 to our winter parish meeting. It is lovely to see so many of you with us today. First of all, as always, a giant thank you to the food haulers for the delicious meal they've been preparing on the Reverend Teresa Soto. This hider Winnett shared a photo with me recently. It showed the last page of a sermon of theirs that they were analyzing. The last few lines read, reach out and save love and know that love will reach out and save you back. Then in tall red letters written with a marker, Alex adds an ending, ending. Can I say we're all in this together? I feel that I was struggling not to end on a bummer, to offer some sense of hope, but I'm not sure that this is right. If you are a person charged with giving a good word in a congregation or a community context, if you minister at the very same time that your heart is broken, you may relate to Alex's struggle. Hope is the thing inside you that says yes in the face of every no. The thing that will not give up is not a magical answer. We find ourselves in a time that is equal parts cruelty and confusion. There are even times when the confusion is a tool of systems of oppression. It is control by which people who resist can be pressed to indecision. Or rather, indecision can distract good people from a series of right acts meant to amount to organized resistance. This means that if you bring a good word rooted in the will of your people, it will be the one they are waiting for. This is true even if you cannot tie it up in a pretty bow with an optimistic conclusion. Optimism is more than just being in a good mood, regardless of the turn that we see around us. There aren't infinite ways to say that we're in this together. That's the truth. Yet we retain our loyalty to reality and truth. Our ongoing acknowledgment that each of us is somebody means that we don't need many finely crafted ways to say that in an uncertain and confusing world, the certainty we offer isn't that we have all the right answers or even all the right actions. Rather, we present the certainty that no matter what happens, we move forward together. We need to get out of our own ways. We must choose to give up racism and classism, transphobia, homophobia, sexism, ableism, and other forms of dehumanization. Our hope is not indefinite. It doesn't come magically from inside us. It doesn't exist for ourselves alone. Hope is a practice that we create. Just as mastering physical skills takes training and practice, mastering communal hope requires that we stay at it, that we do the actions that will bring about new states of being and new futures. We are in this together. Means that we choose each other over and over again as sources and communities of hope. Maybe we will repeat it often. Changing our reality often takes more than one try. We are in this together. Thank goodness. Thank you, Kelly. Given the topics on today's agenda, I think we're going to refer all questions back to Kelly's reading. We are indeed in this together at this important time of transition for our community. I just wanted to review today's agenda a little bit. Turn this on. I just wanted to do a brief overview of our agenda. You're probably aware that the two main agenda items are to talk about the process through which we will form a search committee to select our next settled minister. And we'll also hear about some of the findings of the ministerial research task force that has done very excellent work over the past few months. Prior to that, we'll hear a mid-year financial update from Monica. And prior to that, we need to do a bit of housekeeping. We have the minutes to approve from the last parish meeting on September 29. If you haven't taken a look at those, the minutes are on the flip side of today's agenda. Are there any questions or corrections for the last minutes? If not, is there a motion to approve the minutes? Rob, and is there a second? March, March White, sir. Rob Savage moved, and March White, sir, seconded. All in favor of approving the minutes, please say aye. All opposed? The minutes are accepted. Good evening, everybody. It's February 2020. We are more than halfway through a ministerial transition. And we are more than halfway through the fiscal year 2020. I don't know about you all, but I have been craving a little bit of levity, wherever I can find it, these last few weeks in particular. And to that end, is there anyone here who is a watcher of late night television, perhaps a late show? A couple of yeses, OK, all right. View or not, you may be familiar with a gentleman named Mr. David Letterman. OK, all right, more yeses. So he used to have a little segment called David Letterman's Top 10, in which he would share a list of things that centered around a curious topic. So let me preface this by saying that I find it particularly challenging to make finances funny. And I am about to attempt an FUS Top 10. And I do not assert that it will make you chuckle. But I promise I am not going to show a single spreadsheet today. And for those of you that do not share my love of spreadsheets, I hope that brings a smile to your face at a minimum. So actually, I also had an idea this morning. It might flap, but it's going to make me chuckle. So I am hoping Letterman had Paul in the band. I don't know if anybody remembers this. So they did a just phenomenal drum roll before each number. And I would ask that those of you that are willing before each number would drum on your lap or on your chair or on your neighbor's head if they consent. And let's keep this interactive and keep the energy up. I'm actually going to be up here for 20 strange minutes. So that will help break things up. So please, thank you for indulging me. We can practice that right now. Ready? Drum roll please. There's anti-climactic. Hold on one second. All right, FUS Top 10. Number 10, 10 things you may or may not want to know about the FUS year to date financials is that number 10, the no show snow is good for the bottom line. So our year to date budget, budgeted expenses for snow removal, $14,000 was barely touched with less than 3,000 of expenses by the end of the year. Mother nature certainly tried to make up for lost time in January. And certainly, we have no idea what the next couple months hold. But as always, this larger expense line has Thomas Kelly and I on the edge of our seats. And we'll be sure to update you at the financial forum on Sunday, May 17 on how things shake out. Drum roll please. Number nine, things you may or may not want to know about the FUS year to date financials is that the lightning strike means exciting capital upgrades. An August storm that presumably resulted in FUS being hit by lightning damaged