Summer takes many of us away from our usual routines as we spend days at the beach or out of town visiting with family and friends. We return to church in September with unique stories and original photos to share.
This month I explored some different avenues of my own and dove into relationship building within our community. It started with our monthly Board Meeting, which is usually held in the conference room, a full agenda, and 2 hours of business. I decided to move the venue to Fellowship Hall, and began our meeting with dinner and a blank agenda. This was our time to get to know each other better, a team building meeting, to talk frankly about what was important to each of us in the coming year as a member of the Board. Our Board Secretary, Nancy Harrison took notes at the meeting so that we can keep focused on these goals throughout the year.
Karen Cook and I led a leadership workshop for our new Board Members and Committee Chairs last month. We shared our two history books on how our congregation started, reviewed our church mission statement, vision and commitment. We held a short Q & A on how to; ranging from policy questions to expenditures and committee budgets. We also handed out a questionnaire to survey the list of topics for our next class. We hope to open up our next workshop to more members who are interested in learning more about leadership at SKUUC.
I participated in a Summer FUNSHOP for our children last Sunday. I was assisted by Zelma Nunez-Burja, who brought her artistic talents and reliable teaching skills to the workshop. It was a morning of engaging with our children, getting to know them and their families, and a chance to see how they interact together. I am excited to reconnect with the leaders of our RE program in the fall.
Mid-July, I received an invitation from the Pacific Central District, UUA to join an email group dedicated to our districts Board Presidents. The majority of us are just beginning the first year of our two year term as president. We arranged to meet this past Saturday at the UU Society of Sacramento. We were joined by Josh Searle-White, the new District Executive for Pacific Central District. Our meeting focused on the upcoming leadership workshop that will be hosted at the UU Church of Berkeley (Kensington), on Saturday Oct 26th (http://www.pcd-uua.org). We also shared our own list of helpful hints for new presidents, referenced books and web-sites for additional reading.
I will join our Vice President of the Board, Diana Dickerson at her first Committee Council meeting on Tuesday, August 13th. Diana and I will share with the Committees some of the ideas that were formed at our last Board Meeting. We will touch on building relationships between our Committees; what does Stewardship mean to us? ; and how do we plan to tackle some of our most important projects?
-Colleen