3003 Plenary III
Planning Committee Sponsored

Diane Olson
Moderator's Report
June 22, 2002

Moderator's Report also avaible in PDF format [PDF instructions]

And now, it's time for my Moderator's report... First, I want to tell you I've had a wonderful time serving as your Moderator for the past year. The time has flown by. It's been at times an overwhelming job to learn ... But I've loved every minute of it!! I can't think of doing anything else that would give me the deep level of satisfaction and well-being that this work does ... It gives me the opportunity to serve and to act upon my deepest values ... And I thank you for the opportunity.

I told people in the earlier months of this year... That this was a wild and sometimes wacky job. It seems much more comfortable to me now. I've traveled over 120,000 miles since September... I wanted to become acquainted with as many congregations and districts and elected and board-appointed committees as I could. I wanted to make sure that you understood how deeply committed I am to serving you in your congregations and your districts.

I'm interested in doing church. I'm committed to supporting the development of healthy congregations in our association. By this I'm speaking of congregations that use good governance practices to nurture strong community. In the many congregations I've visited this year I've asked what's working well for you in your congregation ... and what's not? I began to notice traits in common in the congregations that seemed most healthy and where the members voiced the fewest complaints.

Members in these congregations had engaged in conversation with their ministers about shared ministry. They understood they were each an important element in building community. There was no confusion about what the board was really doing. There was an absence of mistrust in the community.

Most of these members honored their membership responsibilities. They were present consistently, generous with their time and their financial support, and spoke respectfully when disagreements arose. They wanted to protect the integrity and well being of their religious community, so they covenanted among themselves, promising to one another how they would work together to nurture and cherish their community.

In conflict situations they agreed to stay at the table until resolution of the conflict, speaking their own truths and not critiquing others' opinions, listening sacredly, and agreeing to reach settlement acceptable to all.

So now when a congregation asks me what can be done to strengthen their church I tell them this. Develop a vision for your future. Covenant together, so you understand the rights and responsibilities of membership. Insist your staff and board leaders practice transparent, accountable leadership. It is the responsibility of the members to speak up when they feel excluded from information and decision-making. Be clear in defining boundaries between the roles of minister, staff, and lay leaders. Learn to recognize and deal effectively with conflict. Most importantly, have fun!! And the more fun you have the more deeply satisfying your participation will be.

In reality, I can only encourage you to nurture and support your congregation's practices. It's your job to take this challenge on. And it's very doable.

The UUA website offers you extraordinary assistance in developing your community. So I've asked Jim Austin, our UUA Director Of Technology Information Services, to give you a brief overview of our UUA website... Where you can find answers to the questions I've raised. And you can learn lots of other things about developing church life.

Jim?

Thanks so much, Jim.

Now let's return to words from the opening celebration…We meet on the holy ground of this Unitarian Universalist faith we share, you and I. We can be transformed by the invitation to growth that Unitarian Universalism offers us. We can be challenged to grow at our religious edges…if only we are willing to accept the challenge.

From my visits and my conversations with you I have experienced most powerfully a wish to come together in ways that surrmount our increasing diversity…. a diversity that demands that we stretch, that we focus on our commonality as well as our individuality.

I've listened to several poignant stories of folks who were devoted humanists in the association's earliest years. Their experiences in those years gave them a sense of oneness in community. And they feel lost now.

I've thought a great deal about those stories. And what I've wondered is this. Did that sense of oneness come from being a Unitarian Universalist…or did it come from the pleasure of sharing a common theology that created a sense of oneness?

In our earliest years this association merged two very different groups…those who were committed Unitarians and those who were committed Universalists. To me our history reflects a stronger attention to our individuality and a lesser concern for our commonality.

I'm sure the source of this emphasis came from the need to blend two such very different communities. We have become very articulate about our ability to discern our own faith path, our own individual theologies. We are not very practiced in speaking of the power of our one community.

So I ask you to ponder this question with me. What is our oneness????? What I'm hearing from you is a longing for oneness. So what is our oneness? Is it our principles? Is it our history? Isn't it just about time to move away from the hesitancy to commit as one community as in our earlier years…can't we move into this century celebrating the whole as well as the parts?