a number of our systems, including the atrium audio speakers, the fire alarm system, the telephone system, and door controllers. In the case of the fire alarm system, our service people were able to make needed replacements or repairs within a few short hours. The atrium audio speakers were a slightly longer ordeal that involved shipping them across the country. But ultimately, we were able to fully repair them and have them back in time for the holidays. An old clunky telephone system housed on an in-house server very fortunately was broken beyond repair and was replaced by a new cloud-based telephone system. Yeah. So that, its migration means we've nearly met a goal of moving all FUS software to the cloud by 2022. And like the telephone software, the door controllers were housed on an outdated software so old that it was no longer serviced by any company. So luckily, we had a new provider and a new software selected when the strike occurred. And the final elements of that upgraded door system actually were installed last week, and we're super excited to have much greater functionality on those systems than what we had six months ago. So we've received about $43,000 under the other operating expenses line from this insurance claim. And there's approximately $7,000 in expenses year to date connected to that claim. We're anticipating about $12,000 more in expenses in the third quarter, which means we'll have a net of at least $24,000 as a result of that claim. Drumroll, please. The eighth thing you may or may not want to know about the FUS year-to-date financials is that the art fair income reached an all-time high. So this year's art fair was, as always, a stunning community event that welcomed over 2,000 local art enthusiasts into our facility. And in addition, fiscally, its success reached an all-time high. Leslie Ross and the newly minted art fair ministry team, which you too, I believe, can become a member of, it, they, for the first time, saw it sponsors, event sponsors, which played a key role in the art fair surpassing its net goal by 2,500. Its gross income surpassed its $13,000 goal by nearly $7,000, reaching the $20,000 mark this year. And the team obviously hopes to build on that momentum next year with even more sponsors. So if you know any local business owners who may want to take advantage of the wonderfully, the wonderful opportunity for good publicity, do seek out Leslie Ross, our CRE wizard, and art fair magician. All right. Number seven, drum roll please. Things you may or may not want to know about the FUS Unity Financials. FUS Choir members will take center stage at Carnegie Hall. Exciting, right? So over 20 of our FUS Choir members, as well as other national singers, will join Dr. Drew Collins in a pay-to-play opportunity in New York City. And I'm sharing this programmatic anecdote, mostly because it has fiscal impacts on our designated and restricted funds. In recent memory, we've created two new restricted funds. All fees and expenses associated with this trip flow in and out of the same fund. At the end of the second quarter, we had approximately 3,500 in that fund. The other new restricted fund created this year has a time restriction. And it holds pledge payments for next year that were accompanied by a donor request to wait to place their funds in the operating budget until the following fiscal year. Perhaps you followed that. So at the close of the second quarter, we had $23,000 in that restricted account. And those two funds obviously accompany the eight others that we still hold very dearly. The High School Youth Group, the Lay Ministry Fund, the Memorial Garden Microfinance, Minister's Discretionary, the Beloved Music Fund, Partner Church, and a Tree Planting Fund. We would obviously welcome donations in any of these funds, especially those that are above and beyond your annual pledge. All right, number six. Things you may or may not want to know about the FUSU to date financials, the net operating income is $13,000 better than budgeted. So in other words, we budgeted pretty darn well for the operating funds so far this year. That said, in income, your $64,000 enclosed the gap donations played a tremendous part in balancing the budget at this halfway mark. So without those donations, obviously, we would have been over $50,000 under budget. Those donations were placed within the pledge payment line of the budget, as the goal was to help address the projected pledge payment deficit. And this seems like a pretty good time to mention my mid-year financial report disclaimer, which is to say that the mid-year financials don't often show the wrinkles that we are likely to see in the fourth quarter. So things like a pledge deficit that we were really transparent with y'all about in the last couple of months wouldn't likely appear to their full extent in the financials until the end of the fiscal year. So the close the gap campaign was a proactive measure to address the low pledges, despite pledge payments, year to date, being only slightly below where they were last year at this time. So it's also to say that even while we've exceeded our budget goals by $13,000, it's not necessarily, unfortunately, indicative of an end of your surplus. We hope it is. But we'll talk a little bit more about this dynamic in a minute. But first, in income, I'd like to mention that we exceeded expectations as a result of the insurance check that I mentioned a minute ago, as well as $11,000 in interest that we earned from the Capital Fund money market account that we opened last year. We were $13,000 over budgeted expenses, mostly as a result of the lightning damage claim and a higher art fair expense associated with marketing. Another income area that we were down year to date was in the unpledged donations line, which actually brings me to my next point. Drumroll, please. Special gifts are down from last year's exceptional high. So we receive a myriad of unpledged donations or special gifts each year for a wide array of reasons. Sometimes it's in light of generosity that a member is the recipient of and wants to pay forward. Sometimes it's planned giving upon someone's passing and for others it's a philosophical preference or even tax necessity to give gifts without a pledge. The amount of these special gifts that we've received over the last half decade have been trending up. Last year in particular, we saw a swell of both donations and the size of donations. This year, with the exception of the Close the Gap campaign which I mentioned didn't fall within this budgeted line, we haven't seen that same amount of, we haven't seen the same amount of special gifts as we saw last year. We