General Assembly 2008 Event 2055 Speakers: Rev. Dr. Terasa Cooley, Rev. Nancy Bowen Program description: We Unitarian Universalists pride ourselves on our congregational polity. Yet congregations struggle to find ways of developing and equipping leaders to help bring their mission into being. How...

General Assembly 2008 Event 3035 Presenters: Eunice Milton Benton, Connie Goodbread What is a congregational covenant? Eunice Benton, District Executive of the Mid-South District, and Connie Goodbread, Program Consultant for the Florida District, answered this question, and gave some tips for...

General Assembly 2008 Event 3064 Presenters: Rev. John Morehouse, Minister, Pacific Unitarian Church, Rancho Palos Verdes, CA; Diane L. Hayden, President Pacific Unitarian Church Board of Trustees How did a church grow from 200 to 311 members in just five years? The answer to that question was...

General Assembly 2008 Event 5028 Gini Courter, Moderator of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) called the sixth and final Plenary Session of the 2008 General Assembly (GA) to order at 3:00 p.m. at the Fort Lauderdale Convention Center. She called on Rev. Hope Johnson, Chair of the UUA...

General Assembly 2008 Event 5005 Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) Moderator Gini Courter called the fifth plenary session of the forty-seventh General Assembly (GA) to order at 10:45 a.m., and asked the Reverend Wayne Arnason, Chair of the Ministerial Fellowship Committee (MFC), to light ...

General Assembly 2008 Event 4004 Gini Courter, Moderator of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), called the fourth plenary session of the 47th General Assembly (GA) to order at 8:36 a.m. at the Broward County Convention Center in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She called Rev. Kenn Hurto,...

General Assembly 2008 Event 1030 (Plenary) “I now call to order the Forty-Seventh General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association!” Gini Courter, Moderator of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) thus began the first plenary session of General Assembly (GA) 2008 in Fort...

Minutes Official Minutes (PDF) of the Forty-seventh General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association, held in Ft....

Hometown Press Release The "Hometown Press Release" below is a basic template for General Assembly attendees to adapt and send to local media outlets. Hometown Press Release June 29, 2008 | from the UUA In the Media Unitarians Oppose Anti-Gay Marriage Ballot Measures July 5, 2008 | The Salt Lake...

Sunday, June 23: Wrapping Up General Assembly has that odd quality of simultaneously seeming eternal and being over too soon. I just finished my write-up of the Ware Lecture for the General Assembly web site. (A marvelous talk about the Middle East by Rashid Khalidi: scary, informative, and...

Sunday, June 23: Contagion A lot has happened since my last post. Right after I wrote that, I went to the session celebrating the 35th anniversary of Beacon Press publishing The Pentagon Papers....

Saturday, June 23: The Other Other The presence of six thousand Unitarian Universalists (UUs) is bound to change a city in lots of unexpected and unintended ways. Yesterday in the park next to the Lloyd Center I saw a panhandler whose cardboard sign claimed he was a homeless veteran. Today in the...

Friday, June 22: Personality Test Aphasic. That's the word. I've been staring at the ceiling of my hotel room trying to remember it for...how long now? A while. If you've ever wondered whether you're an introvert or an extravert, GA will sort that out for you. After a day of worship services,...

Friday, June 22: Advice to New Speakers After participating in UU World's session on Spiritual Writing yesterday, I come away with the following advice for first-time speakers at General Assembly: Get yourself on a panel with someone who draws a crowd. Being a nervous beginner, I skipped the...

Thursday, June 21: Emerging Themes Maybe it's me, or maybe I'm just over-generalizing from two events, but I'm hearing a more forceful theological message than I expected. I'm not protesting—forceful beats the heck out of bland, and the particular messages I heard are ones I happen to (mostly)...