Cottage Meeting April 26th and May 3rd

Dear fellow UU congregants,

We invite you to the Cottage Meetings on Sundays, April 26th and May 3rd from 12:00 - 2 p.m. They are about building our future -- and are as important as the hours you all spent putting up our lovely home. 

Please come the 26th (fine lunch provided), to talk about what each of us want in the future from shared and lay ministry. This 2nd Cottage Meeting of the year, we'll resume the conversation we started two years ago, at FCC (before we built our home), when we asked everyone for their vision of how they'd like to see our ministry progress; we'll quickly share the results from that time. We'll also share the results of the first cottage meeting a month ago, when we asked small groups how we are doing currently, as a congregation, with shared ministry. The discussion will continue among all of us as to our desired balance of lay and professional ministry, and our evolving vision of UUCGV. In addition to broad visioning, we will also have an opportunity to discuss some of our specific desires and goals for the coming year. Rev. Wendy Jones will be joining us to hear our ideas and to contribute to her vision of a future shared ministry. Our relationship with Rev. Wendy is ongoing, and she is contracted with the UUs for two years.

We also invite you to meet for the third and final Cottage Meeting on May 3rd, after an even finer lunch, to focus our conversation on the question off calling Rev. Wendy Jones as our settled minister, and moving away from the 1 or 2 years-at-a-time contract basis. 

All three cottage meetings are in preparation for the Annual Meeting, May 31st, when, among other things, we'll vote on this question.

We respect the diversity of opinion in this congregation, and we want to create safe space at these meetings to express all that we think and feel.

We hope that these cottage meetings will help us all communicate clearly what we want and what we envision long-term for our future together.  Please join us to help create a rich, healthy relationship in ministry, both within our congregation and lay leaders and members, and between Rev. Wendy Jones and the entire congregation. 

We'd appreciate it if you could let us know if you're coming by responding to administrator@uucgv.org.  THANKS.  Also, please contact any of us on the ministry committee with any ideas you have or questions that come up.

Warmly,

Sandy Dorr, David Miller, Joanie Leinbach, Lance Oswald, Monte High, Kathleen Hedlund, & Jeanie Hendricks

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