Congregations & Beyond - Reflection
Unitarian Universalist Association President Peter Morales has just released a strategic vision statement called “Congregations and Beyond”. Download the pdf here to read the four pages statement.
The key point: The Unitarian Universalist Association exists to lead a religious movement where innovation based on generosity and courageous faithing joins existing successful strategies.
Congregations can be effective strategies for faith serving the community. Congregations are changing, too, and learning more about faithful service beyond their walls, across denominations and faiths. Unitarian Universalists are joining a larger movement of people adapting faithfully to a rapidly changing world.
Generous and innovative ministries are growing and living faithfully, serving the larger community and connecting people in faith communities. Congregations are not the only effective strategies to faithfully serve the community.
We’re all called to serve the larger world, wherever the world is at, with what issues are at hand and what gifts we can share. It may not be what makes us most comfortable. Congregations are called to serve the larger community, not just the folks making it into the sanctuary.
We’re recognizing that a lot of people who consider themselves Unitarian Universalists, Universalists and Unitarians are not members of Unitarian Universalist Association congregations. There are lots of reasons for this, and we get to address those reasons, with the gifts each ministry and community has. Those gifts and ministries will also have more of us working with people from many and from no faith traditions. We celebrate the diversity of ministries, beliefs, and gifts.
Let’s focus more on connection, the meaning of rather than the form of, membership. Let’s focus more on using the gifts each of us has to work together in aiding and abetting the growth of goodness in this world.
We can be an open source faith, crowd-sourcing wisdom, taking a great core of faithing and making that faithing more relevant, connected, and stronger through generous and courageous innovation based on gifts and needs.
The vision President Morales puts forward is itself a product of shared work and faith among three groups already composing the Unitarian Universalist Association - the Board of Trustees, the General Assembly of Congregations, and the UUA Staff. The Board proposed a by-law amendment last year to remove the requirement of location for faith communities. The General Assembly approved that amendment this past year, and will vote on it a second time this year (as our by-laws require). The UUA Staff are working on becoming “a resource, a platform, and a hub” (p. 4, “Congregations and Beyond”). Now, those of us working beyond congregational walls and in faith communities who’ve been lowering their walls and figuring out how to serve the larger community of which they are one part are invited explicitly into the mix. May generosity and courage guide us we risk faithfully together.
