UUA’s Southern Region Has a Plan – Elders in Action

By Kirk Bogue, Southern Region Communications Task Force

The Elder Model is part of The Work of growing Unitarian Universalism that the UUA’s Southern Region began earnestly in December 2010. UUA Southern Region district boards, working with UUA Trustees, UUA Administration, and professional staff deemed then that there needed to be a more effective way to serve member congregations and covenanted communities, the larger UU faith, and the world around us than the current district structure. It was then that they aligned and committed to The Work they would undertake to implement more effective and impactful ways of being together. The Elder Model is one component of The Work envisioned to be implemented with formal support from congregations at District Annual Assemblies across the Southern Region in April 2015. 

Imagine that your congregation begins formally recognizing Elders in your congregation and that it supports some of them to serve beyond your congregation’s walls as Regional Elders.  The Congregational Elders you support could be youth, young adults, or people of any other age. Elders are trusted and influential members of your congregation, who are able to articulate and teach the UU faith, have demonstrated that they understand and embody the shared covenant of the UU faith, and are able to call people back to covenant. Regional Elders are Congregational Elders sponsored by their congregation to serve the larger UUA more broadly - they stay in right relations with their home congregation, live UU values daily, and have a good relationship with other UU congregations or covenanted UU communities their congregation collaborates with. Their role is to serve the faith in a regional capacity, to represent the larger UUA at events to include building dedications, ordinations, installations, anniversaries, or other events that could occur. Additionally, they’d join one strong body of Regional Elders of all ministry types, such as ministers, professional staff and lay leaders.  It’s expected that Elders would both understand and appreciate the honor and responsibility conveyed to them. 

If there were a sermon just prior to a ceremony in which a congregation formalized its support of particular members as Elders, it would likely discuss the spiritual and practical responsibilities a UU congregation has to develop and recognize leaders within its own walls and to sponsor some of them to serve their faith beyond the boundaries of the congregation.  The message about this sacred responsibility would be simple. “It’s not enough that a congregation’s only involvement with other congregations is with The UUA when a vote is held at its annual General Assembly. The world will have more love, peace and justice when congregations work collaboratively with each other on selected causes where the combined force of their effort can make a colossal difference.”

If the application of the Unitarian Universalism is essential to lifting up and solving complex issues society faces, doesn’t our faith call us individually and collectively to bring that kind of leadership and organization to bear? 

The Southern Region Communications Task Force includes Margie Manning (Florida District), Carrie Stewart (SWUUC), Kirk Bogue (MidSouth), and Chris Reid (Florida), working in shared ministry with Kathy McGowan (Congregational Life Staff member), and Christine Purcell (Communications/IT Specialist).

Maggie Lovins on Covenant and Shared Ministry

by Margie Manning, Southern Region Communications Task Force

There is beauty in living in covenant. That’s a key message shared by Maggie Lovins, UUA Southern Region Congregational Life staff member.

Congregations are never alone and are always better together, Lovins tells those she works with. Living that concept plays a role in creating beloved community.

“I would like for everyone to have some kind of experience of transcendence – it could be personal, it could be communal, for instance participation in a Pride March – where the work of our human hands becomes more important than we are,” she said.

Deep conversations around covenant have been among the most exciting things Lovins said have occurred since she joined the Southern Region staff on Aug. 1, 2013. Prior to that, she served as an active lay leader, including working as a Smart Church Consultant and serving on the MidSouth District Board. In her home church in Pensacola, she was administrator for quite a few years, and also Children’s Religious Education Coordinator and Volunteer Coordinator.

Lovins, who has a wide, engaging smile, a frank manner of speaking and boundless energy, said she loves her job, because she gets to live her call. “I believe my ministry is with lay leaders and religious professionals and helping them to be the best UU’s they can be,” said Lovins, who is enrolled in Starr King's Masters of Divinity program.

One of the biggest challenges Lovins deals with is conversation around religious terms, while some people have shied away from for a long time. She believes talking about words such as covenant – what the word meant historically and what it has come to mean – and owning those terms is important and builds relationships among UU’s.

Being part of the Congregational Life staff team is a source of great strength, because her colleagues and her share frequent phone calls or gather at their online “water cooler” to discuss issues. While they are geographically separated, the system works because of their covenant with one another.

“When we struggle and fall down we get back up and lift each other up when that happens,” she said. “We want to see each other succeed because we are all working toward the same thing.”

Working toward the same goal – to heal and soothe hurt people and hurting places – with other staff members and with lay leaders is Lovins’ definition of shared ministry. “Shared ministry to me is we are all part of the whole. Some people have to lead, some people have to follow, but everyone has a piece of the ministry,” she said. “Evangelizing the South for Unitarian Universalism is a 24/7 job and I need all the help I can get in that.”