What a busy month! And what a great Annual Meeting we had on May 17th! The Board feels fortunate to have a forward-thinking membership that is excited about moving into the Congregation’s transition era. In case you missed the meeting: By formal resolution the Congregation voted unanimously to designate departing Rev. Ortman as Minister Emeritus. In addition, we reaffirmed our commitment as a Green Sanctuary, and voted to designate the Congregation as a Fair Compensation (Committed) congregation, committing us to a five-year plan to meet the UUA’s Fair Compensation guidelines.
As if that weren’t enough, we announced that the Board, on the recommendation of the Interim Search Committee, entered into a two-year contract with the Rev. Dr. Justin Osterman as Interim Minister. We are thrilled to have Rev. Osterman joining us and look forward to his guidance as we work through the next two years of reflection, education and action toward a new settled minister. If you want to learn more about interim ministry and the process of searching for and calling a new settled minister, a good place to start is the UUA’s Transitional Ministry webpage at www.uua.org/careers/ministers/transitions/. There are a number of useful publications there that can be browsed or downloaded.
UUA General Assembly (“GA”) is approaching from June 24th thru 27th, in Portland, Oregon. It is not too late to make plans and register to attend GA and represent the UUCM while you are there. If you want to know more about GA, you can log on to http://www.uua.org/ga or contact one of our ministers or me.
I hope everyone will be able to attend the June 21st celebration marking Charlie’s own transition. We wish him the best as he and his wife, Judy, move to Rhode Island where he will serve as interim minister of First Unitarian Church of Providence.
If you have any questions about the work of the Board, or anything you want to bring to our attention, please call me at (973) 803-9274 or email me at merninmj@gmail.com (I am migrating to a new email address).
In the faith,
Michael Mernin
President, Board of Trustees