The Board Bulletin

This is my final column as your president. On 20 May we had our Annual Meeting and available at that meeting was a packet of reports from each of the officers of the Board of Trustees and most committees. There may be some extras left for you to pick up if you missed that meeting. I wanted to offer here a different kind of assessment of Starr King than I offered in my President’s report at the Annual Meeting.

As a congregation, we have great strengths and many challenges. Everyone says we’re a very friendly congregation. I think that’s because we don’t put on any airs. We may not be very racially diverse, but our congregation includes retired professionals, the unemployed, working poor and underemployed. We are elderly and new families, middle aged and youth. We are highly educated, working class, blue collar, hip and straight, gay, queer. We are recovering Catholics, devout Catholics, Buddhists, Pagans, Evangelical and Pentecostal refugees. We are journalists, teachers, psychologists, welders, musicians, accountants and master gardeners.

We go to great lengths to not just meet and greet visitors but to find out who they are, what they do and a little about their dreams and struggles. I have been enriched by every single new member who has become involved at Starr King. I have had more than one Starr King member tell me that they now feel they had always been Unitarian Universalist, but just did not realize it until they discovered our church. Many more people like that in our community have not yet walked through our doors. We need them to complete our community. I know some who worry that we might become like the super sized church on the hill with three crosses. I don’t think we’re any more likely in the near future to become a mega-size church than we are to erect three crosses out front. I do so hope that we continue to be a beacon of liberal religious freedom, reason and community for progressive minded people in southern Alameda County for decades to come.

My wife, Terri, grew up attending a Congregational (United Church of Christ) church in New Jersey . Before she moved to California , her congregation had literally died off. There were not enough pledging congregants left to continue services. The church property was sold to another denomination. At this point in our history we are wrestling with how we can replace the deteriorating office building, known as Unitarian House. Will we be able to integrate the replacement plan for Unitarian House with our long stalled dreams of a larger meeting house, and religious education space? There are differing opinions on whether we can integrate our immediate needs with our longer term dreams. Mostly, the issue turns on economics.

Our spiritual and material needs turn on the same issue. Will we continue to be a vibrant self-sustaining, welcoming beacon of liberal religious freedom?

I am very optimistic for our future. We are growing. Many of our new members are choosing to become involved with the fabric of our community. Our Board of Trustees has adopted a five-year vision statement and wants to approach implementation of our vision as a strategic plan ,taking up one-byone each piece of our vision and working towards its implementation.

Bob

2/5