From your (Cedars) Prez - query for you

I'm wondering how many Cedars' Members are on Facebook and whether it would be worth creating a Facebook group for Cedars.  It could be yet another way to use the latest technology to expand communications.  I'm interested in what you all think and what ideas you might have for how we could use the group.  Of course, there will be redundancies with what we already have - in print and on the website including the blog.  But everyone responds differently and is excited by different things.  Perhaps if enough people are on Facebook, it might be an easy way for them to stay abreast of what's going on.

Please - tell me what do you think?

From your (Cedars) Prez - about AGM

Last weekend in Salem, OR was my 2nd experience at the Pacific NW District (of the UUA) Annual General Meeting. And again, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it and learned from it. In my former professional life, I attended so many conferences, most of which were of limited value or interest. But these UUA/PNWD conferences are different.

For one thing, it is amazing how exhilarating it is to be around SO MANY UUs!  So many people who ardently believe as I do, in values that I so deeply believe would make this world a hugely better place. I've even started to feel that UUs need to do an intervention in the halls of Congress and the Senate to teach these folks about our 7 principles. Getting them all to start each session and each day with our affirmation would be such a big help, don't you think?  (Maybe we could start with our own COBI government!)

Secondly, I always learn useful and interesting information about how we UUs can make a difference in the world; and I learn useful information about how to make Cedars a better place for all of us.

The most interesting workshop I attended was on blogging - how blogs in congregations can enhance communication, engagement in the congregation's activities, and even excitement in what's going on. This workshop was co-led by the minister at the UU church on Whidbey Island who maintains a blog (Ms. Kitty's Saloon and Road Show) that has become very popular even beyond her congregation. (Perhaps our ministers could be persuaded to have a blog?) What I am particularly hopeful of is that Cedars' blog could become an active, vital place to exchange ideas and be an avenue of open communication between the Board of Trustees and Cedars' members.  The Board wants and needs to hear from Members so that it makes policies that are appropriately responsive to Members' needs and wishes. I will try out for the rest of this church year (end of June), writing a "From the Board" post after each Board meeting to let anyone who's interested know about some of the ideas that surfaced, and about any interesting discussions that could benefit from Members' input. With some publicity, I am hoping that more Members will come to the blog and let us know what they think.

A Discussion on Governance

There is an interesting discussion taking place on the Philocrates blog (Philocrates is the blog of Chris Walton, editor of the UU World) about the Purposes of the UUA. The part of the discussion that interests me most is the discussion of Policy Governance, specifically that which is based upon the Carver model. This is the model that the PNWD board is moving to, if it is not already there. The Cedars’ board is in theory a policy governance board, though it seems not to have followed that strictly, since there are a few committees that have liaisons.

Philocrates thinks that polity of the UUA is currently a bit confusing. I won’t even try to go there to figure that out. I think that’s what people like Philocrates are for. In his comment on the Philocrates post, Dan Harper takes the policy governance model discussion down to the congregational level, a level to which I can more easily relate. I’ll admit that I know little about the Carver model, but Dan says some interesting things about its effects on organizations such as ours, and I wonder if that applies to any policy governance model. Dan's comment that most intrigues me is:

“But I believe the Carver model is a poor fit for membership organizations in which membership meetings set policy, and hand that policy off to a Board and an Executive Director (ED) (where ministers often function as an ED in our churches) for implementation.

“In such membership organizations, it is the membership who set policy, not the Board, which means that you cannot follow the Carver model of having the Board set policy (which is what the UUA is trying to do here). Instead, there should be a different process for setting policy, involving the annual membership meeting ... You can do strategic plans and goal-setting in membership organizations in a way that involves the whole membership, but the Carver model does not give you an adequate process for that."

This raises a number of questions in my mind: Does our membership actually set policy? If not, why not? If the board sets policy, how does it get membership input, and more importantly, membership buy-in? Does the board have a vision? Does the congregation have a vision (my opinion is that it does not)? How can the membership find out about and have input into the board’s thinking so that it can thoughtfully consider what it is asked to vote upon at the annual congregational meeting? Can the board communicate more effectively and transparently to the congregation?

I hope that this will trigger a conversation among ourselves about how we communicate, make decisions, and govern ourselves. Please feel free to comment. Let your voice be heard.