Rev. Phil Lund  0:05  
Well welcome everyone to the first of three webinars that your congregational life staff is putting on this winter and early spring. There's going to be one in March, we're going to have one in April as well. We'll talk about those at the end of the this webinar. This particular webinar, though, is about sharing worship, and all the other webinars to are going to be about sharing amongst congregations. And in a moment, we're going to be hearing from three different groups of folk around the country who are, are sharing worship right now we have a group in Northeast Wisconsin, we're going to hear from a group in southern Arizona, we're going to hear from and a group in the mid coast and down coast regions of Maine. So that will be me, and also one of your hosts, Erica Barron. And also, Sarah Schurr, one of our hosts. And I'd also like to thank Beth Casebolt and Amy Kent, who are here helping us with the tech. So, Sarah, I think believe you have a chalice lighting for us and then we'll hear from the folks in Wisconsin.

Rev. Sarah Schurr  1:23  
I do indeed. So I'll go behind me to light our chalice. I bring you the words of Hope Johnson. We are one working, eating, laughing, playing singing, storytelling, sharing and rejoicing. Getting to know each other, taking risks, opening up, questioning, seeking, searching, trying to understand. Struggling, making mistakes, paying attention, asking questions, listening, living our answers, learning to love our neighbors, learning to love ourselves, apologizing and forgiving with humility, and being forgiven through grace, creating the beloved community together. We are one.

Rev. Phil Lund  2:42  
Thank you, Sarah. And now I'd like to introduce to you Reverend Jim Coakley and Marge Whitinger from the Open Circle Fellowship in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. And they have been doing some worship sharing for a while now. And then they're like, so many things happening right now. It's in the midst of being transformed. So I asked them to join us tonight to talk a little bit about what they were doing before COVID. What what that kind of transformed into during COVID, and then what their vision for the future might be as they continue to share ministry. So Jim, and Marge, welcome. 

Rev. Jim Coakley  3:28  
It's good to be here. Oh, I'm gonna give you the background and kind of how we got into where we're at. And then Marge is going to kind of fill in where we're going in the future. So I was very active in a larger congregation in Appleton, the Fox Valley UU Fellowship for a number of years and got into lay ministry there, which eventually got me into considering seminary, and I came from a corporate background. And so I kind of went to seminary part time, now all of this is relevant, because while I was a lay minister, some of us took a hand at trying to speak or preach, I guess you could call it then. There's like seven lay lead fellowships within an hour, hour and a half drive of Appleton. And at the time, I remember a few of us made the circuit a couple of times, and I just kind of really fell in love I guess is the best way to say it with the lay led fellowships. I loved they're, they're just energy and like their Do It Yourself kind of attitude, and just all that kind of stuff. So when I went to seminary, I said it was I want to be the first minister to lay lead fellowships in Northeast Wisconsin. And the people at seminary thought that was kind of odd and an application that it was that specific, but that's what I wanted to do. And so one way or another over the last 10-12 years, that's what I've done. Some of these the fellowship I serve now four, right now during the pandemic, and so the way we got to that is while I was working full time, I had one of them a quarter time. And then eventually, a few years ago, I retired early. And I started working halftime for Open Circle where Marge is the president, and half time for another one in more than a central part of the state, Stevens Point. At that point, you know, both were not used to having a minister that often and one of the things that happened over time, is we sort of began to integrate. Now the people in each congregation didn't know each other, the leaders, but I was the one that went back and forth between the two. And so I was preaching or doing the whole service, I would do two a month, and I would repeat it at the other one. So over time, our chalice lighting words with the same, our closing words with the same, kind of began to do this similar pattern. And so that's really where we were when the pandemic started. And somewhere in there, I had also pulpit filled for the Fellowship in Green Bay once a month, about three years ago, so they knew who I was as well. Well, that's important because when the pandemic hits, Stevens Point didn't they're a very, very small fellowship, probably about 20 members. Currently, they have about 12, that show up on a Sunday morning. They could, they're paying me out of what's left over from an endowment. And they felt that there's no way I could give them 20 hours of time a week during a pandemic and they were right. So they cut it to quarter time. And so I reached out to the Green Bay Fellowship and asked them if they were interested, and they were right away. So that's how we got three congregations. And the second that the pandemic hit back in March, we had to go virtual on a moment's notice. Well, fortunately, I had this corporate background, where for the last five years, we didn't even have phones on our desk, everything was a Skype meeting. And I was very, very familiar with that technology. So I just jumped in with both feet, not even really knowing how Zoom worked. And so the first couple of months, I see Marge smiling, it was a little rough. But we eventually kind of figured out what works, what doesn't work. And then Door County, who I had also are up in Ephraim, Wisconsin, way up on the very tip, had to approach them, because they've always been, I've always guess, preached there, if they would be interested in a quarter time contract, they didn't want that. But they got really, really, really tired of trying to create recorded services and sending stuff out every week. So within a couple of months, they started coming in. And so now they participate whenever I'm preaching, which is the first and third Sundays. So that's why I say I serve four. Um, so what happened with the pandemic, it was way more than the technology. We had to consolidate everything very quickly. So within what by the summer, we had one calendar across all four fellowships. And so we all were following who was going to speak, we have guest speakers that come in when I'm not there. But I'm actually it turns out, a lot of the people are really uncomfortable worship leading with Zoom. So I'm the worship leader when I'm not the speaker, because I'm very, very comfortable with it. And that just has worked out. Within I think a month we burned out our volunteers trying to help us with tech support. So we actually hired someone to just run the Zoom services because somebody needs to keep track of who's in and who's out while we're speaking. Now, that's all fine and dandy. So we figured out how to do the service, but the most important thing, and this is what I kept saying is we need to figure out a way to keep the community going. Because I know all congregations it's about community, but little fellowships, community is, everything. You go there because of the people and you stay for the sermon is what I always have said. And so we needed to make sure that it was more than just people showing up and listening to music and me talk, right? I can do that on a Facebook, send it out to them or something. So right from the very beginning, we've done breakout sessions at the end of the service by congregation. And so the service goes for about 40 minutes. And we make everybody knows how to do it now but in the beginning of it's tough. They have to put the initials of which fellowship breakout session they want to join in the beginning of their name. So it sorts it really easy for the tech guy to find it. And then at about 10:40, we open up the breakout rooms. And there's always a facilitator for each one. And they lead announcements, joys and concerns. And then they always are given one or two questions that tie back to the sermon in the service, for discussion. And it's turned out to be a big hit. They usually keep going till 11:30. And then they usually don't want to stop. And often we leave the rooms open till noon. So I'm just floored that people are willing to sit there for two hours on a Zoom call to go through the service, and then this discussion. So um, I think that's really all I wanted to say, that's kind of the gist of it. And I'm going to turn it over to Marge.

