Category: Congregational Identity

Rethinking Our Identity – Ministerial Transition Team

Rethinking Our Identity

Ministerial Transition Team

Sign up for a workshop to help rethink our identity – read on.

We have described the five phases of a ministerial transition in previous messages and presentations, but to put it most simply, we need to answer three key questions in this transition process:

  1. Where do we come from?
  2. Who are we?
  3. Where are we going?

 

  1. Where do we come from?

We spent the first months of our ministerial transition creating our Congregational History Wall to look at our heritage and our history and to remind ourselves of how this congregation has been shaped and formed.

  1. Who are we?

We are now in the process of rethinking our identity. The UUA’s Janus Workbook, created to support ministerial transitions, describes this transition phase as “illuminating the congregation’s unique identity, its strengths, its needs, and its challenges”. This is the most important step to complete in our ministerial transition before we search for a new settled minister.

  1. Where are we going?

As we rethink our identity we will envision the congregation we want to be(come) in our future. Determining where are we going includes reviewing our membership needs, how we are organized, and how we will develop new and effective leadership. This transition is ongoing throughout our interim period.

We began this work in the fall with the creation of three task forces:

  • The Organization Design Task Force recommended changes to our organizational structure that the Board has accepted and is implementing.
  • The Long Term Staffing Task Force recommended a new Congregational Administrator position, a new Congregational Membership Coordinator position, and expanding Kiersten Moore’s role to become Director of Lifespan Religious Exploration. The Board accepted all these recommendations and is implementing them.
  • The Young Persons Engagement Task Force presented its findings and shared them with the congregation.

The MTT will be providing support to the Board on the implementation of these task force recommendations.

In January, the MTT created, at the Board’s request, the Decision-Making Task Force to review the four year UCV site redevelopment decision-making process and to provide recommendations for future decision-making processes. This task force will report back in June and will include among its recommendations a more visible and prominent place for our congregationally approved Covenant of Healthy Relations.

Rethinking Our Identity

We plan to engage every UCV member in rethinking our identity. We are organizing 2 1/2 hour workshops based on Appreciative Inquiry principles, an approach to organization transition that focuses on moments of exceptional pride and performance and creates a future that nurtures and supports even more pride and performance. We will answer the question “Who are we?” by sharing our best and most powerful memories of our lives in this congregation.

The process to rethink our identity is based on a set of ‘thought-provoking questions’ (see below). We work in pairs in the workshop to share our responses to these questions and then reconvene in the larger workshop group to identify the common themes in our answers. We then imagine, based on these themes, some ‘possibility statements’ about who and what we would like to be, but that we have not yet achieved. Workshops generally have 6 or 8 participants, but we have also had success with 3 participants.

The workshop has been rewarding and meaningful for those who have participated. All have found it a worthwhile and enjoyable experience. Many appreciated the chance to see and talk to others in this congregation, something we have been missing during the pandemic. We will let you know when provincial guidelines will allow us to hold in-person workshops, probably on our UCV campus (even if outside only).

We will invite those who cannot participate in a workshop to review the thought-provoking questions with another person in a one-on-one interview. We want everyone to have a conversation with at least one other person about their answers to these questions. We will ask those who are not able to do this to respond individually to the thought-provoking questions.

Here is an abbreviated version of these questions:

  1. Reflecting on your entire experience at UCV, remember a time when you felt most engaged, alive, and motivated. Who was involved? What did you do? How did it feel? What happened?
  2. What are the healthiest, most life-giving aspects of the relationships among people at UCV? What would you say is most important about how we relate to each other? Give some examples of how we live together at our best.
  3. What are the most valuable aspects of our congregation’s worship? What makes your worship alive and meaningful? What shapes your Unitarian faith?
  4. What do you believe are the most important and meaningful elements of our congregation’s engagement with the local community, the nation, and the world?
  5. What are the most important things our Unitarian community has contributed to your life? Who or what made a difference?
  6. What are the most valuable ways you contribute to our congregation – your personality, your perspectives, your skills, your activities, your character? Give me some examples.
  7. What do you think is the most important, life-giving characteristic of our UCV congregation? What makes Unitarians or UCV unique?
  8. Make three wishes for the future of our Vancouver Unitarians congregation. Describe what this faith community would look like as these wishes come true.
  9. Is there anything else you would like to add?

We invite existing committees, teams, and groups in the congregation to contact us to organize a workshop with you.

