Feb 23:Report From the Reconciliation and Renewal Team

 

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