President’s June Report to the Board

The past few months have been a race to create and implement systems to keep the church running during this time of unexpected developments and sweeping change. How to offer Sunday Worship? How to maintain budget and payroll? How to be in a ZoomMeeting and other online necessities? Now that the Board and the staff have a bit of experience under our belts, we are able to take on some challenges as we continue to adjust to our new reality.

This month we are preparing for our first online Congregational Meeting. The meeting will be Sunday, July 12 at 12:30PM. The meeting will be held on Zoom and we will use an online service called Election Buddy to vote for new Board members. There is a video about Election Buddy so everyone can become familiar with the process. Everyone with internet access will receive an email ballot with a secure ID number. You simply follow the instructions and vote. For those without internet access, a mail-in paper ballot or call-in options are available.

I am happy to report that our new Interim Minister Rev. Dr. Linda Olsen-Peebles will be dropping by the Congregational Meeting to introduce herself but otherwise the Board anticipates no extraordinary challenges or issues surrounding this Congregational Meeting and elections. We hope to use this opportunity as a learning experience for everyone. Later in the year we will have more online Congregational Meetings to approve the budget and vote to ordain our DFD, Leia Durland-Jones. We anticipate more discussion, comments and secret ballots at these future meetings. So please bring your patience and good humor for this first meeting and we will all figure it out together.

In preparation for the Congregational Meeting, everyone should have received an email from the church office to update your contact information. The church has switched our office management software to a new platform called Breeze. Please open the email and set up your Breeze account as soon as possible. If you don’t receive an email or have any questions regarding the new system, please contact Sean Skally  or Caroline Heines at Office@UUcharlottesville.org.

The UUA General Assembly is happening this year June 24-28 and is a 100% virtual event. The cost is $150 per person. All are welcome and encouraged to attend. TJMC is eligible to send eight delegates to vote at GA. If you are interested in being a delegate, please contact the TJMC office for further information.

Last year, we voted to move forward with an investigation into changing the name of TJMC. Christine Gresser, Liberty Powers and David Mellor will report to the June Board meeting as we consider forming a Task Force to explore this very important issue.

Following the May Board meeting, the Board voted to make our DAF, Sean Skally a full-time employee. Sean is a dedicated and hard-working member of the TJMC staff and has consistently been putting in far more hours than his paycheck would indicate. From upgrading the office software and printer contracts to fixing the faucets in the kitchen, from securing disaster relief loans to searching for supplemental grant money, Sean has found ways to both save the church money and boost our revenue stream. Many of you know Sean because of his instructional Zoom classes. He is also the invisible hand that keeps the Sunday worship moving along. Please join me in thanking him and all the staff for all the extra time and energy that they have been giving us since the pandemic started.

I think we can all agree the staff has performed miracles over the past three months switching us from “in person” church to a completely virtual operation. The learning curve to get us to where we are now has been steep and their time online, on the phone and in front of screens has been astronomical. They had to set aside months of planning and invent completely new ways to meet for worship services, committee meetings and community groups. They had to teach themselves the new systems and then they had to teach it to all of us.! It is easy to see why our staff is even busier now than when we were meeting in person.

Looking to the future, we are creating policy and procedures for reopening the church buildings. We have already created language around weddings and memorial services. Rev. Alex McGee is working with the Committee on Ministry and a diverse group of congregants to consider how to reopen for things like the yard sale, renters and 12-step groups, covenant groups, committee meetings and work parties both inside and outside the church. There are a lot of steps between a completely closed church building and being back to worshiping together in the sanctuary. The UUA has guidance on reopening but every church and every person is free to choose whatever is in their best interest.

And finally, the June Board meeting has been moved up one week to accommodate the UUA General Assembly. The meeting will be Thursday, June 18 at 6PM. The Zoom link will be available on the TJMC website. Hope to see you at the meeting.

Stay safe and healthy!
Lorie Craddock
President, Board of Trustees

Change is in the Air and Our Work is Long Overdue

PRESIDENT’S REPORT, MAY 2020

As the month of May ends and we move into summer, I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy while we all find new ways to maintain our connections with one another during this time of physical distancing.

This month surely marks a new chapter at TJMC as we announce that the Reverend Dr. Linda Olson Peebles has agreed to serve as our Interim Minister. Rev. Peebles has been a UU minister for over twenty years and is currently Interim Senior Minister at the UU Congregation of Rockville. She will begin her ministry at TJMC on August 1, 2020 and will be a wonderful addition to our current TJMC staff. Many thanks not only to the Interim Search Committee but the Personnel Committee and our Director of Admin and Finance, Sean Skally for sorting out all the details surrounding the interim search and the employment of Rev. Dr. Peebles.