are therefore about $42,000 under the year to date budget in that area. This is an area where if we don't see an uptick in the size or the amount of gifts, we may increase the likelihood of ending the year with a deficit. So drumroll, please, let's stay strong. Number four, things you may or may not want to know about the FUS year to date financials, the historic meeting health group and proud renovations are complete. We'll report back to the asterisk in a second. Hopefully you've all had a chance to marvel at the gorgeous prow and the new pristine copper or at least cock your head to the side and wonder about the color of the copper which will change of course. But I hope we can also take a moment to celebrate that we are confident thanks to Findorf and our structural engineers that this is indeed the iteration of repairs that will last us for many, many decades free from lakes. You may have noticed, right, the little asterisk next to the word complete. One project that remains with Findorf is that of the glass walkway that connects the historic meeting house to the atrium wings. We'll be doing some more extensive renovations there this spring that should allow us to fix in more of a long-term manner some of the unsightly soffit issues we've had there really probably for the last 10 years. We need some warm weather to tackle that final little challenge. So now for some really good news, I'm not gonna change to the next number but I'll actually take a drum roll for this as well. Findorf has projected that we are poised to end our projects with over $400,000 in savings. With a final price tag closer to $1.6 million than the $2 million originally estimated. So obviously that's great news for other capital campaign projects, mainly the mortgage pay down which I'll discuss in just a minute. And so just a relatively small $270,000 remains outstanding in capital campaign payments, pledge payments that is. And those are expected to be paid in the next 12 months. Those remaining funds will help finish up some atrium enhancements and boiler heating upgrades that we outlined for y'all when we initiated the campaign a couple of years ago. So is everyone still with me? Good, drum roll, drum roll please. Number three, we are now generating solar power. As of mid-November, just in time for the gray winter skies and the flurries, FUS started generating solar power. The 83 kilowatt system is estimated to supply 90,000 kilowatt hours annually, which equals the consumption of nine average US households. You'll hopefully recall that FUS members bought bonds from Legacy Solar Co-op to provide financing for this project. Also, Mark Schultz and Nancy Vedder Schultz opted to create a new taxable entity that's helped FUS reduce the upfront costs of this project. So huge thanks to them in the House. You may or may not know, the solar project was almost derailed. Last year when we realized we couldn't move ahead without $100,000 roof replacement over the courtyard rooms. So though roughly half of the cost of the roof was folded into that financing, the remainder of the funds were ultimately provided by the estate of Lee Weiss. So thanks to the estate planning and generosity, we were able to charge ahead with the project and realize a very long, lived dream of many FUS members and staff. So kudos in particular to the sustainability ministry team, Eric Sunquest in particular for their amazing work that they've done on this project. We obviously know it's just the beginning of the work we need to do to become a carbon neutral community and help those around us do the same. Drum roll please. We're almost there. Number two things you may or may not want to know about FUS year-to-date financials, the FUS community members closed the gap. They have a very special guest who can rhapsodize far more eloquently than I can about this. So I'm gonna call up Steve Goldberg. Steve, take it away. Steve and Joe, I sometimes take it granted because we really value and appreciate programming and the fact that this is a spiritual home for all generations. So I just wanted to give you a quick update before this fan innovation, a real quick update in mind. Some of the things we've accomplished in terms of our financial stewardship. In the last campaign, 614 households contributed about 1.1 million dollars. And then 64 households contributed another 60,000 plus to close the gap so that we are close to meeting our goal of 1.17 million, which happens to be our goal for the next campaign as well. Or flat as a new update. We have a nice jumpstart on the upcoming campaign. We hear a lot more about the upcoming campaign that will go on in the next month or so. But just to give you a feel for the condition, the position in which we find ourselves. 237 of our members are sustaining stewards, the teams they made multi-year commitments to this organization. And with those multi-year commitments from sustaining stewards, and some pledges from new members, we've already gotten more than 440,000 dollars of pledge or commitment of our 1.17 million dollar goal for the next campaign. So that's a pretty good start. And it's really about 39% of our total goal for the next campaign, already committed. So that's a good start. I mean, we're done. And you'll be hearing a lot more about that so that groups such as Monica have been sharing to be repeated in the future years. With that, I'll give you a quick review of the next campaign. The next campaign is going to pick off Leap Day, February 29th, we're going to be leaving with the generosity that'll be our generosity weekend and it picks off a whole month of generosity and giving. So stay tuned, there's going to be lots of fun and yes, I'll be keeping close to the sun. You do a drum roll. Keep it going, keep it going. This is your last one. All right. And now, without further ado, the number one thing you may or may not want to know about the FUS year-to-date financials is that we will be saving $110,000 annually in operating expenses, thanks to the mortgage pay down and refinancing efforts. So in light of the two and a half million dollars we've received to date in the capital campaign pledge payments, as well as the roughly $750,000 from the Hale Damage Insurance Claim and the $400,000 construction savings that we're anticipating, we are poised to pay down $1 million of our commercial loan or our mortgage in the next two weeks. Given that pay down, these last few quarters seemed like a really great time to shop around our loan and ensure that we were still getting the best rate possible. So we reached out to 10 local banking institutions and we were very pleased that Summit Credit Union, our current