Speakers: Kay Aler-Maida, Chair, Fulfilling the Promise Committee, First Unitarian Congregational Society, Brooklyn N.Y.
Barbara Ives, Intern for the Committee, Student, Harvard Divinity School

How can we work together to bring UU values into the larger world? What is our mission and purpose as a larger association?

The Fulfilling the Promise Committee was appointed by the Board of Trustees five years ago, as a strategic planning committee. A survey ensued in the World magazine (with 10,000 replies). The most interesting fact that came out of the survey was that UUs are not divided by their demographic groups (old, middle-aged, young), not by theological orientations, not by race or sexual orientation. We have different opinions, but we're not divided by their group identification.

We need to have a statement about what is core for Unitarianism Universalism; what is part of our Common Call; then a smaller group will take all the statements made and create a "Common Call" statement. Statements will be mailed out; all congregations should look at it; then next year at GA, we'll try to build a consensus around it.

One of the Committee's basic assumptions is that Unitarian Universalism holds a tremendous transformative power for individuals as well as society. "Fulfilling the Promise" really means "Fulfilling our Potential". We're not talking about doing away with the seven principles of UUism but of developing strategies for them.

In the workshop, participants first wrote down on a worksheet as many elements as they could to answer the question, "What are the member congregations of the UUA called to do so that we may fulfill our promise as a faith movement?" They then prioritized all of the ideas into a priority of three.

After that, participants broke up into groups of three and then into groups of six to share ideas and narrow all the suggestions down to a workable group of three. They then shared these with the whole group, and they were collected by the conveners.

Ideas generated by the five groups at this particular session included:

• Know who we are, by living according to the seven principles.
• Be able to say who we are (speak to intentional growth, what we stand for, celebrate our diversity).
• DO who we are (equal development and use of mind and heart, reason and emotion, as equal parts of what it means to be human); challenging others to "go into the fire."
• Each congregation needs to foster the spiritual development of its own members.
• Turn spiritual growth into action.
• Communicate between congregations; increase strengths.
• Create a beloved community.
• Common action in living out our principles.
• Share our faith with each other.
• Ethical commitment to living out our principles.
• Really welcome people.
• Care for and heal our environment; learn to live "lightly" on the earth.
• Be a nurturing community that supports faith development.
• Articulate what we stand for.
• Live our faith personally, act our faith.
• Turn our purposes and principles into action; our communities should be intentional.
• Work with other congregations to increase communication with outside world.

Reported by Allan Stern; formatted for the web by Kasey Melski.