Marge Whitinger  10:49  
You know, when I think about where what we've evolved into, is, I have to, if there is a good thing about COVID, I have to give credit to COVID. Because what it did through the Zoom ability is that we were able to put faces to names, which you don't do when you're just sharing the minister. And he's there on one week and by you another week. And all of a sudden it was like, Okay, I know, I recognize that person, you'd say hi to them on Sundays. And it just got it was it was a very warm feeling. As as a president, though, I was finding things a little frustrating, because of course, we were shutting down. And then there were some people that didn't have capacity, you know, within their homes to do the Zoom. And, and I felt very much like I was reinventing the wheel. And the other presidents I had gotten to know one very well, because we would get together and do Jim's review annually for the last couple years. And so I got to know her a little bit. And the idea came up that why don't all four of us talk. And so the president from well, myself from Open Circle, the one from Stevens Point, the one from Green Bay, and then the one from Door County, we started to meet every other Sunday night. And initially it was more like, just kind of, you know, getting to know each other. What are the difficulties that you're having in your individual congregations? What are you struggling with? How have you problem solve different issues related to COVID. And then it got even further. And I was thinking and and then Jim had talked about sharing the tech person, we were running real thin on people in our congregation that could troubleshoot the tech situation. And Green Bay had a very strong individual that they had hired. And so we reached out and he was willing to take on ours also. And so that that's how that evolved. And that was that was very, very, very good. The other piece is we, you know, we got together and we were talking about the concerns that we had. But we've found out that each other with our solutions, we could not have to do it individually. So we were talking about our covenants, what is your covenant look like? This is what ours looks like, Oh, I like that phrasing there. And then it was it was kind of like policies and procedures. And then the idea was because we were all kind of financially worried, let's say, that it was almost like Okay, why can't we share some someone beyond Jim? So if you're having a guest speaker, and how about have you do one guest speaker a month, and we'll do one guest speaker a month, that'll save each of us about $270 a month, and then that portion of our service would be recorded, or live stream because we were sharing our services. It just it all started to fall into place. And we were getting really creative and very much enjoying this. The other thing that we all struggled with was religious education. All of us had made attempts at it. It was a little bit scrappy, the children, I think part of the issue was that, you know, they're on Zoom all week long with their classes and so on Sunday, do they really want to sit through RE on in a Zoom format. And so the way that we were doing it wasn't going to work now. And yet we didn't weren't sure what to do with it, because all of us had from a handful to maybe five to six children to have RE with. And so Jim was very inventive. And he said, you know, I'll take a whack at that because I if I do 2 Sunday sermons a month, then the other, it'll allow me time to then work on these extra things that really all of us would benefit from. And so again, it wasn't just each one trying to figure out how to how to approach RE, we were able to combine our efforts, which made a whole lot of sense. So then we were we were very, you know, getting along very well. And we decided maybe we should talk to our have our Treasurer become involved and our other vice presidents and so it got to be a little bit of a larger group. And then Jim had verbalized that, you know, all of you pay me differently, and I thought, well, why can't we all do this together, and so it ended up that Open Circle. And this is, again an evolution because we had talked about different possibilities to solve this. But we're going to decide or we're going to have the Open Circle treasure and bookkeeper take care of the payments for all four groups rather than one writing a check one doing a direct deposit, or however, are one paying at this time of the month or when paying at that time of the month. And so it really cleaned up things for Reverend Jim also. Ah, talked about getting the savings. Okay, so then, you know, right now we decided that part of it is we we think this is a great idea, we think we should probably formalize it since we're getting into a financial piece. And so I reached out while I've been reading different resources on you from UUA, which is wonderful all about small congregations and sharing staff, etc. So I reached out to Reverend Phil, and he was a guest in one of our meetings and, and it was like, Oh, my gosh, I couldn't write fast enough to keep up with everything that he was bringing to the surface. So that you know, like a memorandum of understanding or to really look at what Jim is doing for us and create a tier system. And so all of the President's meet with Jim on a weekly basis. And so we all kind of were talking to him about what Reverend Phil had enlightened us on. And he said, you know, let me take a whack at this. And so he did come up with a three tier system based on halftime, quarter time, like eighth time, and then kind of a ala carte situation. And so we're in the process now of really sifting through that and having it makes sense for each of us and meeting all of our needs. So again, really exciting stuff. And we're really enjoying working together on it. Then Mike, the Vice President for Open Circle, happens to be a professor from Marion University in business. And he said, Well, what we need is a memorandum of understanding. And I thought, Oh, boy, I know another thing I'm not very familiar with. And so he pulled one together. He's been president of Rotary and a number of community, you know, clubs out there. And so he put one together and again, that's something that we're working through. So again, we aren't, we haven't figured it all out. But it's really exciting. And, and we're working through it. The other thing, when I guess jumping from that to where are we going to go after COVID? Because of course, many of the people in our congregations are over 70, they've been vaccinated. And so what are our next steps.We decided that we were going to maintain Zoom, even after we open up fully, the reason being is because we live in Wisconsin, and our weather, it can be pretty challenging at times, this will allow us to have people that don't feel safe, venturing out, continue to have access to our services. Also, in years past, there's probably eight couples that go down to Arizona during the winter. And we lose track of them. And we really miss them. And they're now able to be involved with our services every Sunday, even though they're states away, which is just I just a really, really a bonus. And then to you know, if you're not feeling quite right, you don't want to do I want to go to church and expose everyone to my cold, but I really don't want to miss a service, that again, allows them to have that access to the service. The other thing that we found out is, and I think I'm not sure Jim mentioned it, we've talked about so much already. The other thing that we've shared is different different. congregations are good at maintaining connections in different ways. So I believe it was the president from Stevens Point said, you know, why don't we do a book club discussion. And so Jim grabbed that and he just ran with it. And it's been really neat. So once a month, we have a book club discussion, people can join in, sometimes he's got a handful of people sometimes he's got, you know, up to 20 people are more. The other thing we've done is Ted Talks or we view a movie on our own and then we get together and talk about it. We most recently did Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, really cool movie and we talked about that. Different books, suggestions come from the different people in each congregation, movie discussions and then now we're doing Jim is starting a series on UU 101. And so again, all of us are going to be involved in that we don't have to do it all individually because sometimes, you know you've just got a pocket of people that are doing all of the actions and they get tired and now we can share that and and you know share the ideas. In Open Circle and Fond du Lac we happen to be have a very socially engaged congregation. So we are involved in things I just made a list because I just think it's dazzling and it's really neat for the other congregations to see that even though we're small we do activities were involved in challenge days, stone soup, which is for feeding the homeless and the poor in our community. Chalice circles are very vibrant in at UU, Earth justice now, Avenue vision humanity project, celebrate community, citizens climate lobby, United for diversity, these are all things that we that we have various people that are very engaged with and that they're able to speak to anybody about it. I just, it's just, when I started going to Open Circle, I said, it's this is like going to a buffet. And you can just kind of pick the things and try that. And maybe I'll try that next time. And, and it's just wonderful. And I just think what's magical about all of this working together, is that we can spread that. And I guess that's it. If anybody has questions, I would be happy to answer but you can see I'm kind of fired up about it. I think that we've come a long way. And we're gonna continue.

Rev. Phil Lund  20:49  
Yeah. I just want to say we're gonna do the questions at the end. If that's okay, Marge, we'll do them all together. And so Jim, 

Rev. Jim Coakley  20:57  
I'm just one thing when we go back to being in person, I think most of them there. Again, each congregation wants to do it differently. The larger ones, pretty much always want to have a live speaker in front of them when they're together live. But the smaller one like Stevens Point is moving towards, you know, I'm only going to be there once a month, and they're probably going to Zoom in the other services from the other congregations. Because that's they feel comfortable. That's what they can afford. Also, I'm really tired of driving an hour and a half in a deer ridden dry road in the dark to have four people show up for a book group and Stevens Point. So we're going to continue with all of the adult offerings being Zoom. And so then we'll have more people in people are safe. So 

Rev. Phil Lund  21:45  
okay, wonderful. There was one quick question, maybe you can answer what size is open circle? Marge?