banking institution, ultimately offered the best deal of a 3.75 interest rate down from our current 3.99 and they've locked in that rate for us for seven more years. So we've also opted to re-amortize using a 25-year schedule, restart the clock, and this trifecta of initiatives, the pay down, the re-amortization and refinancing, will save the operating budget $45,000 this year, we've got what, five months left, and like I said, $110,000 for at least the next six and a half years after that, which will decrease our annual operating expenses by nearly 6%. So while we haven't budgeted yet for next fiscal year and obviously despite pledge units trending down, I am incredibly grateful, as I hope you are too, for that fiscal relief. It's by no means an end all be all solution for our fiscal goal of sustainability, but I believe it provides us a little bit of space and time to bridge the gap to the next golden era perhaps for FUS, one in which I believe will fill it with unbounded energy and passion and perhaps most importantly, clarity of vision. So I'd like to say a special thanks to the Board of Trustees for their discernment around this mortgage project, as well as former Board President Joe Kramer, who was a wonderful partner, couldn't be with us today, but was really helpful in that refinancing effort. So in conclusion, I've taken more than enough of your time, of Terry's time, I want to close with just one reflection. Much of my attention in the management of FUS's resources revolves around what's changing from the norm, what are the variances, where are we under, where are we over, with the very important goal, obviously of ensuring that we have enough to live into our mission. However, by embracing that perspective, it's easy to sometimes overlook that which has stayed the same. What departments are on budget or who is plugging away, just as they always have and said they would. So I just, I want to take a minute, and I hope you will too, to lift up all the staff members who, especially those who I haven't mentioned yet, that are just doing such amazing work, being stewards of our resources, and living into our mission and doing important work on behalf of our society. So in closing, if we could just give them a round of applause, thanks everybody. Thank you Monica. And we also have some lost keys, if anyone's here, Sarah Stack, pass them back. So for the next hour or so, kind of have a lot of information to share, and I just wanted to, just to frame this a little bit. I do want to leave some time for questions after this next topic, and also at the end, there will be an opportunity for some group discussion. So just so you know that's coming, there's kind of a lot of narration from me coming. So these are kind of big topics that we're trying to just hit the highlights of a little bit to provide an update on what's going to be happening over the next year. So that spirit just wanted to take a step back before we talk about the search committee and the other agenda topic. Just look at the big picture a little bit. You know, in addition to the search for our next called minister, we are also in the middle, we are about halfway through important work around not just the ministerial transition, but also the transition for our congregation. And we have a timeline that's been produced just this week to bring a little bit more clarity around kind of the big milestones of that process. And you probably can't read it on the screen, but there's a large printout of this that's going to be displayed in the comments. It's right outside the doors to the auditorium right now. And it's going to remain in the comments over the next year. And the copies are also available today. And the goal of this timeline is just kind of, you know, track the more kind of big conceptual parts of the interim transition. If you look at the top line ways where the whole congregation is involved, you'll probably recognize a lot of these items as topics of town halls and other small group gatherings with the transition team, you know, looking at the history of our congregation, you know, what we feel is the heart of FUS. Who are we? Who do we serve? What are we called to do? Number of other items on here, you know, just highlight the larger priorities of the interim time, you know, things that Doug identified in the first few months when he began his work here, you know, particular areas to focus on, congregational dynamics, stewardship, vision for ministry and community connections. And so these are things that we'll experience in many ways, but if you're not on staff or on the transition team, you might not have a sense of just where we are in terms of the whole process. So we are here February 2020, and we are about to, you know, to start looking at the core pieces of the ministerial search itself, the first of which is forming a search committee. And I just encourage you to look at this in more detail. And I, so, yeah, and I know, oh, and also thanks to Brittany Crawford for putting this together. I tried a couple of times to visualize this and failed miserably, and I should have asked Brittany a long time ago, she did an excellent job with this. So the, over the next few weeks, we're kind of kicking off a process to begin to collect names of possible members of the ministerial search committee. And the board's most important goal in this process is to really directly consult as many members of the congregation as possible so that we will eventually end up with a committee that's truly representative of the congregation and our priorities and our vision for the future. The next step would be for the board to narrow the pool. We would provide much more detail to potential members about what the work entails, what kinds of skills are needed to complete the work, and most importantly, the scope of the time commitment. It is a considerable time commitment, so that's something we would discuss in much more concrete detail for anyone considering joining the committee. And it's a big enough commitment that we will actually ask anyone seriously considering being on the search committee to complete a questionnaire to indicate their interest in writing, providing some information about their involvement in FUS and their vision for what they might bring to a search team. We anticipate selecting a slate of seven members from amongst those who have formally expressed interest. And we balance, the goal is to balance the team in a number of ways. It's essentially, we're essentially trying to balance it for diversity. So that's the diversity of perspective as well as just the demographics of the individuals on the team. So to gather, to