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The Executive Committee of the Prairie Star District Board had it’s end-of-the-church-year meeting last weekend at the First Unitarian Society in Minneapolis. I couldn’t help but notice the banner that FUS has next to it’s main entrance. I’ve seen banners here before (I believe they had the “Civil Marriage is a Civil Right” one up for quite some time), but I was especially impressed by this one since it does so well something that I think is crucial for a congregation to do in order to get it’s message out: the words on the banner offer an easy to remember, easy to understand proclamation about what First Unitarian Society believes. It follows nicely the basic threefold pattern for a memorable message: Religion making sense, People making connections, Values making a difference. And it doing so, it emphasizes both sides of the vital components of this congregation’s beliefs–religion, people, and values on one hand, reason, community, and change on the other. I wish that every member of every UU congregation in the country would able to tell a stranger what their religious community is all about in a similar clear and straightforward way.
I was in Milwaukee last weekend to do a presentation on Family Ministry for religious educators and other interested folks from the Central Midwest District. I plan on posting most of my notes from the presentation because: a.) it’s been awhile since I posted a series on the importance of family ministry, and b.) I told the folks there that I would. I’ve got most of the notes ready to go, so I’ll probably start posting them tomorrow. In the meantime, I thought I’d share a photo of a friendly face familiar to people in both Prairie Star and Central Midwest. It’s Beryl Aschenberg, former DRE at the UU congregation in Lincoln, Nebraska, and current DRE in Milwaukee. Beryl also did some of my current job when she was in Prairie Star, working with the district youth. It was good to see her again, along with my colleagues Dori Davenport and Michelle Richards. At any rate, keep an eye on this space…more to come!
That’s from New Mexico to Minnesota. For as long as I’ve been on the district staff of the UUA, I’ve met once a year (usually in February or March) with my colleagues in the “Mid-America District Staff” group at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico for a working retreat. And every year I’m thrilled by the beauty of the landscape. This photo is an actually picture of what the view from my room looked like this weekend. Of course, we come for more than the scenery. The staff of Prairie Star, Central Midwest, and Heartland districts (the current MADS configuration) has come up with several new initiatives that we’re all pretty excited about. I’ll share more of them with you as we iron out the details. For now, I’ve got to catch a flight from ABQ to MSP and get back home to see the family.
I didnt’ mean to stay away for the last couple of weeks. In fact, I’ve been pretty busy traveling around the district, preaching and attending workshops–exactly the kinds of things I wanted to blog about here. But for whatever reasons, I found it difficult to fire up the old WordPress dashboard and type up a couple of posts. So here’s a few catch-up items….
After preaching in Saint Cloud a few weeks back, I made a quick trip to Davenport, Iowa with a group of folks from the Twin Cities to attend an all-day meeting on growth initiatives in Prairie Star. We were blessed with the presence of an number of wonderful people (including my fellow PSD staffers Nancy Heege and Sarah Greene), but the very important attendees were Bob Johnson, growth guru from the Joseph Priestly District and temporary PSD resident, and Kathy Burek, an excellent facilitator who’s volunteering a day a week or so to help the district with growth-related projects.
I did all of the driving for the TC group (seven hour trips each way), which left me pretty exhausted by the time we got back on Thursday evening. On Saturday, I facilitated a Family Chalice meeting at Unity Church with Bill Doherty, who’s recent Fah’s lecture on “Home Grown Religion” I blogged about a while back. Then on Sunday I headed down to Northfield, Minnesota to preach at the fellowship there. My friend and colleague Dawn Cooley has been working as a quarter-time consulting minister at the fellowship, and it was great to see her along with her two daughters and her husband there. I also had lunch with a couple old acquaintances (hard to believe I’ve been in Minnesota long enough to have some old acquaintances!).
Finally, I came down with a little something last week which slowed me down a bit. But I’m feeling much better after resting up over the three-day weekend.
