MINISTER'S REPORT (April/May 2008)

I suppose it was unavoidable that my April report should be so tardy -- but perhaps it will work just as well as an early report for May.  The unexpected change in the course of my illness, which left me hospitalized for most of the past month, was certainly not anything any of us had planned for.  But I'm very pleased by the way that so many people have stepped up to fill in.  I'm especially grateful for the way that Darrell Goodwin has taken on the role of Installation Marshal, along with the overwhelming task of organizing the details of that event.  As I have tried to say on so many occasions and in so many different ways this past month, I feel so proud and so fortunate to be your pastor.  And I'm looking forward very much to this coming weekend, and my physical return to First Parish to celebrate my formal installation as the settled Parish Minister of this congregation.

Even though I've pretty much been out of the loop this past month, this is where I see us right now.  

• Leadership Team.  The biggest challenges facing the Governing Board at the moment are simply finding the right officers to fill out next years vacancies, and pulling together a workable Finance Council in order to address our on-going budget challenge.  At the moment these tasks probably seem a lot more daunting than they really are.  We have the talent, and we have the resources too; we simply need to find the time, the commitment, and the shared sense of purpose to pull them all together.  We have all these things as well, of course -- and when they DO come together, we're all going to feel a lot more relaxed.

• Worship Team.  The way that our short-handed Worship Committee has come together to fill out the remainder of the program year, and to segue seamlessly into our summer service schedule is admirable.  I know that behind the scenes not all has always gone smoothly, but the impression of people in the pews on Sunday morning is that we haven't missed a beat.

• Pastoral Care Team.  The team of caregivers that has come together around helping me and my family during my illness is truly impressive.  And one of my greatest concerns about being ill is the way it has effectively prevented me from meeting my own responsibilities as a pastoral caregiver.  So my great hope is that we can in some way utilize some of the momentum that has been generated around my illness in order to offer these same services to other members of the congregation who require them.  

I envision our "Pastoral Care-Ring" as a set of concentric circles, or perhaps a pyramid with a solid foundation (or outer circle) of volunteers willing to offer specific services (like providing transportation or preparing a meal), a smaller group of Care-Ring Coordinators who match these services to the people who need them, and finally a more highly-trained group of Pastoral Visitors who work with me and our chaplain(s) to provide the kind of one-to-one Pastoral ministry that even the members of a very large congregation should be able to count on from their faith community.  

• Staff Support.  One very obvious problem that has emerged during my illness has to do with communications.  Because I routinely attend meetings of the Governing Board, the Trustees, and various other key committees, I am also typically in the position of being able to answer questions Barbara or other staff members may have about those activities.  But once I became ill, not only was I not around in the office to answer those questions, I no longer had the information either!  

There's no quick and easy fix to this problem, but something I think might help would implementing the practice of sending "Quick Minutes" by e-mail immediately following key church committee meetings.   These Group e-mails should be clearly identified as such, follow a standard format, and contain the following information: 1) decisions on any "Action" items. 2) the name of the Contact Person responsible for carrying out that particular activity 3) any building use implications (i.e. date/time/room).  They should be sent to every member of the Committee itself, along with ccs to office@firstparishportland.org and minister@firstparishportland.org.  I don't think this will solve the problem entirely, but it may mitigate it somewhat.

I likewise want to commend Barbara, Rebecca, Charlie and Moe for all going the extra mile during my illness.  We are a small staff as it is, with way more to do than time to do it.  Seeing how they have all continued to do their own jobs well, while at the same time pitching in to cover for me, is both gratifying and a cause of concern.  I'm certain whatever additional assistance we can provide for them would be very appreciated.

• Music Director Search.  This is something that has basically come to a standstill while I've been out of commission.  My hope is that once I am released from Rehab and have begun my Chemotherapy, that the Search Committee will convene and put together a process to have a permanent Music Director in place to begin in the Fall.

• My Timetable.  Clearly, this is proving to be a little unpredictable.  But given my current understanding, I expect to be in Rehab for another week or two following Sunday's Installation, and then to be discharged into some form of Assisted/Independent living situation, most likely at Seventy Five State Street, where I will be able to receive prepared meals and transportation to my medical appointments as well as enjoying accessible living quarters.  Depending upon how much mobility I recover, at some point I may be moving to my study at the Eastland Park Hotel, or to an accessible guest room in a private home.  Likewise, in July I will have to make up my mind about whether or not to give up my apartment on Carleton Street at the end of my lease and find more accessible permanent living quarters. 

