Letters from Leadership

As fall begins its descent, I find myself reflecting on my summer experience as part of UUCE’s CommUUnity Garden team. We’re all aware that gardening enhances one’s well-being on many levels. It may reduce stress, anxiety and symptoms of depression. Being outdoors in light and fresh air contributes to health, and the physical nature of tasks help maintain fitness and mobility. My involvement over the past three months extends beyond these benefits.  Gardening can be a powerful conduit for personal…

As summer draws to a close, I hope you are feeling refreshed and eager to return to the more structured comforts of our UUCE church year. It’s been a busy season for your Revitalization Team! Once again, I’d like to encourage you to get as involved as you can with our community. The groups and teams we have are filled with opportunities to build connections with loving people. And if the Revitalization Team interests you, our doors are always open…

Hi, I am delighted to be writing you as the Coordinator for Religious Education at UUCE. As it happens, I was an RE teacher here for a while way back in the 1990s, but since then my time with kids has been mostly about either tutoring or being a grandma. In any case, I still have both feet in the water, and it seems I’m about to wade in even deeper! I want to thank you for trusting me and…

For those of us with school-aged children, we are nearing the end of the nine-month period where our schedules are crammed with activities and commitments that make us feel like the cliché plate-spinner.  But now that summer is nearly here, we can finally take a deep breath, relish the less-full calendar, and pat ourselves on the back for surviving it all.  Things feel a little like that with the church year as well – although we no longer take the…

Since February the Financial Committee has been hard at work putting together the proposed budget for the 2023-2024 fiscal year.  Our church operates on a fiscal year beginning July 1st and ending June 30th.  Each year we reach out to committees and groups to ask how much funding they want for the next year, and also use the amounts provided by the Stewardship folks to enter pledges and calculate expected income.  We check those amounts against recent payments to ensure they…

For this Letter from Leadership, the Board wanted to share a summary of the results of the recent congregational survey and give an overview of what we plan on doing with this information. Overall, we had 53 participants, which is a great response! Of course, there was a wide diversity of opinions reflective of our individualism. The survey was divided into 4 major areas: · Professional Minister · Building · Social Justice · Recommending the Church The summary below is…

At the start of the new year, it’s custom to take inventory of where you’re at in life. Did you reach last year’s goals? What new intentions are you setting for the coming year?As part of the worship team, I wanted to take a second to look back on where we were at this time last year compared to how far we’ve come. This time last year I delivered one of my very first sermons – an honest look at…

Life is like riding a bicycle – to keep your balance you must keep moving – Albert Einstein The Revitalization Team kept momentum going by holding our first social event of 2023 last weekend, a Hygge Hangout. We also have February’s Valentine Potluck coming up on Feb 11 in Fellowship Hall. Recaps, including pictures, are available on the UUCE website in the Activities section, which can be found here: https://uuce.org/activity-highlights/ Last week we also kicked off a new Adult RE…

Happy New Year, Beloved Community! I wanted to inform you of the dates we’ll be having RE through the beginning of June, so everyone can plan accordingly. Looking forward to all that our kids and youth will do this year! We’ll plan to have RE on the following dates (and for those of you involved in D&D, we’ll plan to have games on the following dates as well): Jan 22nd  Feb 5th  Feb 19th  Mar 5th  Mar 19th  Apr 2nd …

Some of you may wonder, or hope to never learn, what it is that your Financial Secretary does on a weekly basis.  Over the past 18 months my focus has been to modify the financial processes of the Church to better fit our goals of using our resources wisely and avoiding unnecessary waste.  We do a pretty good job of managing our financial resources, but still have some work to do in terms of reducing waste. Historically our financial processes…

Letters from Leadership As 2022 winds down and we approach the mid-point of our fiscal church year, it is a perfect time to step back and take pride in all we’ve accomplished. In her December 1st letter from the Board of Trustees, Krista Wagner shares a poem from Donna Ashworth. “…take a moment to acknowledge what you already are. All that you already are. Because it’s a lot. You’re a lot. And you deserve to be seen. For catching the…