With the successful conclusion of the interim search and the end of the Pledge Drive, the Board is now able to ask the Finance Committee to prepare a budget for 2020-21. We remain committed to presenting the congregation with a balanced budget. We must keep in mind that TJMC received a $40K loan last year from an anonymous donor and the financial uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic may change our revenue stream during this fiscal year. We remain hopeful that TJMC will receive disaster relief money from the federal government but the Board is also aware that we may need to implement severe cost cutting / revenue enhancing measures in the near future.

In the past, TJMC has held a congregational meeting in the month of May to receive annual reports, vote on the budget and fill open Board / Committee positions. This year will be slightly different as the UUA recommends congregations anticipate not gathering in person until May 2021. Therefore, we will be holding our next congregational meeting online in the same way as our Sunday Services. The Board has not yet set a date for this congregational meeting. We have investigated a secure online voting option called ElectionBuddy that will tabulate our votes safely and quickly. A virtual congregational meeting will be new territory for us and we must all bring patience, flexibility and good humor to an event with that will have many moving parts. According to our bylaws, congregational meetings must be announced 30 days out so stay tuned for further details.

This month, the Board will consider a suggestion to do an all-church census during this time of physical distancing. The census would address at least three issues:

1) gather information on how congregants are doing, their needs during the pandemic and funneling the information to the appropriate teams (e.g. pastoral, RE, membership, volunteer coordinating, covenant group formation)

2) gather historical information on how individuals have participated in the church in the past/present

3) help update our church directory

As the Glenn Short Trust renovations continue, some features of the physical church building have been identified as no longer being used by our congregation—the large pulpit (currently stored in the stairwell behind the sanctuary), the pew fronts (currently stored in the sloped hallway between the sanctuary and the social hall) and a large pile of lumber leftover from previous church construction (removed from the attic to install insulation). The Board will consider what to do with these items.

This month the Board will also look for ways to continue to help the Director of Music and the tech support team with online Sunday Services. We anticipate hiring Ellie Ransom who, along with the staff and volunteers, will work to create videos and other online media using a variety of resources from our church and congregation.

And finally, even though it is likely we won’t hold in-person services for some time, the Board is looking to this document from the UUA about how to decide when the time is right to reopen TJMC.

Yours in faith,

Lorie Craddock
President, Board of Trustees

Dear TJMC Members, Friends and Staff,

I am delighted to report that the Interim Minister Search Committee has reached a successful conclusion and the Reverend Dr. Linda Olson Peebles has agreed to serve as our Interim Minister. Rev. Peebles has been a UU minister for over twenty years and is currently Interim Senior Minister at the UU Congregation of Rockville. She will begin her ministry at TJMC on August 1, 2020 and will be a wonderful addition to our current TJMC staff.

Here is a bit about Rev. Peebles in her own
words…..

My life has been committed to community building, through arts, education, service, and justice-making. I have answered various calls to leadership in service to the needs of my communities. Prior to entering the ministry, I was a singer-songwriter, a counselor to new mothers, an editor of liturgical and musical resources for the Lutheran Church in America, a teacher and arts educator, a director of a community theatre and a large summer camp, and president of a human services organization in Fairfax County. I served as a Director of Religious Education while I studied for the ministry. I was ordained in 1997.

In all my roles, I have been a supporter of families and children, and a leader for education reform, women’s health rights, peace education, and sexuality education. I was instrumental in founding and supporting the growth of a broadbased power organization working for justice for poor and immigrant people in Northern Virginia – VOICE (Virginians Organized for Interfaith Community Engagement). I worked with the UUCA leaders who support the Mayan people in Guatemala, through visits to that country, support of “accompaniers” to keep the people there safe, and contributions to the education of youth through scholarships and mentorships. And I have been honored to lead in my professional organizations, my seminary, and the denomination.

The daughter of a UCC minister and chaplain, I spent a decade studying and practicing with a Buddhist teacher and sangha. I eventually found my way to a religious home in UUism, in which my mission is “To empower all souls to be co-creators of the beloved community.” Helping others become powerful artists of their lives is the common thread that weaves together all my interests, in art, music, education, justice-making, pastoral care, and service. I draw inspiration from community builders who have come before us, reminding us that through connections and partnerships, we can come together to make the change we dream of.

Family is core to who I am. Second child of four in a family raised by a UCC minister and an English teacher, in Michigan, Nebraska and Ohio; launched into teen years in the Civil rights era, living in the DC suburbs, as my dad entered mental health chaplaincy, I became a singer songwriter on the coffee-house and protest movement circuit; married at age 20 to my college sweetheart, Dale, to move to Canada during the Vietnam years (we returned to the States afterwards, to be close to family!); lived with a grandfather as my husband got his PhD in Philadelphia, and my first two children were born; career and extended family took us to Northern VA suburbs of DC, building strong family and friends relationships, a third child born, my music performance turning to theater and teaching \and organizing. Now decades later, my father and mother have died, two of our children are married and given us grandchildren, and Dale and I live in a home we love. I realize how incredibly blessed I have been – family, ministry, friends – and I want to continue to be of service to community.

You can learn more about Rev. Peebles at her website or you can watch her sermons here, here, here, and here.

We are so fortunate to have her as our interim minister. The reasons that the interim search committee was so impressed with Linda are her abilities with interim ministry – her systems level thinking and experience with all aspects of UU congregational life, her ability to truly listen to people and groups of people, her skills at helping congregations make sense of their history, reconcile differences, and identify their goals, her focus on growing leaders in UU communities and so many other strengths too numerous to mention here.

I am deeply grateful to the Interim Minister Search Committee— Pam McIntire, Kelsey Cowger, Beth Jaeger-Landis, Greg Townsend, Larry Moulis and Matthew Diasio. They spent many long hours in ZoomMeetings putting together an interim application and interviewing candidates. Their hard work and thoughtful deliberations are to the benefit of our entire church as we move into a new chapter at TJMC.

In Faith.

Lorie Craddock
President, TJMC Board of Trustees

A Really Good Day

Greetings Beloved TJMC Church Family:

We are now in week 3 of Social Distancing and I hope everyone is beginning to find some equilibrium in this new reality. Maybe you have participated in a ZoomMeeting. Perhaps you can easily visualize a distance of six feet. Has your repertoire of hand washing songs expanded beyond two rounds of “Happy Birthday”? If any of these are true, I congratulate you on your flexibility and adaptation to the changing times.

The past two weeks look different for everyone. Some of us are working from home, some of us are homeschooling or being homeschooled. Many people are not working, either by choice or by accident, leaving us all feeling vulnerable and anxious. Some people are busier than ever, especially those working in healthcare or other essential services such as grocery stores and pharmacies. Lots of us are sheltering at home looking for ways to stay occupied. Our routines have been interrupted. In-person visits have been replaced by a screen of glowing pixels. Dogs are being walked more than ever. Trips to the grocery store feel like an episode of “Mission Impossible”.

When social distancing first started in the United States, I felt especially anxious. I closed my coffee shop and forfeited my income for who-knows-how-long. My spouse, who works for an airline, saw his monthly schedule cancel in a matter of hours. Public school shut down for my youngest child, the lab where my oldest child works closed and my son who had been studying in Italy, suddenly returned to the US to self-quarantine at home. The rug had been pulled out from under all of us.

But now that some time has gone by, we are slowly adapting—and by adapting I mean expecting new information and dramatic changes with each passing day. There are no slow news days anymore. There is always something happening and in an effort to keep up I find myself with the attention span of a housefly, going from news feed to housework to news feed to laundry to news feed to social media. I miss the comfort and routine of everyday life and the abrupt departure from it is perhaps the most challenging part of our altered existence. This is all happening so fast and I really should write some of it down to keep track of the craziness and stop my head from spinning.

And so I will.

Starting with this note, I’m going to try to keep a journal for the next several weeks (months?) while the corona virus disrupts my life and the lives of everyone around me. I encourage you to do the same. Bits and pieces of this time that we can manage to string together—the grocery list, the phone calls, the housekeeping and yard work, an odd photo here, maybe a receipt from take-out food there. From anxiety, boredom and confusion to amazement, balance and calm. For our own peace of mind as well as the bemused posterity who may stumble upon our collections years from now and laugh at our dated technology and quaint colloquialisms.

These are interesting and challenging times we live in. Our priority is to stay healthy, in both mind and body. Try not to be too hard on yourself or those around you. Your church family is here for you and we will join together again at our beloved TJMC when this is all over. I’ll bring soup.

Until then, stay safe and healthy.

Lorie Craddock
TJMC Board President