 to use the Zoom built-in polling functionality. So each item that comes to a vote, there will be a poll question that will pop up automatically on your screen. And there's one quirk to this. Many households may have more than one voting member joining through the same video. So the question will be posed multiple times. And please vote only once per person. So, you know, if there is one person just answer, yay, nay, or abstain for yourself. And if there's a second person sharing the same device, then that person will answer second. And I think there's slots for at least three people, which I think will cover everyone. Monica, do we have, do we need to pause for people joining by audio only? Do we need to call on people for audio votes? Yeah, that's the only way that we'll be able to know what they're voting. So after we've done the poll or even while we're doing the poll, if you're on the phone, unmute yourself and just say what you're voting. Okay. Yay, nay, abstain. Perfect. Thank you. Yes. And I believe the poll will pop up automatically when we get there. So we'll have a chance to practice this in a minute where we're, we are approving the minutes from the last meeting. So we'll see how it works in just a minute. Okay. I think that's it. All right. So if everyone has had a chance to take a look at the minutes from the last parish meeting in May of 2020, that is Oh, one, one more, just one more item about about the meeting. I know there's a lot of activity already in chat. So so at any time during the meeting, please place questions in chat. You know, depending on what the topic is, we may or may not be able to address it right now. But board members and Monica are monitoring the chat. And if we don't have time to get to something, we will come back another way in writing later. All right. So there was a motion on the, on the deck to approve the minutes from the last parish meeting. Are there any questions or corrections, unmute yourself or, or note any questions in the chat? If there are no questions or additions, we can move to the poll. Terry, do you want to mention the multiple options there? Yes, I did. So, so just need to vote once per member. So there's a, there's a second and third option if there's more than one voting member. It won't let me submit it won't let me submit without answering all three questions. I click on submit and nothing happens. Should click abstain for the other ones. We just clicked on close. Maybe we didn't get, maybe it didn't get registered then. I didn't see the submit thing. Let's see. We see 22 people, 35% is voted. Monica, does it work if we click on abstain for the ones that? Yes. I'm wondering. Yeah. Yes, it does. Yes, that works. Yep. Thank you. What if we just close it? What if we just? No, that won't work. Closing it gets rid of it entirely. Okay. I did not see the submit. You have to go on. You scroll down to get to the submit button. Yes. And it doesn't allow you to, it doesn't turn blue and call your attention to it until you've done something with the other, with all three. And I tried the abstain and it worked just fine. Thanks everybody. So yeah, it must be requiring the other two to be answered as well. So if you could hit abstain on number two and number three, we'll just assume that the vast majority of the abstains from two and three are from you all trying to get through the poll. And we'll try to figure out, we'll try to figure out for next time. Thanks for your patience. Trying something new. I'll just give it a couple minutes. It shows the percentage you have voted so far. For next time, you could add a fourth option not applicable and that would not muddy up the abstentions. Yes. Yep. Yep, exactly. That's what we're thinking. Monica, mine disappeared on me. I am wondering, folks, at the bottom of your screen, there is a button that says polling. Do you all see that or no? Oh, no, no. I don't know how you get the poll back if it closed on you. Kelly, I think you have some extra privileges because you're a co-host. That's why you can see polling. How many of you, so I see Lori, how many of you were not able to vote? I have a suggestion. I can see that 66 people said yay to the first question, 3% abstained. And the second question, I'm sorry, not presented. 66 people said yay. And the second question, 19 said yay. In other words, we have more than a quorum that's voted. So I think if everyone's okay, you could raise your hand if you really want to make sure that your vote is seen. But otherwise, let's Terry try to move forward and assume that this has been passed. What do you think? Monica, can I vote verbally? Absolutely. Yep, raise your hands or vote verbally. I vote verbally. Okay, so John, let me, you want to do yours? Cindy Graham, Claire Boss, Ann Reifenberg, Rachel Avery, Jackie. This is Dick Goldberg and Liza Monroe. We vote yes. Rachel, okay. Yeah, so I think we just need, you know, if anyone hasn't already gotten the poll to work, you know, we just need a consensus. You're not closing the precision of this for future meetings. Put in progress. Is there anyone audio only that we need to chime in? There's not to switch the gallery either. Yeah, can we switch the gallery? Okay, I think we have an overwhelming majority. I see no nays on the polls. So I think we have, we've accepted our minutes by consensus. All right. Yeah, please mute everyone if you're, if you're not intentionally speaking. All right. Chad is also available if you have any anything to bring forward. So we are our next item. If we could share the, share the screen again. Here, do you mind terribly? I'm going to try to fix the poll for number two. So if, if we could