"A Few Simple Truths"

Let me share with you a few simple truths about religion and money.

First of all, churches never have enough money to do everything they dream of doing. Or if they think they do, then their dreams aren’t big enough. Our aspiration, literally, is to transform the world and make it perfect. But realistically speaking, we generally have to settle for simply making it a little better by our on-going presence in it.

On the other hand, churches always seem to find the money they need to do the things they know they absolutely have to do. Sometimes I can’t figure out how they do it; it simply seems like a miracle. But they do. Every time.

A big part of my job, as a professional religious and spiritual leader, is to try to empower people to bring these two realities closer together.

First Parish is Portland’s original faith community. Since 1674, this congregation has worked to create “a warm and welcoming place in the heart of the city,” where individuals of every stripe and color can come together to dwell together in peace, seek the truth in love, and help one another grow their souls into greater harmony with the divine.

It’s an important ministry, and it doesn’t come cheap. But through the gracious and grateful generosity of us all, we will somehow figure out a way to make it happen again this year.

One gift at a time….

RETREAT NOTES

The First Parish in Portland, Maine, Unitarian Universalist
Governing Board Meeting
Tuesday, September 11, 2007 -- 7:00 pm

Governing Board Members Present: Rev. Tim Jensen; Pres. Sue Veligor; V.P. Bill Dickinson; Treas. Carl Laws; Clerk Bruce Carver; Members At Large Judy Dale & Leslie Runser; Children’s R.E. (and D.R.E. Search Committee) Nathalie Hutchinson & Linda Shary; Worship Bob Greenlaw; Membership Sylvia Skillin (Chair) & Val Blais

Also present:
Trustee Representative: Beth Marshall
Faith In Action: Artha Freebury (Co-Chair)
R.E. Search Committee: Kathy Stewart
Guests: Betsy Whitman; Leigh Mundhenk; Cate DiMarzo; Stewardship Stephanie Eglington (Chair);

Co-Facilitators: Ellen Alcord & Grace Valenzuela

The Leadership Retreat starts off with a potluck on prior evening (Friday, September 14 from 6PM to 8PM). Participants engage in a round robin share time. Attendees express their visions and hopes. Reverend Tim facilitates the discussion.

Morning retreat starts off with a “Coffee and Pastry - Mix and Mingle” from 8 to 8:30AM. Meeting convenes at 8:30AM

I. Welcome and Introduction. Participants respond, “What are you looking to get out of today’s retreat?”

II. Covenant is created, to provide guidelines for retreat communication, process and self-expression

III. Outcomes for the day: retreat Agenda is distributed and reviewed

IV. Revisit existing goals and priorities from 2006/2007
a. Copy of the three First Parish 2006 Leadership Retreat goals are distributed: comprehensive membership development strategy; increased stewardship; and, connection to larger denomination and community.
b. Definition and clarification of the three over-arching goals/outcomes are elaborated upon and word-Smithed.
c. We name the accomplishments and efforts that have unfolded over the 2006/2007 church year, as related to these goals.

V. Redefining and expanding upon goals, priorities and needs assessment. Small groups brainstorm, by establishing extended goals and benchmarks. Next steps are identified as they relate to each goal/outcome, and we identify “who” may be involved in implementing these goals and needs.

VI. Report back to the large group. Small groups report out on their ideas, priorities and next steps (attempting to identify: resources, challenges, council/committee responsible, and timeline).

VII. Next steps.

VIII. Evaluation of the retreat. Check out.

Meeting adjourns at 12:35PM.

Respectfully submitted,
Bruce D. Carver, Clerk

GOAL #1. NOTES FROM MEMBERSHIP GOAL GROUP 9-15-07

First Parish has Developed and Implemented Comprehensive Membership Strategies that feed the Heart- fire.

Priority activities

1. Developmental Engagement (We need a better phrase here) but our intention is to integrate RE activities and programs intentionally and age-appropriately into Faith in Action and other areas of FP life. ( long term continuing objective) and (CRITICAL SHORT TERM INITIATIVE) keep current 4th and 5th graders interested in FP into their middle school and high school years.

This age group influences their family's church attendance very powerfully. This is the age when sports and increased school load competes for time and interest. If the youth are not interested, the family will stay home because the kids are too young to be left home alone.

Next Steps:

Encourage collaboration by RE/FIA/Worship -

Identify activities which appeal to youth and will keep youth engaged. What do we currently have available? What might we add?