Marge Whitinger  21:51  
Oh, yeah. between 50 and 60. Members?

Rev. Phil Lund  21:59  
Yep, got it. What I love about this story, though, is you know, it is kind of centered around worship. And then you've just shown how once you make that connection, and start those partnerships, just all sorts of things can happen. And there's just so much potential as we hopefully come out of the pandemic, to just really transform the way things are done in those small congregation. So thank you so much. And now we're going to hear from Sarah is going to be joined by Reverend Tina Squire from Sky Island, UUA in Arizona, and we're going to talk about the Baja Four. 

Rev. Tina Squire  22:35  
Hi.

Rev. Sarah Schurr  22:36  
Hi. 

Rev. Tina Squire  22:37  
Hi. 

Rev. Sarah Schurr  22:38  
So Tina, where are you? I'm looking at my screen. Well, let me just introduce you everybody. This is the Reverend Tina Squire. She is the minister at the Sky Island, you you in Sierra Vista, Arizona, it's about 74 members. And I invited her to here today to talk about the Baja Four, which is the coolest thing in the Pacific West these days. So and we I can you know, we can dialogue a little bit. But first Tina why don't you just tell us all about what is this amazing Baja Four?

Rev. Tina Squire  23:14  
Well, it's really interesting hearing from Wisconsin, we're kind of like a flip of that. We are for churches that do worship together. And it started, we already had something called the Baja Four between our churches, we'd have a picnic once a year, and it was kind of not vibrant. But the ministers met once a month. And that's an hour and a half drive each way from me up to Tucson, because I'm near Tombstone. And, but it was so worth it, you know, to get to know the ministers. And so we had a good relationship. And when all this was starting up, the minister of the largest church, which is about a 290 member church, reached out to all of us and said, Hey, she she's from the east coast and has colleagues there. And it was really the the pandemic was getting bad fast. And she said, I think it would be great if we did a joint worship, and then we'd have more energy for other things for our churches. And so right after she got in touch with us the 15th of March, she was forced because of being a bigger church, that church had to have a streamed service. The three of us continued and had on the 15th, our final in person service. And then by the 22nd, we had put together a service together, videoing our parts. We put it together and we put it up on YouTube. And so the I never thought of myself as a small, small church. I sort of always thought of that one big church, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tucson that had a lot of staff. The other two churches had some staff but lost, one of them lost them and so the way it works is once a week the ministers just meet and talk and iron things out. And then the next day, we will meet with the whole worship team. So there are two musicians from the big church, there's one musician from the medium sized, there was another musician at one point, we have one RE person has really got training and really experienced. And among us, we come up with what we're going to do for the service. And now we're at the point we plan several weeks ahead. So you know, so that the musicians have an idea about what they're going to do for music and how they're going to put it together. And one thing we've done is we gathered our gathered our resources, and we pay one of those musicians to be the Baja Four music coordinator, above and beyond what he's already doing for that church. And at first, you know, oh, should we, you know, should we pay by population? No, we just, it's just a quarter, I figured that was smart. That's what we do. And we're not doing a lot of worship. So, you know, our budgets pretty wide open right now and at my little church, so we put together this worship in our different parts, we take turns leading. So each one of the four ministers will be lead throughout, you know, I do it once a month. And that you may do them, you may do the homily, whatever, or you may just be chasing every other everyone else down to make sure their pieces are in. And, and we come up with sermon arcs. So we did, we did a whole series, we just did one on covenant. Now we're doing one on taboos, things that hard to talk about. So So that's how we work. We have an intern who was hired before the pandemic to work with two of the churches. So of course, she's actually working for all of us. And it's been really, really helpful. And, and the way we put up our service on YouTube, and some of the churches preview it together, I just put it up and you go whenever you want, and I send out a link. And people know when to you know, they can go. And each of the churches has their own social hour every Sunday, to be in contact with our own people. And we do different things. Some churches have Vespers, I have a book group. And again, I think I will also continue to do the book group on Zoom, because we travel a lot of miles to get together, Arizona is pretty wide spread out. And this church in Sierra Vista has people coming half an hour to an hour away to come be with us. So it's a lot easier to meet together that way on Zoom. And I'm trying to think so I think it's working really well, the ministers and the worship team really trust each other. But I wonder about afterwards. And so we're starting to plan. It's as if we're really far ahead. And we're trying to bring our congregations along. They love the worship, but they don't really have a connection with each other. And so we have a facilitator who's going to help us work with some pretty organic groups coming together. Will our financial groups, do audit help each other do audits? You know, will we share RE resources? Will we have shared affinity groups? And so I think that's our weak point is, we are so connected, but our church congregations aren't as much. And we're trying to figure out how to make that happen. For future.

Rev. Sarah Schurr  28:35  
One of the questions I think that that people would like to hear about as what's it like to be the little congregation in this partnership? Because you you're small, and then you've also got Borderlands and Monta Vista, Mountain Vista, which are medium sized, and you've got Tuscon, which is big. So how that work? Do you get stomped on by the big kids?

Rev. Tina Squire  28:56  
I never. First of all, right from the beginning those other ministers, there's something about being in Arizona, no matter what denomination you're in, that we're so spread out that we really value each other. And really, when we get to meet we really support each other. Clergy networks are really strong I found here. I used to live on the east coast. And I feel like they're stronger here because we just don't have that connections. You know, there's not another church around the corner. So right from the beginning, we were very collegial, very supportive. There. And so the, I never thought of myself as a little church, I thought of the three of us and the big church. And I think that's sort of how we functioned. And the big church. I mean, the only reason that it is different is that they you know, they have more of the staff, and we work more with them. But I've never felt stomped on again, because of geography. There's no fear that I'm going to be absorbed by this big church. I'm an hour and a half away. This church started as a carpool to the big church in Tucson twice a month and then eventually built itself up. So we're not a satellite. We weren't created by the big church, but it nourished us in the beginning. People from here wanted something wanted to be UU. And slowly over the years built that up.

Rev. Sarah Schurr  30:21  
Yeah, so so this this wonderful brainchild of the bar for and I will say, I've watched your services, and they're really great. So this is this was the brainchild of the ministers. How did the congregation members feel about this? How did they absorb, you know, kind of been taking this in as their way?

Rev. Tina Squire  30:43  
Well, you know, we were just so quickly tossed out of our buildings, right? It was so wonderful to have this option. And a lot of them didn't understand Zoom. We've had a few Zoom, Zoom. I mean, we do Zoom gatherings for the book group and the social hour now. And different groups have different meetings that way. But it was never like, Oh, we had been doing streaming, so why can't we keep doing that separately alone. That was a, and I'm really grateful because that would have been a lot of work. Today we were talking about Could you imagine if every work every week, we had to do this alone for our congregations. I'm halftime or three quarter time, you know, I would have to be way more than full time to do that, I think. So my church my church, knew about the Baja Four, it helped form the Baja Four, it was a concept in their head. It wasn't something that was part of everyday life. But it was something that had helped build. So it was a trusted entity. And we'd started doing these things called Pulpitpaloozas, every fifth Sunday doing a pulpit exchange. So different churches had seen different faces. And it was a way to very quickly, you know, within that week have a service up for people to see.

