The Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica

Featured Articles - December, 2004

Want to Know More About Covenant Groups?

Two covenant groups, part of the Small Group Ministry program, were launched this fall. Meetings are twice a month on Monday evenings and Sunday afternoons with an end date of April 2005. The groups have chosen their behavioral covenant (their way of being together). Next they will choose themes.

Our groups provide a safe space where we practice respectful listening, share decision-making, and come to know one another more deeply. The emphasis is on being together in an open, honest manner, working through conflicts, and building relationships. At the same time, each group plans and executes a service project of its choosing.

Facilitators, trainers, and members of the Implementation Team (IT) meet with our minister monthly to continually shape and refine all aspects of the Small Group Ministry program. We want to alert the talented among us: your attention and skills are needed. Help strengthen this program by joining our facilitators in upcoming training. There are benefits and challenges waiting for you.

We are especially eager to find persons who have had prior experience elsewhere as covenant group members. Please share your ideas with us.

“Taster groups” are planned for year-end to familiarize you with the structure and process of a covenant group. Watch for your invitation to participate in upcoming new groups.

Ask the office staff for a blue Q and A information brochure called “Connecting,” contact the Implementation Team folks wearing “ask me” badges on Sundays, or call or e-mail the members below to know more.

Jean Allgeyer
Sanna Egan
Pat Gomez
Gerrie Lambson
Marv Pulliam
Carol Ring
Carol-jean Teuffel

-- Carol-jean Teuffel, Implementation Team member

Long-Range Planning (Or is It Stragetic Planning?)

Although the terms are often used interchangeably, “long-range planning” and “strategic planning” differ in what we can assume about the environment surrounding our plans. Long-range planning generally means the development of a plan for accomplishing goals over a period of several years. It assumes that current knowledge about future conditions is sufficiently reliable to ensure the reliability of the plan itself over the duration of implementation.

On the other hand, strategic planning assumes that we must be responsive to a dynamic, changing environment. It stresses the importance of making decisions that will ensure our ability to successfully respond to changes in the environment. Fundamental to this process is thinking that asks, “Are we doing the right thing?”

In either case, planning for our future is determined by goals, objectives, roles and responsibilities, timelines, etc., in the context of our UUCCSM vision, mission, and values.

At its spring retreat, the board authorized the formation of a long-range planning committee made up of board and non-board church members. In November, the board ratified this decision. There is work to be done and it’s time to get going. If you would like to be part of this effort, please call me.

—Pat Wright

Church Considers Changes in How It Manages Its Finances

Carol Agate, because of her experience as treasurer and a member of the Finance Committee of our church for the last two years (and having been treasurer of several other organizations in the past), has concluded that the UUCCSM position of treasurer has outgrown its usefulness and should be abolished. Leading to this recommendation are her observations that (1) the usual money-handling and accounting functions of a treasurer are being handled entirely by our office staff, (2) to effectively oversee the functioning of the staff in this area would require more accounting and specialized software knowledge than could reasonably be expected in an annually elected volunteer, and (3) the financial budgeting and policy functions are handled by a Finance Committee, also with more pertinent expertise than could reasonably be expected in an annually elected volunteer.

The simplest way to accommodate abolishing the treasurer position would be for the chair of the Finance Committee to become the chief financial person for the church. However, California corporate law requires that our chief financial person be an officer of the church, and currently the chair of the Finance Committee is not automatically even a member of the board. We could require that the Finance Committee chair be ratified as an officer (and therefore a board member) by the congregation at the annual congregational meeting. Another possibility would be for a chief financial officer (CFO) to be elected annually, but with some kind of special consideration of the Finance Committee chair as a candidate. It appears that this issue does not have a single obvious answer, and it warrants careful thought.

At the same time I, recognizing that I have for too long been in a central position relative to the church finances, believe that this issue provides a natural time for me to back away from that position. Therefore, as of the 2005 annual meeting, I will neither be a candidate for a new chief financial officer position nor continue as chair of the Finance Committee. And to make sure that my backing away is in fact real, I propose to cease taking a central part in the exploration of what our future finance management configuration should be.

Listed below are the three major factors that I think need to be considered, and probably traded off against one another, in making this decision, but it’s up to the rest of you to decide how best to balance these factors:

1. Provision of adequate pertinent experience and technical expertise in the financial facets of our church management.

2. Maintenance of an acceptable degree of democratic voice in selection of the church’s finance leadership.

3. Establishing positions that are practical to fill with available volunteers. In considering the first factor, it is important to understand how the Finance Committee currently is structured and functions:

a. Standing members of the committee are selected primarily for prior or current experience in finance or business management, and are subject to ratification by the board. Ex officicio members include the treasurer, the chair of the Investment Committee, and the chair of the Stewardship Committee. The church administrator (Marie Kashmer-Stiebing) is a regular non-voting participant. The committee elects one of its standing members chairperson, subject to ratification by the board.

b. When a vacancy occurs among the standing members, a replacement is selected by the remaining members of the committee, subject to ratification by the board.

c. The term limit for standing members is four years. The chair serves for a two-year term and may not succeed him/herself in that office.

The purpose of this structure, established some 40 years ago (and mirrored in the Personnel Committee) is to provide greater depth of technical competence in finance than can be expected in an annually elected board, and with greater continuity than that of the elected officers.

I urge that all interested parties give serious thought to the above considerations in deciding how best to structure the management of our financial future.

—Warren Mathews, Chair of Finance Committee

We Gather to Honor Dean Voegtlen and His Contributions to Our Church

On Friday evening, October 29, approximately 75 members of the congregation, friends, and family members of Dean and Lee Voegtlen gathered in the sanctuary to hear Dean talk about his life and a select few pay tribute to his nearly 40 years of service to our congregation.