The chemotherapy itself is scheduled to last for approximately 12-18 weeks, and consists of 4 to 6 three-week cycles of two weeks treatment and a week of rest.  At the end of that period, there is very little statistical advantage in continuing the same treatment, so another assessment is conducted and a decision made about whether to: a) wait, watch, and do nothing until the cancer recurs; b) begin an alternate form of follow-up treatment; c) begin palliative care.  Obviously, nobody can predict what kind of outcome I will receive as a result of my treatment, but my hope is that I will be at the high end of the bell curve, and feeling healthy enough to return to work full time in September.

BALANCING A BUDGET: BUILDING A RAINBOW

Rainbows aren’t typically the first thing to spring to mind when one thinks about balancing a budget. Budgets are generally about getting out of the Red and into the Black, and it doesn’t really matter how you get there. But the options are generally pretty simple: increase revenues, cut expenses, differenciate between the things you merely want and the things you really need, and get rid of the former while preserving as many of the latter as you can. And when revenues match expenses, the budget is balanced and we can all sleep easier at night.

None of this has really changed. But it’s also important to remind ourselves that “balancing the budget” is not the primary mission of a church. Obviously, we need to learn how to live within our means, and to do so in a sustainable way that also reflects the values and principles of our faith community.

But not all Red Ink is Created Equal. It’s been my experience that churches never have enough money to do all the things they dream of doing, but they always seem to come up with the resources to do the things they know they NEED to do.

My hope for First Parish is that we will use this Opportunity to have a serious conversation about the importance of the on-going ministry of our congregation to this community in the 21st century, what our actual priorities are, and how we can best fulfill this mission given the resources available to us.

When I say that not all Red Ink is Created Equal, I mean to suggest that our expenditures can actually be divided into several different categories depending upon our level of control over them and their relative importance to the success of our overall mission.

DARK RED expenditures are for things that might be thought of as Necessaries. These are often “fixed” expenses (like electricity and heating oil) which are provided by outside venders, are required (or necessary) for our on-going operations, and over which we have very little direct control other than to use less.

BRIGHT RED expenses represent our Obligations -- responsibilities which we have voluntarily chosen to take on, but are now obligated in good faith to pay. Most Personnel expenses tend to fall into this catagory.

PINK represents our Commitments. These might be thought of as expenses which we would like to take on (such as adequate health insurance benefits and regular Cost of Living Adjustments for our staff) because they reflect our values, but which we just aren’t certain we can really afford.

If all this Red Ink isn’t complicated enough, there are also VARIOUS SHADES OF GREEN. These respresent expenditures to fund the Healthy Practices that will help us better fulfill our mission, grow the church, and either save money or generate additional revenues in the long run. We all know “it isn’t easy being green.” But most of our program and committee expenses tend to fall into this catagory, as do expenses like the storm windows and

And then finally, there are our SKY BLUE DREAMS-- our vision of what First Parish might look like when we lift our eyes skyward and look to the horizon, and see our church as if money were no object, and at its best and highest potential. This is our “Castle in the Air” -- the church we WISH we could create if only we felt we could afford to build the foundations under it.

The point of this whole exersize is not to spend a lot of time arguing over whether a particular catagory of expense is Blue or Green or Red, or to try to identify and eliminate all of the “superfluous” Green and Red expenses in order to concetrate our limited resources on meeting our essential Red obligations. Rather, the goal is to give us a common language with which to talk about our historical expenditures (and how we might better manage and control them), as well as our future aspirations and priorities going forward.

We don’t often talk about our current financial situation in these terms, but First Parish actually has a balanced budget right now. It’s just not a budget that is balanced in a sustainable way, or one that adequately reflects our mission, values and priorities as a faith community. It requires us to defer important on-going maintenence to the Meeting House by drawing upon money that would otherwise be set aside for that purpuse, and is also dangerously vulnerable to inflation and the dangers of a recession. Likewise it fails to fund adequately the kinds of new inititives we might undertake in order to better serve the larger Portland community, and (in the words of Bob Greenlaw) “become the kind of church people think we are.”

