By John Wodnick, Board of Trustees Trustee-at-Large
In her 2019 Sophia Fahs Lecture at the UUA General Assembly, titled “Building A Community of Communities,” Paula Cole Jones articulated a vision of governance grounded in awareness of the many smaller communities that make up the larger community of each congregation. She challenged congregational leaders to consider whether each of these smaller communities is welcomed, heard, and cared for in the governing decisions of the congregation. This is work that this year’s Board will be highlighting throughout the upcoming congregational year, in part by investing in training sessions designed by Jones to strengthen the connections we already foster through so many diverse teams and covenant groups.
I invite you to consider what smaller communities you are a part of here at UUCM. Do you identify with fellow retirees? Fellow families with young children? Fellow people of color? Fellow LGBTQ+ individuals? Fellow lovers of music? Fellow philosophers? Fellow social justice activists? Do you feel that your community’s concerns, experiences and values are being heard by the Board? Do you feel that your community contributes meaningfully to the larger life of the congregation? If you do, then you are experiencing love and justice in their most salient forms, and I encourage you to share that full, happy feeling with other people in your life who are looking for that same sort of empowering communion. If you don’t, then I encourage you to bring your concerns to the Board, to the Council on Ministries, to the ministers themselves. We are here to serve all of the smaller communities that make up our congregation. The more successfully we all contribute to that goal, the more we will grow as a congregation, and the more powerful we will become in truly making the world a more just and loving place for all.
My own experience as the Board’s liaison to the Religious Education (RE) program confirms this. Last year, there was a concerted effort to reach out to young families with children in our Religious Education program. We expanded the RE Team to include new members who had young children. Our Director of Religious Education, Judith Hogan, transformed the Tomlinson Room into a multisensory learning environment we now call the Values Room. We hired a new RE teacher, Elias Alderman, to lead programming there. As our young families with small children felt more cared for, they invited more of their peers to come and see the love and justice they were experiencing, and we began to see more young families engaging with UUCM. This is the sort of positive cycle of growth that the Board hopes to encourage this year among all of the many vibrant communities that make up the UUCM.