Cedars UU Church Blog

I am disturbed by this post. I thought the purpos...

2009-10-11T12:34:37.342-07:00

I am disturbed by this post. I thought the purpose of this blog to promote Cedars and Unitarian Universalism? Many seekers view this blog to find out about us. The content of this blog post seems more appropriate for an internal discussion, not a public one.

I appreciate feedback on this. Evolving does feel ...

2009-10-02T11:56:05.749-07:00

I appreciate feedback on this. Evolving does feel a little awkward - the Worship Committee is looking at various models practiced in other congregations, and I welcome conversation if anyone chooses to talk with me about this. I'll be doing the Welcome this Sunday, and will notice folks' responses.

Also, I some of the upcoming after-church Conversations may offer relevant input as we shape our future together - topics about "Home" and "Public Presence" are upcoming. (I am just glad not to hear that we are a lively congregation!!! )

We appreciate your observations and opinions as we...

2009-10-02T10:36:34.171-07:00

We appreciate your observations and opinions as we, the members of the Worship Committee, explore new ways to make visitors feel welcome at Cedars.

Ultimately a church our size can’t realistically have everyone who visits introduce themselves from the floor. Many congregants cannot hear visitors speaking without a microphone in Webster Hall. And many visitors prefer not to introduce themselves to a rather large group of people they’ve never met.

Having tried a new welcoming experience for three Sundays so far, we’re in the early awkward stage of discovering how to make our welcoming time most meaningful. We’re doing it imperfectly and we’re learning from our mistakes.

We ask for your patience while we work out the kinks.

You note the connection between the change in our welcoming and the board’s commitment to radical hospitality. That is deliberate and, we think, congruent. Note also that we no longer have the scripted welcoming statement delivered by board members in rotation. We are trying other radically hospitable techniques to help folks get to know their board members.

Hospitality also includes striving to make a good first impression. We now have worship associates crafting and delivering Words of Welcome, followed by a prelude from Chris. We hope this will offer a more spiritual beginning to our Sunday services.

Finally, we were startled by your choice of words to characterize the decision made by Rev. Barbara and the members of the worship committee. We value your opinions and your right to express them, but must say the word you chose sounds disrespectful of our carefully considered efforts to make the Cedars worship experience the best that it can be.

Thank you for your thoughts and support in this ever important endeavor.

I have had this experience when I have visited oth...

2009-09-28T05:12:03.484-07:00

I have had this experience when I have visited other churches while traveling. I always feel like a spectacle. In any situation, I feel its odd to invite only the visitors to stand and introduce themselves. To me, it says that the "regulars" are the important ones and they need info on all the newbies.

Hi Frank. I too miss some of those sermons that m...

2009-04-12T18:00:00.000-07:00

Hi Frank. I too miss some of those sermons that made my head ache (in a good way). I want to suggest to you and anyone else -- how bout you work with the Worship Committee to craft a sermon or part of the service either yourself or with other folk? One goal of Worship is to have more voices in the pulpit. I would really welcome that.

I sure was touched by Julie T's take on Easter today, if you were there...was a good one.

The UUA suggests creating a Facebook page for a co...

2009-03-09T11:13:00.000-07:00

The UUA suggests creating a Facebook page for a congregation, not a group.

The following Do's and Dont's are from the UUA.

Facebook Dos and Don’ts
for Leaders of Unitarian Universalist Congregations
DRAFT

From the Unitarian Universalist Association
For more information, contact pw_specialist@uua.org

Getting Started

DO set up a "page" for your congregation on Facebook. Get started at: http://www.facebook.com/business/?pages

DON'T set up a "group" for the congregation. Pages offer greater functionality and more visibility than groups, and are designed for use by organizations.[1]

DO make sure that more than one person has administrative access to the page and that the administrators are authorized to post information on behalf of the congregation. This page should belong to the congregation, not to an individual member or staffer.

Adding Content

DO upload a logo for your "profile picture." Choose an image that is recognizable at a very small size. Eligible congregations may use the UUA logo: http://www.uua.org/leaders/leaderslibrary/corporateidentity/index.shtml

DO treat your Facebook page as a public document. Visitors as well as congregants will see it. Offer information that is relevant to visitors, including contact information, phone number, service times, and website address.