Rev. Sarah Schurr  32:00  
So in some ways, it was a natural extension of your pulpit exchanges. 

Rev. Tina Squire  32:06  
Yeah, we hadn't been doing it for a few years. And we just started them. We just had one. Because we had a change in ministers. And so you know, but I'm glad we had worked really well, for our churches to see in our faces.

Rev. Sarah Schurr  32:23  
And your church at Sky island? Are you the only staff?

Rev. Tina Squire  32:29  
Yeah, yeah, we have. We have a musician. But she will not be returning as our full time musician, person, she's older. And that's an issue for me, I have to re-create a worship team now. Which is going to be challenging.

Rev. Sarah Schurr  32:47  
You've been able to make use of the partnership with other with other churches, staff members.

Rev. Tina Squire  32:54  
Right. Right. And we really work together. You know, because we've been doing this so long. Yesterday are the RE person called me up to say, I don't know, does this story fit? Because I'm the lead person. And you know, and we've come to work really well together, we have one extra little blessing we have, out of the big church, the person who's now the head of the board used to work for Sesame Street as a as an editor. So it is really and she's, you know, a volunteer, we couldn't afford her. Right. So that's really helped. Although, you know, early on, I think the other ministers did a really good job of editing, you know. So we've been really lucky to have her. And we each work with her as if she were part of our church.

Rev. Sarah Schurr  33:40  
One of your ministers even went out on maternity leave, and you guys covered,

Rev. Tina Squire  33:44  
and we have another one about to go out. 

Rev. Sarah Schurr  33:46  
Goodness. 

Rev. Tina Squire  33:49  
So, yeah, luckily I and Matthew can't do that. I'm too old, and he's too male. But I guess he could have paternity leave. But he's too old, too. So yeah, it's been fun. It was really nice. It meant a lot to that church, to have us there. They they really love the Baha Four now, because we help them in that transition time.

Rev. Sarah Schurr  34:13  
So even if it hadn't been for COVID, this partnership benefited your congregations?

Rev. Tina Squire  34:20  
Oh, my goodness. Yes. I don't know what you know, it would have been very different for them. Yeah. But I think it's made us stronger. And we started out with the the saying that we are four people who are used to being in charge who really love each other. And now our saying is we are stronger together, which sounds cliche, but is very true. So

Rev. Sarah Schurr  34:41  
So what do you think will become of your partnership once COVID begins to recede?

Rev. Tina Squire  34:48  
That's my question. I mean, it's so interesting of hearing what the group in Wisconsin is doing because I think there are ways that if we get our lay groups to work together, there are things we could do together. We we're in a military town. So sometimes we'll have a family with five kids, and then they're gone. So for RE, it would be really good to have a joint some kind of joint program we could do together. It's just hard because kids are zoomed out. It's just really hard.

Rev. Sarah Schurr  35:18  
And because you are so physically far apart. It's not like you can get together in person for things very easily.

Rev. Jim Coakley  35:24  
Yeah, I mean, we could do joint projects periodically, but it's not like we could do them every week. Yeah, yeah. And I have done joint projects with other progressive churches in this town that I've gotten together. We're in a very, very conservative County, but there are some other progressives, so you have to do things like that. So yeah, RE is a big question for me. And I really want to supplement it somehow, with, I think the adults we could do more joint adult RE. I'm not sure about children. Mm hmm. So you know, we're looking to see if they are, there are several things we could do and be stronger together doing them. You know, oh, the other thing is, whenever we hire someone for the Baja Four we do it through the big church, you know, we send the money to the big church, and they, they take care of the staffing issues. Partly because they already were the one in charge. But that's that's also how the internship works. It's the big church and Borderlands and they, yeah, so that's, we have we kind of made use of some of their resources. But on the other hand, we're all pitching in as ministers. So.

Rev. Sarah Schurr  36:41  
So the big church handles the payroll and the taxes. And

Rev. Tina Squire  36:46  
for the one person we now have as a joint staff person for all of us, the musician who coordinates, right. 

Rev. Sarah Schurr  36:54  
And they said, the intern that you all sort of share. She's actually an intern of the big church.

Rev. Tina Squire  37:02  
Yeah, officially, she she works with those two churches, and they give her supervision. And but yeah, I've just seen her really grow. And she has, the four ministers, I think we really trust each other, but we're kind of tired. So she has this vision, and big picture of wisdom that is really been helpful to us, even as an intern, even though she's younger. She's very helpful to all of us in worship planning. And she's really stepped in to do that. But yeah, so the big question is what happens afterwards? How do we continue this connection? How do we stay stronger together? And that's what we're working on and getting a facilitator to help us with.

Rev. Sarah Schurr  37:44  
Well, I think that the thing that gives me hope for you guys, is that you had a relationship before the pandemic, the Baja Four ministers were supporting each other, finding ways to be of help and comfort, before the pandemic hit. So with a pandemic hit you already had the network of who to go to.

Rev. Jim Coakley  38:05  
Yeah, and I think my church had had some issues and had some gaps in staffing. And Matthew whose been around the longest came and preached a lot in support. So yeah, he already had that connection with the church, and they trusted him. And then they got to hear Reverend Bethany. So they trust her. Yeah, it. Yeah, it was a good beginning, because we'd already had we'd already been a network to each other. 

Rev. Sarah Schurr  38:29  
Yeah. 

Rev. Tina Squire  38:31  
That's part of geography. 

Rev. Sarah Schurr  38:34  
Yeah. The wonderful thing about being out here where it's far apart,

Rev. Tina Squire  38:39  
we, we really value each other.

Rev. Sarah Schurr  38:41  
Yes. So one last question I have is Do you have any advice for small churches about how to be in partnership with medium and large churches?

Rev. Jim Coakley  38:54  
I think if you have that relationship on the pastoral, as ministers, you are yours, you see each other as equals that way. And so I think if you were to, you know, oh, we're the small churches. I never thought that way because we just work together as colleagues. You know, so there are going to be some issues that come out of, and you have to talk about, you know, do you feel like your people are, what can we do to support your people? Can we give them some more money, we're talking about helping the RE person, finding another RE person, so that they're not overused and burned out. But otherwise, you know, I was just so grateful. I didn't have a musician and boom, there were all these musicians I could work with. So yeah, and so now if I do a Vespers, I can call them my joint Baja Four coordinator because we pay him you know, it's kind of nice every once in a while.

Rev. Sarah Schurr  39:53  
Well, how great because you know, next month, the small congregation webinar is about sharing staff. So you You've sort of given us a little preview of that important topic. Terrific.

Rev. Tina Squire  40:06  
Thank you.

Unknown Speaker  40:07  
Are there other things you want to say before we move on to our, our New England friends?