refer to the agenda for just a minute, I think I can, I think I can make this work for the next one. All right. Good practice for our, for our next, for our next votes, you know, Monica's going to make a quick change to the polls. So our, the next item we'll be voting on, we have, you know, a couple additions to our nominations committee. And right now, Joe Kramer has been working, you know, he's, he's been the primary member of the committee as our immediate past president. And to, so two new members, Susan Keenig and Dick Goldberg have graciously agreed to join him. Very happy to have them on the committee. Both Dick and Susan have been members for over 20 years. So know a lot of folks in the congregation and, you know, very happy to have more people working in this, in this important role. So this is, so the nominations committee, you know, they focus on the, you know, the, the few standing committees that are mandated to exist by our bylaws. And it also, you know, nominations for the board itself. So Monica, I guess any, and please review the, the bios in the handout for both, for both Susan and Dick. And there's also our next, coming up next are our youth advisors to the board also. Oh, so I see there's a second, thank you. I'm forgetting to ask for seconds. Thank you to the folks who are seconding the motion in, in the chat function. Thank you, Lorna, for, for seconding the motion. So the motion will be to approve these two candidates and we will vote as soon as the poll is ready. All right. Can everybody see the second poll is now live? So what you're going to do is select yay, nay, or abstain in the first one. And then in a second, in the third, if you've already voted, you'll, you'll select NA. And if you have two members in your household voting right now, the second person can select yay or nay or abstain and so on for the third. Looks like about 90% have voted. It's possible the remaining folks are people calling in. So feel free if you are calling in to vote verbally. All right. Monica calling in to vote verbally. Yes, on both nominations. Thanks, Jen. All right, looks like it's slowing down. I see 72 of 86 folks have voted. And participants who aren't members as well. So it won't be 100%. Yeah. I'm seeing, I'm seeing all yeas and a few abstentions and lots of NAs. So all right. The motion carries. Thank you very much, Dick and Susan for joining our nomination committee. So next up are our youth advisors to the board. We've had youth advisors at our board meetings for the last several years. It's a very valuable addition to the board. They are, you know, technically non-voting members, but their perspective is very much valued and, you know, brings, you know, brings interesting perspective and insight to the board. So this year's nominees are Ava Rochester and Esme Hill-Gorman. And both our youth who have come up through our CRE program have been very active in our youth programming for high school age youth. And, you know, again, please take a look at their full bios. I'm very happy to have them join our board. So whenever, so any questions? So we'll need a second to the nomination if someone could second via chat. And then also, thank you, Michael, for seconding. If you really want us to read these, we can't see them. They're too small. Right, right. You're not trying to read them on the screen. They're in the, if you look at the handouts, the handouts have the agenda and then both sets of bios for the youth and the nominations committee. And sorry for this. We would be showing them on the screen, but Monica's making the quick adjustments to the polls. Yeah, so the poll is live. And if the poll does not work on your device, feel free to vote verbally at any point. We only need that if you're not able to vote on screen. I approve the nominations, Monica. Terry, who moved the nominations on this first? Michael May. Well, the nomination comes from the board, then Michael May seconded. The last one was Lorna Aronson and the one before that was Andy Esbridge. We'll go just a few more minutes here. We've got about 75% of the participants voting. All right. Again, seeing all the yeas, the motion carries. Thank you, everyone. Thank you for your patience with our interface. All right. I know Monica's doing many things in this meeting, so we'll give her a second to make sure we have a clear record of our votes. And next up in the agenda whenever you're ready is the financial update. We aren't seeing the presentation yet. Monica, do you have the slides up? Sorry, could you not hear me? We can hear. We don't see the parish meeting deck. So there was only an intention to see one large video. Can you see that when I share and can you hear? We saw your desktop earlier right now. We see the FUS logo. And just a moment ago, did you see my face and my voice or no? No. Intriguing. Give me just one second then. Who's going to sing a song and do a dance? All right. Let me give this another go, okay? And feel free to verbalize if you can see it, okay? For about 10 seconds, then everyone can go quiet again. There you are. Can you hear me? No, we can't hear you. Are you muted? You can't mute yourself, Monica. Monica, we can't hear you. We have a tremendous amount to be And I'll remind you that last fiscal year in February of 2020, we refinanced, advertised, and paid down $1 million of our mortgage, bringing the remaining building loan down to just under $3 million. That paydown was obviously thanks to the generosity so many of you extended to the capital campaign back in 2017. And these mortgage moves placed us in a much better position for this year, decreasing our annual payments by $107,000. Now a