Transcript Document

Dreamcatchers 2
September 21st 2014
Info Link
Dreamcatchers 2
• 167 participants
• Began April 26th, ended August 31st 2014
• 12 sessions with the same design (available on the web)
• Co-facilitated by every Board member in turn with either Kay
Crider or Rev. Sydney
• Mission/Values/Ends process
Mission
Values Ends
Design of Workshops
•Values
•Ends
Appreciate Inquiry
From experiential to conceptual
The Nested Bowls
Shared Core Values – What transcendent,
timeless qualities of our religious community will
we carry forward into the future?
Values
The Nested Bowls
Mission – What difference are we here to make?
Mission
Values
The Nested Bowls
Ends – What specific, measurable differences
will we make and for whom?
Ends
Mission
Values
The Nested Bowls
Moral Ownership – connection with our
sources of authority & accountability adds
the flame
Ends
Mission
Values
Values
What transcendent, timeless qualities
of our religious community
will we carry forward into the future?
Four core values
Service/Justice
Connection
Spirituality
Integrity
Value #1 Service/Justice
• Service to individuals and communities in need of help
• Protecting and preserving the natural world
• Embracing inclusion and diversity at all levels
• Sharing a sense of purpose and building a better world
Value #2 Connection
• Seeking connections for families and individuals
within & outside our church
•
Welcoming & nurturing all who enter our church
•
Celebrating together
Value #3 Spirituality
• Honoring the individual search for truth & meaning
• Experiencing the sacred in music, art, nature & in everyday life
• Sharing deep joy & connections
Values #4 Integrity
Expressing ourselves in ways that expand these qualities
Loving
Open
Kind
Tolerant
Courageous
Compassionate
Accepting
Authentic
Mutual respectful
Free inquiry
Generosity of spirit
Try it: “We commit to being a ______community”
• Loving
• Open
•
Kind
•
Tolerant
•
Courageous
•
Compassionate
•
Accepting
•
Authentic
•
Mutual respectful
•
Free inquiry
• We commit to being a community practicing Generosity of Spirit
Ends
What specific, measurable differences will we make
and for whom?
Within ourselves personally
Among ourselves as a congregation
Beyond the walls of this church
Your Input
From Groups:
• Beyond – 4 pages
• Among - 2 pages
• Within - 6 lines
From Individuals:
*Beyond – 2 pages
*Among- 6 pages
*Within – 8 lines
Reflection
Accomplished in:
• Building community among ourselves as a congregation (Among)
• Serving the world (Beyond)
Consider:
• What does it mean to be a church encouraging individual
transformation? (Within)
A Wild Venture into Categorization
Beyond ourselves – Serve our world
Whole church opportunities for service!
Environment
Education
Economic and global
Food
Health
Homelessness and Hunger
How to -- cooperation with other groups
-- cooperation among ourselves
Infrastructure
Among ourselves as a congregation
• Welcoming
• Building Community among ourselves
• Worship
• Membership
• Finance
• Staff
• In Practice
• governance
• right relations
Within Oneself
Transform Ourselves
• Personal qualities to cultivate
• Opportunities for spiritual growth
• Identity work
on issues of race, GLBT, income, ability, health, education
Looking Back: Cottage Meetings 2013
• Right Relations
• Pastoral Care
• Community Building
• Welcoming
• Worship
• Aesthetics
• Staff
Looking Forward: Visioning into Happening
Raw data and this powerpoint on UUCE web
Another InfoLink!
Whole Congregation activities during the fall of 2014:
• Open Source process
• Circles of consensus (as we did before)
• Other opportunities
Continue winnowing and refining through winter and spring of 2015:
• Summit meeting of whole
• Ministries
• Annual Meeting June 2015
Beyond
• Do more social justice!!!
Service opportunities in the community or at UUCE for the community,
such as being a warming center, or host church for First Place Family
Center. *
Fifty UUs engaged in a productive project in the community, spanning
weeks or months without meetings.*
What would I like to see this congregation do more of: take public
stances on difficult issues.*
Homelessness and Hunger
• Fund and build 10 shelters in the next year.
• be a warming center; Become an Egan Warming Center.
• be a dining room/breakfast work
• Serve a meal a week to the hungry.
• Begin program to welcome any homeless who come here – trained
volunteers who can listen and share resources
• Hold five outreach events in the community, with info about us, who
we are and what we do.
• Potluck once a month for homeless as guests with music and games.
• Work with Food for Lane County, Occupy Medical; Cooperate with St.
Vincent connection; oppportunity village; Community gardens
How to organize
• Interfaith work
• Collaboration with other congregations and groups to promote positive
change in community.
• Networking with services Utilize what other UU and faith-based groups are
doing successfully, in relation to social justice and environmental issues.
• Create action plans that can be shared. Phone tree with other
organizations Wide range of service projects – in church and community.
• Partner with a black church to do projects
• Linkage with outside groups: i.e. Mt. Pisgah Monday A.M. Regulars; Let’s
try NAACP again; medical-single payer health care; Eugene Celebration.
• After service activity or project workshops/lectures to reach out to
community and raise money to make church financially stable
Environment
• Doing more to save our planet!! Discussion, learning and action at the church to
accomplish it.
• 25 households in the congregation do green audits of their homes and take the
recommended steps to lower their carbon footprint by end of 2014;
• Develop within the church a strong program to save the earth from global
warming and use that to influence Eugene, Lane County, Oregon, the Northwest,
and North America, and Beyond.
• Our environmental focus should include issues of food availability and quality and
sustainability.
• Encourage sustainable food sourcing: 1) plant start exchange in June; 2)
gardening mentor/buddy program-sign up during plant exchange; 3) Fall local
food-sourced potluck. Take part in interfaith community for farming, education,
housing.
• Our environmental focus should include issues of food availability and quality and
sustainability
The Earth is in serious trouble, all of our futures are at stake. I love this
church for it’s stated mission and principles and people that live them.
2014 Climate Report by the UU needs to be a guiding force for our
service to our families, neighborhood and the country to be salve upon
the great wound all lives must endure in the coming years. *
Doing more to save our world: “Plant food not grass”; turn down your
thermostat; wear a sweater inside when heat’s on; install doubleglazed windows; add more insulation to home’s exterior; caulk/seal all
joints around exterior openings; seal all joints in heating ducts;
consider a ductless heat pump; consider adding solar roof panels; take
navy showers with low flow heads; install a wood stove or fireplace
insert; burn only dry/dead wood. Consider buying an electric vehicle;
ride a bicycle and do more walking; wash clothes in cold water and dry
on line; cut down on your consumption of red meat; buy food grown
locally; go by train not by plane; use public transportation; use the
most efficient lighting system; buy only very efficient appliances and
electric; in this climate use only black roofs; recycle/reuse and grow
your own food.*
Education
• Support to the school next door
• Targeted education with partners for Pre-K literacies; Reading, writing, Spanish speaking
• Focus religious education on liberational theory
• Start after school program
Economic & global
• Recognize loss of the middle class
• Increase our fair trade sales – at least once/month for the coming year.
• Task Force for universal economic justice.
• 25% of church members (and friends) participate in one or more monthly community
action projects outside of church. – Targeting healthy sustainable community (set up
monthly actions- one year in advance, one per month). (Build a ramp, sanitation in
homeless camp, weatherize a house.)
Music Promote music in community.