In attendance were two of Dean and Lee’s sons, Alan and Brian; Brian’s wife, Christy; and Dean and Lee’s grandson, Miles Dean. Speaking in tribute were Warren Mathews, John Raiford, Charles Haskell, Ernie Pipes, and Karl Lisovsky. The master of ceremonies was the Rev Judith Meyer.

Warren reminded everyone that Dean has not only participated in and chaired almost every standing committee of the church, including the Board of Directors, but in some cases has done so multiple times (Dean was president in 1977-78 and 1993-94). John thanked Dean and Lee for offering solace and support in times of crisis. Ernie highlighted Dean’s calm leadership in stormy seas (figuratively and literally, noting Dean’s sailing skills). And Karl and Charles spoke of Dean’s love of tennis and how the game may be seen as a metaphor for life.

Dean described his childhood growing up in New Jersey and summers in upstate New York, his truncated academic career at the University of Michigan, followed by serendipitous success at the Hughes Company and elsewhere.

Dean’s analytical knowledge in the fields of statistical quality control and value engineering has been much valued in business and industry. And we all know Dean’s musical abilities. There is so much more—the sum reaches Renaissance Man status. Dean’s reaction to the evening: “I had a lot of fun, and I hope others did so too.” The audience’s reaction: “Dean, you’re the best.”

—Rob Briner

UK Political Studies Association Honors UCLA Prof. Pateman

Carole Pateman, Distinguished Professor, Department of Political Science, UCLA, and a member of our congregation for four years, has received the Lifetime Achievement Award for 2004 from the United Kingdom Political Studies Association. She was scheduled to be honored at an awards luncheon November 30 in London.

The association, which also gives awards to politicians and journalists, honored Carole “for a long, hugely impressive list of publications, which have influenced theoretical and practical debates in politics and are widely cited throughout the academic field, allied to a longstanding commitment to the collective good of the profession, reflected by distinguished service ona wide variety of collective bodies.”

Her two best-known books are “Participation and Democratic Theory” (1970, Cambridge University Press), now in its 19th reprinting and still going, and “The Sexual Contract” (1988, Stanford University Press). She has also published many articles in professional journals. Her major organizational service was as president of the International Political Science Association from 1991 to 1994. She was the first, and is still the only, woman to have been president of the association, which was founded in 1949.

Carole’s field is political theory. She has been a member of the Department of Political Science at UCLA since 1990. Born in a small village in Sussex, England, over the past 30 years she has lived in worked in a variety of places. She has taught in Europe and Australia as well as the United States. She is an honorary professor at Cardiff University in Wales and will spend two months there next spring as part of her sabbatical leave.

Partner Church Council Gives Overview of Our Unitarian Roots in Transylvania

If you have looked at our mural room in Forbes Hall you know it starts where modern UUism starts, with Frances David in Transylvania.

Transylvania is a geographic region of Romania directly east of Hungary. Under the Ottoman Turkish occupation of Hungary during the 16th and 17th centuries, Transylvania was a semi-independent principality ruled by Hungarian princes, who were able to maintain a precarious independence from the Ottoman Empire. The country of Romania was formed relatively recently, in 1861, with the unification of the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia.

It is ironic that Transylvania, which today is a hotbed of ethnic discord, was a model of enlightenment and religious tolerance during the 16th century, when most of Europe was embroiled in religious wars. In 1568, Prince John Sigismund promulgated the Edict of Religious Toleration at the Diet of Torda (an assembly of nobles and landed gentry), which enabled the Unitarian religion to prosper among competing faiths.

The Unitarian faith is a product of the Reformation and was introduced into Transylvania by Francis David (Dávid Ferenc in Hungarian). Dávid had studied in Wittenberg, Germany, where Martin Luther had previously taught. He started his career as a Catholic priest, but soon became a Lutheran, and then a Calvinist. Upon studying the writings of the religious scholars Faustus Socinius (an Italian) and Michael Servetus (a Spaniard), both of whom had challenged the theological concept of the trinity, Dávid began to spread the Unitarian "heresy" in Transylvania—with so much success that even the prince, John Sigismund, became a Unitarian.

Earlier, Socinius had tried to spread the Unitarian theology in Poland, but it was ruthlessly squashed by the Counter-Reformation. Servetus, too, had considerably less success than Dávid, and was burned at the stake in Geneva by Calvin.

Although Transylvania in the 16th century was far ahead of the rest of Europe in the sphere of religious tolerance, limitations to religious freedom developed soon. Upon the death of John Sigismund, a Catholic prince ascended the throne; he continued to sanction freedom of the previously established religions (among them the Unitarian), but he strictly forbade the introduction of any theological innovations. Thus, when Dávid began to proclaim that it was not appropriate to invoke Jesus in prayer, he was tried and sentenced to prison for life. He died in prison in 1579.

Transylvanian Unitarianism underwent a significant evolution in England and was transplanted to the United States at the end of the 18th Century by liberal dissenters from the Church of England, most notably Joseph Priestley, the discoverer of oxygen.

Our Unitarian brothers and sisters in Transylvania have suffered much over the past four centuries, but they have kept their faith under the most trying circumstances. Today, they are about 80,000 strong and have about 170 churches—each of these paired with a North American UU partner church. Although their religious beliefs and church services are more traditional than ours, we all share in these basic values and principles: the use of reason in matters of faith, a belief in absolute freedom of conscience, a commitment to human rights and social justice, and the tolerance for differing opinions

—Adapted from the website of the UU Church of Fairfax, Partner Church Council

Back to Features Index