Report - Regional Lead

April 27, 2023

Regional Lead Report to the MidAmerica Regional Business Meeting

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Rev. David Pyle, MidAmerica Congregational Life Consultant and Regional Lead

In last year’s report, I highlighted all the ways that, for both the MidAmerica Region and for our congregations, that year had been one of slowing down and catching up. I named that the previous three years had been more than a decade of transitions compacted into just a year or two, as our congregations moved from in-person to digital community, and then into a new multi-platform reality for how to build and develop Religious Community. I shared about both the level of transformation, and also the exhaustion, particularly of Religious Professionals, that this kind of a rapid pace of transformation created.

In this year’s report, I want to highlight both for our congregations and for the MidAmerica Staff that it has been a year of resetting. Transformation has continued for our congregations and for our faith, but it has shifted from transformation that is inspired by a new crisis reality, and rather towards needing to address systemic challenges and issues that were highlighted by the crisis reality of the last few years.

In working with our congregations, we have seen a significant increase in congregations that are focused on resetting their own sense of mission and vision... in this new reality, what purpose do our congregations serve? What is the church for? We have also journeyed with congregations moving towards that new vision and mission conception with a focus on strategic planning, and doing both stewardship and fiduciary work around the shifting financial realities of our faith. As congregations come back together for in-person ministries, we have seen a growing realization of the need for a commitment to how we treat one another, or Right Relationship, and the supportive structures that help us to live the beloved community within and beyond the walls of our congregations and our faith.

We also have to acknowledge that our congregations are encountering a reality where not only are their fewer resources in many of our congregations, but there are also fewer Religious Professionals who are able, available, and willing to serve our congregations in professional capacities. Congregations that, just a few years ago might have expected 10-15 ministers applying to come to serve as their minister are instead encountering only 3-4 ministers who are expressing interest. Some congregations, for both settled and transitional ministry positions, have not had any viable candidates for their open ministry positions. Though less intense, we have seen some similar patterns with other Religious Professional positions, including but not limited to Religious Educators. A significant and growing portion of the work of the MidAmerica Staff in this past year has been focused on supporting congregations in search for Religious Professionals amidst this new reality.

During this past year, the MidAmerica Staff has been engaged in these and other areas of support for congregations while being significantly understaff, due to multiple staff transitions. Staff transitions, even ones that are long planned, create two challenges, as many of our congregations know. First, during the time period of being understaffed, you have fewer staff for the same level of work. I want to celebrate the members of the MidAmerica Staff that have continued to provide an excellent level of responsiveness and service to our congregations during this year of reduced staffing. The second impact is that the process for hiring new staff within the UUA is complex, labor intensive, and long, and the more staff members are engaged in the process of hiring, such as myself, the less availability they have for direct support to congregations.

While I am hopeful that the MidAmerica Region Staff will be able to go into the next church year not only back to our earlier levels of staffing, but with increased staffing. Some of this increase in staffing comes from multiple cross-regional staffing positions that have been developed over the past few years. These cross-regional staffing positions have increased the MidAmerica Region’s capabilities in both administrative and programmatic areas. One example of this is the new Congregational Life Events Team, where the administration of running in-person, digital, and multi-platform events have been consolidated as one team serving all five UUA Regions, including MidAmerica. Another example is the Hope for Us Conflict Transformation Teams, which are available by referral from the MidAmerica Region to support congregations who are ready to go deep in understanding and learning from congregational conflicts and allow that learning to be transformative. I am also very excited by the new cross-regional position Leadership Ministry Associate to both help us coordinate leadership development programming across all five regions, as well as to develop and manage processes that draw congregational leaders towards serving in Regional and National leadership positions in our faith.

