District President Reports

Board and Delegates Meet

Rev. Brian Eslinger

As we head into the new church year the district board and staff are striving to find ways to connect our congregations and enflame the passion for Unitarian Universalism that helps us express our liberal religious faith.

At our recent retreat, with Board members, Program Coordinators, staff and Kris Warhol (Underwood, MN) representing the Resource Liaisons, we envisioned ways in which we can assist our congregations in deepening their spiritual and intellectual understandings and growing their impact in their communities. Of course the role of the District is to listen to what our congregations need and respond to those needs. All of us are also members of District congregations. There is no ‘them’ there. It’s us. So there are also projects or opportunities that the board will advance in hopes of leading our congregations to new vitality.

Goals we selected from this year’s retreat include:

• supporting congregations in providing opportunities for UU faith development
• developing and supporting effective leadership in congregations
• assisting congregations in taking their UU values into the world
• creating passion for UUism in congregations

Some of the tools for meeting these goals included:

• offering workshops on faith development and the Commission on Appraisal
• on-line book club on the language of reverence.
• forums for presidents and congregational board member at the Annual Conference and offering advanced leadership training
• helping congregations with electronic and media communications
• fostering emerging congregations and exploring avenues for creating new congregations.
• supporting and encouraging the formation of District clusters, either geographical or around specific affinities.

The clustering activities are especially exciting. We find this vehicle can help us break down the isolation often felt by congregations, create mentoring opportunities between congregations, provide a more efficient means of delivering resources to congregations, and can be a whole lot of fun.

Actions taken by the board to help facilitate this process included: affirming district sponsorship of the Southern Cluster Camp; approving changing our District Lifespan Program Coordinator’s position to ¾ time; hiring a new person at ¼ time who will work specifically with youth and young adults (this person’s salary will be covered by the balance of Phil’s salary).

The board supports this change for two main reasons: first, it allows us to support our staff person as his family situation changes. This family-friendly policy helps us to create a more productive work environment and meet the human needs of the people we employ. Second, this change gives us more flexibility in our programming. The new person will focus on an area of emphasis for the board and will bring a different skill-set to the position than our current staff. Another board action was to create a Young Adult Network task force, with David Leppik as the board representative. This task force will explore how to develop a cohesive young adult network between our congregations.

Board members also reviewed staff goals and found them to be consistent with the vision discerned by the larger group. We recognized and thanked our staff for the excellent work they do for us.

This is an exciting and challenging time to be a Unitarian Universalist. Our message of religious pluralism, religion that stresses compassion and freedom and the understanding of deep interconnectedness is so vital to our world. I am proud to be working in a district where this importance is recognized and our vitality is strong.