bit of a side note, it's interesting that the UUA considers a mortgage of 25% or less of your entire annual operating budget to be a reasonable size. So we're at roughly 10%. And Roger recently shared that this will be a very pleasant surprise to most ministerial candidates who may have heard our reputation for being, and I quote, mortgaged up the wazoo. There are certainly amazing and obvious benefits for minimizing or eliminating one's debt, but I think it's interesting to note that objectively speaking, the impact on our overall budget is considered quote unquote reasonable. The other thing to mention about last year is that we qualified for the Small Business Association's PPP or Paycheck Protection Program loan in the spring of 2020. We receive just shy of $200,000. We anticipate that this loan with a 1% interest rate will likely be forgiven, becoming more like a grant than a loan sometime in or before the spring of 2021. And with the help of approximately a quarter of the PPP funds, just shy of $50,000, we ended the year with a balanced budget, so zero deficit and zero surplus in our operating funds. In other words, without the PPP funds, we would have ended the year with a $50,000 deficit. We ended the fiscal year with $1.83 million in our operating funding coming expenses, which is about 82K less than projected, which is about a 4% deviation. So moving into this fiscal year, which began July 1st, 2020, you'll recall we had a budget in hand with some loosely held assumptions that we may be able to gather in person again in early 2021. The verdict is still out on that, but seems highly unlikely that will be the case, at least in any fiscally significant manner. We committed to you all last spring that we would revisit our budget this fall, which we have done. So together the staff and finance committee created a revised projection for the remainder of the fiscal year, given the new assumption that we will likely be a primarily virtual institution for the remainder of the fiscal year. We propose that rather than officially ratifying our current budget that we use this new projection as an internal tool that will primarily help guide our spending. We will of course reference these projections and future communications about the budget this year. Given the unique landscape of this year, we project using $93,000 less in operating expenses, bringing anticipated annual expenses closer to the $1.74 million mark. We're projecting $123,000 less in operating income, which is just over $1.7 million. So we're currently anticipating using just over $30,000 in PPP funds to end the year without a deficit. Doing so would leave us with around $120,000 left in PPP funds. Currently, including those funds and assuming they're forgiven, we have approximately $300,000 in cash reserves. Our average monthly expenses are approximately $150,000 per month. So this is about two months' worth of savings. Keep in mind that for the last five years, we've incrementally decreased the degree to which we rely on cash reserves. But we have long utilized budgeted cash transfers in order to balance the budget. So this year, for example, we budgeted using $63,000 of cash reserves, which was down $35,000 from $99,000 we used the year prior. So let's assume we continue to use approximately $75,000 of cash reserves for the next few years. Our reserves would be depleted in three and a half years. And given that there's so much uncertainty about what the next few years looks like, both from a public health perspective and in light of our internal ministerial transition, we know that in the next few years, we need to find meaningful ways to either increase income or decrease expenses. And I'll be sure to circle back to that at the end of my time. So in regards to current income, pledge payments remain our largest and most significant source. And you know, if you've been tuned into our finances at all the last few years, that though on average, those that are giving give more year after year, our number of donors has been decreasing in numbers for nearly a decade. This year, so far, at least, there does not appear to be an exception to that trend. Though I imagine few of anyone would have expected otherwise in the midst of a global pandemic and in the third and final year of a ministerial transition. Currently, pledge commitments are down from last year by about 30 households and about $42,000. So to date, we have 542 pledge commitments totaling $1 million. And given that we budgeted a lower pledge payment amount this year of about $1,109,000, we are about $15,000 closer to our budgeted pledge goal than we were last year at this time. So Roger, Kelly, and I are reaching out personally to all the folks who pledged last year, but haven't yet this year in hopes of gaming a sense of what's happening in their lives and in their ever-evolving relationship with FUS. We really hope to gain a better sense of why community members are making different financial decisions. Those 110 households collectively committed just over $124,000 in pledges last year. So it's our hope that at least a quarter of these donors will still ultimately decide to make a pledge this year. In the next two weeks, we'll also reach out to all of our sustaining givers, many of whom are in the room virtually today. You all are the folks that a year and a half ago opted to make multi-year pledges and have been tremendous to FUS in your generosity and your reliability. And as we aim to address a pledge delta, we'd ask that you, pillars of our community, consider making a contribution of $25 more each month for the next six months. Doing so would go a tremendous distance