Unknown Speaker  40:13  
I mean, I just think relationship is so important. And we talk a lot. We connect a lot via Zoom, we have, you know, at least two long weekly meetings. And we really trust each other and, and it energizes us, you know, how Zoom meetings, you're zoomed out, you get together, you're actually gets silly and funny. And sometimes we've even put that in our worship services when we've gotten a little punchy. But that has really helped sustain us. So if you have good relationships, where there's life, go for that.

Rev. Sarah Schurr  40:44  
Thank you so much.

Rev. Phil Lund  40:46  
Yes, thank you, Tina. Thank you, Sarah. Yeah, and thank you, Sarah, for reminding us that the next webinar a month from now is going to be about staff sharing. And as Tina pointed out, there's just lots of ways we could be sharing staff now, these days. So that's, I'm looking forward to that. And I hope that you'll be able to join us for that as well. So now we're going to move on. Erica has the collaborative ministry team or some folks from the collaborative ministry team in Belfast, Castine, and Ellsworth, Maine to talk about how they're doing some sharing.

Rev. Erica Barron  41:27  
And actually, this is a great segue, because this is a collaboration that began with a shared intern. And so we have Margaret Mac. Yeah, sorry, Margaret, Margaret Beckman, Lane Fisher, Jacqui Lee, Karen Wigglesworth and Bettina LeHovec. They would tell us about this collaboration and how it got started and what it has been during COVID. So I will let you take it away.

Rev. Margaret Beckman  41:52  
Thanks, Erica. Hi, I'm Margaret Beckman, I serve the congregation in Castine. And we are the smallest of our three church collaboration, we have about 60 members. And my job is to give you a little bit of background on our collaboration. Our collaboration is six years old. So we're way older than COVID. And we will be way beyond COVID. When COVID is a shadow of a memory. Our collaboration started with three congregations in the downeast, Maine area and midcoast as a way of saying, you know, what are we going to do when, when ministry is thin, and needs are thick? And so it started that way. And I I came into an ongoing collaboration. So the Castine church called me as their settled minister after the collaboration was already going. And so part of my whole interview process was, are you buying into a collaboration because guess what, we already have one and you'll be part of it. So that was kind of exciting for me, coming from a different small congregation. I do think that that finding ways to do work together is the way small congregations are going to stay vital going into the middle of the 21st century. And our collaboration did not start as a way to share worship, and that is not our strongest bond. So we started collaborating doing we do some social justice things together. We've done book, book things together, we have done marches together. And we do do worship together. But it is not a weekly thing. I mean, I'm fascinated at the at the Wisconsin model. We started out doing ah joint worship once a year, in the spring. And all the rest of the year we were doing other collaborative things. We also have the ministers, the interns, and one or two other leaders from each congregation, we meet monthly and we call it the collaborative ministry team. And we meet for a couple hours every month just to say what are we doing together? How are we doing? yada yada? The one thing that the churches share and we share the cost of equally as an intern. And none of our congregations could have supported an intern individually but collectively we can come pretty close to the recommended stipend for UU ministry interns and two of them are here. Lane was our first intern and Bettina is our current intern. And I have to say that the experience of having an intern has enriched all three congregations In some really wonderful and marvelous ways, but we're here tonight to talk about sharing worship. And Lane is our spokesmodel for what it takes in our in our version of collaboration to plan and deliver spectacular collaborative worship. So Lane, I'm going to mute and you're going to come in.

Lane Fisher  45:27  
Okay. Um am I in? Yes. Okay, great. Thank you. Um, I was the first collaborative intern, I'm now ordained and in search, but I'm a member of the UUA Church of Belfast, which is one of the three collaborating churches. So because that's my home church, I've been serving as a member of the collaborative ministry team for the last few years. So I've served this collaboration in two different ways. When I was when I started my internship, it was 15 days after Margaret started her ministry in Castine. And early in the discussion, the question was put to me, do you want to be the facilitator, the liaison for our collaborative worship in June? And I shrugged and said, it's just another worship service, right? So yes, I took that on. We pool our resources and try to bring in a pretty big name speaker. You know, we're small churches. So we go for a small rock stars, but people who can share something that will really put us on the edge of the edges of our seat. That is really time consuming. The first year, I think I asked five people possibly. And one other year, when we did not have an intern, and I was on the collaborative ministry team, I said, Sure, I'll do that. Again. It's just another worship service. And that year, I called all over the countryside trying to find somebody who would be our speaker. So we have we do that big service once a year, which is a celebration of our collaboration. It's also the time when we released our intern from the covenant that she they all have been people who use that pronoun so far. We release her from the covenant that she created with each of the three congregations and send her off with love. We have done collaborative worship since the pandemic started. And if you have questions about that, Margaret will be able to answer them more fluidly than I would I was involved with the first one because it was kind of an all hands on deck feeling. But by the time we were planning the second one, it was clear that we had too many ministers cooking up this broth. So I ducked out. And there's a third type of service that we have, in the fall, when we have a weekend retreat at Ferry Beach, all members of all three churches come and we have worship each day there. So I want to stop for a moment and distinguish between what I consider collaboration and cooperation. Because in my mind, a true collaboration involves everyone as equals. And it's a very open process of slow cooking something to use another cooking metaphor, keeping ideas open, rather than trying to be efficient and get things done. And what we have particularly come into I think, during the pandemic, is a very cooperative model of saying, Okay, let's focus on this. But this will be our theme and we cook up some music ideas together. And then people take pieces of it and we trust and love each other and know that those pieces will come back in and find form but we don't check in with each other all along the way and creating those pieces. Our big service always has a coordinator. Because doing things together takes more time, doing things with more people takes more time, we start planning well in advance. And for those people who are doing collaborative worship during the time of COVID. I can only imagine how complicated that that planning curve might be. It's great to know your talent pool and This is where the intern is especially valuable, because the intern is the person who is most current as to what's going on and who's doing what in each of the three congregations. So for example, during at the end of my internship during the collaborative worship service, the time for all ages was a pretty improvisational play, there was a script but and they had it in their hands. But they departed wildly and got stuck at one point and pulled themselves out. The reason they were able to do that, and what made the play, the skit absolutely wonderful, was that these were three really talented experienced drama people who were very at home doing that kind of thing. So they were able to wing it with joy, and everyone loved it, it probably was the high point of that particular service. And another service. People were sitting around buzzing talking to each other. And instead of ringing a bell to get them to quiet down, we had one of our best singers just call out, sing out a note from the back of the sanctuary and then come forward singing the first hymn and the accompaniest knew, of course, that was that that would happen. And she joined in. But it was a very dramatic beginning to the service that we were able to do, because we knew what the talent pool was, excuse me, in each of the churches. Things that help. Um, we'd like to involve the lay people obviously, allowing for the unexpected. Um, in collaboration, okay, I'm a writer and editor and my background. And there's a saying among writers who edit their own work, that you have to be willing to murder your darlings. And when you collaborate, you have to be willing to abandon your darlings, they're not all going to go forward and it's really easy to get stuck. Um, what gets in the way of collaboration, talked about guest speakers, the logistics for us when we have met live and when we will meet God Willing live again. The size of the building is a huge issue, the smallest church Ironically, the smallest congregation has the largest building. And Belfast has a large building, Ellsworth has to put our gathered group into two rooms, which has been done. But it's not ideal. Parking is a big issue. Where do you put that many cars and we try to get people to carpool. But that takes a lot of time in the planning process. We have had picnics when the weather permits after the service. So that means going down to parks and recreation and reserving the use of part of a park. So those logistics are just really time consuming. As everybody here knows. We'll be glad to take questions. But I'm going to turn it over here to Karen Wigglesworth, who is a member of our collaborative ministry team, a lay leader. And she is going to talk about how the relationships and our collaboration empowered. So Karen, you're here someplace. Thank you letting you now mute.

