The Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica

Featured Articles - May, 2005

Elections and Budget Will Be Voted at the Annual Meeting on May 15

The annual congregational meeting will be held on May 15, at 12:30 p.m. Sandwiches and child care will be provided.

The nominating committee has announced its slate of officers for the 2005-2006 church year. As of the date of publication, there have been no nominations by petition. All officers serve one-year terms.

The nominees are: President, Carol Kerr; 1st Vice President, Charles Haskell; 2nd Vice President, Ron Crane; Secretary, Melinda Ewen; Treasurer, Carol Agate. As the immediate past president, Jerry Gates remains on the board in a non-elected position.

Members-at-large to be elected for two-year terms are Marv Pulliam, Peter van den Beemt, and Pat Wright. Board members who are not up for election because they are serving the second year of their twoyear terms are Rebecca Crawford, Warren Mathews, and Daniel Teplitz.

At the annual meeting there is also an election for new members of the nominating committee. Candidates are S.J. Guidotti and Victor Paddock. Continuing on the nominating committee are Kathy Cook, John Fels, Audrey Lyness, and Linda Van Ligten.

This year the board will present a balanced budget to the congregation. This is the first time in several years there has not been a deficit budget. The board’s discussion of whether this represents a one-time fix, or whether we can continue balancing the budget, is reported in “Splinters from the board” (page 7). This discussion may be continued at the meeting.

During the past year the Bylaws and Policies Committee, chaired by Charles Haskell, has rewritten the entire set of bylaws. The changes will be discussed and voted on at the meeting.

At the end of the meeting we will have a drawing for the shopping bag raffle, so hold onto your tickets. See raffle article on page 6.

— Carol Agate

E-Mail Aliases Can Simplify Committee Communications

Are you a member of a UUCCSM committee? Do you ever wish there were a simple way to e-mail all of your committee members without constantly looking up and re-typing their e-mail addresses? Do you ever lose track of who has joined or resigned from a committee you’re trying to contact? If so, you might want to consider setting up an e-mail alias for your committee, which would establish a single address for e-mail that is sent to all your committee members. For example, members of our Building Committee can now be reached using the address building@uusm.org, the Stewardship Committee is at stewardship-committee@uusm.org, and the people who receive newsletter submissions are at newsletter@uusm.org

The benefits of having a single address for your committee are that anyone trying to reach the committee can use just a single address to contact all the members at once, a “reply all” response lets everyone follow the conversation thread, and it doesn’t matter how often people leave or join the committee — the contact address always remains the same.

To set up an e-mail alias for your committee, please contact Marie Kashmer-Stiebing at the church office, and let her know the name of your committee, the e-mail address (with an @uusm.org suffix) you’d like to use, and the names and personal e-mail addresses of the people who should receive mail sent to that address. Marie will pass the information on to Greg Wood and Liz Fuller, who manage the mailing addresses through our website host.

Also, if you’d like your new committee address to be published on our website, we can do that as well. Just be aware, however, that any address published on any website will become a target for spam and the occasional strange or random inquiry. So anyone who receives mail from a published address (i.e., anyone on your committee mailing list) will receive that spam as well. (We do have junk mail filters on the aliases, but while they help, they can’t solve the problem entirely.) If all the members of a committee approve publication of the committee’s address, however, we will be happy to include it on the website.

— Liz Fuller

Once in a Lifetime is Now

I paraphrase the late Robert Karnan, UU Minister, because he speaks to the greater meaning of what a community builds:

We UUs are theists and atheists, pagans and Trinitarians, the confused and the certain. Our sharing stimulates us. We are made thoughtful by our differences.

We do not come to church to balance a budget or meet the goals of a building campaign. We come to church because it speaks and acts for the transformation of our lives at all levels: spiritually, emotionally, intellectually, and morally.

We live together as a community made of companionship and love, social concerns, agreements and disagreements, and hospitality, spirituality and mystery.

Our community exists to do something a great deal more compelling than growing our congregation or annual budget. We exist to enjoy the gift of deep and soulful friendship. We share our sorrow, our tears, our laughter and our joy. We share our lost moments and our insanity, our found moments and our sanity. We share our humanity. We live to err time and again, but we do so openly and in a community of searching and understanding. We mold a context of truthfulness and spiritual vulnerability that is ferociously alive and transforming.

For our children, and for ourselves, we provide the safety of learning and loving.

Above all the items we are both a giver and a receiver. As you consider the difficulty and excitement of making buildings and gardens, remember that they are only vehicles that carry our community. Contribute to what we are and what we offer others to be.

“Once in a Lifetime” is now.

—Ron Crane
Member, Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica

Our Ministers Lobby in Sacramento

The Rev. Silvio Nardoni and I joined 50 clergy from several faiths in Sacramento on April 17 to ask legislators to support AB 19, the “Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act.” This bill ensures equal treatment under the law for same-sex couples by allowing them to marry in California.

A highlight of the day was listening to the coauthors of the Act, Assemblyman Mark Leno and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez. Speaker Nuñez spoke about his own deeply religious upbringing as a Roman Catholic. He credited his faith for teaching him to work for civil rights and human dignity. The group greeted both Leno and Nuñez with a standing ovation.

Our UU group made up the majority of clergy. We were joined by several UU youth leaders as well. Our group visited legislators from the Los Angeles area, including Senator Debra Bowen, who is a member of our congregation.

Silvio and I made the rounds with Rabbi Lisa Edwards, the Rev. Jay Atkinson, Father Kevin Steen, and youth leader Samantha Ames. We visited the offices of 15 legislators, meeting with them or a member of their staff. In most cases, we were able to thank them for their support of the bill.

