Strategic Plan

UUCA is at a place that can be seen as a crossing, a stepping-stone or transition.
It is a crossroads, where one must choose which path to take. It is an open space, and can be filled with an atmosphere of uncertainty, neither this nor that. In such a state, one can feel confused and frightened, or one may feel surprisingly liberated and open to new possibilities where anything might happen*
As a faith community, we can make UUCA be a place where anything might happen. *Francesca Freemantle

The congregation's vision might be seen as the meaning the congregation makes about its present and its future. A vision emerges, constructing a sense of what is, what actually exists, a process in which people make meaning together. (from Holy Conversations, Strategic Planning as a Spiritual Practice for Congregations)
February Report to the Congregation

Our work with Dan Hotchkiss, our consultant from the Alban Institute, is progressing as scheduled. Our effort to redefine and restructure UUCA is moving ahead on three fronts.

1. The Strategic Planning Team has been meeting with members of the congregation and Dan to clarify who we are and what our mission and goals should be. Their report to the board is expected by late spring.

2. The Board of UUCA is working with Dan first to understand, then to decide if a way of doing board work called Policy Governance is right for us. We're going through the extensive details of how such a change would be instituted. The general principles of Policy Governance are (1) the Board should be focused on what our goals and ends should be, and avoid getting bogged down in the details of running the church, and (2) the staff should be empowered to manage the details of running the church, thereby allowing the Board to focus on "the big picture".

3. The Organizational Development Team (ODT) recommends a restructuring of the organizational model of the church so that Policy Governance can succeed. Detailing of who is responsible for what, who supervises who, and how that supervision takes place (e.g. how and when job performance reviews are to take place) have to be addressed. The ODT has met with and without Dan Hotchkiss. We understand what needs to be addressed and are proceeding toward a new organizational model for UUCA.

I thank the congregation for its support and participation in this effort. I believe we are on our way to becoming a more focused and effective congregation.

Scott Eden

Featured Solutions

The congregation is using the book Holy Conversations: Strategic Planning as a Spiritual Practice for Congregations , written by Gil Rendle and Alice Mann, as a guide. Gil Rendle and Alice Mann cast planning as a ?holy conversation,? a congregational discernment process about three critical questions:

Who are we?
What are we called to do or be?
Who is our neighbor?

Rendle and Mann equip congregational leaders with a broad and creative range of ideas, pathways, processes, and tools for planning. By choosing the resources that best suit their needs and context, congregations will shape their own strengthening, transforming, holy conversation. They will find a path that is faithful to their identity