gather an agent, I mentioned we really want to consult as much of the congregation as possible. To do this, we will launch a survey in the next couple of weeks. So later this month, we'll launch the survey. It will be electronic primarily. We will also mail a printed letter to the membership to just to make sure that everyone sees the request and has the ability to participate if they want to. The primary question that we're asking is really just this simple question. Who would you trust to serve on the search committee for our next settled minister? And I know that we could go into a lot of detail about the tactics, the work, the timeline of the search itself. But many UU congregations have found that really focusing on this question of who you personally trust to serve on the search committee is likely to result in a committee that works well together and knows the congregation well and is successful in identifying a good match for our congregation. So that's the overall question. And we're also asking you to consider just a few other questions in addition to that. We know that ministerial candidates are interested in congregations with a high level of self-awareness. Awareness of strengths and weaknesses, what the congregation is like at its best and at its worst as well as on an average day. So think about who knows or can learn the history of the congregation, whether a new member or a member of longstanding. It's quite common for search committees to be a combination of new members and folks who have been members for a long time. And it's good to have a diversity of perspective. Second, please give some thought to who you think can represent the whole congregation well. We're far too large a congregation to have every interest and group and idea represented. It would be a very large unwieldy committee if we were kind of a collection of separate interests. So we're thinking about folks who really know the whole congregation well and can think about and enjoy considering the needs of the whole congregation. And practically, again, this is a high commitment, this group is going to work together a lot over the course of several months. We really want folks who work well on a team and who are self-aware about how they work on a team and can express what they perceive bringing to the committee. Okay, so we do wanna take our time in gathering information. I know we're all busy, so it can take several weeks to really give people a chance to respond. Oh, we're asking for suggestions of up to three names from each person. And we'll provide more detail when that survey goes out, but that process, including the board's work to narrow down a slate of seven proposed members, that will happen from February through May of this year. And the committee is not commissioned until it is formally voted on by the parish at our May parish meetings, so May 31st. So this is one of the very short list of tasks that cannot be delegated. Only the parish can commission a search committee, and we will do so, we will vote on the slate at the May 31st meeting. And this is a very brief summary, but the work of the search committee takes place over the course of approximately a full calendar year, so it really begins in June of this year and continues through June of 2021. And roughly the busiest time in there is July through April. It's a lot of months, yeah. And we won't talk about the contingencies, the edges of that, if it can extend, if things don't go as efficiently as hoped, it can extend slightly longer than that. But we're going to look at the best case scenario. All right, I do wanna open it up for questions, specifically just about this process, because I know that the materials that the UUA provides for the whole transition process for the work of the search committee, it's just over a hundred pages long. So there's a lot of detail, and I know people probably have questions about what the work of the committee looks like, but if there are any kind of general questions, just for clarity about what I just presented, we'll open the floor. And we have a mic. What's the program that's 18 months? Well, the short answer is, that's one of the reasons we produce the timeline, because again, it's a transition for the congregation as a whole. And when the search committee begins their work, the kinds of questions and reflections that we've been hearing over the past 18 months, in sermons, in small group discussions, in town hall meetings, the topics are going to look very, very familiar. The information that the search committee will produce, it's not really a job description like you'd do for say a job in the business world or something, it's called the congregational record, and it's essentially a collection of documents that are primarily about us as a congregation. And a lot of what we've been doing is trying to represent the congregation very honestly and kind of assessing where we are right now. The search, well, yeah. And again, I could go into a lot of details about the timeline, but again, that's what the congregation has been doing, and the search committee will draw on all of that process. So I'm starting to go into the process of the congregational record. Can you describe a little more completely whatever it would be the task? I can, a little bit, from memory. A lot of it, well, I shouldn't say a lot of it, part of it is just demographics, what does the congregation look like? And that's done in a standard way so that all congregations in search would be completing a similar survey because a minister looking for their next congregation is probably looking at multiple places. So there's a lot of uniformity. It's part of why we're all on this same timeline because it's coordinated for the sake of the ministers who are in search to look at many different congregations. Of course, part of it does have to do with who we foresee as being a good match to be our next minister and describing that in narrative form. And again, it's not necessarily a job description as you might see for other roles, but it's more about kind of our vision and priorities as a congregation where we see ourselves going in the future. And, I don't know, Doug Popup, if I've left out anything important, it's a whole collection of documents about our history, it's answering questions. Again, it really does literally say things like who do you see yourself serving? Who do you serve in internal to your congregation? How do you partner with the community? These kinds of things that we've been talking about at the town halls, they show up in the congregational record. We, as all congregations are asked to do is to describe ourselves as honestly as we can in the record. A lot of things are next. Yeah, it really, we could talk. Part of it, the highlights are on the timeline. I could do this really briefly. The congregational record is made available to ministers in search. And the next stage, a lot of things are done just over the phone and electronically, the search committee would ideally interview remotely a short list. And then there would be opportunities for them to meet in person. And at the end of the process, if a mutual match is found, if the search committee identifies a candidate who is also interested in coming here, that single candidate would come to FUS for a full week. And the end of that week would be a congregational vote. There are a lot of other details in there. Jake, microphone. The search committee. That is a model. