Letters from Leadership (Page 3)
Each week, our leadership publishes a message to keep the congregation informed about what’s happening at UUCE.
From the Board of Trustees
Hi everyone! Time for another update on what your board has been up to! This month the board has been focused on getting ready for the Annual Meeting on May 22nd. The meeting will be held in person in the sanctuary, and we encourage all members to attend and vote. A big part of the annual meeting is approving the budget for the year, and the finance committee has been hard at work crunching the numbers and trying to put…
From the Worship Team
Greetings from the Worship Team. We are now several months into being a lay-led church. While the Worship Team has always participated in shaping our Sunday services, we are now doing it all. We as a team have actually absorbed the role of Minister. Every Sunday, we deliver a complete worship service to you, from music and video, community connections and share the plate, to the sermon and readings. As a team, we develop a weekly theme, and each of…
From the Revitalization Team
Hello all! The Revitalization Team has been busy! In March, several members of our team attended ‘A Second Slice of Pi’, which was a virtual conference held by the UUA for small congregations. It was great to get together to share ideas with others that are having some of the same challenges as UUCE, and hear some fresh perspectives on how we can be more efficient and effective moving forward. Alongside this, the Revitalization Team has had several meetings with…
From Marj Askins, Religious Education (RE) Coordinator
As we approach the last couple of months of the religious education year at UUCE, and prepare to enter the slower, summer months – I find myself starting to think about what the RE Program might be able to do in the future. I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to continue to have RE on-site into the fall and long into the future, but the simple fact remains that to do much of anything with our incredible kids, we need RE…
From the Board of Trustees
Hi Everyone! It has been great finally getting to see many of you in person at our services over the past few weeks! I’d like to thank everyone involved in getting the church open and figuring out how to do services while keeping everyone safe. They all continue to meet and discuss how to improve your experience at the services. I attended the last meeting, and we did decide to continue masking for now to protect our most vulnerable congregants.…
From the Executive Team (ET)
Greetings from the Executive Team Let me begin by saying WELCOME BACK! I think I can confidently say, on behalf of the entire Executive Team, that it is wonderful to see folks return to our prairie cathedral for in-person worship again. To those who attend via Zoom, we are certainly delighted to have you with us too as we work to improve the online experience with live-streaming of worship from the sanctuary (with upgraded equipment thanks to the generosity of…
From the Worship Team
It was so great to see everyone who was able to attend our service last Sunday! We were blessed with a beautiful day and a healthy turnout for our first in-person service in 2022! Several people stayed to walk the labyrinth and place the stones Rowan provided, thanks Rowan! I love spring! Buds are forming, grass is greening, and I rejoice in the rain! Ponds that looked doomed are teeming with life and the birds are singing happy songs. The…
From the Revitalization Team
Spring has sprung, the grass is riz, I wonder where dem boidies iz? This silly saying pops into my mind every spring – can’t find an author to own up it! Our most exciting spring news right now is the Reopening Team’s announcement that an on-site service option will resume on March 20th! (We will still offer an online Zoom option for all services as well!) As I write this, statistics are still favorable and expected to improve. Thanks to…
From the Board President
Hi Everyone! I wanted to check in and give you an update on what your Board of Trustees has been working on. With the church closed I feel like we have less opportunity to get the word out on what we’re doing, and I sometimes forget that people would like to know what direction the Church is headed! We recently held a meeting that combined the Executive Team, the Revitalization Committee and the Board to discuss how we could all…
From Marj Askins, RE
Learning to be Together Again As we enter a new phase of this pandemic (again), and plan to be back in person for our Worship and Religious Education, I am feeling some tension – and I’m sure you are too. There is a strong desire to go “back” to the way things were before the virus, and also an urgent need to figure out how we do this in a new version of the world, one where we live alongside the virus…
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From the Worship Team
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the place Dr. Seuss refers to as, “The Waiting Place”. This time of year I always seem to get stuck in The Waiting Place – waiting for W2s so we can get our taxes done (and, hopefully, get some money back), waiting for the weather to warm up, waiting for Spring Break… Hopefully, one thing we won’t have to be waiting on too much longer is a return to in-person activities and services! …
From the Revitalization Team
Everything you do matters. Each and every choice makes a difference. Maybe it won’t be a huge difference. Not every decision is going to be a do-I-move-across-the-country-and-take-that-new-job kind of choice. But they all do make a little difference. And cumulatively, these everyday choices determine what kind of life you have. Do I eat a salad or a burger for lunch? Do I bundle up and attend the church bonfire and spend time building community or do I stay at home, on the couch, and binge…