UUA Board Secretary Paul Rickter posed this question to UUA presidential candidates Peter Morales and Dr. Laurel Hallman prior to the UUA Board Candidates forum 14 January , 2009.
“Imagine five years have passed and imagine that your vision for UUism is fully alive and thriving. What three to five goals have been realized?”
Written responses.
Rev. Peter Morales
The goals that will have been accomplished in five years are intimately interrelated. The guiding vision behind them all is a revitalized Unitarian Universalist movement that transforms lives and that helps to heal the world. In five years we will have a new sense of urgency and excitement across our movement. The following accomplishments are manifestations of living out our mission:
1. We are growing at a rate of three percent per year. Growth is not the goal, it is the measure by which we determine whether we are meeting the fundamental human need for religious community. We are growing because we are doing a better job of welcoming the seeker, retaining our youth, and engaging our existing members. As we grow we are becoming more diverse in terms of race, class and culture. Our growth rate has tripled and is accelerating.
2. We are more engaged in the great moral issues of our time. As a natural outgrowth of a deeper sense of compassion and connection, we are a more powerful force for justice, understanding and environmental stewardship. At the local level, it means that more members of our congregations are involved in social action and public witness. At the Association level, it means that we are building on our tradition of public witness and that we have forged a new partnership with the UUSC on social action.
3. We have developed a strategic vision for ministry and are beginning its implementation. Our strategy for ministry has been developed through consultation with stakeholders. Our strategy is a comprehensive approach that includes recruitment, training, placement, mentoring and development of professional ministry.
4. The UUA staff has a culture of transparency, accountability and effectiveness. As a matter of course we evaluate our programs and our people. We learn from our mistakes. Our staff is more involved in being the means for sharing best practices and innovative ideas across congregations.
5. We are forming strong relationships with groups that share our values. This includes international Unitarian and Unitarian Universalist movements, public policy advocacy groups, the UUSC, and others.
Rev. Dr. Laurel Hallman
1. Our children and youth will participate in UU congregations as adults.
2. Our UUA endowment will grow to a sustainable level, and our dependence on its income for operating expenses will diminish.
3. We will wed our religious and theological future to our historical past, and will experience the power of that synergy.
4. The Free Spirit will become a source of inspiration, activism, humility and strength in our association.
5. Our alliances will enlarge our effectiveness in the world.
March 2, 2009 at 9:05 pm |
I was alerted to this by Morales campaign manager Dea Brayden.
It’s easy to see why she wants people to read this. But please point us to other comparisons.
To me personally, it shows that Morales has what it takes to lead the UUA:
a penetrating analysis of our situation, concrete and tested plans for action, provisions for accountability and for measuring progress, and an infectious vision for progress that is indeed a religious vision and therefore has a chance to inspire us, and overall a much more complete perception of the problems and possibilities along the way.
Unlike Laurel Hallman’s unjustified hopes for magically increased endowment coffers Peter Morales has demonstrated with workshops, training DVDs, and by example (as a member I know that JUC has no wealthy mega donors) that our growth does not depend on cash but on applying best practices after a congregation takes an honest look at the homegrown causes for their stagnation.
Also, my own Free Spirit appreciates the occasional history of theology sermon but unless it’s preached by a true master I won’t bet on it having life changing effects.
Speaking of stagnation – I had expected to find real development in Dr. Hallman’s positions since the Ft Lauterdale debate but I keep coming up empty.
Take her hopes for keeping children and youth to stick with UU. Yes, it’s an obvious and laudable objective. But it mainly has possibilities (not guaranteed results) that may eventually play out decades from now. Fostering youth, however, faces many obstacles over which we have little control.
Young adults often don’t find any UU parishes once they move away because they are so few and far between. If they do, they may be less than welcoming or have little to offer (as applies to most small congregations who are at a disadvantage because they don’t have the numbers for a host of programs). Plus, most people will make religious compromises when they marry, and as UUs are bred not to be fanatical they are more likely to give in if their partner insists on, say, a Catholic church, rather than call it off.
In my opinion, the focus on youth can only be a part of the puzzle, but Laurel Hallman places most of her emphasis on it, probably because of her familiarity with and success in that field. We all have our pet peeves.
A leader, however, should have the bigger picture in mind, as does Peter Morales, who acknowledges the importance of youth work but points out that we scare away too many visitors for whom our religious community would have been a good fit. I believe that his goal for 3% growth might be entirely achievable simply by retaining most of those visitors. Those people have all checked us and the UUA out online and have already determined they generally like what we do and believe. If they don’t come back, chances are we didn’t make them feel welcome.
Martin Voelker, Golden, Colorado