Thank you to the many people who filled out the minister search survey this past weekend; you pushed us from 33 to 49 percent of our goal of 200 respondents.  By the time you read this there will be fewer than three days left in the survey window, so if you haven’t completed your survey at https://uucuc.org/ministersurvey then please do so as soon as you can.  And if you have already filled yours out, please reach out to your fellow congregants and nag, er… ask them to do theirs as well.  The more responses we get, the more complete a picture we have of the congregation’s desires.  You don’t have to be a member to register your opinions; we want to hear from everybody who considers themselves a part of this church family, whether they’ve signed the book or not.

Looking past the survey, we will be spending the month of October doing a deeper dive into your feelings about our next minister in the form of cottage meetings and focus groups.  The cottage meetings will be gatherings of members and friends in which we will have guided and general conversations about the church, its history, and your visions for its future.  Some of these meetings will be held at church, some on Zoom, and some in people’s homes, so there should be an environment that will appeal to you.  Focus groups will be gatherings of people involved in specific areas of the church: religious education, for example, or music.  Those conversations will center around the role the minister should play in those specific aspects of church life.  Like the cottage meetings, these will be offered in a variety of venues.

Once the focus groups are completed, the Search Team will withdraw into its “cone of silence” and use what we have learned to construct a profile of the church that will be an important part of our Congregational Record, the packet of information about our church and the local community that will be our introduction to those ministers searching for a church home.  Thank you for all of your help and participation!