A New Way of Being Connected With You

Rev. David Pyle, MidAmerica Regional Lead

Rev. David Pyle, Regional Lead

Over this last year as your Regional Lead for the MidAmerica Region, I have loved getting to know the congregations, the Religious Professionals, and the Lay-Leaders of the MidAmerica Region. The MidAmerica Staff and I have been exploring the ways in which we work to serve the congregations of the MidAmerica Region, especially in light of the changes that are happening in our country and our Living Faith Tradition due to the pandemic as well as political and social unrest. One of the lessons we have learned is that congregations experience even the same challenges differently from one another, often based on the congregation’s size.

Beginning this fall, the MidAmerica Region will be shifting our Primary Contact method of being in relationship with congregations away from a geographical (by state) model to a congregational size-based model. What this means is that one of our Congregational Life Consultants will be the member of our staff who is proactively seeking to be in relationship with your congregation and can be your first call (or email) for support from the MidAmerica Region and the UUA. Our goal is that every congregation knows the name, email address, and phone number of the member of the UUA Staff who is most focused on building and maintaining relationship with your congregation.

We hope that shifting to building cohorts of congregations of similar size will allow us to build programming designed for congregations of similar size and needs, as well as allow our Congregational Life Consultants to develop their own skills in coaching, companioning, connecting, and challenging congregations that share similar challenges, goals, and experiences.

Our wonderful MidAmerica Admin Staff have worked very hard to develop a new online tool to allow your congregation to find who your Primary Contact will be in this new congregational-size based system.

Our hope is that your congregation will help us to build relationship between your congregation’s MidAmerica Region Primary Contact and your congregational leadership. However, we do know that there may be ongoing work with a Congregational Life Consultant on our staff who is not your Primary Contact, and that is wonderful. We will work through the fall to transition these relationships where that is needed, and at times it may be that, in conversation with your Primary Contact, the support your congregation needs is best met by another Congregational Life Consultant on our staff. However, we are asking for your support to help us to make this transition in how the Region is in relationship with your congregation.

I would like to thank the MidAmerica Regional Staff for all the work in preparing for this change, and all the congregational leaders that we have spoken with as we have been considering this shift in our practice of relationship with you. Once we have more fully made this transition, we will be exploring further ways we can offer programming for each of these congregational-size cohorts, as well as opportunities for congregations of similar size to gather together and share your own learnings with one another.

If you have questions about this transition, you can reach out to me, or you can also reach out to your new MidAmerica Primary Contact. We would love to continue to build our relationships with you!