and helping us meet our budgeted pledge payment goal. And obviously we recognize that in light of the pandemic, this is not a viable solution for everyone. We know that there are those among us whose household have been significantly impacted financially by the pandemic. And we honor and encourage you to please know that we are not asking you to give more than you're able. We also hold true that there are those among us who have lowered our personal expenses during this time and have perhaps even increased income. And if that is true, you may want to step forward to give for those who cannot. We know you'll all do your own discernment around this, but please know that we are always available to discuss either increasing your current giving or listening and supporting you as you experience financial hardships. All right, so back to the first quarter financials, and I promise we're in the home stretch now. Between July 1st and September 30th, we saw both less income and lower expenses than we anticipated. Pledge payments from Q1 in particular were significantly lower than anticipated. We budgeted $238,000, received $190,000, so we're $44,000 under our budgeted pledge goal. It appears that the majority of the pledge payment issues we saw in the first quarter are the result of once a year pledge payers holding off on payments in the first quarter. So I suspect this was likely in light of public health, political, and economic uncertainties. I wonder if not having a physical basket to drop pledge checks into has delayed pledge payments. We've also heard from numerous members about interim fatigue and their intentions to wait until after the next settled minister is selected to begin financially supporting FUS again or making their pledge payments. It's likely a combination of all of these factors. So for those of you that make your pledge payments once a year, we hope if you're able that you'll consider making those prior to the end of the calendar year or at the beginning of 2021. And for those of you that like to make your monthly pledge payments, please review those contribution statements that we mailed to you periodically to ensure your payments align with your giving intentions. So this year is strange, obviously, and it's pushed us as a community to grow in ways we couldn't have imagined. I personally have been deeply inspired by the work that we're doing together and you'll hear more about that in a moment. We have a powerful annual strategic plan this year that speaks to the urgent need to address the many forms of systemic oppression perpetuated in the name of sexism and homophobia, but in particular racism. The plan also calls on us to be adaptable in this year of ministerial search and care for each other as we navigate this global crisis and transition. Having a fully funded budget means we can lean into those priorities to the fullest extent possible. And finally, I hope you all believe as fervently as I do that there is cause for financial optimism. It feels important that we recognize that it is not uncommon for congregations to experience significant income bumps with the arrival of a new minister. I hope you all are as excited as I am to welcome this new person and create a relationship that brings even greater energy and vision to our community. When we chat again virtually about finances, it will likely be on May 23rd at the financial forum. Please mark your calendars. In the meantime, I hope you'll keep a lookout in newsletters and red floors for periodic financial updates. And of course, don't hesitate to reach out to me directly if you have any questions. All right, so I will hand things over to Kelly and Terry to discuss the annual strategic priorities. And Monica, I think there were just a couple of questions that might be good to address now. Question about deadline to use the CARES Act money. Does that carry over into 2021? No, so the CARES money has all been utilized already. So yeah, the application for forgiveness should go in in the next month. We should know about the answer to that in six months though. Okay, all right. And just in general, please reach out to Monica directly if anyone would like to see the video that wasn't able to hear it well on their device. I was able to hear it okay. I hope everyone was able to hear the gist of it. So thank you very much, Monica. We will whenever you're ready, if we could share. Were there any other questions? I think we whenever you're ready, if we could share, go back to the presentation to the strategic planning slide. So I just want to make a few notes about the process and intent of this year's strategic priority statement. So for the past several years, the board has been focused on kind of creating and refining repeatable processes related to governance. And we've had a few goals related to this. First, we're working on improving continuity from year to year, kind of keeping things going in the way that's intended by our governance model and kind of more fully living out the processes put in place. So one of our main goals in creating this priority statement is simplicity. We're looking for something concise so that the priorities are easy to share and communicate throughout the congregation. So just a single slide. This is it. This isn't a summary. This is the strategic priorities document. And also behind the scenes, we've been working on keeping the open question conversations going throughout the year. So this is our parish meeting for discussions. It's one primary place where that happens. But our model really calls for this to be a year-long activity. One thing we've been doing internal to the board is just reserving