The religious groups that oppose the bill are well organized and vocal. Our visit helped to counter that impression and offered a religious viewpoint to bolster their support. Both Silvio and I felt that our visits had a positive impact.

— Judith Meyer

Telephone Outreach Program Wants More Volunteers to Call

Here’s an update, everyone, on how things are progressing with our new Telephone Outreach Program.

On Saturday, April 2, the program got off to its formal start. The Rev. Judith Meyer, Michael Eselun and I provided a special training to our first group of 13 volunteers. The training included an overview of what the program is all about, techniques for active listening, and then pairing with their telephone buddies. Things are now up and running, and we’re hopeful that this will not only meet a need in our church community, but also be a richly positive experience for everyone involved.

By making a brief and friendly phone call once a week to church members who may be alone or frail and feeling isolated, callers will be letting their buddies know that the church community cares and is thinking about them. It requires only a small time commitment, with potentially large results.

We plan to offer another training session again soon. So if you can spare 15 minutes per week and would like to become a telephone buddy, please give me a call. And if you have any general questions about the program, Judith, Michael, and I are available and would be happy to hear from you.

— Anita Brenner

To Benefit Our Church's General Fund, a New Improved Version of the Raffle

For three consecutive Sundays (May 1, May 8, May 15) tables in Forbes Hall will hold items to be raffled. However, unlike other raffles, you will decide which items your tickets are allocated to. A wide range of offerings will be on the tables: a Lucite earring box, a car organizer, a lighted magnified mirror, a Japanese vase, a television turntable, and many more.

Here’s how it works. Raffle tickets will cost $1 each, or six for $5. There will be ticket sellers walking around Forbes Hall. Buy as many as you like and put them in the mini-shopping bags next to the items you want. You may put all your tickets into one bag, or distribute them among all the things that interest you.

You don’t have to put your name on each ticket, but do save your stub. The only way to win is to have a ticket stub with a matching number. Numbers will be drawn on May 15 at the end of the annual congregational meeting. You don’t have to be present to win. Winning numbers for all unclaimed items will be posted at the church and sent to all e-mail news subscribers. You have two weeks in which to claim your prize.

If you know at the time you buy the tickets that you won’t be around for two weeks after the drawing, you can put your name and phone number on the stub. If you have any questions, contact Carol Agate.

Newsletter Survey has Mixed Results

At both services on April 10 a survey was distributed in the order of service. There were 36 replies — a pretty small sample but enough to start people thinking about the questions. These are questions that have been asked the past few years at budget meetings when we consider the annual cost of about $8,000 for printing and mailing the newsletter.

Twenty-five respondents said they read it thoroughly, and eight said they skim it for what interests them. Only one did not read it, and two sometimes read it. Of those who read it thoroughly, nine rely more on the newsletter than on the order of service for their information and 14 rely on the newsletter and the order of service equally. Interestingly — and surprisingly since the survey was taken at church — no one selected the order of service as the primary source of information.

Respondents were asked to indicate which items they read regularly. The three most popular were the general news, the minister’s column, and the Sunday services. Surprisingly, given the low level of denominational involvement in the congregation, the next most popular was UUA news. The next two were “You Are Invited“ and building committee news.

A primary reason for this survey was to gauge interest in saving money by ending the mailing of newsletters and relying instead on their being read online or picked up at church. The responses were all over the place, and led to the most narrative comments. Only five people have no e-mail or web access and two of those indicated they want to learn. Of the people with computer access, 16 do not subscribe to the online news postings and 12 do. Two of the nonsubscribers said they would subscribe if the newsletter were available only on the web.

Of the 12 people who subscribe, six like reading it early and in color, and only two print it out. One who reads it only sometimes would be happy to go “totally web.” Some of the other comments were: “I would be fine getting it by e-mail,” “Our pledge should include the newsletter,” “It [not mailing it] seems to decrease our inclusiveness,” “To save money I will happily access the web version.”

Most respondents were willing to pick it up at church, but there were a lot of comments about this question. Twenty-two were willing, and six were not. Three gave as answers: “maybe,” “hopefully,” and “only occasionally.” Two said they would not pick it up at church because they would rely on the web version.

There is overall a sense of more people being willing to switch to e-mailed and church-distributed newsletters, but also some strong objections. Some respondents offered suggestions to consider before taking any steps to change the newsletter distribution. All these suggestions will be kept and considered before any changes are made.

— Carol Agate

Two Covenant Groups Starting in May; Older Ones Have Community Projects

Two new covenant groups (CG) will begin the first week in May with two committed facilitators each. To keep facilitators connected and learning ongoing, all meet with the Rev. Judith Meyer monthly.

Participating in covenant groups offers us the opportunity to stretch in a safe and supportive space. Here we can focus the most powerful of forces — our capacity for compassion, empathy, and forgiveness. We can realize a deeper level of awareness during all our days by building these new relationships. Our work and play in covenant groups strengthens not only ourselves but our church community and beyond.

The current Sunday group has identified and launched its church service project. Before Sunday services, the group is extending hospitality to visitors, new members and those who are here infrequently. They are greeted at the church entrance or in Forbes Hall and welcomed. Sometimes guests enjoy a warm presence during services. If they seem receptive, CG members answer their questions, introduce them to others, and generally engage them. This project may launch a workshop to establish an ongoing welcoming group.

The current Monday night covenant group will help coordinate and provide support for the ordination of Stefanie Etzbach-Dale as their church service project. For their community service project they will participate in “Big Sunday,” a community-wide day of service for the City of Los Angeles. The group will help with food preparation for underprivileged children ages five and up, who are learning about community wellness and fitness.

Working closely together can bring deep fulfillment and may be an antidote to the uncertainty in today’s climate of fear, locally and globally.

— CG Implementation Team

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