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's why I mentioned the conversation that we would have with folks who are interested. There's a whole list of skills. And this is where the EUA materials are very helpful. You know, we don't have to make this up from scratch. But there are a lot of very specific skills that the team collectively, the committee collectively should hold. Because probably not. I mean, this really is a congregation-driven process. So I don't, I can't answer for every detail, but the short answer is no, this really will be the work of the search committee. And it will engage other members. You'll notice on the timeline, there's the work that the search committee does. And there are other activities that the congregation participates in throughout the whole process. You know, a lot of the work of the search committee is of course, by nature, confidential. But there are other things that where the congregation continues to prepare for our next settled ministry and continues to gather input that will go into the congregational record. You've been watching MSNBC. It's a congregational record. All throughout the process. Yeah, there. Well, in that, a lot of this will be, the search committee will receive training from what's called a transitions coach with the UUA. And I really do want to get some of the other, to our other agenda item. The search committee will spend a weekend retreat toward the beginning of their work together. They'll spend a weekend, or part of a weekend, with the transitions coach that will go into all of that detail about how to truly engage the congregation in this process, both drawing on the work we've done over the last 18 months and some more focused activities that go directly into completing the congregational record. I think Lee has a question. Becara. And personally, there are some conclusions that for a current person who stole a moment ago, it would seem to me that we should get a written report describing what has emerged from all this effort, rather than sending a search committee in. So will there be a report on the discernment process first, so we can have a look at it and find out who we think we are? That was one of the questions. Well, I'd say there are a series of answers to that. I'd say, and again, it's like part of the goal in the timeline is just to see how distributed this work is. It's not one activity with one report. There are a number of sermons where Doug has reported back on some of that work. I'd encourage you to talk to members of the transition team. They are kind of a source of the ongoing work. They hear a lot of the more direct feedback from the work that Doug and others are doing. The newsletter is a good source of that information. I don't believe there's a single report that would summarize all of that, but there are many ways to get connected to that information for those who have interest in that. All right, any other questions specifically about the process to collect names over the next year? There seem to be somewhere, simply what we received is almost... I have about a half hour of material on that, so we can move on to the next question. Well, that's what we're gonna talk about next. All right, yeah, we should probably, yeah, let's let that be our segue. All right, so on that topic of how we want to think about the work of our next settled minister as and how we want to present ourselves in the search, we knew that it was going to be a priority for the interim time to really look in depth about what our expectations are of our ministers and how we foresee them working together, and specifically we wanted to go out and consult other congregations who have multiple members on staff to see some examples of how to conceptualize the very broad and complex work of ministry and specifically how our ministers might relate to each other. So the work, so we did very directly go out and interview and consult a number of other congregations. First, before we begin, I just wanted to thank the task force itself, Jake Blasek and Mark Schweitzer, John McGevna and Belinda Gustafson-Gervaisi comprised the committee. They did a tremendous amount of work over several months to gather information and they worked together with reference Kelly and Doug. And broadly, this work is intended to, you know, these interviews are intended to inform the work of the search committee kind of in a broad way, not, yeah, so. So I'm gonna walk through just some of the findings in a very quick summary and I do want to leave some time for conversation amongst the group. So the task force interviewed seven congregations that are listed on the screen. They're all large congregations with anywhere from just around 500 to over 2,000 members. And so each of them has at least two full-time ministers and many of them have a number of others doing some kind of ministerial work in other part-time or affiliated arrangements. But each of these has at least two full-time ministers. And the findings that I'm going to share, I'm gonna really primarily focus on of the work of the primary ministers on staff. Some of them in some of New Jersey? Yes, some of New Jersey, yeah. So respondents to the interviews included seven senior ministers, two associate ministers, one church administrator and five board members for a total of 15 respondents. And really impressed folks were very generous with their time, they did respond to written questionnaires and spent time on the phone with the task force members. And I'm very grateful to have this information for the work of our congregation. So I won't read all these, but these are the exact questions that were asked of each interviewee, essentially asking about the details of how the ministers relate to each other in their work, how they think about authority. And a lot more just practical questions about