The Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica

Featured Articles - August, 2003

Stefanie S. Etzbach-Dale is Our New Intern Minister

The Rev. Stefanie S. Etzbach-Dale will join our church staff next month as an intern minister for nine months. She is in candidate status through the UUA, focusing on pastoral ministry as a result of her chaplaincy experiences at NYU and UCLA Medical Centers. This interest was furthered through field work at First Unitarian Society in Hyde Park, NY, this year under the supervision of the Rev. Nina Grey. There she helped initiate and lead small group ministry learning groups.

Stefanie is originally from Queens, NY, where she earned her undergraduate degree from CUNY Queens College. After a two-year program at Interfaith Seminary, Interfaith Fellowship in New York City, she was ordained as an interfaith minister in June 2000, at St. John’s Cathedral in New York.

“Ultimately,” she says, “ I found my religious home at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock on Long Island, NY, and moved to Chicago in 2001 for the Meadville Lombard Theological School residential Master of Divinity program. “Last year my husband, George, and I were married, and I became stepmom to three wonderful children — Gregory, 17; Natalie, 14; and Alex, 10. I am very excited now to be moving to Santa Monica to be with my new family, as well as to be working and learning with the congregation in the capacity of minister intern.”

“Stefanie initially approached us and I could see that she would be a good match for our congregation, so we worked together to create the position,” explains the Rev. Judith Meyer. In the past, according to Judith, our church has often been a “teaching congregation,” though we haven’t had a ministerial student since our former director of religious education, Judy Tomlinson, was with us.

“I’m looking forward to working with Stefanie,” says Judith. “She is already a highly skilled minister, with experience in pastoral care and small group ministry. What we offer in return is the opportunity to learn how to serve a UU congregation and to explore her vocation in this context."

Please Take Our Online Communications Survey!

Most members of our congregation have e-mail addresses, and we have a record of most of those addresses. Last month a message was sent to every address we have, asking recipients to take an online survey about our electronic communications. In case you didn't receive that message or haven’t taken the survey, please visit http://www.uusm.org/survey2.html.

As our church continues to expand its electronic communications offerings, we need to find out more about how our congregation uses the online information and publications we provide . . . and how we can create stronger relationships among our traditional newsletter, our website, and our very newest publication, the Faith in Action Bulletin. You can provide this valuable input by taking a few minutes to complete the electronic communications survey, even if you are not a regular newsletter reader.

The survey contains 22 questions, divided into three sections dealing with newsletter, website and Faith in Action Bulletin issues. It should take five to 10 minutes to answer all the questions. Thank you for your help. We look forward to hearing from you!

New Website Design is Up and Running

Liz Fuller has finished her long-planned revisions in our website design. The new layout, which creates eight top-level navigation categories, with sub-menus for each one, will allow us to add a lot more content to the site, while also making it easier for our users to find things (no matter how big the site gets), and much, much easier for them to bookmark favorite pages. All the old content is still there, and Liz has added a lot of new things, too, particularly in the Newsletters section.

The Stewardship Story: Commuication and Community

Stewardship is defined as the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one’s care -- and this church is entrusted to our care. What will make us better stewards?

We’ll be better stewards when we can communicate effectively the state of our church finances. We’ll have more vitality when we know, and can articulate and fulfill, what the church expects from each of us. Closer to our spirit, though, we grow in faith and commitment when we create personal connections with each other.

During June we held a number of informal conversations about stewardship. Consistently, people talked about the need for creating a stronger sense of community in the congregation:

• “I’d like more interchange of people.”
• “Get people involved in the church community.”
• “People give to people…create people connections.”
• “What’s important to me is building personal relationships in smaller groups.”
• “I’d like to get to know people outside of a didactic environment.”
• “We missed both greeters and ushers in service today. These are an integral part of making congregants new and old feel welcome.”
• “We need a more sharing and open approach. We are inclusive as a religion but not as individual members.”
• “There’s a perception of an in-crowd.”
• “Let’s have social activities during the week.”
• “We used to hold monthly potlucks that allowed people to get together informally and get to know each other there.”

We’re living in a time where we’re information-rich and connection-poor. But our church has an opportunity to combat this truism. As UUs, we can create community without dogma, making the best of what “religion” has to offer.

Someone said in my stewardship meeting on June 22, “We are more than spiritual people. What makes us religious is that we’re joining together as a community for similar principles.”

Our challenge, then, is to truly join together and strengthen our bonds. In the case of the stewardship committee it means engaging this congregation by asking “If a stronger community means a stronger congregation, what can we do to get there from here?”

Continue the conversation. It’s a good one, isn’t it?

In faith,
Jacki K. Weber

Stuart Moore Honored

On June 22, the Rev. Judith Meyer presented Stuart Moore with a plaque honoring him for taking care of the physical structures of our church since 1970. “He has done more than any other person to keep our religious home in good condition,” the wording on the plaque states. “He is knowledgeable of all standards, codes and regulations pertinent to the care of our buildings, and has the myriad professional skills and techniques required in their maintenance. . . The entire congregation owes Stuart Moore a debt of gratitude for his extraordinary services to this church.”

Back to Features Index