Communicate these initiatives through RE/Website/other PR ideas

Resources:

Internal - RE – Natalie Hutchinson, FIA- Betsy Whitman, Worship – Bob Greenlaw; FP members and friends who have experienced good youth activities and programming. Possible focus group with youth.

External – UUA , NED RE consultant, other churches with successful youth activities.

2. Age Group Programming and Strategies – recognizing and providing programs for lifespan interests.

Next steps:
Identify Adult RE person/team
Focus groups for various age groups
Identify age appeal of current offerings (e.g., Building Your Own Theology, Articulating Your Faith)
Identify new offerings to meet identified interests. (possible topics: UU and Family Life,UU and Spirituality, UU and Sexuality (OurWholeLives program), UU and Christianity).

Resources: Membership/Life Long Learning/FIA/Minister/VALS (Values and Lifestyle Survey material for our area), UUA.

3. Calendar – to provide visual overview of church year activities with annotations to help everyone understand what's happening when. (What is a Water Communion anyway?)

We also need to code what activities are open and what are closed groups on the calendar. Our current calendar shows groups that rent space here and doesn't clarify whether they are open to FP members.

Next Steps:
Ask Admin. Asst for suggestions -
Ask each Committee/Program/Activity to give their dates to office
Put calendar on Website, in Newsletter, print for Parish House and Vestibule

4. Public Relations – Communicating about the activities of FP is vital to Growth. No one is doing that job now. Need job description, then a call for member who might be interested ASAP.

Next Steps: Val Blais will search UUA Interconnections and other UUA sites, talk to Tim, and bring info to Membership, and to other councils, maybe at GB.


We rewrote GOAL #2 to read as follows:

"First Parish has developed a culture of generosity and stewardship strategies that allow us to meet our commitments, sustain our values, and support our vision."

These responsibilities, values and vision include:
• General budget in the black
• Staff compensation (with benefits) according to fair compensation guidelines
• Accessibilities of building
• Make a difference in the world through advertising, outreach, and Faith-in-Action

Strategies include:

Development comprehensive Fundraising/Stewardship Plan, including:
- Annual budget drive
- Special events
- Building use/rental
- Planned giving – L. Shary, T. Rogers, and W. Bonney will organize
- Grants

Develop culture of generosity
- take ownership of endowment; behave like we’re all trustees
- be a lover of mankind; believe that we are all angels
- communicate real numbers relating to prior week’s attendance and financial support of outreach through:

o Stone Soup
o Pulpit
o Weekly bulletin
o E-mail blasts

Build and maintain Stewardship Team under umbrella of Finance Council
- remembering that canvass people are only one aspect of Stewardship
- recruit folks to run special events
- planned giving team
- transparency of church finances


GOAL #3

First Parish established strategies that increase connection to and involvement in the larger denomination and community.

All Goals need Extraordinary Amounts of Communication between Committees and from Committees to Congregation!!!!!!

1. Create a Community Forum
• Activities/Tasks: Willing agreement of respective committees, secure governing board support, find contacts who have knowledge of people in various community roles, $?

• Challenges: Find a leader (Bill & Janet), organization

• Responsibility: Bill Dickinson will lead a cross-functional team

• Date: Spring of 2008

• Benchmarks: Minimum of 2 forums held by June 2008

2. Implement National UU goals locally
• Activities/Tasks: Awareness of what the goals are, move global thought/idea to local action, team up with other faith communities/committees, find a leader, scalability (getting people to see there are small and large things to do.

• Challenges: Apathy, scalability

• Responsibility: Faith in Action??

• Date:

• Benchmarks:

3. Attend local, district, and national UU events. Also, attend UU presidents, RE Director, etc. events.
• Activities/Tasks: Find out when and where meetings are, attend.

• Challenges: Finding enthusiastic and interested members to attend.

• Responsibility:

• Date:

• Benchmarks: When a First Parish member attends a meeting

4. Encourage members, church employees, and church leadership to participate in ecumenical and/or interdenominational groups.

• Activities/Tasks:
• Challenges:
• Responsibility:
• Date:
• Benchmarks:

5. Get more members involved in Faith in Action.

• Activities/Tasks: have a Faith in Action Sunday

• Challenges: Apathy,

• Responsibility: Faith in Action leadership?

• Date:

• Benchmarks: Sufficient # of people to carry out Faith in Action’s goals.

