Tuesday Talk
Allie Bonsteel, Board President, is our guest this week…
This year is off to a very energetic start.
Our Church is filled up during weekdays with students attending the School for Young Children, Red Oak Community School and folks learning English as a second language as well as church programs. Evenings and Saturdays are buzzing again too. Sundays are kicking off promptly at 9 o’clock and our services have been focusing on Covenant. September’s focus on Covenant is a good reminder for all of us to review our Covenant of Respectful Relations as well as our Healthy Relations Policy that was rewritten last year.
Newly revamped Religious Exploration classes are up and running. I’m one of the teachers for the 9 o’clock 8-11 Curiosity Garden class. While I’ve only taught one class so far this year, it was a lot of fun. The students tried to build stable structures with hula hoops–not a easy task! My son, Pierce is in the next room in the 5-8 Curiosity Garden class–he’s having a great time too! Thanks to all of the Religious Education staff and team for all of the hours invested in getting this year off and running.
Beach Hall has been refreshed and rearranged. Thank you to the generous donors who made this possible.
Middle Hour is offering many opportunities to connect. This past Sunday during Middle Hour about 30 people gathered for the Board Town Hall to discuss how we, as a congregation, can better create community through nurturing. Lisa, Larry, Greg and I will be debriefing the rest of the Board next month on the conversations we had. I’ll let you know what we heard from you. And next time, we’ll get a bigger room!
I hope you are finding ways to engage as the the new Church year commences.
The Board met on September 25th. There are some things that you should be aware of:
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Bill Fiorini was approved as the Moderator with a term to end 6/30/2020. This fills the remaining portion of the year left vacant by the death of Tony Rice. The congregation will vote to fill the remaining portion of the term in June 2020.
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We are still working to fill the vacant seat on the Board.
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Doug Kaufmann, as the Chair, and the other members of the Finance Committee are doing a wonderful job keeping the Board informed. They’ve developed some new reporting that is very helpful for the Board to evaluate our financial health each month. We are keeping a close eye on things like membership trends, worship service attendance and budget variances. If you have any interest in serving on the Finance Committee, please e-mail us at board@firstuucolumbus.org.
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We spent the last 40 minutes of our 2 hour meeting talking about the culture at First UU. This is not the beginning or this conversation nor is it the end. There are many things that we do well, but there are also many things that we struggle with as a community. Some of those struggles are shared by other UU churches and others are very unique to us. We’re having conversations about understanding what historic events have influenced our culture. There will be more to come on this. If you are interested in digging deep into our Church culture, please e-mail us at board@firstuucolumbus.org.
Board meetings are open to all. They typically occur on the 4th Wednesday of every month in room 301 (former room 7) and are listed on the Church calendar.
Allie
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