rich discussion, as the District Presidents have a similar issue, especially if they are also under Policy Governance.

What became clear was how difficult it is for many congregation presidents to get out of the role of "customer". Linkage is not only about who you talk to, but what you talk about: our congregations are both "customers" of services provided by the UUA (a conversation held most appropriately with the UUA staff), and "sources" (moral owners) who care deeply about what the institution of Unitarian Universalism provides to the world (conversations with the UUA Board). Congregation presidents are often so caught up in the crises of church life (even as a policy governance board) that asking them what differences they want the UUA to make in the world can not only catch them cold but also seem irrelevant.

In speaking to about 150 congregation presidents at GA, I used the classic metaphor of being "hard to remember your aim was to drain the swamp when you are up to your whatever in alligators". Lots of heads nodded, as they did when I recounted mythical survey results that said congregation presidents spend "49 hours attending congregation board meetings, 96 hours attending meetings they didn’t realize they were expected to attend before they agreed to be president, 47 hours either explaining why they were transitioning to policy governance or why they were NOT transitioning to policy governance, and a whopping 117 hours wondering why can’t we all just get along."

Is there time in there to be talking to their district trustee about their dreams for the larger vision?

General Assembly highlights

2009-07-12T17:44:00.001-07:00

I hadn't intended to post about GA itself since there is so much information out there already -- until a conversation this morning with another member of my congregation who was unable to attend this year made me realize not everyone knows where to look.

Click on the primary link for all the "official" GA information, including live blogs. If you have limited time, rather than set this all aside for later (which if you are like me you may never get to), here is the "quick start" version -- my "top 3" GA events in streaming video (make sure you have a high speed connection to avoid frustration). Note that these will take you to descriptions - the video link is at the top.

This year's Ware Lecture was by Melissa Harris-Lacewell, Associate Professor of Politics and African-American Studies at Princeton and a life-long UU. A frequent media commentator, it is easy to see why her star is rising along with President Obama's, who she profiled long before most of us knew who he was.

This year's John Murray Distinguished Lecturer was Rev. Nate Walker, minister at the UU Church of Philidelphia, a stand in for Rev. Gail Geisenhainer. Listen to his extraordinary story about hate, free speech, and love.

My third top choice is between Sunday's public worship service by Rev. Abhe Janamanchi and The Service of the Living Tradition by Rev. Mary Harrington, though you will need to wade through ritual of recognizing the milestones of many of our ministers in the latter if you just watch the video (though nice when you hear familiar names). You pick -- and list your own!

Next post: back to the Board meeting and congregation presidents

A weird beginning

2009-06-30T21:25:00.000-07:00

Second in a series of posts about General Assembly and the June UUA Board meeting

In response to the question "who sets the vision?", Rev. Rob Eller-Isaacs replied during the UU University Policy Governance track (and I paraphrase) "The Board sets the vision. But don't forget that the minister has the pulpit."

UUA President Bill Sinkford had "the pulpit" as he gave his final report on Wednesday, and included a vision statement about the shift from "anti-racism" to "multi-culturalism". It was an important message from the first African American UUA president. One of my first surprises on the UUA Board was that our AR/AO/MC (anti-racist/anti-oppression/multi-cultural) efforts were so fixated on Black and White.

There was good reason for that. Watching the DVD "Wilderness Journey" helped me understand the intense pain that so many felt over the controversies of the late 60s and early 70s in Unitarian Universalism -- controversy that drove Bill Sinkford away from Unitarian Universalism at that time. [These events are also detailed in the new book "The Arc of the Universe is Long" which I predict will become THE reference for anti-racist UU history.]

So why would a vision statement about multi-culturalism irritate any of my fellow board members? The eloquent vision statement made no reference to any of the "ends" formulated six months before that had already made the same shift: the UUA "ends" refer to being "intentionally...multi-cultural" and "embracing and struggling with issues of oppression and privilege", but "racism" and its derivatives are nowhere to be found. This shift was made with the participation of all board members, including the current president and both candidates, but was never acknowledged in the vision statement set forth in the plenary report.

Why does that matter? It matters if you believe that collaboration is essential to effective governance with an elected president and board. It matters if you perceive past UUA Boards to have had relatively little influence with an agenda set and dominated by the President. It matters if the action in question (presenting the vision statement) is one in a long string (over decades) of unilateral action on the part of the UUA President. It matters if some of those actions are perceived to undermine other UUA-related institutions by going around them.

It matters if you are trying to model behavior for the rest of the Association about what collaboration looks like.

Let me be clear here that one of the reasons that I agreed to run for the Board was Bill Sinkford. He did not disappoint. My respect for him continued to grow over the two years I had the privilege of serving with him. I doubt he perceived any of his actions as "going around" anyone, as within the culture of what it has been to be a UUA president he was doing what the UUA President did.

Hence the "weird beginning": a statement read by one of the Board members very near to the beginning of the first meeting with the new President that essentially said the Board wanted more collaboration. It came across to at least some of us (including me) as a scolding for a President who had been on the job for 12 hours. Add to that the "missing moderator" from Saturday night and conspiracy theorists could have a heyday about Board vs. President.

Though it wasn't initially clear, the statement was a personal one with input from just a few Board members. Though Board members agreed this was not exactly how we needed to start as a new Board, I appreciate us naming this "elephant", albeit awkwardly, so that we can address it in the future.

The President does have the "pulpit" and I expect him to use it. I also expect him to publicly acknowledge the partnership he has entered, at least until we all reach the comfort level of a Lao Tzu.

Next post: the life of the congregation president

OK at the Deer Valley Corral

2009-06-30T10:39:00.000-07:00

First in a series of posts about the June General Assembly and UUA Board meeting

Anyone looking for a showdown at the first UUA Board meeting at the Marriott Deer Valley Room between the new UUA president and the moderator who endorsed his opponent would have been sorely disappointed. Not only did Gini welcome Peter with open arms (literally) but I watched the two play off each other's senses of humor throughout the meeting. It was genuine, appreciative - and exactly what I would expect from both.

I called Gini in early May to tell her I was endorsing Peter shortly after I called Peter to tell him the same thing. She did what Gini does -- listened attentively, understood my reasoning, and thanked me for letting her know. She made no attempt to change my mind or disagree with me, and before we hung up said that though she had endorsed Laurel, she would be fine if Peter was elected.

She is.

So it is particularly unfortunate that not showing up at the post-election celebration at 10 pm on Saturday evening has been interpreted by some as sour grapes. Gini was not the only Board member absent, and who came was not a function of who they endorsed.

Because of the large number of meetings and workshops Board members are expected to attend, we typically work together to identify which events need to be covered. For whatever reason, the election celebration was listed on the compiled Board schedule as 8:00 to 8:30, even though the GA Program listed it at 10:00 pm, so a number of Board members did not even realize there was a celebration until the next day.

Gini typically spends Saturday evening preparing for a long Sunday that includes her Moderator's report -- and a plenary that needs a lot of patience, good humor, and respect for those who come forward to present end-of-session responsive resolutions. This year she also prepared the eloquent charge to the congregation she gave for installation of the new president. So she was in her room when GA Planning Committee Chair Beth McGregor called out her name. Those of us there know Gini is often called to counsel, advise, or otherwise provide her time, and it never occurred to me that her absence would be any kind of statement. Once she realized what happened, she apologized the next day to the assembled delegates.

Why would we think otherwise? Are we so starved for drama that we make it up? I loved the example set personally by both Peter and Laurel Hallman in terms of their campaigns and respect for each other. I could have easily worked with Laurel as president. Not only do I highly respect her, but learned years ago the power of setting aside personal preferences for the mission of the organization I was part of as long as I could remain true to my values.

I suspect the term "gunfight" really does not resonate with many UUs, with good reason. There are so many better ways to use our time and energy -- especially when this "gunfight" never existed.

Next post: the "weird beginning"

Hiring and firing the President

2009-06-04T18:09:00.001-07:00

Policy Governance, some say, can't work in an organization that elects its CEO - unless the Board has the power to hire and fire the executive, the logic goes, there isn't a strong enough incentive for the two to work together.

Huh? First of all, the Board DOES have the power to fire the President. Per the UUA By-Laws:

Section 8.5. Removal of Officers.

Elected Officers. An elected officer may be removed by a three-fourths vote of the entire Board of Trustees at a meeting at which not less than three-fourths of the entire Board is present if in the opinion of the Board such officer is incapacitated or unable to carry out the duties of the office. The President may also be removed by such a vote of the Board if it determines that such removal is in the best interests of the Association.

(thanks to my fellow Board member Jackie Shanti for pointing this out)

The Board also has final authority on the budget (per most state and federal laws) so could choose to not fund an out of control president.

The thought that we would ever get to that point is inconceivable to me. We are watching a rigorous election process with two highly qualified candidates who have both spent the last year at all the Board meetings, providing input into the Policy Governance deliberations. Moreover, they start with UU values, which is where Policy Governance starts. For those of you not familiar with the process of creating "ends", the statements about what difference we want to make for whom, and that are given to the President to interpret and make happen, you start with your values and it is those values that are translated into policies.

My experience in 30 years of hiring and firing managers is that a difference in values is often what leads to trouble, especially in more senior positions. If I am part of a Board that believes in treating employees with respect and the CEO rides roughshod over them, I am not going to be happy - or I object to the use of overseas suppliers with sweatshops and the CEO insists this is the only way we can reduce our costs and compete, there will be a problem (these are both real examples, by the way).

Another problem Boards often face is a CEO (often the founder) who has outlived his or his effectiveness as the organization changes under them. Our term limits deal with that.

Underneath all of this concern about hiring versus electing is what I consider a fairly unhealthy view of how to use power. Totally aside from Policy Governance, the Board (or manager, for that matter) that has to depend on obsolete notions of "command and control" is operating in the last century. "Facilitative leadership" or similar concepts replaced it for most corporations and other professional organizations decades ago, but my experience is that far too many UUs still assume the old model.

Everything you have ever wanted to know about policy governance...

2009-05-18T16:53:00.000-07:00

Can't attend General Assembly in Salt Lake this summer? We would still like your questions and comments for the Board's "Learnings on the Way to Policy Governance" that will be on Thursday, June 25, at 10:45. Part of the workshop will be "town hall style" and we would like to intersperse your questions with those of the audience. Either respond to this with a comment that includes your question, or send to me at llaskowski@uua.org. Include your name and email address and we will make sure you get a written version of the response.

Endorsement for UUA President

2009-05-15T15:20:00.000-07:00

I continue to feel a little uncomfortable with the idea that the Board endorses UUA presidential candidates - somehow it seems more dignified to remain neutral. That said, after the appearances of both candidates at the Pacific Central District Assembly two weeks ago, it became clear to me that I would endorse Peter Morales.

I first "met" Peter as many of you have through his "drive time essay" on "repelling fewer visitors". I appreciated his passion for the subject, and the very practical approach to making a difference in our congregations by simply paying attention. I met him in person two years ago at the PCD District Assembly, long before he declared his candidacy -- and for the next two years quoted his statistics on how many people had friends they could really talk to. He was smart, engaging, and thought outside the box of what had been my UU experience so far, probably because he had an unusual set of experiences prior to becoming a minister. For perhaps obvious reasons, I really appreciated someone who was passionate about applying lessons learned in an entirely different field to this faith, not to mention actually knowing who John Kotter was.

Yet I waited because I wanted to know who Laurel Hallman was. My experience over the past year is that she is an extraordinary leader: caring, intelligent, and (as she says) tough enough to be in the public spotlight. I heard story after story from people about how she ministered to others in so many ways, a role model for other ministers and lay leaders. I observed a management style somewhat like my own -- not seeking the limelight but really taking the time to understand the issues. She is solid, deep, and brings a spritual awareness to what she does.

So what happened at DA for me to endorse Peter? In a somewhat unusual format, Laurel and Peter appeared separately at our district assembly in two different formats. Many people asked the same questions, and we were able to compare answers at different points in time. It was these different answers that triggered my decision.

For example, when asked about his first 100 days, Peter continued to lay out his vision of the direction we needed to take, and the urgency to do so. Laurel said she would start with the staff, those who needed to work with and for her, and likely felt bruised and uncertain around UUA financial concerns and the change in administration.

Laurel was right -- but that is not what the audience needed to hear. They needed to hear inspiration and passion that would involve them. The same is true for the primary presentations each gave -- Peter's was his "stump speech" (a very good one), short, with a lot of time for questions from the audience. It felt interactive. Laurel gave what felt like a thoughtful sermon, albeit with questions afterwards. Though I appreciate what she brings to the concept of "going deeper", and the importance of doing so, I believe Unitarian Universalism is far too inward already. I want a faith that feels a strong urgency to get "out there" - and that is integral to Peter's candidacy.

If this faith is saved from irrelevance, it will be because most of our 1000+ congregations are able to perceive the need for change and move in the direction that keeps us relevant. Though I believe Peter will work closely with the Board, it is the President, not the Board with our 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of "ends" (which I love, by the way), who is expected by these congregations to make that kind of impact. I believe Peter has the ability, skills, and drive to be that leader - and take us with him.

Do the UUA's "Ends" violate congregational polity?

2009-05-12T13:18:00.000-07:00

Eighth in a series of posts about the April 2009 UUA Board meeting

In his May 6 post, Rev. Fred Hammond expresses concern about the final draft of the UUA "global end", which reads:

“Grounded in our covenantal tradition, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association will inspire people to lead lives of humility and purpose, connection and service, thereby transforming themselves and the world.”

I actually agree with everything in Rev. Hammond's post with the exception of his conclusion and corresponding examples:

"The...statement is a directive to the member congregations and the subset ends that follow contain possible criteria for enforcing that directive."

An "end" is a statement given from a board to its executive (in this case, the UUA President) that describes what difference the organization will make in the world. We are not giving this statement to the congregations and saying "make it be so" -- we are giving it to the President and saying "make it be so". It will be up to her or him to inspire and create the programs that enable congregations to do what they told us they wanted to do at our ends development sessions at the last two General Assemblies and the past six months of discussion with trustees across the United States -- and up to the congregations as to whether or not they want to use what is provided. The reason the statement was changed from the original "the UUA will inspire" was the many people who pointed out that it should be clear that the UUA primarily worked through its congregations rather than directly "inspiring".

I love it when someone notices and cares enough to post. This is important -- even holy -- work.

Next post: UUA Presidential Candidate Endorsement

Excellence in Ministry

2009-05-07T14:46:00.001-07:00

Seventh in a series of posts about the April 2009 UUA Board meeting

This is NOT about funding for theological schools, though if you read to the end you will find something about that.

Half of our UU ordained ministers will likely retire in the next decade. Who will replace them and what kinds of skills will they need? What kinds of skills will they have? For that matter, what kind of congregations will be have -- I doubt our current standard of "sign the book in a bricks and mortar congregation" will remain the dominant model. And who will serve the small congregations in out of the way places that have difficulty finding matches already? This will be in a world that is far more diverse, far more technologically savvy, with an even greater need for business skills as more and more boards opt for forms of governance that empower ministers to act like managers.

Add to that the calling many lay leaders feel for ministry, especially in their later years. Is devoting yourself to several years of seminary the only option to satisfy this deep longing?

This is what the Saturday evening session on "excellence in ministry" was about. I don't know the answers to these questions, but I do know it is a much bigger topic than funding for theological schools. The Board has reorganized working groups, and now has one devoted to "excellence in ministry", convened by Rev. Doug Gallagher, who is also a member of the Panel on Theological Education, and attended the December Summit. Doug used that session as an opportunity to get input on the broader issues from the rest of the Board.

I do, however, feel some softening toward our two seminaries, Meadville-Lombard and Starr King School for the Ministry. I suspect it may be tied to the keynote delivered at the December summit by Daniel Aleshire, from the Association of Theological Schools. This provocative address identified two things a movement needed from theological schools to be excellent: education of leaders, and identity. So even though only 30% of our ministers are being trained at either Meadville-Lombard or Starr King, Aleshire argues that "identity partners" need a different kind of funding and attention.

Which finally brings me to funding our schools. Though not a long term solution by any means, the Veatch Foundation (Bringer of All Things Good) just gave $100,000 to each of the two UU schools to support their transition to their new educational models. In addition, the Panel on Theological Education, which administers an endowment trust given by Veatch in the 1970s, was able to provide an additional $25,000 to each school above the $190,000 they were expecting. This provides some short term relief to each school -- along, I hope, with a desire by all involved to be sitting on the same side of the table, looking together at the problem.

Next post: Do the UUA's "ENDS" violate congregational polity?

We get to decide

2009-05-03T16:52:00.001-07:00

Sixth in a series of posts about the April 2009 UUA Board meeting

In response to my question about what the fifth principle was at last weekend's District Assembly, a woman in the audience said "we get to decide". Certainly one aspect of "the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within congregations and society at large".

How well do we use the democratic process? I have posted on this before, and have indicated some concern about the casual way many congregations choose their delegates for district and national events, part of our congregational myopia. [Full disclosure: I have been there too.] The result is often a combination of "DA/GA junkies" and those attending their first GA, at least some of whom never set foot in a plenary session, delegate or not. Realizing the money and time prohibit many from attending, the Board funded several years of GA registration for congregation presidents.

Needing additional creative thinking, the Board also chartered the Fifth Principle Task Force, led by former moderator Denny Davidoff to identify ways to change General Assembly to make it more accessible and insure a solid voice in governance. The Task Force has been making appearances at District Assemblies across the US, including PCD last weekend, led by Joe Sullivan, one of the very talented and dedicated people on this Task Force.

Changes like these require revision to our by-laws. The Task Force will be making their recommendations at the UUA Board meeting next January (2010), which would put it on the agenda for final decision in 2011 (a two year process).

Yes, we get to decide.

Next post: Excellence in Ministry

Describing the South Americans

2009-05-03T15:10:00.000-07:00

Fifth in a series of posts about the April 2009 UUA Board meeting

I finally understood some of the undercurrents connected with the UUA's AR/AO/MC (anti-racist, anti-oppression, multiculturalism) efforts after I saw Wilderness Journey, a video that gives the history behind the loss of hundreds of Afro-American Unitarian Universalists in the early 1970s, as part of my UUA Board training two years ago: why did we appear to be so stuck on Black/White relationships?

Though the training I got included concepts (such as race identity) that were applicable to any group, it still felt very much geared to righting old wrongs, focusing on the "AR" with some "AO" but not much "MC". The Board committed to addressing this when it came up in the second report from the Journey Toward Wholeness Transformation Committee: "it is important to note that when we talk about responding to racism and a host of other oppressions, the concept of multiculturalism is often an afterthought" (page 17). Led by Trustee-at-large Jose Ballester, the April Board training included education on basic definitions ("culture" and "ethnic") and concepts such as assimilation and acculturation -- not to mention photos of 18 members of the French national soccer team, none of whom "looked" French. We then broke into small groups to discuss situations faced by "our" congregation in a set of disguised scenarios.

My group was given a scenario around a suburban UU church in Southern California, mostly white but surrounded by a population 35% Hispanic/Latino, 33% White, 18% African American, and 12% Asian. The suburb had grown up around a hospital and migration from South America, but a clinic serving low income families in the area had recently closed. The scenario got more complicated, but one of the questions involved describing the needs of the South Americans.

We were smart enough to say we didn't really have enough information to do so (a key learning in anything multicultural -- don't assume!) but managed anyway to described the recent immigrants from South America as needing housing, support in Spanish and in learning the English language, as well as job-training skills.

At the end Jose described what really happened in each scenario. Somewhat to my group's discomfort, the "real" South Americans had migrated in order to fill key spots for medical personnel: doctors, nurses, lab technicians, and administrators. They were nearly all professionals and doing quite well, gracias. The service workers who needed the support -- and the clinic -- were mostly new immigrants from Southeast Asia. The neighborhood had shifted demographically, and one of the reasons the clinic closed was because it was focused on serving the needs of an Hispanic/Latino population that didn't really use it anymore.

Hmm... don't assume. I remember the old joke about the surgeon who would not operate on an accident victim by saying "this is my son", yet the surgeon was not the boy's father -- and how few people figured it out. I felt like I had done the same thing.

