President's Message

A tiny family in Lakewood, Ohio, just west of Cleveland joined the fledgling West Shore Unitarian Church in the late ‘40’s. The dad signed up to be an usher, the mother took on the responsibility for Sunday’s flowers and their little girl just loved Sunday school. The young minister was dynamic and the little congregation grew by leaps and bounds. Property was acquired and a capital campaign to build a church in Rocky River took place. Money ran out and the congregation pitched in to help in the building. The little girl’s dad had a peck basket filled with a hammer, pliers and other supplies and went out to the church every Saturday morning to build cabinets and shelves and run electric wires. The mom helped in the Sunday school by preparing all the supplies the teachers would need each Sunday. The little girl grew up in a wonderful supportive environment and was eventually married at this church.

Along the way, the congregation grew considerably. As the daughter reached her high school years, congregants changed from saying “We need to mulch the flowers,” to saying, “Why don’t ‘they’ mulch the flowers?” and from “Time for a painting party for the Sunday School rooms,” to “Why don’t ‘they’ have the classrooms painted?”

Especially in this period of difficult economic times, let’s not let this attitude seep into our thinking here at UUI.

Soon we will have a special coffee hour to introduce us to multiple opportunities for us to help our church community. Please explore these possibilities and volunteer to help and be involved. The Eye and the Sunday Times will announce this Service Fest.

Susan

Communication at UUI

Over the course of the last couple of years as a member of UUI, but especially during my first year on the BOT, it has become increasingly evident that what I will broadly call communications, or the lack thereof, remains one of the biggest single issues facing our church. The way we communicate at UUI really does affect almost every aspect of how our church functions. Having been a member of several UU churches and fellowships, and having worked for several companies from very small to very large, I don’t think our UUI communications issues are much different or worse than one would find anywhere else. As we have evolved into a larger organization, we have taken our communications process for granted. We have let the excusable bad habits of a small church continue into our larger and continually growing church.

How do we begin to address this issue? The way I see it, from the perspective of a member of the BOT, the first thing we need to do is to be more intentional about the way we manage communications and the way we communicate. We need to make sure we don’t take anything for granted. We need to know that just because we may think we are enlightened about some aspect of church life, having listened to members’ concerns and having discussed an issue at a Board meeting, does not mean that all concerned members somehow automatically share our enlightenment.

To an extent, we have been intentional. We (mostly David Jackoway) maintain this column in the Eye. We send e-mails and letters to the congregation. We need to do more. We need to make sure that the committees doing the work of our church are not only intentional about communicating, but that they are provided with the tools and resources to do so. We need to make sure the membership at large is not only able to communicate with church leadership but able to receive the information they want and need.

As we enter this new church year, one of the first signs we will all see of improved communications at UUI will be a new church website. The new site design and development for UUI is being done by an unusual team of experts. James Acker, a monk/priest of 35 years and under lifetime vows, leads the team and is the site designer (a service that supports his own website and spiritual center). Joining James is Andrea Fiore, a minister who is also on the UUA headquarters web maintenance team. Andrea will be doing most of the coding for the new site. A third team member, Rob Starr, is an expert in backend database coding, and brings his expertise to many nonprofits.

Thanks to this team and to a lot of thought on the part of many UUI members, this new site should be the first of many tools which give our church a much simpler means of communicating. Our hope is that we will be able to use this site to more effectively manage not only internal communications but also how we are able to present ourselves to the Indianapolis community at large. Look for more news about the new uui.org website soon and please feel free to call or e-mail me with any suggestions or advice.

John