I guess I should have sent the greetings earlier since I’m writing from the lobby of the Chaparral Suites Resort in Scottsdale, Arizona, waiting for the shuttle to take me to the airport in Phoenix, where I’ll catch a flight back to snowy Minnesota. I’ve been here since Tuesday night for the Big Complex Meeting (BCM…and yes, that’s really what it’s called) of the co-employed district staff of the UUA. The meeting has been traditionally held in Boston, Massachusetts, where the UUA is headquartered, but for the last two years we’ve met a way from Boston (last year we were in New Orleans). At any rate, I’ve been very busy meeting with colleagues in various configurations (committees of the whole, regional groups, small groups with Congregational Services folks who were holding their annual retreat at the same time, and lots of breakfast, lunch, and dinner conversations). It’s been a very fruitful trip, capped with a rocking holiday party last night! And a beautiful closing worship this morning where we all thanked one another by sprinkling flower petals on each others’ heads. Whoo-hoo!
I’m sitting in Terminal C of the Kansas City International Airport, waiting for my (just slightly) delayed flight back to the Twin Cities. Since KCI offers free wireless in its terminals (whoo-hoo!), I thought I’d take a moment to upload some photos I took this morning while visiting the UU Fellowship in Manhattan, Kansas. I’ve saved 3 photos from the Konza Prairie Scenic Overlook on K-177, just south of Manhattan. It’s really quiet a view. And this morning was a perfect time to linger there on my way to the fellowship–sunny, breezy, not too warm. I have to confess that being able to spend time traveling was one of the original appeals of this job, and although I’m trying to keep my time away from the family to a manageable level, I still a pretty regularly thrilled by the differing landscapes I get to see as I roam the plains and prairie states of the district. The visit to the congregation was a success, too, and I’ll blog more about that later.
Just wanted to give credit to the person who took the photograph for this month’s header–it’s from Tzatziki’s photostream at Flickr. I found it through Yotophoto, a great resource for finding free images to use on websites. (And thanks to Scott Wells for his post on the subject.)
I just arrived in San Antonio TX for the LREDA Fall Conference, and I have to say that I couldn’t be more thrilled with my room. As opposed to the Denny’s parking lot that I was graced with during my stay in Portland OR during last June’s GA, my room at the San Antonio Doubletree looks out into the courtyard and this beautiful fountain. I think this will make the next few days quite enjoyable, although I miss the family already.
A quick post this morning. I’m at the Shalom Hill Farm in Windom, Minnesota, for our district’s annual Board/Program Council/Staff retreat (I’m beginning to think we should just go ahead and call it our “leadership” retreat.) I’m here with Julia and Henry David, too. H.D.’s pretty excited about the trip because Shalom Hill Farm is a working farm. There are chickens and goats and sheep and horses–what more could a two year old want! At any rate, the retreat started yesterday with a report by Sherry Warren (our district’s Youth and Young Adult Specialist, or YaYA) and Emma Olsen (one of our district representatives to the recent Youth Summit in Boston). Board member Cheryll Wallace also reported on the fantastic Transformation Team she’s assembled to move the district toward becoming an Anti-Racist/Multicultural institution. Finally, Kathy Bowen and Libby Starling led us in some team building exercises All in all, a great start to a wonderful weekend.
I’ve just received a preliminary report on the UUA’s Youth Summit (the culmination of the Ministry To and With Youth process) from my colleague in the Central Midwest District, Dori Davenport. The gist of Dori’s report is this: “At the end of our five day Summit, we came away with one overarching theme: We ask for a fundamental shift in Unitarian Universalism–a shift to a multigenerational, congregation-based youth ministry in which youth ministry is central to the articulated mission of the UUA.” To which I say, Whoo-hoo! This is good stuff, and I agree with it whole-heartedly. Multigenerational, congregation-based youth ministry–yes! Youth ministry central to our mission–yes! I’m going to be blogging more on this over the next few weeks, specifically about what I consider to be one of the more useful approaches to youth ministry these days. It’s an adaption of the Youth Ministry & Spirituality Project that I’m calling “Spirituality & Service: Youth Ministry for the Whole Congregation.” Stay tuned….