I believe this trend will continue to develop, as we find there are more and more ways that we can better serve our congregations in the MidAmerica Region by being in partnership nationally. One of the ways we have begun to live into this kind of partnership has been to take down some of the Regional barriers around programming for our congregations, and to encourage congregational leaders to attend leadership development and other programming being offered by the UUA’s Congregational Life Staff, no matter which Region is offering the programming. If you have attended MidAmerica sponsored programming this year, you might have noticed that now those programs include congregations from across the country, and I believe the learning that has happened in those programs has been the better for it.

With the reduced staffing we have experienced this year, the MidAmerica Board and I agreed that the MidAmerica Regional Staff would focus this year on the direct Primary Contact relationships with our congregations more than on providing multi-congregational programming, and that is one of the reasons for our holding only an Annual Business Meeting this year and not a full Regional Assembly. We are currently planning for a multi-platform Regional Assembly for 2024, and that will be a new experience for the Regional Staff.

However, even with that direction, I want to celebrate the MidAmerica Staff for the level of digital and cross-regional programming that we have conducted and sponsored this year. From upcoming Renaissance modules, to the Extended Leadership Experience, to events that support our congregations’ stewardship programs, to programming on right relationship and covenant, to the first ever national Large Church Staff Conference, to religious professional and lay-leadership gatherings based on church size, to supportive and learning workshops for congregations adapting to the new reality of professional ministry in our faith, the MidAmerica Regional Staff have created amazing opportunities for our congregations to gather together and learn from one another.

I am excited about some of the programming, both national and regional, that will be coming in the next year, and about connecting our congregations even more closely with resources such as the UUA’s Leaderlab and other resources, particularly those that will connect our congregations together in learning how to actively dismantle white supremacy culture and continue our transformation into an intentionally anti-racist faith.

I also want to celebrate the work of the MidAmerica Regional Board in this past year, as we seek to clarify and codify the relationships that the MidAmerica Region has with our partners in this ministry, including the UUA, the Midwest UU Conference, and the Camp Unistar Foundation. This comes after a focus last year on developing the Regional Board’s own governance policies, and a focus on the MidAmerica Regional Staff developing operational policies. Our hope is that this provides a foundation of knowing where we are in these relationships, so that we can then be bold in where our relationships need to go to best live the practice and the promise of our faith.

I continue to be honored and blessed that I get to do this work as your MidAmerica Regional Lead, and to work with the wonderful MidAmerica Regional Staff: Our Congregational Life Consultants, Rev. Phil Lund, Rev. Dr. Lisa Presley, Rev. Sharon Dittmar, and our Finance and Administration Manager, Andrew Zallar. In this last year we bid farewell to Nancy Combs-Morgan, who joined the Southern Region staff, and Gretchen Ohmann who left for a well deserved if not exactly restful retirement at the end of December. Earlier in the year we had wished Kathy Charles a wonderful retirement, and to Cameron Young as they returned full time to working for the Southern Region.

I am also grateful for our cross regional partners in the work of supporting the Congregations of the MidAmerica Region, including our Transitions Program Manager, Christine Purcell, our Co-Directors of Hope for Us, Jacquis Robertson and Connie Goodbread and all of the Hope for Us consultants, and our Leadership Ministry Associate Woullard Lett, and our Safe Congregations Manager Heather Bond. I also want to welcome our new Congregational Life Budget Manager Carol Gable, and our Congregational Life Executive Administrator, Amy Kent. And I especially want to recognize and celebrate the members of our new cross regional events team, Ritoo Chaturvedi, Chanel Gomez, and Tanja Turner Bell.

And, I want to express my gratitude to Jessica York, the Director of Congregational Life, and the other members of the UUA’s Congregational Life Leadership Team. As we are living into and through these changing times in what it means to be a religious community, it is important that we are not doing that alone. At the center of our Unitarian Universalist faith lies the covenantal commitment that we journey together. I am grateful for all of those members of our faith that I am privileged to be on this journey with.

Yours in faith,

Rev. David Pyle
Congregational Life Consultant and Regional Lead
MidAmerica Region of the UUA