Next post: "We get to decide"

UUA Finances: why you should care

2009-04-27T10:26:00.000-07:00

Fourth in a series of posts about the April 2009 UUA Board meeting

Before your eyes glaze over, I would like to try to make a case for why you should care about UUA Finances.

A few weeks ago, I watched Wilderness Journey, a video of interviews with UUs who took part in the actions around the General Assembly resolutions in the late 60s and early 70s, and the efforts at Black empowerment in a predominantly white culture. Though far more complicated than I can describe here, the UUA Board ended up taking an action they felt they had to take as part of their fiduciary responsibility that severely damaged the relationships with many Afro-American Unitarian Universalists -- damage that probably continues to this day.

Unintended consequences of sloppy bookkeeping, not enough transparency, and a GA body that wanted to do the right thing.

Though perhaps an extreme example, given the current economic times, the UUA could again find itself unable to fund programs needed and wanted by the GA delegates and congregations it serves. So far the budget for this year has been addressed by reducing travel expenses and General Assembly costs, and so far the Annual Program Fund (funding from congregations) remains relatively strong. The primary reduction has come from "friends" contributions, with the resulting delay or elimination of the programs funded by other than the congregations.

Next year will be more difficult because of the reduction in the transfer payment coming from the endowment, and more congregations are struggling to meet their own obligations. The UUA staff has been reduced by 13 FTE (full time equivalent positions), mostly by attrition, with a number of other cost saving measures. These were the "low hanging fruit". It may not be enough.

As each congregation makes its decision about "fair share", generally a "per member" dues to the UUA and district, the result will determine what programs will be delivered. Like most non-profits, employee-related expenses form the bulk of the budget. If more congregations reduce their dues, the next round of cuts could be the people involved in programs for things like youth, lay education, and multi-cultural work -- important commitments we, the UUA, have made as part of our values.

I understand the temptation to balance a congregation's budget by not paying national and district dues. My congregation, the largest in the Pacific Central District, has been a fair share congregation for all but one of the last 16 years and will be next year as well, in spite of a difficult budget. Our dues are an investment in our faith.

We are stronger together.

Next post: Describing the South Americans

We covenant...

2009-04-26T11:13:00.000-07:00

Third in a series of posts about the April 2009 UUA Board meeting

When I think about how the UUA Board might be accountable to the "heritage, traditions and ideals of Unitarian Universalism", one of our "sources of authority and accountability", I think of Burton Carley.

The Reverend Burton Carley is the minister at the Church of the River in Memphis, Tennessee, and an outgoing member of the UUA Board from the Southwest District. During my two years on the Board, Burton has consistently been the voice representing our historic traditions and reminding us that we are a faith, not merely an organization.

Friday night's conversation on covenant, led by Burton and the Rev. Barbara Merritt, senior minister at the First Unitarian Church of Worcester, continued this practice. The earliest covenant from our historical Biblical perspective is the one cited in Genesis 9: 12-15 between God and humans: a rainbow, promise that there would never again be a flood to destroy them. Burton has written an excellent paper that goes from here through history, including the Mayflower Compact and Cambridge Platform, to our current Purpose and Principals.

Over the past few years I have come to appreciate the role that covenant plays in Unitarian Universalism, a concept that is far too absent in our conversations and practice. Burton identified 4 covenants: the primary one is what we have in relation to the community we join as a congregation member. Though we may often think of ourselves as a "big tent", holding all comers, I think it is more accurate to describe our faith as a voluntary covenant, replacing a creed, agreeing to work and worship together. This would argue that the roughly half million UUs who show up in census counts but are not members of some sort of congregation (including the Church of the Larger Fellowship) may have UU values, but have failed to accept one of the most important tenets of the faith.

We talk even less about the lateral covenant between congregations, called out in Section C-2.1 of our by-laws: As free congregations we enter into this covenant, promising to one another our mutual trust and support. "Mutual support" between congregations happens, but we congratulate ourselves for activities that appear to be few and far between. This is not intentional -- most congregation members do not tend to think beyond their own congregation (I have been there). Perhaps a better understanding of our historical heritage and traditions would change that. Per Burton:

It is the communal memory of the historical nature of covenant that gives depth to the present reality of covenant. It creates a people rather than a disparate collection of individuals. It joins past to the future. It binds the many into one community without sacrificing the individual. It grounds the power of voluntary belonging. It lifts us up and bears us through the world when by ourselves we would be bereft of courage and without consequence in the larger culture. It bonds us to something more than ourselves and calls us beyond self concern to be partners in justice making. It causes us to remember the promise of who we are and who we might become. It gives the context for the present day reality of our covenant that joins individuals from all peoples. It makes rich our worship which is the primary location for the covenantal practices of memory. It makes real how we practice a faith.

[for copies of Burton's paper, contact llaskowski12@comcast.net]

Next post: UUA Finances

What were they thinking?

2009-04-23T19:35:00.000-07:00

Second in a series of posts from the April UUA Board meeting

Somewhat to my surprise, over 70% of the groups who provided feedback on the global end said it captured "most or almost all" of what they want the UUA to be. Over 80% of the groups said the nested ends reflected "most or almost all" of what they wanted.

I view that as high praise from Unitarian Universalists.

"They" in this title refers to our "sources of authority and accountability", which in Carver language is referred to as our "moral owners". The UUA Board has chosen to not use that language because of the shameful and very real history of ownership in the United States. Asked to consider these statements from the vantage point of someone more concerned about the sustainability and legacy of the organization than what they received from it, "they" characteristically also provided excellent suggestions for improvement.

"They" are 14 of the 19 districts that provided feedback on their meetings. This included 3 "at large" meetings, 10 district boards, 4 groups of ministers, 3 annual district meetings, 4 groups of congregational presidents, 3 groups of religious educators, and one theological school.

We incorporated significant trends into the draft, with a few notable exceptions.

The first change we made was to the “global end” (sometimes referred to as a mission statement) to clarify that the Association works through congregations to inspire and thus transform people and the world, rather than doing so directly. Changes to the “nested ends” (further detail) included:
- restructuring to allow each of the three levels of ends to reflect “within” congregations, “among” congregations, and “beyond” them. Our thanks to Laura Parks from Unity Consulting who originally gave us this construct.
- replacing the phrase “agents of mission and extension” with “growing congregations” and "living their mission within our communities".

We also got comments complaining about language that was either too secular or too spiritual - so made no changes in this arena. Some struggled with the term "Beloved Community" or "oppression and privilege" but we felt the conversations engendered by these words were the kinds of discussions we needed to have.

The resulting draft is a living document that will continue to evolve as we have these kinds of discussions with our "sources of authority and accountability" at General Assembly and beyond. It will be provided to the next President of the Association to begin writing interpretations of the language to turn it into something tangible -- and actionable. Note that this is NOT a "new mission" or "purpose" for the Association, though these words can be used to describe "ends". These are statements of what difference the UUA should be making in the world to whom - created specifically to provide direction from the Board, on behalf of the "sources", to the President.

ENDS for the Unitarian Universalist Association

1.0 Grounded in our covenantal tradition, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association will inspire people to lead lives of humility and purpose, connection and service, thereby transforming themselves and the world.

1.0.1 Congregations that unlock the power that transforms lives.
1.0.1.1 In our congregations, participants deepen their spiritual lives. People:
a. Develop a personal spiritual practice
b. Participate in meaningful worship
c. Learn and practice empowered leadership and generosity
d. Find their ministry in the world
1.0.1.2. Our congregations are:
a. Vibrant — joyful and excited about their ministries
b. Intentionally multi-generational and multi-cultural
c. Embracing and struggling with issues of oppression and privilege
d. Open and inclusive in their outreach and welcome
e. Ministries deeply shared by ministers and the laity
f. Active participants in ministerial preparation and development
g. Growing in membership
h. Living their mission in their communities

1.0.2 Congregations that live our covenant with other congregations in our Association through
a. A strong, articulated sense of UU and community identity
b. High expectations of their members
c. Full participation in Associational life
d. Networking with each other

1.0.3 Congregations that move toward sustainability, wholeness and reconciliation.
1.0.3.1. Our congregations answer the call to ministry and justice work:
a. Grounded in the communities in which they live
b. Nationally and internationally
c. With interfaith partners and alliances
1.0.3.2 The public engages in meaningful dialogue and takes action informed by our prophetic voice and public witness.

1.0.4 These are all at equal priority and are to be achieved within a justifiable cost.

Next post: We covenant...

April 2009 Board Overview

2009-04-21T11:09:00.000-07:00

First in a series of posts about the April 2009 UUA Board of Trustees meeting

It was a good omen.

As my flight landed in Boston, I found myself responding to the question from the woman sitting next to me: "what do Unitarian Universalists believe?" At one time I would have been desperately trying to remember my elevator speech, mumbling something about salvation and love with the Universalists, and character with the Unitarians. No more - now I talk about a different paradigm for a religion, one with a covenant rather than a creed; where I worship with a community of people who may differ in religious beliefs, but like me have chosen to "stay at the table" with that community (even when it is hard to do so) and work together to impact the world around us. And I talk about how that has impacted my life.

The woman on the other side of her leaned over and said somewhat incredulously "are you a UU?" Turns out she was a former Board member from the San Francisco church, and we had even been at a meeting together some years before. After more discussion, I think the woman between us (who lives on the Peninsula) will be checking out one of our congregations soon as I gave her the uuba.org website.

This meeting was bittersweet because this was the last regular meeting for several trustees who will be going off the Board -- not to mention President Bill Sinkford. These are strong leaders, who have made a significant impact on the Board's culture.

In terms of time, governance once again took first place, as we listened to the feedback gleaned from our conversations across the US in the preceding months, amending our draft "ends" based on this feedback, and grappled with the criteria for what a board committee should be doing. We are also reorganizing the board working groups to work more effectively in our new governance process. Multicultural training helped us realized how dangerous assumptions could be, and the "deep chair" conversation on covenant with Burton Carley and Barbara Merritt was exceptional. I will be posting on these and more over the next few weeks.

Next post: Governance as Holy Work: What were they thinking?

April Board Meeting Agenda

2009-04-13T19:50:00.001-07:00

At 407 pages, the April Board packet is not for the faint-hearted. Closer examination though shows that the length is dominated by three reports: a 90 page evaluation of the UUA Health Plan (kudos to those who conceived of and have made this plan so successful), 115 pages on the Mosaic Project, and the 24 page Youth Ministry Working Group report. The latter two should be must reading for every Unitarian Universalist -- click on the link above and download both. I especially like the index on the Working Group report!

