General Assembly and Regional Assembly 2021

UUA General Assembly, June 23-27, 2021, Circle 'Round for Justice, Healing, Courage

Just as all of our congregations are living into this new reality of learning to be religious community when we cannot be physically together, so too is your Unitarian Universalist Association and the MidAmerica Region learning how to bring our congregations together in the shared community of our faith tradition. While there are some hopeful signs on the horizon that we will emerge from this pandemic as a country, we do not yet know when that will be. As such, both the UUA and the MidAmerica Region have made the decision that we will not be hosting in-person events for the foreseeable future, and our staff will not be traveling to congregations until at least the end of June, 2021.

You may already have received notices that the UUA General Assembly for 2021 will be completely virtual due to the pandemic, June 23rd – 27th, 2021. At last year’s General Assembly, we learned that we can create authentic cross-congregational religious community, as well as make General Assembly even more accessible through holding the event online. I will admit I am personally sad we are not gathering together in Milwaukee as we had planned, however I am grateful we are prioritizing the health of all of us, and also allowing the GA Planning Committee and Staff to focus on creating an excellent virtual General Assembly. The Theme for this year’s General Assembly will be “Circle 'Round for Justice – Healing – Courage." You can Submit a Program Proposal, and there will still be opportunities to be a GA Volunteer. I look forward to seeing you there!

The MidAmerica Region of the UUA, along with the other four Regions, will be holding Simultaneous Virtual Regional Assemblies the weekend of October 8th – 9th of 2021, so Save the Date! This will be an experiment in gathering together as Regions on the same date to share programming, conduct some national UUA business, while still connecting and building relationships with the congregations closest to us. Much planning is still in process for what these simultaneous Regional Assemblies will look like, and I am excited about the possibilities.

This does mean that the MidAmerica Region will not be hosting a Regional Assembly in the Spring of 2021 as would normally be our practice. Instead, we are planning on hosting a virtual MidAmerica Business Meeting on Wednesday, June 23rd prior to the beginning of the UUA Virtual General Assembly, in order to conduct elections, hear the reports of the MidAmerica Regional Board, Committees and Staff, and conduct any other business of the Region. Details on how to register and attend this virtual MidAmerica Business Meeting will be shared in the coming days.

I wish we could be together. I wish we could gather together in person for these times of our congregations being the covenant of our faith. And… and I am grateful that while we cannot be together physically, we have been able to keep our Unitarian Universalist congregations and communities together through these virtual means, and that we will be able to come together in this way for General Assembly and Regional Assembly in the coming year. And, I look forward to the day when we can be together in-person again.

Yours in Faith,
Rev. David Pyle
Regional Lead, MidAmerica Region of the UUA