more of our meeting time to focus on open questions. The question we're going to talk about today, we actually took time during our board meeting to kind of walk through the question just as a group, just as a small group would do today. And that's just one piece of things. The intent is to create many opportunities throughout the year to keep these conversations going. So just a few notes about the questions themselves or sorry, the statements themselves. So because of this unique transition time that we're in, this statement is intended to primarily guide this year, so the 2020-2021 program year. And it will continue as long as is needed when the new ministry team is in place next year. The first item, nurturing a strong sense of community through the pandemic, taking care of ourselves and one another with love. There was, you know, the sense of urgency and necessity, you know, just at FUS as everywhere else, it is, you know, just has to be a top priority to continuously adapt to the evolving public health crisis. The second item, dismantling systems of oppression, particularly racism. The intent in placing this in our top priorities is intended to communicate that, you know, we want to focus on this at all levels in all areas of our operations and programming. So it's not just for one particular group or ministry team, you know, but it's, you know, we want to look at this in all of our policies and practices and our programming. And again, unique to this particular year, you know, we need to practice adaptability, supporting our search team and engaging in the process as FUS searches for a new minister to join Reverend Kelly Crocker next fall. So as with many things we're doing, that is, you know, our search and transition as an FUS community is top of mind. So the intent of sharing and creating this document is intended to help enable everyone involved with the FUS community, so staff, members and congregation, to focus on a limited number of top priorities and to help in decision making around, you know, where to put time and energy and to say, you know, yes or no and individual ideas or programming topics come up. And I, next thing Kelly is going to just say a few words about, about how this is playing out for the for the staff in helping prioritize time. Thanks. Yeah, so we brought these to the staff. And primarily what we're hoping and what we're hearing from staff just over the course of the past few weeks, we would like them to use these to prioritize their work to think about what it is that they do. And to really see that work in light of these strategic priorities. So what fits? What doesn't fit? Right, especially our operational staff, we were really clear with them that putting your work into strategic priorities is easier for programmatic staff. Right, we can think about the small groups and the worship and the things that we're doing to nurture community and then facility staff might say, where do we fit in here? And Monica's doing a fantastic job in working with operational staff in seeing where their work does indeed fit into these strategic priorities. The other piece of that, besides helping them figure out how to prioritize their time and efforts is also being able to say no. And this is one of the hardest things that our staff has to do. If someone comes with this great new idea that they're so passionate about and it doesn't fit into these priorities, learning how to say, this may not be the year that we've got staff time to work on this. It's not saying that it can't happen if there's enough members that want to see this happen, we can talk about it. But being able to use these to say no, which is so difficult. And so we wanted to name that today on behalf of staff and really ask you all for a lot of grace, if and when that happens, to understand where it's coming from that it is not coming from a place of a value judgment around your idea. It's coming from a place of wanting to hold and honor and respect the amount of time that our staff has. So thank you for that. Thank you, Kelly. All right. So moving on to our next presentation, President-elect, Alyssa Ryan Joy and Roger Bursthausen are going to say a few words about the ministerial model. Thanks, Dary. So I am incredibly excited to share an update to our term ministerial model that was outlined in the ministerial search update sent this week. If you haven't read the article there, there's more details, so please reference that if you haven't. First of all, I just wanted to say a huge thanks to all who participated in this effort. The ministerial research task force, huge round of applause for them. They did an amazing job of reaching out to other congregations and also doing a ton of research on what kind of models exist and what are the benefits and drawbacks of them. Also shout out, of course, to the search committee and everyone, all of you who participated in cottage meetings, open question discussions, and surveys as well. So I'm really proud to be part of a congregation that really leaned into our fourth principle and has engaged in a free and responsible search for truth and meaning to bring forward the benefits and drawbacks of different ministerial models. It's really neat to see. So in previous times of transition at FUS, there were far fewer examples of success with less hierarchy and organizational structure. UU congregations that had more than one minister almost always had one senior minister with more authority. And while we know more now about the advantages of maybe a more collaborative structure, most of us also joined FUS while Reverend Michael Shuler or Max Gabler were senior ministers and we