We also invite individuals who are not part of any active groups in UCV to contact us and we will organize groups of 6 or 8 at a time that will be convenient for all participants.

Please also contact us if you have any questions or want more information about this transition process.

Rob Dainow (rdainow@gmail.com; 604-523-0123)  Vivian Davidson (vdavidsonc@gmail.com; 778-318-3713)  Marg Fletcher (mfletcher508@gmail.com; 778-772-1120)  Leslie Hill (lesliehill49@gmail.com; 604-321-7175)

The Road Ahead – What’s Your Vision for Our Future?

The five fundamental tasks of our Vancouver Unitarians congregation during our ministerial transition are to successfully navigate our:

HERITAGE – Coming to terms with history by reviewing how this congregation has been shaped and formed.
LEADERSHIP – Reviewing our needs and ways of organizing and developing new and effective leadership to accompany times of transition.
VISION / MISSION – Illuminating and redefining our identity, sense of purpose, and direction.
CONNECTIONS – Renewing, expanding, and strengthening our relationships and resources in the wider community.
FUTURE – Preparing to engage in a new future with renewed vision, stewardship, commitment, anticipation, and zest.

Coming to terms with our history and heritage is the foundation for being able to envision and move into the future. Where did we come from? Who are we? Where are we going? These are the questions we have been exploring as we have built our Congregational History Wall (UCV Stories) over the last few months. 

We presented several short videos in January and February Sunday services to highlight some of these UCV Stories: the Members page, the Controversies and Fights page, and two presentations on the Environment page. 

The February 28 service – “The Never-Ending Story” – illuminated some of the important themes that have shaped and formed us over our 500 year history as a faith tradition and our 119 year history as a Unitarian congregation in Vancouver: 

  • The founding beliefs and principles that cost some of our first leaders their lives and paved the way for what has remained a progressive, non-dogmatic religion that values independent thinking and social action, well-exemplified throughout UCV’s 119 years.
  • The ways in which we have encountered and suffered from conflict situations, notably with past ministers, and how this experience can and should shape how build our path forward – “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
  • Our deep roots and long-standing commitments to social action in response to some of the biggest and most challenges issues in each generation.

We have a rich tradition and a strong foundation to build on. March is the month when we begin our visioning conversations to explore our identity and sense of purpose. What we learn in these explorations will clarify the directions for our future. This is a very exciting part of our work together! 

The Ministerial Transition Team (MTT) is adapting the Appreciative Inquiry approach to organizational transition to structure this transition phase. We will engage in structured conversations with as many congregants as we can in group workshops, one-on-one meetings, and individual surveys. These conversations will focus on seven questions:

  1. When did you feel most engaged, alive, and motivated at UCV?
  2. What are the most valuable ways you contribute to our congregation?
  3. What are the most valuable aspects of our congregation’s worship? What shapes your Unitarian faith?
  4. What are the most important and meaningful ways we engage with the world around us – locally, nationally, globally? 
  5. What are the essential, central characteristics that make UCV unique?
  6. What are the most important things UCV has contributed to your life? 
  7. What are three wishes you have for the future of our Vancouver Unitarians congregation?

The answers to these questions will tell us a great deal about who we are, what we value, and what we aspire to.

We will work with existing committee, teams, and groups in the congregation to enlist your help, and we will summarize all the feedback we receive from the responses to these questions and share it with the congregation as we craft our collective visions for our future.

All aboard!

January, 2021 – Imagining The Future For UCV

We are travelling the “road ahead”, our ministerial transition. We have made great progress on our first developmental/transition task, “Coming to terms with history”, and we continue to build our history wall. Please visit or revisit UCV Stories to discover our past and to add your own memories and stories.

We begin our second transition task this month – “Discovering a new identity”. The UUA’s Janus Workbook, created to support ministerial transitions, describes this second transition task as “Illuminating the congregation’s unique identity, its strengths, its needs, and its challenges”. Simply put, it is time to imagine the future we want to become, to stretch ourselves, to look into our crystal balls, and to use our imaginations to reshape our reality and transform UCV into the congregation we dream to be. Our imaginations are the magic that will get us there.

Our Soul Matters theme for January is “Imagination”, and Reverend Lara explains in her January 2021 In the Interim that we will explore imagination in various ways during this month. Unleashing our imaginations will help our Vancouver Unitarians world come alive – an exciting step in our “road ahead”!

from Transition Team, Rob Dainow, Chair