The agenda includes planning for General Assembly, a major opportunity for the Board to interface with members. In addition to the presidential election, GA includes UU University as an integral part this year, featuring tracks in Stewardship, Multigenerational congregations, Multicultural Congregations, Governance, Justice, and Theology. There will be an interfaith public witness on immigration issues. Entertainment includes comedian Kate Clinton and Sweet Honey in the Rock's Ysaye Barnwell. For further information, housing, and registration, click here.

The Board will also be reviewing the feedback collected over the past few months on the draft Ends: "what difference the Association makes to whom" and adopting our initial set of "ends". Although not all trustees have reported back on their meetings, we have met with (at least) 8 district boards, 6 groups of congregational presidents, 4 UUMA ministers/chapters, 3 district annual meetings, 2 religious educator chapters, 1 theological school, and the GA Planning Committee. The overall response has been positive - 71% said the global end captured "most" or "almost all" of what they wanted for the UUA, and 84% said the nested ends capture "most" or "almost all".

Saturday night will focus on Excellence in Ministry. This is a difficult area, because no matter how broadly the topic is posed, there continues to be a sticking point around the UUA's relationship with the UU seminaries. Look for posts on this and many other topics starting next week.

The Perfect Form of Governance

2009-03-12T19:16:00.000-07:00

The “perfect form of governance” does not exist. All forms of governance have their pluses and minuses, and like a strategy, how it well it is implemented is a greater determinant of success than how good the strategy was to begin with. So with all due respect to those who question Policy Governance and the UUA Board’s move to it, there is nothing inherently wrong with Policy Governance in a Unitarian Universalist context. While I agree our convoluted organizational structure would give pause to ANY system of governance, the more I get to know the Carver model, the more I like it.

Five years ago I experienced the implementation of “policy-based governance” in my home church – and while I was somewhat put off by the “thou shalt nots” and the work that went into creating really fluffy ENDS, anything that would move the Board from meetings that went to 11 pm and dealt with far too much trivia seemed like a really good idea. We called it “policy-based” because we did some picking and choosing of the Carver principles, and Carver is a little sensitive about that. But we didn’t really understand the power of the model – I say “we” because I spent five years on the executive team so am guilty as charged.

Several weeks ago Rev. Dan Harper posted some thoughtful reasons why the Carver model was inappropriate for a membership organization, the first because “it is the membership who set policy, not the Board, which means that you cannot follow the Carver model of having the Board set policy (which is what the UUA is trying to do here).”

I agree a voting membership like the General Assembly complicates things, but shareholders in for-profit organizations vote as well, and do not change the need for a board to establish policies. While the GA process results in a number of key positions and priorities, the idea that this non-representative body (I wish it were representative) researches, creates, vets, revises, and refines the large body of policies for the UUA is a stretch. The level of thought put into most of what is ultimately brought to the plenary sessions is usually Board-driven, other than actions of immediate witness. The policies they do approve bind the Board and staff, who typically create a lot more context for implementation. I also suggest almost all of the General Assembly actions are "means" rather than Board-established "ends". Carver’s model sets three roles for the Board: linkage (communication) with owners, setting ENDS, and monitoring: GA delegates do a partial job on the first two within the confines of a few days, change from year to year, and may or may not represent the wishes of their congregations.

One of the further criticisms of Policy Governance is that it does not hold the executive (in our case the President) sufficiently accountable. I would have agreed with this statement before I learned about the relatively new monitoring methodology from consultant Susan Stratton, who has been working with the UUA Board. The monitoring reports my church team churned out monthly were filled with stuff, and we got very little response from anyone on them. This new methodology addresses not only accountability, but my hang-up: fluffy ENDS. It turns out that is the point: “ends” should be broad to allow management to interpret them with as much creativity as possible.

So the first thing the executive team (CEO/President) does is interpret the "fluff", giving concrete definitions, scope, and tangibility to those broad statements. And then tells you in concrete terms why that interpretation is a reasonable one for that church/organization, environment, time in the life of the universe. And then results! Not activities (“we did this many workshops, held this many worship services” – what Carver consultants call “wingflaps”) but results that measure whether or not we are getting to the goals set by the Board.

This is very counterculture. And while some of it is just plain good management from the for-profit world (like measuring results rather than effort) it demands an accountability that most non-profits – and churches – do not have.

Bay Area marketing campaign data

2009-02-22T20:18:00.000-08:00

This post has me with my "regional marketing gUUerilla" hat on (rather than UUA Board member), a group I have been chairing for the past four years that has about 10 people from 8 different congregations working on low or no cost ways to keep our faith visible in the Bay Area. I spent the last two days in various meetings and workshops with Valerie Holton, UUA Marketing Director, including highlights of the 2007 Bay Area marketing campaign, which I share below.

There were five objectives for this $300,000 media campaign:

Build brand awareness of Unitarian Universalism
Increase visitor attendance at local UU congregations, [resulting in]
Increased membership
Build excitement and pride among Bay Area UUs
Build a sense of UU community among Bay Area congregations

The campaign used a "media mix" of TV, BART ads, newspaper ads and inserts, radio, direct mail, and the Internet. The "call to action" in almost all the media was to go to the uuba.org website, which we hoped would connect them to one of our congregations that they would then visit. That meant we could track results through web hits during the campaign and visitors who walked through the doors. We also attempted to track new members, but converting visitors to new members was up to the congregations rather than the campaign.

Over 5000 unique visitors went to the uuba website in the 90 days that covered most of the campaign. This was more than 3 times the average daily traffic before the campaign started. 1127 visitors filled out registration cards in our 17 congregations between September 16 and January 6 (though that data is short about 30 weekly reports from congregations that did not consistently report). We do not know how that compares to "normal" visitors as most of our congregations were not counting visitors the previous fall, but we do know that 236 of these visitors specifically cited the marketing as what brought them to the congregation. We also know that more than 322 people joined in the Bay Area (data missing from 2 of the 17 congregations) the 12 months following the start of the campaign, though we don't know how that compared with the year before. You can download Valerie's complete report from the UUA website.

Ahh, the tyranny of incomplete data! Not to mention the hassle of trying to get congregations to actually report it. I understand that we are all volunteers, and have different priorities, but it does make simple questions hard to answer.

Was the campaign a success? It certainly increased web traffic, visitors, and (probably) members. There is a stronger sense of congregations working together, and I heard a lot of positive comments from UU members who saw the ads.

It was not the silver bullet many of us hoped for, with the Bay Area an expensive market that is not exactly pre-disposed to go to church. If we did it today, we would probably do more with less traditional media, though no one really knows quite how to do that yet. Valerie and I met with two agencies in San Frnacisco on Friday that have some interesting approaches.

Speaking as a donor, I am glad we had the financial commitment from over 600 people in the Bay Area that allowed us to try - and that we did. I'd love to see your opinion in the survey on the right.

Owners and sources of authority

2009-02-09T09:13:00.001-08:00

"Ownership" is a useful concept in the non-profit world - analogous to "shareholder" in the for-profit world, it implies a level of accountability not present in words like "stakeholder", or "customer".

It is also an uncomfortable word. My ancestors were never "owned", at least not in the past 300 years. So the UUA Board has opted for the term "Sources of Authority and Accountability" and made some minor changes to what we had created in October at our January meeting. So who are these "sources of authority"?

The obvious answer is the member congregations of the UUA. But we did not stop there - I think the longer list is intriguing, and a more accurate portrayal of who or what we are accountable to or from whom or what we get our authority.

• Our member congregations
• Current and future generations of Unitarian Universalists
• The heritage, traditions, and ideals of Unitarian Universalism
• The vision of Beloved Community
• The Spirit of life, love, and the holy

What is more intriguing is how we would actually demonstrate that accountability/source of authority -- which makes for a great discussion.

[See also Governance as Holy Work, Part III]

Independent Affiliates Revisited (Again) (And Again)

2009-02-02T22:42:00.000-08:00

I have received more feedback on Independent Affiliates (IAs) than any other postings I have done - mostly from people active in (former) IAs. As a Board member elected to the Board after the new, more restrictive definition for IAs was put into practice, it is easy with 20/20 hindsight to say I might not have implemented the changes quite the way they were done (or not), and avoided what I perceive as unintended consequences (or not): valuable organizations who felt demeaned and dismissed by the change in relationship with the UUA Board. The decision to sunset the current IA status and replace it with one that appropriately recognizes and values these organizations is an attempt by the Board to fix this concern. So I am not quite sure I understand the outrage in several of the comments to my last AI post that we would do this. Enlighten me?

I do believe that changing the IA definition was necessary, and that a lot of work went into making it a smoother transition than it ultimately was -- and that the IAs themselves are partly responsible for the trainwreck. Read on.

The following is a fairly detailed history of the issue written by Chief Governance Officer (also known as Moderator, Board chair, and Mom) Gini Courter in response to an email she received on the issue - I have Gini's permission to post it here (with apologies, Gini, for the "Mom"). It is worth the read -- all the way through -- for anyone concerned about this issue:

At the time of consolidation, there was an assumption/hope that other liberal religious groups might wish to affiliate with Unitarian Universalism. That’s why they were called Independent Affiliates. In nearly a half century, that hasn’t happened. Sometimes we dream big, and I love us for it.

Fast forward 40 years from consolidation. No other religious groups have sought Independent Affiliate (IA) relationships, and the Board is happily using the IA designation as a sort of Good Housekeeping Seal for groups inside UUism. Staff and committees are relying on a group’s IA status to confer other benefits: reduced rates for advertising in the UU World and vendor space in the GA exhibit hall; the ability to participate in the UUA health plan; workshop spaces at GA; a listing in the UUA directory and on uua.org, and so on. When the board finally began examining the role of Independent Affiliates in 2002, there were about 90 Independent Affiliates. The affiliates were allocated over 60% of the workshop slots at General Assembly (GA). Congregations were allocated 0% of the workshops. In the meantime…the proliferation of affiliates had resulted in an annual meeting of congregations that was much more expensive, and where congregations and their needs had been completely displaced. At GA, The “little churches” of James Luther Adams’ ecclesiola in ecclesia weren’t churches at all. We didn’t have any space for our congregations because the Board, staff, and committees were covenanting (loosely, for sure, perhaps “contracting” would be a more appropriate term) instead with non-congregational entities.

You might wonder: Why we didn’t simply keep the IAs as they were and work separately on providing space for congregations at GA? The GA Planning Committee earnestly tried a couple of alternatives, but they didn’t work. In 2008 and 2009 they quit trying for other reasons discussed in a few paragraphs.

General Assembly was not the only venue where the displacement of congregations by IAs was taking place – it was only the easiest to see. For example, the UUA staff chose to provide expertise and resources to some affiliates (as well as discounts for advertising in the UU World, etc). At the congregational level, affinity groups parleyed the national relationships into congregational affiliation, and congregational boards were sometimes hard pressed to turn down requests from groups if the UUA Board had recognized the national organization as an Independent Affiliate. Often the relationships between “local” affiliates and the congregation’s board precisely mirrored the relationship between the IA and the UUA Board – an almost non-existent relationship with little or no accountability from either party.

Now, jump halfway back in time. The Board’s decision in the 70s? 80s? -- whenever it happened – to repurpose Independent Affiliates from a finite number (zero is pretty finite) of external partners to what would become a sizeable number of internal partners without providing criteria had created the problem. The Board began addressing this issue in earnest in 2002. Every affiliate organization was surveyed by trustees from one working group. The working group had one-on-one phone conversations with the leaders of over 80% of the IAs. Hearings to help the board understand what the leaders of IAs wanted from their relationship with the UUA were held at the GAs in Long Beach and Fort Worth. From 2002 to 2006 the board reclassified about two dozen affiliates. For example, Starr King and Meadville were asked to quit sending applications: “you’re not affiliates, you’re UU seminaries”. Same with the DPA, LREDA, and others. The criteria for Independent Affiliates was communicated to all the IAs in 2006 and implemented in April 2007. By April 2007, every Independent Affiliate had received a letter each year explaining the Board’s process and intent; a survey; invitations to participate in two hearings, two workshops, and direct conversation with the board members facilitating this process.

At the 2007 General Assembly, I invited leaders of then-current and former affiliates to meetings to try to help them imagine what they could/might do next because I knew there was lots of frustration about the changes. The UUA trustees who had been most closely involved with implementing the new criteria wished me luck and said I shouldn’t expect too much from these meetings. I’m an optimist, but they were right to be skeptical of the results of my efforts. I was verbally abused and treated in other totally inappropriate ways by leaders of some of our former independent affiliates. I also learned a lot, and have continued to work with some of these leaders to figure out how the Board and the Association staff can support their efforts. I was able to direct some of the former IAs to the relationships that would actually meet their needs and enable them to ask the right questions. For example, an IA that is primarily a funding panel should be in relationship with other funders and the staff that support them. When they’re participating in the right relationship, they can ask the right questions such as: why should our group pay for ads to give money away to UUs? I

t’s all about relationship. I’m glad I had these meetings at GA in Portland, because I know with absolute clarity that there is no confusion about what the Board was trying to do among IA leaders who were part of the process from the beginning. There is denial, but no confusion. There is a sense of entitlement, but no confusion. Some newly-elected leaders were confused because their predecessors told them nothing about the process, but I routinely hear that a specific leader of a former IA “doesn’t understand” what the board was attempting to do when I know that to be untrue.

[In your email], you ask a great question, and it’s the same question that I asked at the meetings at the 2007 GA. Here’s the question: So when have we told our Affiliates, if they seem to us merely self-serving, how they should better serve the Association as a whole? What have we told them, other than "go away"?

A mission of the UUA should be precisely to enable our independent groups to be more effective in projecting their concerns into the congregations. It’s not appropriate for the UUA Board to try to maintain relationships with 80+ affiliates, particularly since many of the IAs aren’t really interested in relationships with the Board. It’s not an appropriate use of UUA staff to have them use the funds provided by congregations to resource 80+ affiliates. Each affiliate doesn’t appear to be asking for much, but taken in the aggregate, it’s overwhelming. In the meetings at the 2007 GA I asked – to be honest, I begged – some groups of affiliates to organize themselves so that we could better support them. For example, the large number of single-issue social justice affiliates masks the fact that we don’t adequately support social justice ministry. If there were a council of social justice affiliates defining common interests, we could begin to address the common functions of a social justice ministry such as promotion and training. Such a council also meets the criteria that the UUA Board established for IAs. Such a council begins to be an interesting partner, not just for the UUA, but for other groups like the UUSC. The possibilities are amazing and limitless and worthy, but leaders of most of our former IAs chose to spend their 90 minutes with me and, more importantly, each other, explaining how they have nothing in common with any other group of Unitarian Universalists. It’s a failure of imagination that’s tragic.

The GA Planning Committee has dreamed aloud of a kind of conference of religious traditions day at GA: imagine a GA Saturday where every workshop is a worship service or spiritual practice group. The Planning Committee doesn’t have the bandwidth to do this with a dozen IAs. It’s not just providing the space, it’s building the relationships between the Planning Committee and the groups, and between the groups. Imagine brochures in every congregation outlining “spiritual paths in UUism” or “celebrating our sources”. At the 2007 GA meeting the leader of one former IA laid out this vision to the other groups, and was almost shouted down. The discussion returned to the comfortable topic of the bone-headedness of the UUA Board, and her idea curled up and died on the floor while I watched. It’s a failure of imagination that’s staggering.

At GAs 2008 and 2009, the rubber is really meeting the road. If the UUA Board had done nothing about IAs, there would still have been many IAs without workshops at GA 2008. The Ft. Lauderdale convention center did not have enough rooms to accommodate the many IA workshops. Here is the trend throughout the industry; convention centers are being built or renovated for a different conference style – small breakout rooms are being replaced with larger meeting rooms. Salt Lake City has more rooms than Ft. Lauderdale, but in 2009 the GA Planning Committee is moving UU University into GA programming space.

In the fall of 2003, we surveyed congregational presidents to find out what they needed from the Association that would make the greatest difference to their leadership. Over 80% responded that leadership development for lay leaders was the place where they most struggled. UU University was designed to respond to this need. The hundreds of leaders who attended UU University in 2006, 2007, and 2008 had to come to GA early and pay extra. In 2009, the programming that our congregational leaders have requested is finally part of their General Assembly. It’s taken five years, but we are making General Assembly the meeting that the elected leaders of our member congregations tell us they need. With the 2009 GA, the choice is very clear: we can provide the programming that our congregational leaders tell us they attend, or the programming that former independent affiliates want to provide.

I don’t just support the UUA board’s choice. I celebrate it, and I’m grateful that the Board tackled this as a governance issue rather than simply waiting until the IAs were squeezed out by space considerations, because it’s really about the relationships, not the space. Thanks for your questions and concerns, [name removed]. I’m grateful for the opportunity to lay this all out. I’ve copied your trustee (since you mentioned that you spoke with her) and I’ll be sharing my reply with some other folks who are thinking about and working on this issue. The Board just approved a new independent affiliate, and some board members are working with other former IAs on their journeys. I hold out hope that the social justice groups, in particular, will organize. There is so much opportunity not just for the IAs, but for our congregations. I remain optimistic that with continued work and care, we’ll arrive at a better place as an Association.

In faith and hope, Gini Courter, Moderator/Chief Governance Officer Unitarian Universalist Association

Amen. Though I am empathetic and apologetic to all IA members who felt devalued by this process, I too think it is time for imagination rather than pining for what was not working -- and is gone.

Business is Booming

2009-02-02T15:30:00.000-08:00

Kudos to whoever at All Souls Church in Washington, DC wrote the following words:

"All Souls Church is proud to be one of the bright spots in the current economic crisis. The worse things get on Wall Street, Main Street and every other street, alley, avenue, you name it, the more relevant who we are and what we do becomes to our community. If we were a business, we'd say things are booming. Demand is very high right now - demand for a spiritual safe haven and for comfort during troubling times. Demand for a helping hand to those in need right here in our neighborhood. Demand for things that have real and lasting value and matter in the day-to-day lives of real people."

Great words! So how do we best live it? Would love to see your posted comments on how we make this “real” in each of our congregations.

UUA financial support from our congregations has continued strong despite the economy, with many people prioritizing their giving to their church . The UUA Administration is taking a number of steps to reduce costs though, especially for 2010, when we really start to feel the impacts of the market losses in the endowment. This year we have about $2.2 million in unrestricted operating income from the endowment, with an estimate of that dropping next year to $1.9 million. The GA Planning Committee is also reducing expenses for GA2009 in Salt Lake, though so far not in a way that will reduce the impact and quality of this UUA election year event.

As already reported in PCD Currents, the Board passed the following resolution keeping Annual Program Fund (APF) contributions from congregations at the same level as last year:

Recognizing that the economic recession being felt across the country affects Unitarian Universalist congregations, the lives of their members, and the Association, the UUA Board of Trustees resolves that:

* together we shall seek creative ways of reducing costs while enhancing environmental sustainability, using technology in new ways, and supporting one another through the challenges sure to be ours over the near future
* the Association shall continue to deliver essential services to member congregations and assist them in addressing fiscal challenges, while examining all expenditures and programs carefully for their centrality to our mission.
* we approach these challenges with the spirit of positive reinvention

Further, we will hold the Annual Program Fund Fair Share contribution for fiscal year 2009-2010 at the current rate of $56 per member and hold the percent of budget option for large congregations at the 2008-2009 level.

Next post: Independent Affiliates Revisited (again) (and again)

Sustainability and White Privilege

2009-02-01T17:32:00.000-08:00

Fifth in a series of posts about the January Board meeting

There is probably no issue more pressing to the survival of ourselves and our planet than global warming and the toxic effects of what we have been doing to the Earth. Recognizing that, several of us argued forcefully for elevating “sustainability” in our ENDS to a premier position. Twice I heard one of our Board members of color state that they could not in good conscience elevate this concern over our anti-oppression efforts – and then I suddenly got it.