found our spiritual homes here. So we continue to treasure the incredible leadership that both of them brought to us over the years. And I personally feel that FUS that most certainly didn't have an inadequate model of ministry in the past. And we also find ourselves now in a time of transition with a number of truths that have pointed us to new possibilities. So first calling a new minister provides opportunity to organically change our organizational structure. Reverend Kelly Crocker has served our congregation for almost 20 years and for so blessed that she wants to carry her experience into this new chapter at FUS. There are more examples of large UU congregations that have successfully implemented more collaborative models of co-ministry. Research and anti-oppression work has enlightened us to how systems of hierarchy don't always allow women and other non-dominant groups to thrive in their professional lives. And we've seen more evidence throughout society that collaboration provides flexibility, encourages creativity, and enables people to work to their individual strengths. And most importantly, our majority of our congregants have told us that they find value in a more collaborative and less hierarchical model at this moment in our congregational evolution. So considering all of these things, we're using this time of transition to build a ministry of equal standing. So that means that our new called minister will have the same level of responsibility and authority to Reverend Kelly. While the ministers will have extensive collaboration and a lot of freedom to divide up the work according to their own skills and passions, each are also going to have distinct areas of responsibility to with robust accountability to the board. And to ensure that, and once the new minister settled, a written covenant will be developed by Kelly and the new minister along with the board to define this and will be shared out with the congregation. So we'll be able to see what areas of ministry each minister is accountable for. The board is very enthusiastic about this direction. We hope you're excited to engage with our ministers in this new model that allows us to more fully live into our value values. And if you do feel some discomfort or uncertainty with this change, that's okay too. We hope that everyone is open to learning and adapting and growing so that together we can continue to build a loving community that seeks to do what we do and do that in the world. So with that, I want to just take a few minutes to answer any questions from the chat. As Terry said, if you're called into this meeting and can't chat any questions, feel free to speak up. And again, we, if we don't get to your questions during the meeting today, we'll be sure to save the chat and answer any questions under written communication. I'm looking back here if there's anything that's coming. It looks like not at the moment. So I will transition over then to an update from the search committee with Emily and Sandy. All right. So for those who may not know me, my name is Emily Smith and today I will be representing the seven members of the search committee. We wanted to take just a few minutes today to share with you the work that we've done so far, kind of a brief summary of that, as well as what we've learned through doing that work and what to expect from us next. So first, just a really brief overview of what we've been doing in the last few months. I'm not going to go into detail on any of these activities because we've written several newsletter articles and there's information on our search webpage where you can find out more about this. But just to run through it briefly, in September, we conducted a congregational survey. In October, we hosted several cottage meetings and focus groups for small group discussions with members of the congregation. In November, we did a few things. We wrote our congregational record, which is how ministers will learn about our congregation and the job opportunity here. We hosted the Beyond Pedetrical Thinking Workshop with Reverend Keith Crone from the UAE. Our negotiating team drafted our ministry agreement, which is the employment contract that our new minister will be taking on. And finally, we put together our document packet, which is basically just a lot of supplemental information to that congregational record, a lot of examples of documents that exist throughout our congregation, things like our bylaws and past parish meeting minutes, as well as several other things. So if you do have any questions about those activities, we're trying to save a few minutes at the end for any questions you might have. But for now, I will move on to thanking all of the volunteers who have helped us do this work. We go back just one slide briefly. So to shout everyone out briefly, Lorna, Roz, Lois, Ann, and Cricket helped us make calls to get people engaged for the congregational survey. Rene, Harry, Dick, and Dave helped us conduct those cottage meetings and focus groups, mostly by taking notes, and a couple times by facilitating those meetings themselves. And I forgot to put his name on the slide, but Michael May has also been helping us out a lot the last month or so as part of the negotiating team, so drafting that ministry agreement. And we also want to give a shout out to all of our supportive staff. In particular, Monica, who is really kind of quarterbacked all of the requests that we've made of staff, and has been really patient with our multiple requests and competing deadlines and really helpful and responsive in getting that all done. Roger has attended many of our search committee meetings and offered