In order for us to live up to our reputation as Portland’s Original Faith Community, and fulfill our mission of being “A Warm and Welcoming Place in the Heart of the City,” we need to continue to offer excellent services in the traditional areas of ministry like Worship, Education, Fellowship, Hospitality, Pastoral Care, Community Outreach and Social Justice Advocacy that First Parish has historically provided to the Portland Community for over three centuries now. And we also need to be exploring new avenues of ministry, and new revenue sources that will allow us to better serve the community as it changes and evolves in response to changes in the large culture.

Finally, if we look First Parish specifically in fiduciary terms, we might think of the church as a legacy which we have received from our ancestors and hold in trust as a bequest to our descendants. It is likewise a gift which we give to the wider Portland community, and in particular a gift we give to one another. Our individual levels of participation may vary from time to time as the circumstances of our own lives change, but the shared desire that First Parish will always be here for those who need it is at the heart of the Covenental responsibilities that hold us all together as both “people of faith” and “a community of memory and hope.”

GOING FORWARD

I. The First Step might be to bring together a “Financial Summit” this Spring in order to better define the problem and identify the tasks ahead of us, as well as fleshing out the details of the plan and the direction outlined below. The specific objectives of this/these Spring meeting(s) are:

• to bring together the people in the church who have both the institutional memory and the financial expertise to accomplish these objectives. (ad hoc Finance Council)

• to get a good handle on our actual historical expenditures, as well as our current revenue sources.

• to draft a preliminary “spending plan” (in multiple colors) which reflects both our historical actuals, and also our future aspirations, while:

a) cutting as much of the “Dark Red” as possible.
b) honoring our “Bright Red” obligations.
c) identifiying our “Pink” commitments as future goals.
d) prioritizing the various “Green” inititives we would like to begin.
e) lifting up the “Blue” aspirations we’re working for.

• to identify honestly and accurately our present and potential future revenue sources, and to begin to explore ways of improving, increasing, and expanding them.


II. “The Patch in the Ceiling”

• Following up the work of the Spring summit, we need to develop a more permanent Finance Council that includes the Treasurer, the Stewardship Team, the Planned Giving Team, a representative of the Trustees, etc. We all need to do what everyone else is trying to do, and we to do it together!

• The Campaign Begins Today to promote the vision of what we hope to accomplish, and what we will need to do in order to pay for it. We need to share the dream and recruit more partners!

• ºLiving Within Our Means” means paying as we go. Once we have identified our fixed expenses and our reliable revenue sources, we need to manage our cash flow in such a way as to pay our essential bills on time while deferring as many of our discretionary expenses for as long as we can. “Use it Up, Wear it Out, Make it Do or Do Without.”


III. “The On-Going Appeal”

• Use the enthusiasm of the start of a new church year to publicize the Rainbow Spending Plan, and how it reflects the mission and ministry of the church.

• Create some sort of Autumn “signature” outreach/fun(d)raising event in order to raise visibility and good feeling as well as additional money.

• Send sincere, year-end “Thank Yous” to ALL of our current contributors, along with annual statements reflecting their total contributions for the previous tax year.  Let them know how much we appreciate their generosity and partnership.

• Make a general year-end appeal for individuals to remember the church at the holidays.

• Make personal, one-on-one Stewardship Visits to our “Annual Givers” -- individuals who prefer to contribute to the church in one lump sum at the end of the tax year.

• Spring 2009: Every Member Stewardship Campaign to kick-off fiscal 2009-10 and “Rainbow 2.0.”


IV. Next Steps

First Parish has utilized a lot of different methods for paying the bills in its 335 year history, and it may well be that we are in a period where the paradigm is once again changing. It may well be, for example, that we DO want to be in the Real Estate business right now, simply because it provides us both with additional revenue and a tangible asset that helps us fulfill our core mission. The “four pillars” of our revenue stream will no doubt continue to be income from invested funds, member giving, fundraising activities, and building rentals for quite some time. But we can and should continue to explore alternative means of generating revenue, while at the same time attempting to enhance the sources we currently rely on.

Likewise, our Budget (Spending Plan) equals our Mission equals our Ministry. Wealth = Worth = Value(s). It’s what we do (and try to do as well as we can) in order to be who we say we are, and to become what we dream of being. The goal is NOT simply to reduce our expenses to the bare minimum. The goal is to be as responsible about ALL our expenditures as we can be, while getting as far into the Blue as we can afford to.