6. Broadcast to the larger community who we are as a church and what we offer.

• Activities/Tasks: On-going banner program, press releases to local papers about activities Church is involved in, radio ads, new signage

• Challenges: Who will lead,
• Responsibility: PR person, governing board, all members

• Date:

• Benchmarks: When any Portland citizen can speak to what that big stone building next to city hall is all about.

7. Develop a way for members to comfortably talk about our church and our faith to outsiders.
• Activities/Tasks: Organize conversation to talk about “talking about” First Parish to friends and neighbors.

• Challenges: Isn’t religion a private issue, it’s not polite to talk about, don’t want to be seen as proselytizing.

• Responsibility: Leslie Runser

• Date: 12/1/07

• Benchmarks: Every seat in church filled on “Bring a Friend Sunday.

SEPTEMBER MINISTER’S REPORT

Under ordinary circumstances I will attempt to e-mail my report to the members of the Governing Board prior to the meeting. In this instance I hope you will forgive me for handing it to you at the meeting itself.

General Observations: it’s great to be here, I’m gradually settling in, keeping plenty busy, slowly unpacking. I appreciate all of the excitement and enthusiasm about my arrival and the start of a new church year, and share it.

Committee on Ministry met last Sunday, and has trimmed itself down to five members as stipulated in the By-Laws: Betty B (acting chair), David B, Alex L, Leigh M and Sally W. On the strength of my assurances that a minister is not a piece of equipment whose warranty becomes void if not properly installed, the COM accepted my recommendation to plan for an Installation service in the spring rather than this fall. The main work of the Committee will be to learn and implement the “Assessing Our Leadership” evaluation and review process, as stipulated by our Letter of Agreement.

Worship. Our Ingathering Intergenerational Water Ceremony seemed to come off relatively smoothly, with only a few predictable glitches and 144 souls in attendance. Following Bill D’s inspiration, my hope/goal now is to work to routinely double that number, so please start thinking about inviting your friends. I’m still in the process of figuring out how best to “manage” recruiting worship leaders, children’s storytellers, chalice lighters, guest speakers, etc. but trust that this will all work itself out in relatively short order.

Membership has been hard at work preparing for our Ingathering Sunday – we have a new nametag stand, and are in the process revising many of the materials which we make available to newcomers. Samples are available.

Stewardship has pretty much been operating independently without the need for much participation from me, and is planning to covenant with our Visiting Stewards and kick-off the annual budget drive and stewardship campaign on September 30th.

Religious Education has developed a draft job description for the open DRE position. Sunday School classes will begin this coming week.

I look forward to seeing many (if not all) of you again this weekend at our Leadership Retreat!

THE ECLECTIC CLERIC - “It’s a New Day at First Parish!”

Which really isn’t saying much, when you stop to think about it. I mean, isn’t EVERY day pretty much a new day, no matter where you are? But notwithstanding my overly-zealous semantic literalism, there sure seems to be an awful lot of energy around First Parish these days, and even a newcomer like myself can notice it. An air of excitement and anticipation. With just a whiff of expectation and urgency. Great things are just around the corner. Assuming that the roof doesn’t fall in first.

We’ve typically been told from childhood that “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” and “slow and steady wins the race,” or that “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” So why do we have such a hard time believing it? Is it merely the accelerated pace of our 21st century lifestyles, and the desire for instant gratification cultivated by our consumer economy? Or is there a more fundamental inconsistency between our dreams and our means, and the fact that we generally tend to think a lot quicker than we can do?

Likewise, there is a vast landscape of possibility between “Perfection” and “Catastrophic Failure.” But at least if we know our desired destination, and can see it clearly in our mind’s eye, we are able, in the words of Thoreau, to “advance confidently in the direction of [our] dreams,” and “meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” By endeavoring to live the lives which we have imagined, we move beyond that “invisible boundary” after which “new, universal and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within” us, and we learn to measure our success according to the things we already do well (and can learn to do even better), or can easily learn to do without. “In proportion as you simplify your life,” Thoreau continues, “the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.” Or in the words of that old, familiar Unitarian hymn “The goal may ever shine afar; the will to win it makes us free.”

The passage I’ve been citing concludes with one of my all-time favorite quotes from Walden: “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.” The discipline of building a solid foundation capable of supporting everything we imagine for our church isn’t nearly as exciting as the original act of imagination itself, but without that foundation we might as well just be daydreaming. Safely navigating the narrow path between Patience and Progress, Frustration and Persistence, Tedium and Tenacity, Desire and Commitment, may not always feel like the most rewarding journey on the planet. But ultimately it’s what makes the difference between wishful thinking and having dreams come true…………………………twj