some excellent advice and was willing to help us edit our congregational record, which involves reading through tens of pages of information, so we really appreciate that as well. And to Brittany, who has helped us communicate much of the information that we've communicated to you by helping us update our webpage and put together newsletter articles and all of that fun stuff. And I know that all of the other staff members have helped us out as well, in particular with helping us get together that document packet, so a big thank you to everyone. But moving on to what we've learned, which is really what we've heard from the congregation as we've talked with you over these last few months. We've heard a lot and we have valued all of it. And if you're looking for a pretty detailed summary of what we've heard, I would encourage you to check out the search committee's webpage where we have a summary document of comments that were left in response to questions on the congregational survey, as well as a summary document of the comments that we heard during cottage meetings and focus groups. But today, what I would like to read to you is just kind of eight big themes that we heard most frequently. So that is what is on the slide and I will read to you now. So first, we seek unity and a common purpose. Our large congregation can feel fragmented and siloed. We'd like to break down those silos to work more collaboratively together. We know that many among us prefer intellectual sermons, many prefer emotional or spiritual sermons, and many like both. We refer to this as head versus heart, and we hope our new minister will help us balance both of these perspectives. This is a welcoming community. It can also be difficult to develop a deep sense of belonging here. One person summarized this by saying, FUS is a welcoming place where it's hard to find a friend. We're conscious that the demographics of our congregation are primarily white, highly educated, and skew older. That being said, survey results show us that some members of our congregation do not fit these categories, and we want to make space for all when we define ourselves. If we go to the next slide. We're very proud of our strong music and CRE programs. We're committed to social justice, especially environmental and racial justice, and we'd like to engage more with our broader Madison community in these areas. We're aware that a consumerist mindset is prevalent in our congregation. We'd like to see our congregation continue to grow in membership, engagement, and financial contributions. And finally, we love and value our staff and Reverend Kelly. We'd like to see our new minister work collaboratively with the existing team. So like I said, there's a lot more detail to what we heard, and there's more nuance to any one of those points. And if you would like to read about that, do check out our webpage. But we think in these big themes that I just read to you, there's a pretty good balance of things that we currently do well and we're really proud of and areas where we'd like to grow and maybe we have some goals and aspirations. When the search committee starts interviewing ministers in January, we'll look for someone who shares many of these aspirations with us and has skills to help us move towards them. But we also want to offer a reminder that realizing these goals and aspirations is the work of a community. Whomever becomes our next minister will be part of the community that works towards those goals and aspirations, but no single person is going to do that on their own, which is why we have each other. So we're really excited to continue working with all of you towards those goals. And finally, what's next? So the search committee is going to try really hard to take the rest of December off. There's been a lot of work the last few months and we're really going to try to give ourselves a break for a few weeks. Because in January, January 2nd is when names of interested ministers will be released to us and the interview process will kick off in earnest. In February and March, we'll hold pre-candidating weekends with three of our top candidates who will be referred to as pre-candidates. Those weekends will, in all likelihood, be virtual. Likely sometime in April is when we will be able to announce to you who our final candidate is, and then likely in late April or early May, we'll have Candidating Week, which is when that person will be introduced to our congregation. And at the end of Candidating Week, we will hold a vote on whether to call that person as our next minister or not. So that's what we've got on our docket. I do want to mention that as we're working through the interview process, so really from January 2nd when we get names through in April, when we're able to announce a candidate to you, we're not allowed to tell you anything about the ministers that we're interviewing just for the sake of maintaining their confidentiality. And if there are a lot of reasons why that could be important, just one of them to mention is that if a minister is currently serving a congregation, they may not have told that congregation, their congregation, that they're in search yet. So for that reason, we're just we're not allowed to share any identifying information about ministers. So January through March, we might be quieter than we've been the last few months. We just won't have as much to communicate with you. But know that everything you've shared with us over these last few months is informing those interviews, and we really appreciate and value it. And we look forward to sharing a candidate with you in April. So with that, are there any questions