Rev. Megan Foley  0:04  
Welcome, everyone. I'm Reverend Megan Foley, I'm the regional lead for the Central East Region. And this, our event today is brought to you by our fabulous staff team, especially Renee and Evin and of course, Amy and Beth behind the scenes always. And some fabulous newly minted deputized facilitators to help us with our day. We're so excited, you're here to talk about these these, I don't know, the culmination of a lot of hopes and wishes of possibly being able to think about reopening our churches soon, especially today, because today, tomorrow is the one year anniversary of when most of our churches closed. So what a time to be able to, to kind of think about unwinding some of that stuff. We, this was a brainchild, mostly Evin Carvill-Ziemer, just a few weeks ago, and we Central East Staff and actually UUA staff have in one second gone from fairly appealing and popular events to extraordinarily popular events that are, that are somewhat outside of our scrambly skill set. So what you're going to see today as I was trying to wrangle a situation, either in front of you or behind the scenes to have an experience that we're hoping will lead to some information for you and some connection. And because we have to do it through the screen here we are doing it. So we're also hoping to model that we can have connection and learning even in imperfect systems. And we know that that's the case in your congregations too. So I'm gonna start with a chalice lighting for us. And this Chalice lighting was written by Celia Thurston How about you take a deep breath, a deep, Sunny breath.

It's called I Light this Chalice for You. I light this Chalice for all the times you have lit this Chalice, for every time you've struck the match, or flicked that zapper thing, or empowered a nervous parishioner to do the same. I light this Chalice for all that you've done, for all that you've fostered and cultivated and nudged, for all you've suggested and directed and maneuvered. I light this Chalice for the intensity of your reactions in responding to grace and rejecting mediocrity within the tender balance between tradition and choice. I light this Chalice for your being here now. Out of calling, out of commitment, out of love. I light this Chalice for the time you have spent preaching and hurting and feeling. I light this Chalice for you. Alright, and since I've only really lit and lit the chalice of our hearts and not an actual candle, I'm going to invite you to stay there for one second because I really do want to want to light this chalice for you. Hold on. What kind of zoom minister would I be if I didn't have right off screen 800 million replacement candles.

Now we're ready.

So we're gonna start with about 30 minutes of kind of teaching time. And we're going to share that amongst the staff. We're hoping that that will give you some ideas, you know, no need to really like write every word down. But just some things to take away. Before we start talking to take with you in the next few weeks to come. I'm going to start. And I want to start with a quote from this new book that I read, called "We Shall Be Changed: Questions for the Post Pandemic Church" by this guy Mark Eddington, edited by him. It's a collection of essays. I'll put that in the chat in a minute. So so you'll have it if you want to look at it. It's Christian focused. But it's about what we've been going through. And I think a great, a great essay by Sarah Sarah Birmingham Drummond says, "The Great rethink that COVID-19 is requiring of us is going to change the church forever, for bells are ringing that cannot be unrung. One of those bells is the realization on the part of faith communities, that they have a much bigger toolbox than they realize, than they realized for carrying out the it that is church." So I wanted, we were talking today about that toolbox and even expanding our understanding of our toolboxes so that we can do The best possible job that we can in serving the people that were called to serve. So I want to talk about just three qualities of church that maybe aren't front of mind today. But I'm really hoping that you'll take with you, as you think about this next phase of your congregation as we get past the emergency shutdown period of time and into rethinking how we want to be together. Three qualities. So the three qualities are attention to mission, nimbleness, and inclusion, attention to mission, nimbleness, and inclusion. So inclusion of course, is two things, it's a theological statement that we Unitarian Universalist make about the importance of every human being, but then we don't always enact particularly well, because we create these structures where we're, you know, our longtime leaders, our staff get a lot of room, a lot of voice at the table. And of course, that is unmatched in a structure where dominant voices always get a place at the table, right. And so the theological work for us to do is to figure out ways to undo that dynamic so that everyone can bring their whole selves to our communities, and everyone potentially has a voice, either in decision making or a voice, but more importantly, a voice in saying, what the community is, what it's for, and what it can do. That's a theological statement that we are bound to, that's a theological purpose that we're about to to use. But it's also the way to make your organization the most effective it can be. Because we all know that the more diversity, true diversity you have at a table, when you have the ability to manage that diversity and learn from it, then you create the best possible organization. And so I really hope that you'll think about that concept of inclusion. And then as a foundation in the next few months, nimbleness. And nimbleness is that thing you had to learn this year that you wish you didn't, right? So but and so you may be in the back of your head thinking I cannot wait until we don't have to be nimble anymore, until we know what's what, we can go back to the way we know things ought to be. And we can forget about all this rapid change and responsiveness to context. But I really want to tell you that nimbleness is the most important quality you could possibly bring with you to your next chapter of church. It's the thing that is going to make all of your future efforts relevant and useful, no matter what happens and your ability to be nimble prepares you for any sort of future, whether that's a great and calm and steady future, which I wish for all of us, or more likely a future that does have a few bumps in the roads, whether those are pandemic bumps or others. So, nimbleness please, you have all learned it and we know you've learned it, we're not going to forget you have all learned it, that is a quality you now have. Don't forget about it will serve you better than almost anything else.

And then mission. So lots of congregations try to like make a mission statement and you feel like there's going to be a long meeting, it's like called mission, kind of makes you feel like ugh, but when I talk about mission, I'm just talking about why do you exist. This is no longer the time for you to exist simply so you can exist again tomorrow. I think you've probably gotten out of the habit of that a little bit in this time. But the more you can do now, to think about why your congregation exists in the world, whether that reason is big or small, and really be able to make the and focus on that, the easier it will be to make decisions that serve that purpose in the world. And it doesn't have to be a statement. It doesn't have to be written in stone, it can be written in pencil, in your mind, and adjusted as needed. But the point is, is that you've understand why, but you're for, why you're there. Because when you understand why you're there, everything else falls into place. So those are, that's my five minutes, three things to remember, mission, nimbleness and inclusion.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai