A small congregation – defined as one with 100 members or less – is sometimes called a “family-sized church.” One characteristic of a family-sized church is that you never need to know who the “right” person is to talk with about something because pretty much if you talk to anyone you’ll have talked to everyone. The word gets around, and at that size it’s not an inefficient way for things to run.

TJMC is about two “sizes” larger than that. At approximately 450 members we are, depending on who you talk to, a large mid-sized church or a small large- sized church. At this size everybody doesn’t know everybody else, no one person can know everything that’s going on, and the communication style that works in a family-sized church just simply doesn’t work.

So who do you talk to in a congregation of our size when you have a question or a concern? It’s best, always, to go directly to the relevant person.

• Have a question about music during a service? Talk with our Director of Music, Scott DeVeaux.
• Want to know why something was or wasn’t done during an RE class? Talk to the teachers, or to our Director of Faith Development, Leia Durland- Jones. AFD? Leia and RevWik.
• Soup Kitchen? Jen Larimer. Forever Green? Johanna Woodchild and Glenn Short.
• Racial Justice Steering Committee? Sara Gondwe. Governance Task Force? Sally Taylor.
• [You get the idea.]

Sometimes you don’t know who to talk with, or don’t feel comfortable doing so. In this situation, a lot of people bring their complaints and concerns to the Board President, which is a great idea if the feedback has to do with the Board. For everything else, there’s the Committee on the Ministry. This group is charged by the Board to receive feedback about the ministries of our congregation. In our monthly meeting we share what has been shared with us and work to discern the best way(s) to respond.

You can email the Committee at com@uucharlottesville.org. If you want to talk with a person face-to-face, our Committee on the Ministry for the 2015-2016 church year consists of Doug Webbink, Ruth Douglas, Katharine Maus, Lisa Shutt, Beth Jaeger-Landis, and Cathey Polly.