Trustee Talk

Ft. Lauderdale: Another View

    Thanks to all of you who continue to write, call and email to discuss my decision not to attend General Assembly; I've been both enriched and challenged by the conversations. I also continue to be grateful that, as people of faith, we take seriously the gift of free religion we have been given, and that we struggle with the parameters of that freedom.
    My board colleague, Tamara Payne-Alex, recently returned from a trip of several days to the Fort Lauderdale Convention Center; I've gotten her permission to post below a brief reflection on her experience there:

The Future of Youth/Young Adult Ministry

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     In the last several weeks, there have been a host of rumors about the future of youth and young adult ministry within the UUA. Recent announcements about a shift in emphasis to youth and young adult ministries rooted in our congregational life  (which has been discussed for some years now) became confused with the elimination of funding for both Young Religious Unitarian Universalists (YRUU) and Continental Unitarian Universalist Young Adult Network (C*UUYAN).  In addition, there was some miscommunication at the UUA staff level that contributed to the sense that our youth and young adults were being set adrift in some important ways.

Why I'm Not Attending General Assembly

    As your UUA Trustee, I have always believed that one of my tasks was to encourage congregations and congregational leaders to make an investment of time and treasure on behalf of our liberal religious tradition.  I am a Unitarian Universalist minister who first saw the enormous potential and possibilities of our faith when I attended my first General Assembly in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1987.  I was a new UU, and in fact had married into the faith; my husband grew up in the Community Church of NY and his parents, Gladys and Isaac McNatt, had been vigorous activists for liberal religion before Bob was born. (Bob’s first liberal religious meeting was the 1958 meeting of the International Association for Religious Freedom –IARF; he was four years old!)
    At Little Rock, I first learned the power of General Assembly. Our primary purpose in gathering yearly is to conduct the business of our association of religious communities. But that is hardly the only reason to attend GA. In my years as a UU, it has become a gathering of congregations that serves to educate and to motivate, to inspire and indeed to recruit faithful leaders in our liberal religious tradition. I myself was one such leader.  At GA, I first fell in love with our free faith, and I have never wavered in my belief that liberal religion is the hope of the world.  But we cannot be a beacon, we cannot be a way station for people hungry for meaning and purpose, if we forget our heritage, our history, and the ways in which we differ from other religious traditions.  Here I take a page from my African-American heritage, remembering the old saying that unless we know where we are coming from, we cannot know where we are going.

Fort Lauderdale GA Has Issues

    No New Yorker living in the post-Sept. 11 world is the least bit surprised by the often over-the-top security measures in place here.  Residing as we do in the eternally orange zone, we long ago grew used to being asked for ID to enter any building short of a McDonalds. There are few high-rise office buildings here that aren't decked out with a webcam, poised to take a grainy shot of you and transfer it to a visitor's badge. Perhaps our town is a little paranoid, but once you've lived through a terrorist attack and remain a terrorist target, it's hard not to think about avoiding The Next Event.  Separate from all these issues, I'm a black woman in America, and thus live without any expectation of living without some kind of scrutiny.  I learned long ago to keep my ID current, to keep my temper in check, and to keep my eyes open for the names of my interrogators, in case I have to file a complaint.
    But the security challenges that have gradually been revealed in the run-up to the UU General Assembly in Fort Lauderdale are quite another matter. The recent memo  from UUA President, The Rev. Bill Sinkford, UUA Moderator Gini Courter, and UUA Planning Committee Chair Beth McGregor, has acknowledged the considerable difficulties inherent in the Fort Lauderdale arrangements, and yet asks us as board members not to move the site of our annual gathering.  If the conversation on the UU Ministers' Association chat and other venues is any indication, this request may be easier made than granted.
    There is something squirrelly about the thought of the religious community that once published The Pentagon Papers subjecting its gathered delegates and Sunday-morning worshippers to search by the Department of Homeland Security.  More than one of us who've spent the past several years preaching about the slippery slope of American civil liberties will have to decide if we feel like sliding down to Florida next June, much less explaining it to our congregations.  The estimated $800,000 loss that the Association would have to absorb in order to change venues could be just as tough to justify to the fiscal conservatives among us.   And nearly everyone seems too well-behaved to ask why the Planning Committee hasn't taken a harder line with officials who assured UU site visitors five years earlier that the convention center would be outside the security zone in June 2008.  Inquiring minds want to know....