DON'T post private information on the Facebook page. If you wouldn't post it on your congregation's website, DON'T post it on Facebook.

DO take advantage of the features offered to page administrators, by answering questions posted on your wall, creating events, uploading videos, and adding other content that is relevant to congregants and visitors.

DON'T clutter your Facebook page with excessive or irrelevant content. And DON'T install additional applications unless they are necessary and you know that they are free of viruses and malware.

DO upload photos of your congregation.

DON'T upload photos of children without permission from their guardian(s).

DO add new content and respond to questions on a regular basis, so that visitors know your congregation is active.

Encouraging participation and creating a safe space

DO tell congregants that the congregation has a page, so that they can become "fans.”

DO have fun with your page and use it to share the spirit of your congregation.

DO encourage “fans” of your page to participate by writing on the wall, uploading photos, and answering questions on the discussion board.[2]

DON'T allow threatening or offensive content posted by fans to remain on the page. DO consider reporting such content to Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/help.php?safety).

Keeping in touch with the UUA

DON'T hesitate to contact Shelby Meyerhoff, public witness specialist, if you have questions or would like to share your Facebook success story! DO e-mail pw_specialist@uua.org or call 617-498-6103.
________________________________________
[1] Committees or other groups within the congregation may find Facebook “groups” helpful for conducting conversations or sharing information amongst their members. However, “groups” are arguably less useful than “pages” for interacting with the general public.

[2] Fans can write on the wall and participate in discussion boards without administrative access. Fans can also add photos and videos, although photos and videos uploaded by fans are labeled as such, and are differentiated from photos and videos uploaded by page administrators.

My good friend and colleague, Kari Kopnick, DRE, o...

2009-02-27T14:12:00.000-08:00

My good friend and colleague, Kari Kopnick, DRE, of the Westside UU Congregation (West Seattle) co-led the blogging workshop at AGM. She has a really good blog called ChaliceSpark. Check it out. I go there quite a bit and find lots of good stuff, including her Westside UU RE blog...

I'm on Facebook and I know a lot of other Cedars m...

2009-02-25T12:30:00.000-08:00

I'm on Facebook and I know a lot of other Cedars members are. I think there may be ways to replicate content we put in once place, say here on the blog, and have it show up automatically in Facebook.

Yay! I love blogs, too! Cedars members: to contrib...

2009-02-24T15:23:00.000-08:00

Yay! I love blogs, too! Cedars members: to contribute to this blog, create a free google account (if you haven't already done so), and e-mail Frank Mandt with your google name. He'll give you the permissions you need to post.

And it's easy! If you know how to use a word processor, you probably already know how to contribute to this blog.

Frank, you raise some important issues here and I'...

2009-02-24T10:32:00.000-08:00

Frank, you raise some important issues here and I'm glad you did. I plan to put the issues of improved communication & transparency between the Board and the congregation on the next Board (March 10th) agenda with some specific proposals that I've even mentioned to the Trustees at prior meetings. After reinforcement at AGM last weekend for using this blog more effectively, I am persuaded that this blog can and should be used for, among other things, communicating what ideas come out of Board meetings that would benefit from congregational members' input and comments. My hope is that we can publicize the blog better so that people will come here to make comments. And the more content that is here, the more interesting it will be for people to come. Hopefully, our youth group members will also come here to make their valuable comments.

As for governance, my impression is that the Carver model seems inappropriate for larger congregations - the larger the congregation, the more complicated & cumbersome to use a model of governance where the membership sets policy and the Board implements. I do think that it is ESSENTIAL for the policy-making body to get feedback, comments, suggestions from the membership, and for policy to reflect the wishes of the membership. However, I'm afraid that expecting the entire membership to come together and make policy in any efficient and timely way becomes more problematic the larger the congregation.

At 140 members, being on the edge between the smaller "pastoral church" and the larger "program church", I'm seeing that most members seem too busy to be involved in activities that entail many meetings. Parents have so many commitments to their children's sports, academic and extra-curricular activities that they already feel stretched pretty thin.