Karen Wigglesworth  53:51  
Am I good? Okay, I'm Karen Wigglesworth. I came to the collaborative ministry team from a little bit of a unique perspective in that I started off as a member of the UU Church of Ellsworth. And in 2014, I relocated my home to Belfast and became a member of the Belfast church. So I was delighted when I was invited to join the CMT. Because I thought it would be a great way for me to keep in touch with my congregation in Ellsworth, who I really love. And I will say that from the beginning of the collaboration from our first event that we sort of unveiled to our three part congregation was our first shared worship service in 2016. And it was met with a little bit of hesitation by some of our lay people. There was there were a lot of questions. What is this thing that you're pulling on us? And we didn't know what to tell them because we were making it up as we go. And you know, some questions. I love my minister, I'd be just as happy to stay home and Go to my own church, why do I, why do I get in my car and drive for an hour to see somebody else's minister. But it was mostly because people didn't know what to expect. And so a number of a large number of people did get into their cars and drove to castine for our first worship service together, and I recall that as they walked in the door, for the most part, they looked around the room to see to find other members of their own congregation to sit with. And that was, that was our first service. However, over the years of our six years after that, it is completely different now. I would say that it feels it has more of the feeling of a homecoming, or a family reunion these days. And as Lane mentioned, sometimes the bigger problem now is getting people to be quiet so we can begin the service. Because people will walk in the door and look around the room for someone that maybe they haven't seen for a year. Also, I think also, the other thing about the worship service, apart from being just a joyous occasion to join together is that it's a it's a very kind of a low stress, entry point for people to come into other activities together. It can be a little bit intimidating to walk into someone else's church where you don't know anybody and you don't know the minister. But if you have ever been to a joint worship service, and you go to someone else's church, after that you're guaranteed to know somebody, and to see a friendly face to welcome you. And that has led on to people as Margaret was talking about our annual retreat, which is in a beautiful oceanfront place on the southern coast of Maine. Ellsworth began this retreat and then invited Belfast and Castine to join us. And we've been doing that every year since. And so with each shared activity, we weave more of our threads together. And that means also more people. It sort of feeds back on itself so that more people are coming to the shared worship services. When we have an event that is of interest to all of us, we share it. We've we've ordained, we've had done two ordinations, we've done installations, when the Belfast church moved back into our building after a huge renovation project, our other two sister churches were there to celebrate with us. And so it's something it's kind of like a little ripple that is spreading outwards with every year. And I don't know how I don't know what the changes, that zoom has brought us what they will manifest when we're back together. But right now, you know, wherever your geographic location is. We all live in zoomville right now. And so maybe that's been something to bring us more together. And we see new faces at every one of our worship services Time, Time will tell whether they will be with us in person when we open our doors again, but I think a lot of them will. So back to you, Margaret.

Rev. Erica Barron  58:29  
Sure, yeah. Thanks, Karen. Jacqui Lee is one of our lead leaders and Jackie's not a worship planner by choice, not by lack of talent. And Jacqui watt wanted to have just a minute to talk about what it's like to be a congregant. In the midst of these collaborative events, and and ours are not just worship, we we've done our book studies together and our conversations on anti racism together. But Jacqui is going to take a few minutes to talk about what it feels like to be a regular congregant, in the midst of these spectacular collaboration, so I'm going to be quiet again and Jacqui, it's the floor is yours. There we go. There you go.

Jacqui Lee  59:34  
There we go. Sorry, I forgot about that piece. So I'm Jacqui Lee. I'm a member of the UU Church of Belfast, as well as a member of the three church collaborative ministry team. I've been asked to talk about the collaborative worship from the perspective of a congregant. But first I'd like to mention what it's like to watch. At a monthly CMT meeting. Three ministers, Lane Fisher and Ariel, our intern at the time, brainstorm a multi church service. It was wonderful to hear Lane talking about how difficult it was for me, it was sitting there with my mouth open, and my head swiveling like I was watching a tennis match. They just came up with these ideas, and they work together. And I watched this whole thing blossom in about 10 minutes. And it was awe inspiring. So of course, I don't know all the work that went beyond that. And behind that, but you guys need to know that those of us who are watching are really impressed you do a great job. So let's see, I was on our worship arts committee at one time, and I thought I knew what went into crafting a service. But of course I didn't. I just knew how to follow the parts that were given to me and ease transitions during the service. But there's so many other pieces as all you ministers in the room know. So it's been exciting for me to start finding out a little bit more of what's involved. Let's see, I'm reading this because I don't speak well off the cuff I get lost. So as serving a congregant, at one of those services, it was always eye opening and enriching. Every time it was more than three churches giving a service though it was the carpooling together, the sitting in a different church being welcomed, getting to know them, hosting the other churches, welcoming them at the door and giving them name tags before, coffee cups of coffee after the drive home talking to each other about the service, the church and the people we met, collaborate, whoops, are going to slide this thing down. Collaborating with these other two churches encouraged us all to stretch and grow, challenge ourselves to live our principles outside our own building, feel the strength of the widening of our circle, understand that we are kin to all the congregants in our state, our region, in our country, even our world. We recently welcomed members of our sister church in Wales to one of our services, thanks to Zoom. Now on Sunday mornings, I look for members of our collaborative churches in zoom and I feel connected, I'm more easily welcomed visitors. This has been a very big part for me too, too. Many of our churches tend to be very parochial. And in fact, we're only 25 year old church. So we have, we have people in our congregation who are founders of the church, there's a lot of ownership there. We've always done things this way, that sort of response. Newcomers didn't always feel welcome, because everybody who knew each other would talk at coffee hour in the new congregant would be just kind of standing around. Making this collaboration happen, we've all had to stretch a little bit and reach out to meet each other and get to know each other. And meeting and Zoom has been fine. We've had brand new people come to our church via Zoom. I met one of them for the first time, a couple of weeks ago, physically in space. Before that for months, I'd only known her through Zoom. So it's a it's a broadening that happens and I think that going forward when we're back together. It's gonna make us all more open and more welcoming, and, and just more comfortable. Our collaboration has made us more open to more collaboration. And that's what the UUA is right? It's a collaboration of churches. We're just living it a little more deeply, a little closer to home and it is immensely rewarding.

Rev. Erica Barron  1:03:48  
Thank you, Jacqui. Bettina Lehovec is our current collaborative ministry intern. And I am going to let her talk about how important it is to have an intern in sort of organizing and managing all this I will say Bettina came in, post zoom. She may in fact, leave before we're done with Zoom, and so like many newly minted ministers, Bettina's whole experience with these three congregations has been not entirely virtual, but largely virtual and so Bettina, I'm going to be quiet and you're going to talk. 