Second Thoughts...

    One of the most enduring commentators on our system of governance is the Rev. Alice Blair Wesley, who for some years now has encouraged Unitarian Universalists to pay closer attention to lateral relations among congregations.  We should, she believes, be much more attentive to the ways that congregations can work together, support one another, even call out one another on both individual and collective behavior. Hers are provocative arguments that call congregations to re-examine their covenental relationships, and live more fully into a reimagined version of the Cambridge Platform that grounds and inspires our movement.
    If Rev. Wesley's aspirations for congregations are sound, it makes sense that some among us might be similarly inspired to speak with others about broader matters of governance. So after a lot of personal stewing about the dangers of the policy governance model and its impact on our association, I decided to speak instead with leaders in our own Metro New York District.  After all, our district itself uses the same model, and I have felt good for some years now about MNY's responsiveness to our congregations.
    It was the perfect topic for my part of the quarterly District Board Meeting, and I was really glad to have brought it up.  I felt affirmed about my distaste for the language of policy governance, with its jargon about "ends" and"owners" and other terms that make me grind my teeth.  But I was reassured, too, about the practical effect of policy governance on the ability of the district to accomplish tasks, and about the ability of leaders, within the policy governance system, to actually LEAD.  (Any one of us who serves a congregation knows how hard that can be  I heard again and again that district board members found the system of policy governance one of consistency and clarity. 
    So I await, with a lot more pleasure than I imagined, the next UUA Board meeting, where we will have a more in-depth conversation with large congregation leaders who are living with policy governance "on the ground."  I am hoping to put to rest at last my misgivings about what such a system of governance will mean to the work of our association, and whether it will mean the disruption of relational ties that are vital to every religious enterprise.  If any of my gentle readers are familiar with policy governance in their own life's work, I especially welcome your thoughts and comments.

First Thoughts.....

    So, I'm home from my first meeting of the UUA Board! After getting some much needed sleep and catching up with parish life back at my home congregation, I've had time to think about the experience and to report to you about the good work I believe we are doing on behalf of our congregations. 

    You can be confident about the dedication of the Association's board--though we have fun when we can, the workload is intense and the days are long.  Because this is the start of a new two-year cycle in which committee assignments change and new board members like myself get oriented, the meeting started even earlier than usual.  When you add to that the continuing work of the board to move to a model of policy governance and to wrestle with the unique challenges this mode of governance represents for a religious community, you get one VERY long total meeting, with lots of working groups and a retreat embedded within it!

   The toughest part of this first meeting for me was the workshops on policy governance.  I am just not a fan, and reading John Carver's book, "Boards That Make a Difference," only made things worse for me.  It was hard to be in a room filled with people who have been working hard to gain clarity between the role of the UUA board and the UUA staff (something the Carver model does very well) while fighting the nagging feeling that we were all signing up to be on the board of the United Way.  My great fear: In the desire to create clear firewalls, policy governance asks religious institutions to give up their relational  character.  My great hope:  that I'm wrong about my great fear.

   

Welcome, Everyone...

...to my first posting on this occasional, moderated blog devoted to my work as your representative on the UUA board of trustees.  I'm honored to serve the Metro NY District, and look forward to communicating with you about the work of the UUA board and about issues that concern you.  I hope this blog will also create a space for you to have conversations with me about some of these issues, and a separate posting will set out the ground rules for those conversations.  Please be in touch, and welcome!