I hope you'll join the Values and Mission team this Sunday October 18 after church to help articulate the values and determine the mission of our church. Childcare and lunch will be provided. All are welcome. I especially want to invite our younger members and parents of children in the Faith Development program. This is the final chance to add your voice to our new mission statement.
The church has a mission all the time, whether it wants one or not. Like a ship, it has a direction in which it is sailing and a port at which it will call. It will take on crew and discharge passengers; it will be more or less seaworthy, more or less able to withstand a storm. The church always has a mission. It is our job, as members and leaders of our church, to help take control of that mission and steer the ship where we want it to go. We raise and lower the sails, we turn the wheel and read the weather signs. The ship of the church will go somewhere.
The question is whether we will take up our role of helping steer it where we want it to go. To be sure, there are challenges. This is an old, big ship, for one thing. There are some leaks in the hull and its course was first set long ago. We are only the most recent sailors in its long voyage.
To steer the ship of the church where we want it to go, we have to agree on where we want it to go. From time to time, it's good to check in on our course and bearing. We build our community by being together. First Unitarian members and friends have been gathering over the past several months to do just that: to be together, and to talk together about our deepest values and how we live them out in this church. I hope you've had a chance to participate in one of these sessions, or that you can attend this Sunday's session so your voice will be heard.
Carol Gregory, Laura Kirshenbaum, Steve Knox, and Joan Russo have worked with me on the Values and Mission team for the past year. I'm grateful for their leadership, hard work and love for this church. They were nominated by the Lay Leadership Program Council to be members of this team, and were affirmed by the Prudential Committee. We will be collating all the responses we've had in our Values and Mission workshops, as well as answers which congregants provided to surveys during the ministerial search process. We hope to present a new mission statement to the Prudential Committee in December, and then to the congregation at the annual meeting in January.
The church will sail somewhere, but by focusing on our mission, we can trim the sails and turn the wheel so it will sail where we hope it will go. We are its sailors, its captains and crew, for the time we are here. Help determine its mission and course this Sunday.
In faith,
Rev. Sarah C. Stewart
