From the Board

Alyssa Ryanjoy, Board President

At the end of September, the FUS Board of Trustees participated in a retreat with the Rev. David Pyle, our Regional Lead and Congregational Life Consultant with the MidAmerica Region of the Unitarian Universalist Association. Part of this retreat was focused on our roles as board members and how we can be a more effective board. Especially in a large congregation like FUS, it is critically important that we have clarity on the roles we all play. Our ministers will be sharing about the areas of responsibility between them as CoSenior Ministers, and we wanted to share our learnings about board responsibilities as well.

Discerning the Congregation’s Mission and Vision

What kind of world does the congregation seek to build, and what parts of that world is the congregation ready, committed, and resourced to work on creating right now? These are the questions Mission and Vision Discernment strive to answer, by having deep conversations with each other and with the congregation. As we embark on discerning a new mission and vision with the help of our wonderful task force, there will be many opportunities to share your own thoughts.

Holding the Fiduciary Responsibility

Ensuring that the assets, resources, and strengths of the congregation are being used for the fulfillment of the congregation’s mission and vision in the world is a critical role of the Board. We learned to think about this responsibility in a more expansive way. While ensuring that money is spent in the right places is a part of this task, we must also ensure that other resources are used to fulfill our mission and vision. Some of those resources include the use of our facilities, staff time and energy, time and energy of volunteers and lay leaders—even our reputation in the community can be an asset when used in the right way.

Capturing Institutional Wisdom by Generating Policy

Good policy requires us to be rooted in our mission and vision and then answers the question: what is required of us as a congregation when challenges and opportunities arise? Policy should capture learnings in such a way that makes them available and accessible to future leaders. Congregations are communities of people in covenanted relationships, not communities of laws. When policy is not being followed, it is covenantal conversation which determines how to bring people back into relationship, not punitive action.

Assessing the Health of the Congregation

In order for a board to see what institutional wisdom might need to become policy, or to know if the resources of the congregation are being used in the right way, it must have a practice of looking deeply at the whole organization. The Board must assess the congregations’s health to discern where we are and where we might go. Boards with a healthy practice of congregational assesssment might look beyond their own congregation to see what is happening in other denominations in our area, or in other UU congregations near and far.

Planning for the Congregation’s Future

The Board of Trustees needs to be continuously charting a course for the congregation’s future. A strategic plan should be rooted in a deep understanding of both the (con’t on page 7)

FROM THE BOARD

(con’t from page 6) mission/vison and the sustainable resources and assets of the congregation. A strategic plan should also include an understanding of where we have been, where we are now, and the possibilities of where we could go in the future.

Building and Maintaining Relationships

Staying connected to the congregation and other stakeholders of FUS requires intentional effort. Our relational covenant is meant to help all members of our congregation stay in right relationship with each other, and its concepts are especially important for the board. In addition to maintaining personal relationships with congregants, the Board must maintain relationships to other elements of FUS, like each of the committees, our ministers, and staff. Key relationships in the local community and the broader UU community are also important.

Transforming the Congregational Culture

We too often think of what is possible through the lens of what we already know. Transformation calls the Board to lead toward a new paradigm, not to accept that the way the congregation has always been is the way the congregation will always be.

Like all of American society, UU congregations have been built within the structures of white supremacy. Transformation is learning about those structures and patterns, seeing them within our congregation, and finding ways to transform those patterns into something else—even when that something else may not yet be clear. Transformation is learning about the ways that power is expressed in the congregation, how it is shared (equally or unequally), and strategizing ways to transform the nature of power in the congregation.

Transformation is also about examining where the congregation is not in tune with the values of Unitarian Universalism, and it seeks to transform the congregation to be closer to those values. All of the previously mentioned practices help to build a congregational governing board that has the credibility, the vision, and the purpose of leading transformation in the congregation.

The Board came away from the retreat with many new ideas for improving our own practices, and we were energized by our time discussing how we may best serve FUS. If these seven practices excite you too, you may consider applying to become a board member when the opportunity opens again this spring. As always, the Board would love to hear your feedback, and you can share it with us by emailing me at fuspres@gmail.com.