that have come in via chat? Yeah, thank you again to all the work the search committee is doing. I don't know how clear it is from the, you know, from the summary, but you know, the many, many hours of work go into this. And it is what is expected of congregations. It's, there's a lot that's happens that's preparatory work. It is unlike any other hiring process. And I'm aware of it is it is extensive. It is really an examination of our entire community and who we want to be in the future. Thank you very much to each member of the search committee and everyone who has helped. And I see Roger saying in the chat F us is lucky to have this group of people leading the ministerial search. I agree. Thank you. Thank you very much. And we do need to we will continue to monitor the questions in chat. We are just barely on track to have our plans time for the for the open question. All right, thank you again, Emily. All right, so very briefly just, you know, kind of we're kind of using jargon every time we say the word open question. So the open question is, you know, just like the term sounds, it is intended to be a very open discussion. The discussion, the open question is intended to, you know, elicit long term thinking, you know, creative thinking that will guide our congregation in the years to come. It is, you know, kind of it is kind of directed toward the board. It is intended to guide the board, all of the board's work as the, you know, the governing body of the congregation is intended to carry on throughout the year. So not just this discussion today. And, you know, over time it, you know, informs, you know, all of the strategic choices that we make. So this is just, you know, just one point of input, but it is a it is a format that is that is at the center of our governance structure. We go on to the next slide please. All right. So the topic today, you know, again, we're using some terminology that you want to make sure people are a little bit familiar with. You're focusing on the concept of centering people of color. And we have a working definition that Lorna Aronson found for us on a blog put out by some activists. It's called the fake equity blog. And the definition they put out there is centering people of color is about shifting power, control, and well-being or comfort to people of color. And, you know, if you'd like to read more about that, there's a little bit longer blog post on that website. The link is below and in the handouts. So the question who would like to consider today is what would it look like for F us to center people of color? And we are going to, you know, move into this discussion in small groups. And, you know, I know the the zoom format is very impersonal. So we really want to focus on giving people ample time to discuss in the small groups. So this, you know, the small groups themselves will, you know, will constitute the the majority of the meeting. We'd like to, so each group will be facilitated by either a board member, one of our members, sorry, one of our ministers, or a member of the racial justice team. So, so the facilitators will help with this as well. But, you know, please, you know, please focus on making sure everyone has a chance to speak and and really, you know, doing some deep listening on this topic. And the facilitators, you know, will will provide a little bit more information about that. And so we do we do want to kind of, you know, it's intended to be a full discussion amongst the small group, you know, just, you know, for time and format considerations, we're not going to try to to summarize or synthesize to bring back to the full group. The facilitators will be taking notes. And that's intended to be the record of the kind of the conversations. So so the board will take that and we can, you know, share that in writing and in future conversations. But today, you know, we will conclude within the within the small groups themselves. All right. So let's move in. Sorry, go ahead. I'm sending you. Yeah, so we'll be in small groups for 20 minutes. Welcome back, everybody. Thank you for having that conversation. We look forward to seeing the notes from the facilitators. And we're grateful that you stuck with it today. I think what we have left is Roger. I think that's right. So my thanks to Terry and all the presenters, everybody who made this work today, Monica, all the behind the scenes in 18 different ways at the same time. Thank you to all of you who came to this. This is, you know, not how we're used to doing parish meetings. It's different. It's challenging. And I'm grateful that you came and participated and please do follow up with any person you heard from. If you have questions, ideas, thoughts, we'd love to love to love to hear from you. So for closing words, I've got one of my favorite closing readings from our hymnal that comes from Barbara Peskin. And to me, it's just a beautiful statement about our past, present and future. And how we're all human. Because of those who came before, we are, in spite of their failings, we believe. Because of, and in spite of the horizons of their vision, we too dream. So let us go remembering to praise, to live in the moment, to love mightily, and to bow to the mystery. May each one of you each one of you go in peace this day and keep on staying engaged with this amazing congregation. Thank you. Bye, everybody. Enjoy the day. Bye. So good to see you. Bye. Thank you all. Bye-bye. Thank you very much. Thank you. I hear and rose. I miss you. Bye, Kelly. Bye, everyone. Bye, everyone. Bye, everyone. Bye, everyone. Bye, everyone. Take pepper. Okay. Bye, Emily. Bye-bye. Nice to see you. Good to see you, too.