Some of you may know that we had a Search Team retreat with Rev. Phil last month. This was a terrific and productive event! We learned more about each other and bonded together as a team. We talked about how we wanted to communicate with each other, how we wanted to make decisions, and what we could do when conflicts arise. And we set our meeting schedule through August and assigned a number of responsibilities. In all, we were grateful to have this opportunity to begin this important work together!
As for those responsibilities, here are some of the assignments we made:
Cathy will be chair of the team and update the blog.
Esmeralda and David will be in charge of communications and the Beyond Categorical Thinking workshop (more about that later).
Tommy will be our Treasurer and will be in charge of our Documents Packet (more about that later, too).
Michelle and Laurie will work together on the survey, cottage meetings, and focus groups (you guessed it — more later!).
Libby will be in charge of our Congregational Record (ditto!).
Michelle will be in charge of arranging neutral pulpits at which our pre-candidates will preach in the spring.
Laurie will be in charge of arranging for and providing hospitality at those pre-candidate weekends.
Cathy will be in charge of interviews and candidating week.
And those responsibilities don’t even take into account the tasks that all of us will be working on together — coming up with survey questions and questions for the cottage meetings and focus groups, helping to facilitate those meetings, analyzing the results of the survey and meetings, helping to answer questions for the congregational record, helping to find documents for the documents packet, reviewing our website and suggesting changes to it, and more! Plus, of course, many of us continue to have other church responsibilities, which you can read more about in our bios.
In sum — we’re swamped! In fact, the UUA’s Transitions Handbook recommends that none of us be actively involved in other areas of the church during this time, so that we can each devote all of our efforts to this work. That’s why we may politely decline when asked to help out with other church responsibilities for the next year. Please understand that we do not do this lightly, but only so that we can maintain our focus on what is currently our primary responsibility. Thank you for understanding!