Report from the Senior Minister

The Rev. Jane Rzepka
September 17th, 2005

I always wonder as I picture each one of you. What is the best approach here? What I really want to do is thank you, that's what I most feel like writing. We're a church after all, and you are fabulous volunteers.

But we are also a corporation, non-profit to be sure, and you are in charge. You need to know what's what. Given our mission of reaching out to isolated religious liberals and promoting Unitarian Universalism, what are we actually doing? Sure, we hand-write a letter to the member who wants to discuss Stoicism and its relationship to Unitarian Universalism, we talk on the phone to the woman in Florida who killed her sister, we email a full worship service to that little group in Vancouver. but beyond those acts of ministry and evangelism that each staff member engages in, what does the CLF do? Where does the money go? What do we offer?

Is this the time for a concise list? I'll keep it to a manageable ten.

1. Our prison ministry serves those most isolated among us, linking free world UUs with prisoners and offers resources. Our prison ministry class at Starr King is just beginning.
2. Our worship publication, Quest continues to be the life-line it's always been for isolated UU's and many in congregations.
3. The CLF Website offers more resources than one can count, spiritual, educational, and programmatic.
4. We offer religious education in a wide variety of forms, from kids' curricula both online and in hard copy, the lively Between Sundays site, to the monthly KidTalk site, and on it goes.
5. uu&me!, our kids publication now enclosed in the UU World magazine.
6. Our library, at the ready with books, worship services, and more.
7. Online courses, online covenant groups, email lists, and shared interest groups.
8. The Church of the Younger Fellowship, by and for young adults.
9. Church on Loan / / Church on Line, is a fee-based program for small congregations which provides resources for worship services, religious education for children and adults, and support for growth.
10. Internship program, for the future of the movement.

But that doesn't really explain what-all goes on or where the money goes. Suffice it to say that The Church of the Larger Fellowship is a publication house, with all the acquisitioning, permissions, editing, proofreading, and production that that implies. We are a retail outfit selling jewelry, orders of service, note cards, and luggage tags, with orders, bookkeeping mailing, and inventories. We are a marketing operation, with a daunting PR schedule, a convention booth, several brochures, and a Website. We are a non-profit, with a payroll, bills, financial management and budget preparation, unbelievable data entry, and staff and volunteer supervision. We are grant-writing organization, with an elaborate calendar of grant deadlines and reports. We are a fund-raising organization, always generating letters, mailing lists, strategies, thank you's, and hopefully, constantly posting checks and running credit cards.

But finally, we are a church. That's the point. We have members, just like any congregation, and with your help, we serve them and love them in the context of Unitarian Universalism.

So now can I get back to thanking you?

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Last updated November 21, 2005