Bettina LeHovec  1:04:33  
Well, I came up here at the very end of July and started the internship in mid August. And so and I'll be leaving at the end of May. So yes, my entire internship is mostly over Zoom, although I've taken every opportunity to get together with people when I can and there has been some opportunity. So this year because we're on Zoom instead of doing that one big collaborative service that you've been hearing about, We've decided to do four services, which we can do, because no one has to drive 50 to 60 minutes to get to the other church. So I think what I've been really noticing is we have three congregations, three worship leaders, three sets of expectations about what goes into a worship service. And so I think the joy and the challenge is, how do we bring those together, and we do it pretty darn well, I think, largely, because we already have this collaborative, we have the trust, the ministers have the trust built up and their relationships with each other. And when we I've noticed everyone brings their strengths, you know, everyone brings their different strengths, the different ministers bring their strengths. And here comes a worship service. Not quite that easily. But we have we get together and plan an outline. And then we each take a different piece of it. And we we combine our pieces. So it's been it's been good. And I think it's really benefited the the congregations as well, just in the way that Jacqui spoke to have stretching a little bit beyond that insular Here we are, this is our congregation, like, oh, we're actually part of something bigger, and we get to know each other, and we get to experience different ways of doing things. One example I want to bring up is our Christmas service we did just the week before Christmas, and our theme was the spirit of Christmas. And it was I thought it was a lovely service, we all decided instead of having a sermon and that kind of thing, we the different ministers contributed a reflection, a short reflection. And then we got all people from our different three congregations to do music and readings. So from each congregation, we had about two pieces of either music or reading. And we put all that together with some other music. And one of the things I really enjoyed and maybe this is my vantage point as the intern, you know, the other two of the churches are a little bit bigger and a little bit more used to using more, I will call it produced music while we're over Zoom. And the third congregation uses more, I call it home grown. But that's probably not the best word but their own musicians doing their own music. And so here, we were planning this, and we're going to have all these wonderful produced pieces. And I said, Wait a minute, what about what about our musicians and Castine. And let's do let's use them and do something more on that homegrown level. And I, I thought that that actually contributed a lot, it was a very, very sweet counterpoint to some of the more produced pieces that we use. And what I've noticed since which is really interesting, I've actually noticed, Margaret, Reverend Margaret, your church is actually starting to use more of those, you know, videos that, you know, that are being created by other people, for us to use that have a little more than produced value, you're pulling a few more of those in. And in our worship meeting in Belfast the other day, they were actually saying, you know, we want more of just the simple, maybe our own people's music, or just music without all the video with it. And so I feel like each congregation is learning from the collaboration. Oh, I can try something different. Here's something else. And let's see how that works. So I guess that cross pollination is one of the benefits that I see. I'm sure there's more. I know where we're going long on time here. I do think that having the relationships already built among the ministers and as a collaborative has really, really helped us to just transition to Zoom. And I do want to shout out that because of being on Zoom, we're able to do more things together, which has been really great. You know, one church has a Vespers service, one has a matins, and people can go, you know, to those, we've I've led a collaborative book study, we've had, we're having a monthly collaborative, anti racism, conversation. And our people are loving, being able to do those things together in a way that they wouldn't have before because who wants to get in a car and drive for 50 to 60 minutes to go to a meeting, you know, it's probably not really realistically going to happen. So we also are excited about all of that and looking at ways to keep that going. We certainly will keep some of that going when we I won't be here anymore, but when the three congregations transition back to it in the fall or whenever that will be.

Rev. Erica Barron  1:09:53  
Yeah, thanks, Bettina. I'm going to give it back to Erica. I just want to say one thing. You know, Hearing hearing Tina Rev. Tina and Rev. Jim talk about their models is really exciting for me. I will say, for the ministers in our collaboration, Sara Hayman and Amy Fiorilli  and me, when we take time away, study leave or vacation leave or sabbatical leave. Our congregations already know the other two ministers. And Tina, I suspect you have that in Arizona. And, Jim, I don't know, you might be on your own up there in Wisconsin. But it is fantastic that our congregations already know, the ministers who are most likely to provide pastoral care coverage, well, we go away, and I don't worry about it for a minute. If we've got an intern on board, the intern is the first call. And the other two ministers are the second call. So I will just put that out there and say thank you. And Erica, thank you for inviting us. And I guess it's yours for Q&A time.

It is thank you so much to all of you. I went to one of the giant Zoom services and was just so it was so lovely. And it was such it was clear that the congregation's knew each other, there was just this really great spirit, even on zoom of community and collaboration. And so it definitely thought of you and this webinar was being planned. So thank you for coming. So yeah, we have about 15 minutes for questions. So I'm going to invite you to put your questions in the chat. Um, I've already gotten some of them. And so I'm going to start with those. And then we will take as many as we can tonight. Um, just a reminder that there are two more webinars, so we're not going to answer all questions about collaboration tonight, because we have two more chances. Yay. Um, but let's start here. Um, so all of these, we noticed some of you have noticed that all these collaborations involve ministers. I don't know if you all therefore can answer this question, but it was here. What how might this work if there aren't ministers? So like, what does this look like when when there aren't? Either there's one congregation and the collaboration without a minister, or none of the congregations. Maybe the Wisconsin folks would know this better? Since some of those congregations were without ministers at the beginning.

Marge Whitinger  1:12:27  
We have, we have a Can you hear me? Okay. We we actually would prefer not to have a full time minister, we really like to have our guest speakers. We have professors from area universities, we have people that are in charge of different social agencies in town come and speak. Actually, one thing that I think it's kind of a favorite service for many is that we will have our own members talk about their spiritual journey, because so many of us are not born and raised Unitarian Universalist. And so how did you get to this point? And so we usually have two people speak when we have those Sundays, we usually do that a couple of times a year. And so yeah, we we really enjoy that variety, that flavor. And we found that the other congregations that are part of our group are feel the same way. None of them want a full time minister.

Rev. Jim Coakley  1:13:27  
Yeah, I mean, these are fiercely led congregations. So part of this collaboration is also why do we want this dude hanging around either. So it's a maturation process on both fronts?

Rev. Erica Barron  1:13:43  
Thank you.

Rev. Phil Lund  1:13:44  
And I just want to add something that to Jim, you had told me once and and I found it has been true, that if there were some small congregations looking to do this collaborative sort of thing, they need somebody to be sort of an icebreaker and propose it, and bring it to them. And I don't know who necessarily would be responsible for that. It could be one of the congregations you know, hooking up with a couple others. Or I would say, contacting your regional staff and see if there's anybody interested in collaboration. So getting another party involved, I think could be helpful for layled congregations. 

Rev. Jim Coakley  1:14:21  
And I just saw the question about a large congregation collaborating with a smaller, we have struggled with that because several different tries, these congregations that I serve, tried to collaborate with Appleton, which is has like 650 members. And it, it always ended in let's not do this. So I think we learned something from that for whatever reason there was. I think there's more, they're similar to each other, so therefore, they understand each other and are more willing to collaborate. I think.