THE ECLECTIC CLERIC

Dancing with my daughter Stephenie


News travels quickly by word of mouth, especially in a church community. After sharing during the Candles of Joy and Sorrow a few Sundays ago the news of my illness,. I was both amazed and gratified by the outpouring of sympathy and support I have received from friends, family, colleagues, former parishioners, and of course all of you here at First Parish. I feel as though I am seeing blossoming before my very eyes the living proof of the truths I've been attempting to learn, practice, and preach with love for the past thirty years: about the values of Gratitude, Generosity, Humility and Service; and the importance of Compassion, Community, and Common Sense; and especially the power of an authentic Ministry of Hospitality to bring out the best in people, and to empower them to do good in the world, while walking together in a covenantal relationship of mutual trust, accountability, and support.

Facing a potentially life-threatening cancer diagnosis is obviously an emotionally intense experience, so I am actually a little surprised by how calm I feel. Perhaps this is simply evidence that all this expensive theological education was actually worth the money after all, but I am also well aware of the fact that I am not the first person in this congregation, nor even its first minister, to receive this kind of news from their physician, and the knowledge that I am not alone gives me great comfort. So I want to repeat my request that those of you who have had some experience with this sort of thing in your own lives will help reassure others in the congregation that it is indeed a normal part of living, that doubtlessly almost every one of us will at some point receive news like this from our own physicians, and that we simply have to have the courage and the trust to take things in stride, without worrying too much about the things we can't control, and concentrating our attention on the things we can.

By the time this newsletter arrives in your mailbox, I will have doubtlessly already started my treatments for this illness. Obviously I can't predict now how I will be feeling then, but I imagine that I will be either on medical leave or at the very least on some form of "light duty" for much of the foreseeable future. I have started keeping a "cancer blog" http://onedayisle.blogspot.com which you are welcome to read as you wish for updates on my progress. And, of course, the plans for my formal installation as the fifteenth settled minister of this congregation, on Sunday May 4th, continue to move forward on schedule.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for all of your support and encouragement during my time of trial, and especially for calling me here to Portland to serve as your minister. Although this is certainly not the start of a new ministry that any of us would have anticipated or hoped for, I have great faith that our journey together will indeed lead us to a place of deeper spiritual insight and wisdom, and that we will emerge on the other side both stronger souls and a stronger community as a result..........twj


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>From the President
Sue Veligor: Susan@cornerstoneplanning.com

I expect at this point that most of you are aware of Tim Jensen's health issue. Surprise, fear, sadness and worry are some of the many emotions/reactions that spring forth for me. One of the characteristics I recognized (and admired) immediately about Tim, when we first began our relationship, is his philosophy of identifying opportunities in all situations, including those where others tend to only see problems. Thus, as you might imagine, he already has discovered the silver lining that envelops his lung cancer. At first, it was in the context of discussing Rebecca Hines' (our new RE Director) request for financial help to pay health insurance premiums. For Tim, this request hit close to home; he knows how fortunate he is to have coverage. Perhaps this might lead the church to set a goal of providing health insurance to all staff?

An opportunity for us as a congregation, which also may stem from Tim's illness, is not unlike that which we've witnessed around such serious events as 911, whereby people truly come together, united in a mission, and in the process have expanded the bounds of selflessness. This morning when I asked Tim how he was doing he confessed to being pleasingly overwhelmed by the many offers of support he's received and went on to observe that "we need a coordinator to manage the people who want to help." Jackie Oliveri has offered to take on the role of coordinating Tim's care committee during his treatment. Jackie will send out an e-mail and include information in the Sunday Bulletin as soon as possible as to what Tim's needs are.

This month I attended a Membership meeting, a Stewardship meeting, and a Pathways to Leadership team meeting. In these meetings, the discussion has been around helping members become more near to their church: to offer regular occasions for socializing and connecting; to find opportunities for folks to develop and grow personally; and to build a society that reflects everyone's best effort.

To that end, I am excited to tell you that on April 6th and 13th you are invited, at coffee hour, to examine the many possibilities for enrichment that exist within our structure. I have asked each committee or council chair to provide a brief description of the opportunities under their purview and an estimate of time commitment. These volunteer positions will be posted in the Parish Hall with chairpersons from the respective committees nearby to answer questions and sign you up to fill one of these important roles at First Parish.

Will you join me, please, in being part of "the three legs: Time, Treasure and Talents," which Rev. Jensen often refers to when honoring the diverse contributions that define our "whole" church experience.