It is hard to be concerned about environmental effects on future generations when you are not sure you and your family will make it through the week. Most of us learned Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in Psych 101 – too many of our brothers and sisters are struggling on the bottom levels of that hierarchy. Many of us forget that not having to do so is a privilege that is often tied to our race or ethnicity. I was able to get a good education that lifted me out of fairly humble beginnings, but was also supported by a stable family that was capable of instilling certain value systems that work in the dominant culture, and a system that saw me as capable and worthy of investment.

Interestingly, the concept of sustainability includes anti-oppression, though many of us think of it in only environmental terms. According to my friend, CJ Hunter, Principle of Leading Sustainability, there are three pillars of sustainability: “economy, equity, and environment” or “people, planet, prosperity”. She bemoans the fact that the term is often connected only to environment, when you really cannot be sustainable without all three.

We often hear more about the environmental aspect of sustainability because that has been viewed as the weakest - which is probably not the view of those having to face societal oppression on a daily basis.

Next post: Business is Booming

Purpose, Principles, and the Commission on Appraisal

2009-01-29T00:35:00.000-08:00

Fourth in a series of posts about the January UUA Board meeting

Included in the January Board packet was one of the best reports I have seen about what can be a delicate and difficult process: a review of our purpose and principles, as required by our by-laws. The Commission on Appraisal (COA) was asked to do this review. Led by Barbara Child and Orlanda Brugnola, this team got feedback from over 1700 individuals and congregations on what we might change – and had the audacity to suggest we actually do that. Some of you may have seen an earlier report put out by comment by the team in September – referred to as the “kitchen sink” report, this version included essentially most major suggestions made and came across that way.

You will find the most recent Commission on Appraisal Report, received by the Board and placed on the General Assembly agenda with one minor change, a very different document. Changes are minimal, and the logic reiterated by the COA for these changes is compelling. Other than putting this on the agenda, the Board has taken no official position on it, and will participate, as you will, in a two year process to discern if this is what we should do as an Association. The Salt Lake 2009 GA delegates will discuss the document, and if a majority passes it, it will be placed on the 2010 GA agenda for a 2/3 majority to pass. No amendments are allowed in this two year process.

My gratitude to the COA for their dedication and work on this.

Next post: Sustainability and White Privilege

Independent Affiliates Revisited (Again)

2009-01-24T10:21:00.000-08:00

Third in a series of posts after the January UUA Board Meeting

I have dealt with Independent Affiliate (IA) status a number of times previously in this blog, wrestling with the need to get an out-of-control process back into something manageable and meaningful. For years the UUA Board had been approving essentially any application for IA, resulting in nearly 90 organizations that may or may not have been serving multiple congregations and filling GA slots with topics that played more to special interests than the needs of the Association and its over 1000 congregations. The tightening up of the rules meant only 7 IAs by January of 2009, with the idea that the Board would have a close collaborative relationship with each of them.

This was not exactly happening, but what did happen was the perception that the “rejected” former IAs were not valued by the Board and/or the Association itself. This meant there were many outstanding and hard working UU-identified groups that felt hurt and unappreciated.

At the January meeting the Board passed a resolution that sunsets the current Affiliate status by June of 2010, contingent upon the staff “creating a strategy to honor and harness the incredible talent, passion and experience present in this large group of dedicated UU volunteers. We encourage these important organizations to partner with the staff to create best practices for engaging with congregations, districts, and staff in carrying out our vision for Unitarian Universalism and the hope we have for healing the world.” Applications for new AI (under the current “rules”) will no longer be accepted after June of 2009.

This is a good step. The staff has also been uncomfortable with the Board’s stringent guidelines, and is committed to create positive relationships with these key organizations. Kudos to those who continued to thoughtfully reconsider this action, and initiated these steps.

Next post: Purpose, Principles, and the Commission on Appraisal

Musings from the Mall

2009-01-22T13:22:00.000-08:00

Rather than come home directly from the Board meeting, I flew to Washington, DC to attend the Inauguration of the 44th President of the United States with 2 million of my closest friends. We left the home of my Bethesda friend shortly after 5 am, drove to park at another friend’s house by the bus route that would take us to within a couple of miles of the Mall, picked up more friends, then walked the rest, arriving about 7:30. Eight of us staked out our postage stamp-sized spots with silver space blankets, and waited for the ceremonies to begin at 10, which we would watch on one of the many “jumbotrons” spread across the Mall, culminating with the peaceful transition of the governance of the United States at noon. This photo is the (standing for 7 hours) view of the Capitol where the inauguration actually took place. The Mall was already full when this was taken, about 8:30.

Bless the planners – starting at 8 the jumbotrons rebroadcast the “We Are One” concert held Sunday night. The crowd was into it, clapping, jumping, dancing (what a great way to stay warm in 23 degrees!) – especially when the songs were the “oldies” most of us knew the words to. The crowd was diverse in every respect, with everyone talking to everyone else, sharing handwarmers, trailmix, coffee from thermoses, and information gleaned from text messages (a lot of cell phones were not working by then). This view is sitting down, which is why everyone is standing.

It was clearly a partisan crowd. When Bush appeared you heard loud boos (rather disrespectful and less clever than the chant started by a group near the actual stage at the front: “na na na na, na na na na, na na na na, good bye”). When Obama appeared, it was an exuberant swell of hope and joy, many people crying when he finally took the oath.

It was a great occasion to feel part of, and was worth the early up, miles of walking, and 7 hours of standing. Two things disturbed me though: all the trash left by those of us on the Mall (didn’t we just have a day of service on Monday?). My friends and I filled our three trash bags to the brim and carted them to the dumpsters, watching others just throwing things on the ground.

The other was the chants of “O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma!”.

I would have felt a lot better had we been chanting “Yes, we can! Yes, we can!” I fully recognize the power this charismatic leader has in turning around the apathy, lassitude, and despair so prevalent in America today. But from the beginning we appear to be elevating him to a sort of demi-god stardom far too much in line with our celebrity obsession. Better that we hear and respond to his message of empowerment and working together so that when we lose him (please hear my prayers that it is after 8 years) we can still do the work that needs to be done.

Next post: Independent Affiliates Revisited (Again)

Governance as Holy Work – Part III

2009-01-22T10:44:00.000-08:00

Second in a series of posts about the January UUA Board of Trustees meeting

By far the greatest amount of time at this and the last Board meeting was around the development of values and ENDS for the Association – “Association” meaning the entirety of the Board, administration, and the 1000+ congregations that have covenanted to be together to form the Association. Those of you familiar with Policy Governance will recognize that ENDS is not an acronym, but rather a Carver branded term for the broad vision and strategic directions developed for a non-profit organization. Based on the Open Space sessions at GA2007, the Appreciative Inquiry of GA2008, and conversations with the UU Ministers Association, District Presidents Association and others, the Board has created initial language for the values, vision, and strategic direction of our Association. I have been meeting with a number of congregation boards to get feedback on these, and will be doing so much more in the next three months, including “webinars” online that will allow all of us to discuss them in the comfort of our own homes.

Here is the “Global End”, or mission statement created at the October Board meeting:

Grounded in our covenantal tradition, the UUA will inspire people to lead lives of humility and purpose, connection and service, thereby transforming themselves and the world.

The following (draft) strategic directions just developed are the broad directions that the Board gives to the President:

Our ENDS are growing Unitarian Universalist congregations that. . .

Unlock the Power that Transforms Lives
• In our congregations, people deepen their spiritual lives. They:

Develop a personal spiritual practice
Participate in meaningful worship
Learn and practice empowered leadership and generosity.
Find their ministry in the world

• Our congregations are:

Vibrant—joyful and excited about their ministries
Intentionally multi-generational and multi-cultural.
Networked with each other

• Congregations are:

Active participants in ministerial preparation and development
Shared ministries
Agents of mission and extension

Invite people into congregations that live out covenant through:
• A strong, articulated sense of UU and community identity
• High expectations of their members
• Full participation in Associational life
• An open and inclusive outreach and welcome
• Embracing and struggling with issues of oppression and privilege

Move toward sustainability, wholeness and reconciliation through ministries, partnerships, and alliances.
• Our congregations answer the call to ministry and justice work:

Grounded in the communities in which they live
Nationally, internationally
With interfaith partners and alliances

• The public engages in meaningful dialogue and takes action informed by our prophetic voice and public witness.

These are all at equal priority and are to be achieved within a justifiable cost.

Does this reflect your dreams for Unitarian Universalism? Post a response and/or take the survey on the right.

Next post: Musings from the Mall

Is it still snowing? Posts from the January 2009 Board meeting

2009-01-21T15:31:00.000-08:00

There is one dimension upon which the Board is divided into two camps: one of them moans over the cold temperature (7 degrees – guess which camp I was in?) and flocks to the window to watch the big white flakes cover the trees and grounds of the Massachusetts Capitol right next door. The other is somewhat dismissive of the cold (“it felt warm compared to where I came from”) and sees the snow as a mechanism to impede their way home.

But it WAS beautiful, including at night, when these photos were taken on Sunday night in Boston’s Public Garden with The Magic Box (also known as my iPhone).

Unfortunately it meant a number of flights were delayed or cancelled on Sunday, the end of the Board meeting, and a number of Board members who had not intended to stay the night did so.

Like all the Board meetings I have attended, this one was long, intense, and energizing. A significant reason for the energy is the fact that we are intentionally a religious board, with worship elements in the agenda as well as impromptu admonitions from a number of our board members (and you know who you are). One of the readings on Wednesday night’s vespers by Board member Will Saunders particularly struck me, and is excerpted below:

Pause with us here a while.
Put your ear to the wall of your heart.
Listen for the whisper of knowing there.
Love will touch you if you are very still.

If I say the word God, people run away.
They’ve been frightened – sat on ‘till the spirit cried “uncle.”
Now they play hide and seek with somebody they can’t name.
They know he’s out there looking for them, and they want to be found.
But there is all this stuff in the way.

I can’t talk about God and make any sense.
And I can’t not talk about God and make any sense.
So we talk about the weather, and we are talking about God.

(excerpted from Tom Barrett, What’s in the Temple)

Look for posts about UUA Ends, Independent Affiliates, Purpose and Principles revisions, White Privilege Part II, and my trip to DC for the Inauguration over the next few weeks.

Next Post: Governance as Holy Work, Part III

The Fifth Principle

2008-11-22T10:58:00.000-08:00

"The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large." The "Fifth Principle" of Unitarian Universalism

After the presidential election, and before we get really into the election of our own UUA president, and amid the discussions about changing our principles, comes the Fifth Principle Task Force. Formed by Board resolution in October of 2007, this Task Force is addressing the issues I hear raised in a number of "hallway" conversations: does our General Assembly governing process, often attended by congregational delegates named in a hasty process (or no process) who can afford to attend, really exemplify the Fifth Principle?

This task force has recently provided its first report, and has been soliciting feedback from a number of places, including the District President's Association. Included in the draft is a proposal to have both a General Assembly, with today's workshops, exhibit hall, and UU University; and a Delegates Assembly, a shorter version focusing on governance of the Association. The two assemblies would meet in alternate years, possibly starting as early as 2011. As these proposals evolve, you will hear far more about them.

There will be a number of opportunities to express your opinion about this (including a GA 2009 Workshop and a planned online survey), but in the meantime add your voice with the short survey (with thanks to fellow UUA Trustee John Blevins) to the right. I welcome this examination, but wonder if it will add the gravitas to the delegate selection process within many congregations that appears to be lacking.

Why is it lacking? I think it is primarily because many UUs do not find the UU organization outside of the walls of their own congregation relevant, and feel that "congregational polity" keeps them immune from interference from any decisions made outside those walls. Rather than viewing being part of a larger whole as a strength, I hear things like reducing the "constant initiatives" from district leaders.

That is not to point a finger at these leaders - there is a valid reason for those feelings. We are all part of the problem - are we all willing to be part of the solution?

Congregation-Based Community Organizing

2008-10-24T17:38:00.000-07:00

The term "congregation-based community organizing" (CBCO) may still elicit blank stares, until someone says, "you know, what Obama did". Obama, following in the footsteps of Saul Alinsky, learned and practiced a form of community organizing that is not only effective, but promises to revitalize the congregations that participate in it. It certainly had an impact on Obama.
Jim Eller, minister at All Souls UU Church of Kansas City, met with the Board on to "preach the gospel" of CBCO on Thursday. It is an exciting approach that the Veatch Foundation is supporting through matching grants for churches to join and train their members. Though Unitarian Universalism has a rich tradition in social justice, congregations do not always find their efforts as effective as they might like in dealing with the underlying issues.

CBCO addresses some of the barriers to effectiveness congregations may face, such as lacking relationship within the communities they wish to impact, or assuming problems of poverty and systemic racism do not affect us. It impacts change by creating networks of religious organization, community groups, and (sometimes) unions and schools that use democratic principles to determine local priorities. The network sets up the process and trains leaders to work within it. These "leaders in training", according to Congregation-Based Community Organizing: A Social Justice Approach to Revitalizing Congregations, "learn the technical skills of organizing, including weighing alternatives, negotiating differences, and developing strategic plans. They also learn concrete skills such as clariying one's self-interest, viewing and accepting conflict, and analyzing the power dynamics of institutions." PCD congregations listed as affiliated with a formal CBCO network include the UU Church of Palo Alto, the UU Fellowship of Redwood City, the First UU Society of San Francisco, the First Unitarian Church of San Jose, and the UUs of San Mateo. I would be interested in hearing experiences from any of these congregations - just post your comment.

UUA Finances in Difficult Times

2008-10-23T14:34:00.000-07:00

Second in a series of posts on the October UUA Board Meeting

The day I flew to Boston the market dropped nearly 800 points, right after a 936 point rally the day before. Though I would occasionally check the market on The Magic Box (my iPhone), I was glad I had something more important to do.

The short version of how this impacts UUA finances is that it has a major and immediate hit on the balance sheet (because of the drop in the value of the UU Common Endowment Fund), but so far income reduction on the operating statement is offset by reduction in spending. This is because most of the income reduction is in special donations for specific projects which are not implemented without those funds. These donors do not want to liquidate funds (sell) in this market.

The longer term impact is yet to be seen, but will likely include the annual transfer of funds from the endowment to the operating budget (about $2.2 M, but less as the market value drops), and the impact on the annual program fund (the annual support from congregations, just over $7 M), and Association Sunday (currently projected at $350,000). The estimates for essentially all income sources have been decreased by the UUA staff, with corresponding decreases in expected expenditures. These are not easy times, but we are blessed with timely and accurate information we can trust, and an executive team that takes fiscal responsibility to heart.

According to President Bill Sinkford, our non-profit partners have seen a major drop off of income. What does one do in these kinds of times?

Though it is tempting to “hunker down” to protect what we have, I believe generosity is even more important now. In his book Who Really Cares, Arthur Brooks provided study after study that shows that people who give to others, regardless of income level, are healthiest and happiest. Though it may be counterintuitive, I believe the best way to make it through these times and remain whole in spirit is to share what we have been given.

Next post: Congregation-Based Community Organizing

Policy Governance as Holy Work Part II

2008-10-22T08:25:00.000-07:00

First in a series of posts about the October 2008 UUA Board Meeting

One way to gain insight into the UUA Board is to look at how we spend our time together. The October Board meeting was particularly grueling, with five more-than-full days, formal meetings running from 8:30 am to 9:00 pm, but many others before and after. Based on that criteria, the hands down winner for mind share is Ends Development and "owner linkage" in connection with the Board’s move to Policy Governance, which covered 2 1/2 days.

If you have been under a rock for the past few years and have never heard of an “End”, it is the John and Miriam Carver term for high level goals: what benefits we are providing for whom, and at what cost. Working with Unity Consultants, the Board spent Thursday reviewing the input from the Appreciative Inquiry at General Assembly, and listening to members of the District Presidents Association (including the Pacific Central District's President Mary Ellen Morgan) and the UU Ministers Association Executive Team. We spent all day Friday developing values, writing the initial “global ends statement” (more or less a mission statement), and defining our “owners”—those from whom we get our moral authority and to whom we are accountable. There is still significant work to develop the next layer of ends, which will have more specificity about what we want to accomplish, but we first need to evaluate "how we are doing so far" with our owners. These ends are what we provide to the next President, saying “make these things happen, but as you do so, don’t do this.”

In addition to the time on Friday, the entire Board traveled to Worcester (the second largest city in New England!) on Saturday to meet with 300 or so New England UUs. Together we watched Laurel Hallman and Peter Morales “debate” as UUA presidential candidates, with what I thought were far better performances from both of them compared to General Assembly. Then the Board did what the Carvers call “linkage” – talking to our “owners” about their values and what they thought the mission of the UUA was. Each of us sat at a table with 8-10 New Englanders and went through a rapid-fire exercise to get input on what we had created the day before.

The exercise was fun and insightful. Most of it was positive. Each Board member will be doing some version of this over the next six months within the Districts. Mary Ellen Morgan will be leading this with me, and we hope to get input from as many members in the Pacific Central District as possible, through a variety of means: travel to meet with congregations, at District meetings, through conference calls, and online. Look for more information through PCD Currents and here as it develops.

Next post: UUA Finances in Difficult Times

My UU Carbon Footprint

2008-09-04T13:54:00.000-07:00

Last year my Unitarian Universalist travel produced over 5 metric tons of carbon dioxide - even driving a Prius! That's over 20% of my total footprint for an entire year. The culprit, of course, is the coast to coast travel, primarily to attend UUA Board meetings. Multiply this footprint by other Board and Committee members, Commissions, Task Forces, and an annual General Assembly.

To this add what is close to a doubling of the cost of flying from Oakland/SFO to Boston, and we appear to have a situation that is not sustainable (literally). Recognizing both the ecological and financial cost of the way we do business, the UUA Board has chartered a "Virtual Teams Taskforce" (VTT), chaired by Finance Chair Lyn Conley and including Roger Thompson and Tom Loughrey from the Committee on Committees, Megan Selby and LoraKim Joyner from the Nominating Committee, and Harlan Limpert and Mark Steinwinter from the UUA staff. We have identified other key stakeholders (such as UU Ministry for Earth) to be part of this effort.

In addition to cost and carbon footprint, how many good people are excluded from participating in UUA committees and events because of time and other obligations? How do we best use technology to strengthen inclusion? How do we build trust without ongoing personal face to face interaction? How do our religious values impact what we do in this situation? We will be wrestling with these and other questions - as always I am interested in your thoughts.

Four ways to find things on the UUA Website

2008-08-29T10:48:00.000-07:00

The following is adapted from a short workshop for lay leaders I have been doing in my travels around the District. I would love to visit your congregation too!

The website of the Unitarian Universalist Association is without a doubt the best resource for all things Unitarian Universalist - whether it is a history of our faith, resources for social justice activities, or practical advice for church administrators, Board members, or canvass chairs. The problem is: how do you find it?

The UUA staff has been working to add tools to help us do that. Here are my top 4 picks on how to find things on the UUA site - note that you can jump to the web page I am describing by clicking the blue link:

1. By position (yours): go the http://www.uua.org and click on the leaders link. You will see a list of various leader positions - click on one and you will see a list of resources relevant to that position.

2. By Topic: go to http://www.uua.org and click on “I am interested in”. You will see a "pull down" menu of various topics - click on one and you will get a list of resources available on that topic, including books, Internet resources, and DVDs.

3. Internal Google search: go to http://www.uua.org and input what you want in the search box. This is my least favorite way of finding things as you often get too many choices - try putting as much detail as possible into your search, putting quotation marks around things that belong together - instead of marriage equality, for example, put in "marriage equality". According the UUA staff member Susanna Whitman
The key to searching the Leaders Library is to use quotes around your search terms. And that if you do not find what you seek, to let web@uua.org know about it. If you let web@uua.org know about it, then they (or the relevant staff) will be able to add more search terms as a feature of the page to sharpen it.

4. Contact the UUA Staff: identify a UUA staff person with responsibility for the area you are interested in, and ask them where to find a particular resource. For example, email Tim Brennan, UUA Treasurer (tbrennan@uua.org), to find financial information or Susanna Whitman, Growth Service Program Manager (swhitman@uua.org) for marketing resources. The email convention is (first initial)(last name)@uua.org.

Between Trapezes in Petaluma

2008-08-12T13:48:00.000-07:00

One of the privileges of being a UUA Trustee is that I am invited to be part of the service at some of our congregations. Last Sunday was with the Unitarian Universalists of Petaluma, with the "world premier" of my sermon on change and transition, borrowing liberally from William Bridges' work, including a description of the place in between beginnings and endings: "like being between trapezes, like Linus when his blanket is in the dryer".