how their work is distributed, what the supervision arrangements are, how that works in tandem with the governance structure of the congregation. And so the next few slides just want to share some of the concepts and themes that came out of these interviews. And just to preface this briefly, there's some nuance in this work. Again, we're not necessarily, the goal isn't necessarily to write a very detailed job description because as a called minister of the congregation, whoever our next settled minister is will have kind of very broad purview to structure their own work and to define amongst themselves how they will work with Kelly and the rest of the staff. So it really is kind of a more conceptual conversation that we want to have to just know what happens in other congregations, how do people talk about ministry and think about ministry, and specifically the authority amongst ministers and a multi-minister staff and how that authority is exercised and described. So if you think about the authority in the role of minister, kind of on a continuum, with one side of that continuum being a hierarchical structure with kind of traditional titles that emphasize that hierarchy, senior minister, associate minister, assistant minister. On the other side of the spectrum, we talk to congregations that very deliberately and in a planful way emphasize collaboration. There's one congregation that has two co-senior ministers and another with a leadership team model in which two ministers and an executive director very intentionally share decision-making and authority amongst that very collaborative team. Interwoven in each of these kind of areas of the spectrum is a concept that I found helpful in kind of conceptualizing how the work of the ministers are carried out. It's the idea of portfolios of responsibility. And again, this could, the work of a minister could be divided up into certain areas in any kind of structure, whether that's collaborative or more concentrated. So in that area where there are a number of titles that instead of kind of emphasizing the place on the spectrum of authority might focus more on the actual work that is the primary focus. For instance, there's one title of executive minister and that person is very involved in administration and supervision, lead minister. That title implies focusing on strategic vision and governance. And then here, these are just a couple examples of much more specific titles and I'm sure we could find many others. These are just two examples, minister of music and worship arts, pastoral minister and a worship architect. So this is a long but by no means comprehensive list of the types of areas that could be part of a minister's portfolio. I always find it interesting to think about how long that list is. And these are just the core work. It's not, this isn't even getting into the many different styles and approaches with which this work might be approached. And we did see examples of many different ways of combining these areas. You know, look at any one item and you could easily focus on that as a full-time job. So we saw, we did see just a variety of examples and really one of the goals of this work was to kind of open up the conversation a little bit from just thinking about supervision. And in the decision-making authority in those rare moments where a big decision needs to be made and we need to know who decides. Is it two people? Is it one person? Just looking at really how the overall work of ministry can be structured and what other large congregations do. So some of the strengths of different approaches by far the biggest thing that came up in the more, in the structures with more concentrated authority is clear lines of authority and accountability, a certain amount of efficiency in having a single decision-maker. Also seen as a strength was having a single visible public face of the organization. On the more collaborative side, people talked about living out UU values and modeling collaboration and equity in the way that the work of ministry is done. A number of people noted that making decisions together can lead to better decisions for the whole organization. And this, you know, it's interesting, the, you know, really looking at the detail of the conversations. You know, a lot of the interviews, you know, really focused on ministry as a profession. So not just the larger goals and vision of a congregation, but what does the day-to-day work look like? And, you know, what makes the job sustainable, enjoyable for the person, for the people doing the job? And, you know, a number of people noted the sustainability of ministry and, you know, possibly having a better work-life balance if, you know, decision-making is shared amongst multiple ministers. I'm gonna speed through some of this because you do want to have some time for discussion. Challenges, configurations where the decision-making authority is more concentrated. Quite logically, it's highly dependent on the abilities of that one person. And several folks who were in those roles, so coming from senior ministers, mentioned that it can be a burden for one person to bear that responsibility. So I was grateful that respondents were sharing so openly because, you know, it's not something we always hear, you know, from our leaders, you know, talking about, you know, sometimes things can be too much for one person. Another topic that came up, ministers are often not trained in administration and even supervision. Some folks referred to the business aspects of running a kind of leading a congregation. And that's, so again, we're thinking about portfolios that, you know, can be worth being very thoughtful about matching the portfolio of a minister to their areas of strength and not, you know, no one person can do all of the areas of ministry equally well. One item that came up in the collaborative approaches, slower decision-making, and that was actually listed as both a strength and a challenge, but anytime you're collaborating, it's going to take time. And in any kind of portfolio arrangement, that same need for communication exists. If you're dividing up responsibilities and work, you will need to communicate across those areas. All right, the Task Force Act asked very directly about conflict. How do you handle conflict between minister and congregation, but even more specifically amongst ministers on a multi-minister staff? Almost everyone mentioned having a written covenant and agreements about how the ministers will do their work together. And as another resource in that, you know, the UU Ministers Association has guidelines that ministers are expected to look to and in any