Rev. Matthew's February Minister's Report
February 8, 2022
Dear BUU Board of Directors,
BUU continues to learn new means of gathering, while seeking to sustain what has carried us this far through the pandemic. Everywhere I look there’s a positive energy at BUU learning and helping us more forward:
- Each Sunday we are seeing more people join us in-person and online for sanctuary worship. Initiating a second service in the sanctuary was a natural next step. The Worship Arts and Audio Visual teams are inviting more people to join in leading worship and further developing our multi-medium approach. While we maintain and develop this worship style which has sustained us, we have begun to look into the altogether new logistics and liturgy we will need for outdoor worship.
- Our Stewardship Team has come up with an exciting campaign for this year’s pledge drive, “Water of Our Lives.” This theme will take us from the individual drops that we put into BUU all the way to the collective flow of our congregation. Working alongside Jerry and Martha has once again been an education on how to connect our many financial supporters to our institutional needs.
- The Membership Team has been hard at work to get clarity on our ICON database and plan fun activities for the many new people joining us online and in-person. I’ve enjoyed one-to-ones with several new people and am excited for our new Member ceremony later this month.
- Our Beloved Conversations: Among group has come up with their covenant and begun to plan exciting worship and art engagements in the spring. It has been a blessing to work with Jerry, Patsy, and Kristin as we seek to offer our congregation the joy of anti-oppression and multicultural worship and music.
Holding Covenantal Conversations
We have been hearing from BUU leaders this week about what they are witnessing during discussions concerning the shade sail project. As I related in an email to you all on February 8:
“I am intuiting that we are bringing feelings and thoughts from outside the shade side project into our process. Accusations of splitting the congregation and being out of covenant, observations of rising temperature and strong feelings in meetings, and the recognition that BUU folks are fragile right now all exceed the discernment process the Board and the Shade Sail team have been engaged in for several months.
As a Good Officer, serving my ministerial colleagues and their congregations at their invitation, I've seen first hand that most churches are experiencing conflict right now, but not addressing the issues at the core of the conflict. We have an opportunity to not only to have a healthy decision making process about the shade sail, but also name our core issues and begin to address them. There are many skilled facilitators who could help us navigate a congregational meeting - and/or assist us in learning what other issues we are bringing to our discernment process.”
Outside help from the Baja 4 or the Pacific Southwest Region has always been a boon to us, but we have another source for learning about our current core issues: each other. Over the past few months, I have suggested methods for covenantal conversations and watched and learned from our congregation as they engaged.
Two passages from our Covenant of Right Relations seem relevant at this time:
We will be compassionate with other Members:
Listen with empathy and without interruption
Seek directly to resolve disagreements with others
These are pretty straightforward by themselves: listen and be direct. Together however, they suggest something new: be gracious. This means showing kindness, gentleness, and courtesy in our relations with one another. Being gracious with one another means that we can begin to listen with empathy and hear directly from others what is in their hearts, even if we disagree with them. This may be too much to expect outside our doors in the current culture of cruelty, but it is never too much to expect from each other here within our convented community.
Graciously,
Rev. Matthew Funke Crary
Minister of Borderlands UU
Dear BUU Board of Directors,
BUU continues to learn new means of gathering, while seeking to sustain what has carried us this far through the pandemic. Everywhere I look there’s a positive energy at BUU learning and helping us more forward:
- Each Sunday we are seeing more people join us in-person and online for sanctuary worship. Initiating a second service in the sanctuary was a natural next step. The Worship Arts and Audio Visual teams are inviting more people to join in leading worship and further developing our multi-medium approach. While we maintain and develop this worship style which has sustained us, we have begun to look into the altogether new logistics and liturgy we will need for outdoor worship.
- Our Stewardship Team has come up with an exciting campaign for this year’s pledge drive, “Water of Our Lives.” This theme will take us from the individual drops that we put into BUU all the way to the collective flow of our congregation. Working alongside Jerry and Martha has once again been an education on how to connect our many financial supporters to our institutional needs.
- The Membership Team has been hard at work to get clarity on our ICON database and plan fun activities for the many new people joining us online and in-person. I’ve enjoyed one-to-ones with several new people and am excited for our new Member ceremony later this month.
- Our Beloved Conversations: Among group has come up with their covenant and begun to plan exciting worship and art engagements in the spring. It has been a blessing to work with Jerry, Patsy, and Kristin as we seek to offer our congregation the joy of anti-oppression and multicultural worship and music.
Holding Covenantal Conversations
We have been hearing from BUU leaders this week about what they are witnessing during discussions concerning the shade sail project. As I related in an email to you all on February 8:
“I am intuiting that we are bringing feelings and thoughts from outside the shade side project into our process. Accusations of splitting the congregation and being out of covenant, observations of rising temperature and strong feelings in meetings, and the recognition that BUU folks are fragile right now all exceed the discernment process the Board and the Shade Sail team have been engaged in for several months.
As a Good Officer, serving my ministerial colleagues and their congregations at their invitation, I've seen first hand that most churches are experiencing conflict right now, but not addressing the issues at the core of the conflict. We have an opportunity to not only to have a healthy decision making process about the shade sail, but also name our core issues and begin to address them. There are many skilled facilitators who could help us navigate a congregational meeting - and/or assist us in learning what other issues we are bringing to our discernment process.”
Outside help from the Baja 4 or the Pacific Southwest Region has always been a boon to us, but we have another source for learning about our current core issues: each other. Over the past few months, I have suggested methods for covenantal conversations and watched and learned from our congregation as they engaged.
Two passages from our Covenant of Right Relations seem relevant at this time:
We will be compassionate with other Members:
Listen with empathy and without interruption
Seek directly to resolve disagreements with others
These are pretty straightforward by themselves: listen and be direct. Together however, they suggest something new: be gracious. This means showing kindness, gentleness, and courtesy in our relations with one another. Being gracious with one another means that we can begin to listen with empathy and hear directly from others what is in their hearts, even if we disagree with them. This may be too much to expect outside our doors in the current culture of cruelty, but it is never too much to expect from each other here within our convented community.
Graciously,
Rev. Matthew Funke Crary
Minister of Borderlands UU