Rev. Sarah Schurr  1:14:56  
Maybe Tina can speak to why they were willing to do an Arizona

Rev. Jim Coakley  1:15:00  
Yeah, yeah, I started to type it on. So we have our big congregation is 290 people, it's not ginormous. And they only have one minister, they do have other staff. And they do have a, they have other religious professionals. But it means, you know, she talks frequently about we are now a 600, member 500 whatever member church, you know, and we have all this staff who can collaborate together, I've always wanted to be in a big church and work with other ministers, I've never been able to. But for her, I think it's really helpful to have these other ministers to bear some of the worship brunt. We've tended to look to community member ministers, we have a few of those connected to our churches, to do more pastoral care when a minister is gone, or so that's sort of how we've worked it that way. But terms of worship, I think she's really grateful to have us and she's the one who said that today is our meeting. She did the one streaming alone, and she said it would have killed me, to have had to do that every week by myself. So yes, it's not a huge church. It's not a 600 member one. So that may make a difference. But in this COVID situation, I think it would probably be helpful to most even bigger churches to to have other ministers to work with other talent other.

Rev. Erica Barron  1:16:24  
Great, thank you. Um, and Phil, you actually answered a question that also came in to me through the chat, which is I someone in a congregation sort of struggling to find collaboration partners, and so I would suggest that you reach out to your own regional staff. Um, so you can, different regions have different ways of deciding who will get back to you. But if you go to the UUA website, you can find your region and, and a way to get in touch with them. And they can help you think about because we tend to know that we know more congregations than people who are in one congregation sometimes, and so we can help you know, who's nearby and who might be interested and who's also been talking to us about trying to find collaborative partners. And so reach out to regional staff. Um, okay, lots of people are curious about the RE in Wisconsin, like you said, you were sharing RE, and what does that look like? We do have a whole webinar on youth ministry. So just so you know, if you want to have a whole conversation about collaborative youth ministry, in particular, come to our third webinar, Phil will be giving you the times and stuff at the end. But I do want to just give the Wisconsin folks just a minute to say, well, like what does that look like? How are you doing that? Is it on zoom? How does it work? 

Rev. Jim Coakley  1:17:40  
Well, I don't want to get into a lot of the complexity. But what I'm trying to say Remember, these are all lay lead. So I'm the only minister. And so it's like reinventing what is ministry. And so rather than it be just Sunday morning worship for adults, is there something that I can do to expand that, that it helps with RE, so it still needs boots on the ground to run the class with and know how to manage children of all different, we do one room schoolhouse, you know, with all different capabilities, right? So that you have to have the right person. And when we've hired people like that, in the past, we weren't very sure that they got much of a UU religious exploration experience. So the idea is that tying a video that I would create that ties to the theme for the month of the content of the service, that become sort of the lesson and then you're using sort of a Montessori method in the school room in the classroom. So it's just an idea, and it's just too, so that's why I would only preach twice a month, to free me up to be sort of the DRE, and then also sort of the membership coordinator too, um, And to me, that's okay, because that's what a minister brings to this party, in my opinion. 

Rev. Erica Barron  1:19:04  
Great, thank you. Um, so there's some nitty gritty details, questions that I invite you to either unmute and answer or these some of these might be easier to answer in the chat. One is, Margaret has just answered one of them. The question about whether ministers charge more to preach to more than one congregation? Yeah, as long as it's one service. We pay the going rate. And if so, go ahead Phil,. But if the minister is preaching multiple times, that will be different. Phil, did you have a

Rev. Phil Lund  1:19:42  
Yeah. It just needs to be upfront and clear about it. So the minister knows what's happening. We had a case where a minister found out later that a service they were going to be doing in one congregation was being promoted in another congregation. And they said that was fine, but I didn't know about it. You know, so You need to be upfront about that if you're going to be making arrangements like that.

Rev. Erica Barron  1:20:04  
Yeah, right. So yeah, get everything clear ahead of time. And America. 

Rev. Margaret Beckman  1:20:09  
Erica, can I take a whack at the army question, please. So where we are, our kids are all assumed out. They don't come to church on Sunday. They don't want to do it on zoom. They're like, Yeah, no. So our three RE leaders, some of whom are paid well, and some of whom are volunteers. Just get together and talk about what's possible to do with kids in this zoom time, but one thing our collaboration did put together is OWL training. And so we do OWL, you know how hard it is to get families and facilitators to do OWL. And because our families already knew each other, the parents trusted the process to send their child to some other place to get their OWL training. And so that has worked really well. Adult faith formation, because we are already on zoom, and we have no choice. Adults are coming to join faith formation things for grownups, pre pre pandemic, it was hard to get adults to, to do anything on Zoom. They're like, No, I'll just wait for it to be in person. But I think we're going to keep doing adult classes on Zoom, once we go back to whatever, whatever the future holds. So adults have become very well, very, I don't know, more comfortable. And we, and we've all each of our churches has sponsored something that the other church adults are coming to.

Rev. Erica Barron  1:21:49  
Cool, thank you for that testimony. This is the thing I've been thinking that like, once people know each other, that gets easier. So like, this is a moment where getting to know each other doesn't involve driving. And so like this might be the moment to strike while the iron is hot. Um, a couple of questions that are in the chat that I just want to say out loud for people who might not be reading it. Our OWL stands for OWL whole lot our whole lives, which is our UUA, a sexual sexuality education curriculum. And Beth says that the UUA staff is working on resources for hybrid services, because everybody wants the answer to this question. So we are working on it. Stay tuned. I'm also want to give an invitation to those of you who have been speakers tonight, if you are willing for people to continue to ask your questions by email after tonight if you'd be willing to put your emails in the chat so that people can reach out to you directly. And while you were doing that a question for the Arizona folks. Why did you decide to pre record your service instead of doing it live on Zoom or some other live streaming platform?

Rev. Jim Coakley  1:23:06  
It's a lot easier to our worship services aren't even at the same time, right? We haven't streamlined that yet. I mean, we could we would have if we had to. We just started by doing that. And, but I think it made it easier. And we then we also own that we could play more with like, scenery and being outside to do the story or one of us is really good at doing slides, which I guess we could do in Zoom, but he just likes doing the the visual part and the musicians can put together. It's not an incredibly overly produced music, but they could put it together and have it ahead of time. And we just find it works more. It's easier for us.

Rev. Erica Barron  1:24:01  
Great, thank you. Um, someone asked about the cost of the collaborative ministry intern, which is in the chat. Also, basically all of our speakers, I think, have put their emails in the chat, so go to the chat to find out more. Um, we are just about out of time for tonight. So I just want to say thank you so much to all of you for coming and asking good questions, and especially to the speakers and all three congregations for answering those questions. And I am going to turn it back over to Phil for our closing announcements.

Rev. Phil Lund  1:24:33  
Okay. Thank you, Erica. I just want to thank everybody who helped out tonight, folks from Wisconsin, Arizona and Maine. Thank you, Erica, and Sarah and Amy and Beth, and the rest of the small congregation team in congregational life and here we have our next two sessions. One is a month from today, March 18 same time. That will be our one guest will be Jan Gartner, who is working very hard to make staff sharing an easy thing to do. And so we're gonna find out more about that. And then a little over a month later, in April, April 22nd, again, the same times sharing youth programming. So we're going to have a couple of our folks who are working on a national kind of what's not a national approach to youth programming, but they're at the national level, kind of seeing what's going on with youth program programming around the country. And we're going to find out about about how congregations can share in that. So I think that's what we have for tonight. It's the half hour. Once again, thank you, everyone. You have those email addresses, you can send your questions and we hope to see you again in another webinar.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai