In the last couple years, we have made remarkable progress in coming together as a community, beginning to create a joint vision of our purpose and stewardship of our resources. We are coming to the end of our interim years with Rev. Linda. Just as we had hoped, our interim years have helped us see ourselves more clearly from a new perspective and we are ready to move into targeted work on goals for developmental ministry.

I am overjoyed that we have hired Rev. Tim Temerson to join us as our Developmental Minister in August, 2022!  Rev. Tim brings considerable wisdom, skills and passion to Unitarian Universalism and I look forward to him joining us in our work to build our UU community.

As we continue to adapt to the world in a pandemic, we need to reconsider goals for managing our response to COVID risk for our congregation.  When the pandemic started, our goal was to make sure that no one got COVID through participating in a church activity.  We did this to protect both our congregants and the larger Charlottesville community.  We have been successful in this goal. However, our connections to one another and our finances have suffered.  We have had decreased collections on Sundays and decreased rental income and this has severely stressed our budget.  

This month, we need to consider what direction we want to give our Reopening/Building Use Task Force. Do we want to continue with a goal of no one gets COVID while participating in activities in our church – recognizing that with new variants and surges, this may mean returning to decreased in-person participation and even closing down again?  Do we want to consider the risk of losing member participation and connection and the financial risk of limiting in-person events? What is the cost of limiting in-person contact to our members’ spiritual and emotional well-being and how do we balance that with the COVID risk to our most vulnerable members?

Once again, we had an inspiring Pledge Drive. We were successful in that our creative pledge drive team made it fun and energizing, many members considerably increased their pledges and so many people participated. Unfortunately, we came a little short of our goal for this year.  Kay, Jim and the Finance Committee have worked hard to craft a balanced budget for 2022-2023 which can continue our ministries as best we can. Sadly, we had to return to members who give the most financial support to ask, yet again, for further increases in their pledges.  This pattern of pledges not meeting expenses is extremely concerning and perhaps not sustainable.

The April board meeting will be full with preparing for our Congregational Meeting on June 5, discussing our budget, and re-evaluating our COVID response goals.  But, I want to bring up a few things we need to continue to think about in the months ahead. 

• We need to prioritize training for the whole congregation to be welcoming – perhaps in a church wide relational campaign.

• We need to think about creating a Fundraising Committee to prioritize and coordinate fundraising.
• We need to prioritize communications throughout the congregation and larger community.
• As a board, we need to set regular opportunities for Congregational Conversations.
• We need to consider renewed covenanting, ensuring healthy communication patterns, and clear structures for congregants to voice ideas and concerns.
• We need to continue to support leadership development.
• We need to reflect on the deep dive we did with the Membership and Nominating committees.
• We need to consider how we support young adult ministry.

With so much progress, so much to consider and so many opportunities for change and growth, these are very exciting times.  I look forward to many more discussions to shape and energize our congregations’ path.