Structure follows Vision
Funding
When STC was founded, the UUA had no real idea of what was required to help support a urban new start congregation, so they applied the existing standards for suburban congregations. This failed miserably, and later after much back and forth discussions, a program was set up to specifically assist STC and the other urban start-up congregations that sprung up around the country.
One of the assumptions was that for the congregation to be successful it had to grow quickly and have a minister. So STC spent a lot of its early years desperately trying to grow and scraping every dollar it could find to pay a minister. We were constantly fundraising. The UUA provided up front half of the minister's salary, but we had to raised the other half in order to get matching funds with which we could run the church. So the funds to run the congregation were dependant on us raising money to pay the minister! But if we had only needed to raise money to run the congregation, we wouldn't have needed the support from the UUA in the first place. It was a hopeless exercise, it ended in 1996 when our minister left to teach, and STC reorganized to simply fund us.
Leadership
STC use to also have a standard leadership model based on a President, Vice President, Treasurer and Secretary. And the board consisted of the officers plus 6 to 7 at-large board members.
In 1996, after much internal reflection, we changed to a cluster model. We have four clusters; Programming, Finance, Communication and Community Building. Representatives from each cluster sits on the central council that runs the day-to-day operations. Several times a year the congregation meets to set priorities, enact policy and resolve disputes.
It was interesting that we lost some membership with the change in the leadership model. Apparently some felt that the new model was a little too loose, and reflected a lack of commitment. The new model places a lot of the responsibility for follow through on the individual clusters, and removes the council from managing details that had overwhelmed it in the past.
Self Determination
Part of the justification for the change in focus, and the change in leadership models was a need to re-examine our fundamental assumptions. Most members liked STC as it was, a small intimate, quirky congregation. We really were tired of trying to grow into a large urban church. There were already two other UU churches in Washington, if people really wanted that large size, they had existing choices that would suffice. So STC in a show of self-determination stepped “off the dole” and declared ourselves free to choose our own destiny.
It has been hard, without a minister or a staff, we had to rely more on each other to keep the congregation going. I stepped in as part time minister in 97, but the religious education and social action activities have been few and far between. Then in February 1999, Dark Flame Coven stepped in to take over the programming cluster which is responsible for two Sunday services and one religious education class a month. We also head up the community building cluster that handles the social action Sunday and congregational celebrations.
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Wish I could be there. Very well spoken.
Katrina,
I wish you all the blessings and power you need on your journey. Thank you for these words. It is good to remember that returning to work (and thus returning to grace) bring a chance for us all to rest and have joy.
Wishing you joy in the Work.
David
Dear Katrina- Thorn reposted your blog and happy am I. Your passion, always so immense, comes blowing out in these words. So akin to my own heart and soul that it makes me have a bittersweet smile.
The Storm is only now coming to the edges of our universe and yet it will sweep and consume all that is. In the end, our beautiful universe will be so much...more? Different? Complete? Who knows?
All I do know is my soul came here to witness and be part in this period. I cannot shrink from the work. I am here with you, fae sister!
Thought-provoking piece, Katrina. Thanks.
I don't know what to call myself either. In Pagandom, I've taken to referring to myself as a Witch at Large. In the interfaith world where I'm active, I call myself a Pagan. Sometimes I call myself an uppity woman or a Second Wave Feminist. I've never really thought to publicly identify myself by my sexuality, het woman, which is very "white bread" and old-fashioned. Not only het, but serially monogamous for the most part. It seems almost a liability these days to say you're het, but I am proudly and happily so. I tend towards intellectualism but only have a BA, which doesn't carry much weight, at least in public and professional worlds, no matter how much you've studied, trained, and can articulate, even teach.
My biological heritage is Irish, Dutch, French Huguenot, Euro-mongrel. My social heritage is Roman Catholic on one side and conservative Methodist, temperance-crusading, women's rights and education on the other, with distinct East Coast sensibilities, now mellowed by more than half a century living on the Left Coast. My maternal political heritage is conservative Republican (altho what my relatives might think of current trends in the GOP I cannot imagine, since they did have brains and they did think and they did have a social conscience), yet I am much farther left in my outlook than any elected official I know. My paternal political heritage is blue collar Democratic, except that my dad broke with his family on politics and allied with my mother's family's conservatism.
I'm a former hippie, a home-birth advocate, a home death and green burial advocate, an opponent of capital punishment and resorting to warfare to resolve humankind's differences. I support the right to conscious self-deliverance. I rejoice in any and all consensual expressions of love and eros. I'm a lover and a mom.
I have never missed voting in an election and I disrespect those who don't avail themselves of this hard-won right. (I have ancestors who fought the Brits in the American Revolution.) I support workers' rights. I recognize our interdependence on this planet, so could be called a greenie. I'm a committed environmentalist in my day-to-day life (in terms of eating locally grown food, expanding public transit, recycling, preserving open space and wildlife, opposing exploitation of natural resources [strip mining, oil-drilling, nuclear facilities, agribusiness, monocultures, clear-cutting timber, overuse of pesticides, genetic modification, etc.]) I want to make the city streets "safe for dancing," as my old friend Tony Serra said when he ran for mayor of SF on the Platypus Party ticket.
Well, you got me going there, my friend. Thought-provoking read, as I said. ;-)
xo,
Macha
Lovely azaleas!
[cough][gag][snort][sneeze]
Just lovely...
I know what you mean.
I feel you. There is too much bs- particularly when people decide that their temperament is tantamount to truthful and ignore everyone else.
I get irked by immature extroverts or closet introverts who ignore you REPEATEDLY and then pretend you're out of line for being upset by the time they can't pretend you didn't say anything anymore. I find that the same people will ignore you if you blow up right away, too, and that it's because they just don't think that honoring what you value is important to maintaining a relationship, or even worse: that you don't know what you value at all and that it's all a mind game for their pleasure or annoyance. Then they call you passive-aggressive, aggressive, moody, touchy and temperamental. I call them "not listening".