As we head into the weekend, please take a moment to feel a quiet satisfaction for your role in helping us reach our ambitious response goal for the Ministerial Search Survey. The Search Team spent this week poring over the results, and you have certainly given us a lot to think about and a lot to work with as we build the model for our ideal candidate. We will do some of that poring and contemplating this weekend as we depart on Sunday for the wilds of Indiana and an overnight retreat.
You have also given us a lot of fodder to use in guiding our cottage meetings, which start this coming Tuesday! If you haven’t already, please sign up for one; they are being held at a variety of times and places, both in person and by Zoom. We will be circulating after church on Sunday with a paper signup sheet, or you can sign up online for any of the meetings (https://www.signupgenius.com/go/20F0A4CA4AB2BA0FD0-cottage). These meetings are a chance for us to dive deeper into some of the ideas raised by the survey and will be invaluable in helping us build the model for our ideal minister.
Looking on into November, we now have a date for our Beyond Categorical Thinking (https://www.uua.org/careers/ministers/transitions/bct) workshop, which will be held via Zoom on November 18th and 19th. The intention of this seminar is to help us broaden our concept of what a successful minister might look like. There will be an evening session on the 18th (a Friday) and a morning session on the 19th (Saturday). It is very important for as many people as possible to participate, so please try to plan to attend at least one of the sessions.
As always, if you have questions about the search process you can reach out to us on email (search(at)uucuc.org) or talk to us at church; you can recognize us by our nifty purple badges.
In loving service,
Janet Revell Barrett
Wendy Graves
Chris Hannauer
Tanja Hodges
Pat McClard
Dave Sharpe
Angela Urban
*****BONUS SEARCH TEAM CONTENT*****
Followers of this column will remember that as part of a UUA seminar at the start of the search process the Search Team all composed poems entitled “Who Am I?”, using a template provided by our facilitator. We have featured a couple of these and are happy to present a third. Who do you think is described in the following poem? First person to email the correct answer to search(at)uucuc.org gets a shout-out in next week’s Enews!
I am from Crazy Bull
From art on the walls and sculptures out back
I am from the Rawhide House
I am from Wisteria,
Whose limbs blow gently in the breeze and whose perfume scent is strong.
I am from Baby Doll and Lego
From Robin and Dave
And from Poetic to Renaissance Man
I am from the Feast of the Seven Fishes
From Spaghetti Bordelaise to gumbo
From heading to America at the turn of the century
And from moving south to form a new congregation.
A juxtaposition of the north meeting the south,
The Italian Catholics intermingling with the Southern Baptists.
I am from the moments my parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents created the foundation.