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Dear First
Congregational Members and Friends,
At the annual
meeting, Moderator Phil Taylor announced the formation of a team to work on
bringing healing and reconciliation to our church regarding the concern and
confusion over the Departed Clergy Policy. The Center for
Congregational Health (CCH) consultant’s report recommended this
action. As has been previously reported, a group of church members met
and unanimously agreed that this team be lay-led, as opposed to having a
consultant involved.
The team members
are Ann Allen, Ed Argue, Dawn Kucera, Linda Laderach, Bob McLendon, Karla
Miller, and Phil Taylor.
The purpose of
this message is to report on what we have done so far and lay out some
plans we have for the immediate future.
Team Principles
The team will
operate by consensus - there will not be a system of “Voting, and majority
wins.”
Thus, anything
that comes from the group will have been agreed to by
everyone. Some early decisions:
·
The permanent name of the group is The Reconciliation and
Renewal Team.
·
Bob will serve as chair, Dawn and Linda as co-Recorders.
·
We will have open, transparent, and frequent communications
to the congregation.
·
We will be open and receptive of all comments and questions
from the congregation.
·
Given the open accessibility and our
consensus method of operation, we decided the number of people on the team
was sufficient.
Laying the
groundwork
We first did an
assessment of our knowledge of UCC policies related to the conflict
situation and the situation itself. We all had different levels
of knowledge, and knew we needed to get to the same knowledge
level. We did this with in-depth discussions and by reviewing all the
pertinent documents. Several people informed us of the blog that the
concerned group operates, and we all read through the entries.
With this, we
realized this situation is mirrored in the congregation: different
knowledge levels on all aspects. We see education as one of our tasks
- we feel this is crucial to moving forward. To that end, we’ve
started developing some information papers - which we will issue soon, and
we’re planning some communication events.
Upcoming Plans
Communication -
two-way communication - is crucial for the healing process. Many
people have expressed the thought that our inability to talk things out at
the onset (due to the pandemic-caused church closure) was the main
contributing factor that led to heightened concern and confusion over The
Departed Clergy Policy. To facilitate the needed two-way communications,
we are planning the following actions.
1.
Set up a special dedicated email account. The
account address is FCCRRTeam@gmail.com. The mail will be
checked daily, and receipt acknowledged. At our weekly meetings we
will go over all the mails that we’ve received and craft a team response to
each one. We request that all questions and comments be sent to this
email address, and not directly to team members.
2.
Conduct some open gatherings via Zoom. The first one will be a
combination of a couple of things. In one part, we’ll be passing along
some of the things we’ve learned about UCC policy and guidance that
pertains to the current situation. Then, we want to listen to whoever has
something to say. We expect to hold it in early March, and we’ll give
plenty of pre-notice.
Our commitment
Each of us takes
our responsibility very seriously. We pledge to our fellow church members that we will proceed
with open-minds, accountability, transparency, integrity, and
prayer. Our goal is to promote reconciliation, renewal and
forgiveness, by focusing on points of agreement and the things that unite
us.
R&R Team
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