situation. So that's another resource as well. But most of these congregations did have written covenants that were just amongst the current ministers and staff. Another thing mentioned was, you know, the possibility of involving a colleague, coach, or counselor if there were to be a major dispute. And one congregation in particular, I think one or two of them, did mention the regular use of an outside coach, so not waiting for a conflict to occur, but just considering that routine part of collaboration to get just outside support amongst the work of the ministers. So what's missing from this very brief summary is some of the stories of these congregations. And, you know, just about every configuration that the Task Force interviewed, they arrived at these particular roles through kind of an evolution over time. And, you know, I think this is helpful to think about in, you know, however we present ourselves in the congregational record, it's really a starting point. And, you know, we would expect things to evolve here as well. And one of the important things we want to convey in our congregational record is how this person, how we anticipate the next settled minister would collaborate with Kelly. And that's, you know, another thing we've focused on for the last 18 months is giving Kelly time to discern her vision of what she perceives as her future here. And she has shared that in a number of ways here and will continue to do so. And it would certainly be a part of our congregational record as well. I do want to leave time for, you know, so of course there's a lot more detail and there will be opportunities to have more of a discussion format, give people a chance to look at more of the detail that the task force gathered and to have discussions if there are folks who have interest in more of a small group setting. But the point of all of this information gathering was to see how we see ourselves as a congregation. You know, where do we see FUS now on the continuum of more concentrated or more distributed power and authority? And what would we like to see in the future? So we wanted to take the rest of the time today, which I think we have about 15 minutes, to discuss in small groups. We have, we have clipboards. If we could, let's see, we have about, we could divide up just in groups of, how many Monica? Yeah, let's say eight. That's probably about 10 groups of eight. I do want to leave time for the group discussion, for there's a clarifying question. We will post something in the interim area of the website. And this isn't, you know, this work isn't done. You know, this is, we will, the board will host conversations to go over this material in much more detail. This was really just in, you know, kind of an introduction of the few of the concepts. Sure, yeah, we'll post more information on the website. This was just an initial overview and we can make more information available. Okay, yeah, we'll work with the staff to get some information on the website. But, you know, but the information gather is really just, you know, about other congregations and we want to leave some time about how we see ourselves in this picture. Okay, go ahead. These are just titles. There aren't responsibilities, there's just titles. Well, this is all about the congregations we interviewed. So this was kind of a summary of the congregations we interviewed. No, no, they're columns. They're columns not rows. Yeah, so the left side of the spectrum, some more concentrated hierarchical model and those were samples of titles that we saw that were, that reflected that and emphasized that. The right side of the spectrum is the more collaborative model and this is a whirlwind tour. I see Jake raising his hand. This is, I just want to repeat what Jake said. These are ways of thinking about power and authority. These are concepts. These are not models that we're selecting amongst. These are ideas and it was interesting in the feedback from the folks of the team interviewed. People on one side of the spectrum would often comment about the other side of the spectrum. Thinking about the strengths and challenges of the way that they had worked and many of the individuals we talked to had worked in different configurations even in the same congregation. They had gone kind of back and forth with trying to be more intentionally collaborative and having a kind of more efficient concentrated model. I really do want everyone to talk amongst it. I don't want to be the one person answering these because I know there are probably a lot of thoughts and opinions on this so we could take just a few minutes to talk amongst ourselves and record some of the ideas that come up. So groups. Hi, if everyone could, it's a little bit after two now. Everyone's deeply engaged in conversation if we could actually come back as a group briefly. Thank you for coming today and thank you for engaging in conversation. This is really just a start to begin to think about some of these questions. Note-takers, please bring your footboards to John, our board secretary waving his arms. Over at the table. We would like to have some insight into the discussions that happened so please bring the notes over to John. And just to conclude, oh, just one note about where to watch for both the information we talked about today as well as the work of the interim time in general. There is a special section of the FUS website just devoted to the interim work and the transition so please watch there for the information that's already out there and things that we will add to in the coming months. And I just want to turn it over to Doug for a closing reading. I'd like for us to quickly yet again thank the food haulers for their incredible work. Feeding us all and feeding us so well is a wonderful ministry so thank you. And they ask that we remind you that there are leftovers still and they're available on the kitchen so please take something home with you. And our closing words are taken from Steve Eddington and Raymond Vaughn, kind of in light of this month's focus on generosity and gratitude. Giving thanks has nothing to do with who or what produces the gift. It is rather a way of perceiving our life. To say thank you is not to approve of all that comes your way or that gets visited upon you. Rather it is to face and take all that life gives us and then using the will, the resources, the power of the human spirit to become agents of transformation for ourselves. For those whom we are in community with and for a world that stands in need of our care such as our task as a community. Thank you everyone for your time and more conversation to come about this. Have a good afternoon.