As part of his Tips on Creating a More Connected Life, Edward M. Hallowell, M.D. suggests that we “visit the grave sites of loved ones every year.” He says that “this provides a time and place for remembering and reconnecting with the past.” So as part of our trip back to Indiana this summer, Julia and I have been doing exactly that. This picture is of the Prairie Street Cemetery, which was donated by the Prairie Street Mennonite Church to the City of Elkhart, and it happens to be the place where my father’s parents are buried. I wasn’t sure exactly where their grave sites were, since it’s been over twenty-five years since their funerals. But I had some vague recollection, and sure enough, I found them. I made this visitation on my own, but Julia and I did take Henry David to Julia’s mother’s grave site in Goshen, and we’ll stop by the memorial garden at the Presbyterian church in Elkhart where my father’s ashes are interred. I’d like to visit my maternal grandparents’ sites, too, but we may not have time this trip.
We also made a quick excursion up to East Lansing, Michigan, where my best buddy from theological school is the minister. Kathryn’s doing a wonderful job with the congregation there, and it was great to see her and her family–husband Stuart and son Theo (and poodle Scotty). Stuart and Theo spent Saturday morning working at a Habitat for Humanity site in Lansing with some other volunteers from the church, so we stopped by to see how it was going. It was wonderful to see quite a few youth from the church working along side the adults. Habitat is a natural volunteer opportunity for our any congregation. It can be completely intergenerational, too. The East Lansing church has the younger children come on the day when the keys are turned over to the new owners so they can be part of the celebration!
I’m heading to the Hoosier State with Julia and Henry David at the moment, but before I got too carried away with my vacation time, I thought I’d do a quick post about the the latest photos I’ve added to my flickr page. They’re from the Healthy Congregations training I was part of over the weekend, which took place at my home church: Unity Church-Unitarian. After being away so much last summer, I promised Julia that I wouldn’t do anything “extra” this year. But since this training was in St. Paul, and since it was based on family systems theory (one of my favorite subjects), I couldn’t resist. What was especially nice about this training was that the trainers were district staff members themselves, Connie Goodbread and Richard Speck. Even better, a lot of my district staff colleagues were there, too. But the really great thing was the UU perspective on the Healthy Congregations model. Connie and Richard have done a terrific job of adapting the Christian elements for Unitarian Universalist congregations. I’m looking forward to working with Nancy Heege and Cheri Cody (a Prairie Star district volunteer who was at the training, too) as we bring these learnings to our congregations.
Just trying out some of the nifty features I can use on this new blog. For example, this is a post directly from my Flickr account. The picture is, as the title suggests, the Rehnberg Window from the Unitarian Universalist Church in Rockford, Illinois (the church where I did my ministerial internship). I had been aware of the image before I went to Rockford because it’s used on some merchandise available from UniUniques–pins, key chains, decals, etc. I assumed that the window was in the sanctuary, but in reality it’s in the narthex. The window faces a small prairie area the church maintains, so it’s really, really easy to take a decent picture of it. This one isn’t bad, I think. By the way, the symbols are, clockwise from the top, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, Taoism, Buddhism, and–in the center–Unitarian Universalism.
After several years at my previous site, I’ve decide to move “Phil’s Little Blog on the Prairie” to a new home. I’ve been recommending WordPress to new bloggers for few months now, and I guess it’s time that I started using it myself. The big reason for the move is that Earthlink, the host for the original version of PLBOTP, never upgraded their blogging software. In fact, they quit offering it to new bloggers a year or so ago. I had to do all of my own upgrades: counter, commenting, rss feed, etc., which meant that each new blog entry would usually take as long to cut and paste various bits of html as it took to write. This blog will make it much easier for me to post. Is that a good thing? You’ll have to be the judge of that. Oh, and the customizable header means I can have a nice view of the prairie right up front. Sweet.
Unfortunately, another side effect of using Earthlink’s software is the inability to export my old posts to this new address. So I’ll keep the old site online for anyone interested in referencing something I wrote there. But all new “Little Blog on the Prairie” posts will be right here. Along with more photos and maybe even some videos. Who knows? I appreciate all the support I’ve gotten from readers over the last three plus years. I’m confident that WordPress has the will and the know-how to take us into the next three years…and beyond.
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