This is why I feel that for where we are in size today (140 members), continuing to look to the Board of Trustees to set policy for today and the forseeable future makes sense. Having said that, I do believe that this cannot be done in a cocoon. Policy MUST reflect the wishes of the membership and MUST reflect and embody our collective Cedars vision. So not having a Vision Statement is a significant deficiency.

This deficiency could be remedied by the end of 2009. The Board and Rev. Jaco are beginning a plan for "Shaping Our Future" that we hope will engage our membership - anyone who is willing and able. I can't tell you much about this yet since the planning group won't be having our first meeting until April, after the stewardship gatherings are completed. We hope to gather valuable input from members during the stewardship meetings about "shaping our future" to inform how we go about this. Stay tuned for more on this.

Frank, you raise some important issues here and I'...

2009-02-24T10:27:00.000-08:00

...and I'd throw in Robert Bresson's Diary of a Co...

2008-04-30T13:06:00.000-07:00

...and I'd throw in Robert Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest and The Trial of Joan of Arc...

One of my favorite early religious movies was Wim ...

2008-04-29T23:21:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite early religious movies was Wim Wenders' "Kings of the Road".

Thanks for posting this, Porter. I will definitel...

2008-04-24T20:28:00.000-07:00

Thanks for posting this, Porter. I will definitely take advantage of this program.

We sure know how to throw a swell party and auctio...

2007-10-29T11:23:00.000-07:00

We sure know how to throw a swell party and auction! Everyone looked like they were having a very fun time. So many people helped to make the auction a success, especially Capt. Tegan and her steering committee of Carolyn Kempkes, Jane Martin, Julie Hill, Jeannette Shanilec, Mark Rosenwald, Porter Hall, Warren & Shayne - and so many others. The auction is an important fundraiser for Cedars, but is just as important as an opportunity for us to have fun in fellowship together.

The biggest risk I’ve taken was pack up everything...

2007-10-14T15:22:00.000-07:00

The biggest risk I’ve taken was pack up everything in Cincinnati and moving to the Seattle with Nancy in 1987. Neither of us had jobs (I had the potential of some consulting work) our relationship was only three months old, and we left behind a large circle of friends and a church we loved. We did have the advantage of at least knowing some people in the Seattle area: my brother lived in Seattle, and another couple from our Cincinnati church had recently moved to Bellevue.

We emptied out my checking account to rent a 24-foot truck, packed it with everything we owned, along with a sailboat we had agreed to deliver to someone in Seattle, and, dragging Nancy’s car behind, left Cincinnati after church on a Sunday. As it turned out, our agreement to deliver the boat, and the $500 fee we received for that, just covered the gas from Cincinnati to Seattle (things were cheaper then). We drove across the country, with side trips to Mount Rushmore and Yellowstone, in six days, the worst part of the trip being the long 10-mile-an-hour grind on I-90 up the hill from the Columbia River at Vantage to the rest area at Ryegrass Summit. Once we got there, I knew it was almost all downhill from there. Well, there was Snoqualmie Pass, but that was a piece of cake compared to Ryegrass.

As it turned out, it was a good decision for both, in spite of the bumps along the way.

I am telling everyone about this. It is a great o...

2007-09-06T17:21:00.000-07:00

I am telling everyone about this. It is a great opportunity to get rid of all that stuff lurking in your garages and sheds.

Frank, this is excellent! Please call me when you ...

2007-08-28T16:23:00.000-07:00

Frank, this is excellent! Please call me when you have a chance some evening--we need to get to know each other better in our official and casual capacities.

Welcome, all, to Cedars' new blog, and thank you F...

2007-08-28T14:43:00.000-07:00

Welcome, all, to Cedars' new blog, and thank you Frank, for making this possible. This is potentially a great communications vehicle for members and the Board to express (politely) comments, suggestions, recommendations or questions. And because we love without judgment, we will be able to do this in the best spirit of the caring and compassion we have for each other in this beloved faith community.

If more folks sign up for the blog, this could be ...

2007-08-26T23:52:00.000-07:00

If more folks sign up for the blog, this could be a cool tool! This might be a way to gather thoughts, ideas, concerns from congregants relative to our ministerial search. What do you think? Does this feel too impersonal? Or, is the anonymity appealing?