I believe we will become so much more vibrant, connected, and even joyous…if we can move in this transformative direction. To me it's the most important question facing our movement at this point in our history. What I hope for as moderator is that we can reach for, risk for the larger experience that our faith can offer us. I want to point us towards that possibility.

Two stewardship issues come to mind for me, when I consider our oneness. Can we come to the place where each of our congregations pays annual program fund dues? What happens now is that 80% of our congregations pay dues that cover the costs of programming for 100% of our congregations. These
services include ministerial training, religious education curricula, and teacher training. These services provide our hymnals, they offer us training in leadership development, in church finance, and in capital campaign development. And this list just scratches the surface of the support the association offers each of our congregations.

Do you have any idea what would happen if each of our congregations paid 100% of their fair share dues? The association would receive about an $800,000 increase each year…enough to completely underwrite all of our ga delegate fees, or underwrite the beacon press deficit and buy the bill board space described in the president' report. Or, if all had congregations paid their fair share, last year's fair share would have been $37.50 per member rather than $44. This information, by the way, was provided by our UUA board finance committee chair, Gini Courter.

If your congregation is not yet paying your fair share, won't you please do your part in supporting the whole? We need you!

The second stewardship issue I want to mention to you is also a justice issue. We ask the sun, the moon, and the stars from our ministers....let's give them decent salaries. Become a fully committed fair compensation congregation. There are programs this weekend that can offer you assistance. Find Ralph Mero's booth in the exhibit hall and make your commitment now.

The UUA board is certainly making increased efforts to connect with you and to be transparent about its leadership…as am I. We've opened working group meetings, we're publishing visitor friendly agendas on the web, and information-packed minutes of our board meetings four days after the meeting adjourns. We're connecting with the district presidents association. We're in conversation with all who wish to speak with us. I'm making the visits I mentioned to you earlier.

But, connection is a two way street? What will you do to connect with the association?

The deepest sense of obligation I feel in my role as moderator is the need to further our efforts to become the religious community we want to be ... To become anti-racist ... To become anti-oppressive ... To become a multicultural religious community.

This is not easy work. It requires of each of us that we develop a personal intentional practice of the values we espouse. The deeper principles that infuse our journey toward wholeness commitment with energy are these….our commitment to respecting the worth and dignity of every person…our promise to honor the democratic process…our fierce engagement with bringing about social justice for all! I ask you to incorporate this sacred practice in your life on a day-to-day basis.

Commitment.

I'll tell you how the board and I are planning to engage further in our journey toward wholeness. I am asking the board to develop a list of questions that will help us assess what we can do to change.

I've suggested as 2 beginning questions that we look at how transparent we are about our decision making process. An open governance process is an anti-oppressive practice. A governance process that creates goals, monitors them, and announces progress toward those goals is an accountable board. The board will be doing that this fall and I will report to you annually about our progress. Your congregational boards could begin this practice as well.

The board received the report of the task force on nominations for president and moderator at its April board meeting, and members of the task force spoke with
us here at GA. We need a process that supports all candidates who wish to run, a process that is open about qualifications and that explains clearly the time demands of the position. I promise you we will work very intentionally with the advice of this new report to create an open process.

On a personal level I will continue to actively promote socially responsible investing and grass roots organizing…because these activities offer great leverage to direct the actions of large commercial corporations as well as nurture the development of powerless and impoverished communities to demand the city services that they deserve.

Finally, I promised you last year that I would look into how to make our general assemblies more affordable to more of our members. I'll introduce you now to the newly appointed Moderator's Task Force On Economic Access to General Assembly. The members include June Gillespie, Chair of the Task Force....June could not be here today. The Reverend Douglas Morgan Strong, Vice Chair of the Committee, and Patsy Sherrill Madden, the Reverend Burton Carleigh, Brad Bradburd, and the Reverend Kristen Harper. This is the charge I have given to the task force:

That this task force report back to the UUA Board of Trustees at its April 2004 board meeting, addressing the following question:
How can costs to general assembly attendees be reduced so a much larger and more representative segment of our membership can afford to attend future General Assemblies? Thank you task force members!

What can I say ...I love this job. I'm committed to healthy congregations, a collaborative association, and intentional practice of our values. You know where to reach me if you have suggestions. dolson@uua.org.

See Also UUA Annual Report - Moderator's Report (Diane Olson) (3 pages, 125KB, ( in PDF format)

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