UUP is a lovely congregation - they meet in the Petaluma Woman's Club, a beautiful historic building with a nice feel - and have been working with the Rev. Ben Koch-Myers to see what they can do to evolve to a part time minister. I was impressed with the people I met, who were articulate about what they were trying to do, and who provided a service experience with warmth and sincerity.

Another benefit of sermon preparation is that you are forced to think through many of the things you are talking about. I included a story about a method of catching monkeys in Thailand that involves drilling a small hole in a coconut shell just big enough for the monkey to get his paw in, filling the shell with rice, and fastening it to something that cannot be moved. The monkey puts in his pay, grabs a fistful of rice, but cannot get its paw out without letting go of the rice. As the story goes, the monkey will be caught rather than let go of the rice.

I could tell from the look on many of the faces Sunday that this story hit home - as it does for me. How often are we "caught" because we cannot let go of something when change is happening?

Covenanting with Knoxville

2008-07-31T20:03:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday morning, during a service that included a performance of "Annie, Jr." at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church (TVUUC), a shooter opened fire at the front row of the people in the Sanctuary watching the performance, killing two and severely wounding 6 more. For the past four days hundreds of UU congregations across the United States (as well as other churches) have mourned with the families in Knoxville, holding vigils and special services, aware that we too could be targets because of our "liberal beliefs".

UUA President Bill Sinkford was there by Sunday evening, along with two members of the UUA Trauma team and UUA staffers to help deal with the publicity that inevitably follows tragedy. Two former UUA presidents, John Buehrens and Robert West, had served TVUUC as ministers, but there is no doubt that any congregation going through such a painful experience would have the same kind of support.

A very moving service was held Monday night with members of many different faiths next door at the Second Presbyterian Church that had sheltered people the day before, ending with the cast of the play performing the well known "Tomorrow" at the end. I wept listening to the voices, many of them children, joined by the entire interfaith body on the second verse.

France's Le Monde newspaper declared "We Are All Americans" on September 12, 2001. This week we have all been members of the 4 Knoxville congregations that were together on July 27, and experienced this tragedy. We share your grief - and your hope for tomorrow.

Two strong candidates

2008-07-22T16:07:00.000-07:00

We have two strong candidates for UUA president, with very different styles. I have met and talked with both. Laurel Hallman is generally perceived to be the more "managerial" of the two, which is meant as a compliment by those who have used the term, referring to her proven ability to run a large organization. She calls for finding more depth in our spiritual lives and has written a new book Reaching Deeper. Peter Morales can be a charismatic leader who calls overtly for change, and says "growing our faith is a moral imperative". He is a known for his "repelling fewer visitors" audio and presentations.

The grapevine has it that Laurel is supported by most of the senior church ministers, who generally serve our larger congregations, through her 26 years of relationships built in the course of parish ministry. This appears to be borne out by the long list of endorsements by well known ministers on her website, though Peter claims some as well. It is interesting that Peter's endorsements include some of our better known "rabble rousers", such as Mike Durall (author and consultant) and Davidson Loehr (senior minister at First UU Church of Austin).

There were three direct opportunities to observe these candidates side by side - two workshops and the candidate forum. I did not attend either workshop, though feedback was consistent that both candidates appeared subdued. That was also my reaction to the Forum, though you can watch the video to see for yourself - it is only at the end that Peter's characteristic energy shows up. Feedback from the Youth Caucus expressed concern about both = apparently Peter's perceived lack of enthusiasm about Youth and Laurel's comment about our Youth serving in our nurseries were not taken well.

At this point I am choosing not to endorse. I would hope each of us take into account what we see and observe first hand more so than the recommendations of others. You will no doubt have the opportunity in the next year to hear both - in the meantime, check out their very different approaches on their websites.

And if you have not done so already, read the following blog. UUA presidential elections are one of the few things that allow absentee ballots, so every congregation will have its "full measure" of delegate votes. If you have a preference for who becomes president, are you content to let your delegates "vote their conscience"? If not, what will you do between now and next summer to insure that delegates represent their congregations?

What does it mean to be a delegate?

2008-07-15T17:21:00.000-07:00

A few months ago we were discussing "UU policy" within the Pacific Central District when the question came up as to whether or not there was such a thing - particularly in regard to congregational compliance. After all, went the reasoning, NO ONE tells a congregation what to do except its members. Isn't that what congregational polity means?

Well, partly. But it appears we may have forgotten the other part of the equation. The Cambridge Platform, considered one of our "founding documents" included not only the concept of autonomous congregations, but also the relationships among those congregations, based on inter-congregational covenants, also referred to in our case as the UUA Bylaws:

We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote.... (Article II, Section C-2.1)

So what does it mean to covenant with other congregations? This was the topic of a Commission on Appraisal Report in 1997, which concluded (among many other things)

Congregations need to take fuller responsibility for the governance of intercongregational bodies and their official meetings (especially the General Assembly).

Which brings me to the original question - what does it mean to be a delegate? Only delegates can vote at the business meetings of the General Assembly. Resolutions passed by these delegates were addressed (and limited) early on - in 1962, in fact, by a resolution that basically said general resolutions were binding on staff and the UUA Board, but not on the congregations that sent the delegates. Furthermore, implementation of Statements of Immediate Witness fall predominantly on the delegates who pass them.

Chief Governance Officer (Moderator) Gini Courter has another take (which I have her permission to share):
Delegate -
v. transfer power to someone v. give an assignment to (a person) to a post, or assign a task to (a person)
n. a person appointed or elected to represent others

What part of "delegate" do some folks (not a majority, I assume) not understand? When we make Joe our delegate, we empower Joe to represent us. That's why we should choose Joe and not someone unreliable, and make sure Joe is someone who understands what the rest of us think. Then we send him off, grounded in that understanding, to do his very best to represent us. We trust. Maybe we even have faith. And when Joe votes, he's voting for us -- that's why we sent him. This isn't complex; it's high school civics.

Gini continued this same theme in Sunday's closing worship, where she quoted Section C4.2 of the By-Laws: "General Assemblies shall make overall policy for carrying out the purposes of the Association and shall direct and control its affairs," and went on to say that General Assembly is a crucial component of Unitarian Universalist polity - and our polity (quoting Conrad Wright) "goes to the very heart of our theology."

So if we, as congregations, take seriously our commitment to each other in "covenanting together", how would we view the role of the people who represent us at the major event in which we gather together and make decisions? Would it be whoever shows up? Would we expect them to represent themselves or their congregation? What is required to represent a congregation? What responsibility does a delegate then have to bring those decision home and make a good faith effort at implementing them?

When I think of "binding" I think of contracts, laws, and penalties for non-compliance. This clearly does not fit with GA resolutions. But when I think of "covenant" I think of freely offering our best intentions to "walk together", which is a moral obligation if not a "binding" one. I fear most of us have lost this part of the polity equation.

Next post: the (UUA) Presidential Election

Youth Empowerment

2008-07-12T10:53:00.000-07:00

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the 2008 General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association urges the Unitarian Universalist Association, its congregations and district structures to:
1. Invite ministerial support to youth and young adults through inclusive worship, intentional presence, and
2. Invest financial support in youth and young adult leadership bodies and programs when viable; and
3, Provide support for youth and young adult staff and volunteers to receive suitable training and resources, including self-directed anti-racism and anti-oppression trainings; and
4. Attend to the needs of youth and young adult constituents with marginalized identities by providing resources and opportunities within the congregation and at the district and continental levels.

They stood 150 strong behind the pro mikes, cheering as the resolution was passed. These were our youth - learning about the democratic process by participating in it with a resolution created by their own. The history behind this resolution is covered in a previous post (see "Youth Ministry"), and there is also a good description at uuworld.org. I also attended one of the FUN TIMES (Folks Unanimously Networking to Imagine, Manage, and Execute Sessions), that elected the next Board Youth Observer and General Assembly FUN TIMES co-manager. It was inspiring to see these young people deal with the issues of fairness, representative, and respect for each person who spoke and/or stood for election. Both young people elected, including Nick Allen who is the new Board Youth Observer, were thoughtful, bright and articulate and will represent Youth and UUism well.

How could anyone oppose this kind of youth resolution? Some did because they felt it did not go far enough, but what I found most interesting was the opposition by Denny Davidoff, a highly respected former moderator, who said "I fear this resolution will be asking this delegate body to make promises that many congregations cannot keep." This went to the heart of my next post: to what degree are decisions passed by delegates at General Assembly binding on the congregations that make up the Association?

Ethical Eating

2008-07-08T16:37:00.000-07:00

Why does food figure so prominently in many of the world's religions? To what degree does our choice of food encourage farming practices that wear out the soil and contribute to environmental degradation? How does the unavailability of healthy food contribute to poverty and ill health? What moral guidelines, if any, should govern food production?

I hope you hear a lot more about this topic over the next few years. Chosen as a Congregational Study/Action Issue, our congregations will be exploring this topic over the next few years, culminating in a written position in 2011. It combines concerns about social inequality and environmental destruction, and uses our Fifth Principle around the right of conscience and the democratic process to determine the stand we take as a faith on this issue.

Two study topics were put forth at this year's General Assembly, the other Nuclear Disarmament. Though Nuclear Disarmament is clearly an important issue fundamental to the survival of humankind, Ethical Eating won hands down - as well it should.

Why? Those of you who have heard me speak publicly know I am a Stephen Covey fan, particularly around his "Circle of Concern" (everything we are concerned about) and smaller concentric "Circle of Influence" (what we can impact directly). Rev. Marlin Lavanhar must also be a fan, as he used the concepts in his Sunday morning sermon, though he did not credit Covey. These two study topic choices are a great example of the difference between the two Circles. Nuclear disarmament fits my perception of what stereotypical UUs are capable of having: a wonderfully articulate discussion that will likely not have any impact on anything.

Which topic has the highest probability of transforming the life of the person who delves into it, as well as transform the community around them? How can our congregations work together to share "best practices" in how we address this? Does your congregation have someone who will help explore this?

Or might that person be you?

Next topic: Youth Empowerment