by Margie Manning, Florida District President, Communications Task Force
The Southern Region’s proposal to dissolve district governance and move forward with a new model of stronger relationships between congregations is a return to our covenantal roots.
It’s also an opportunity to build a stronger Unitarian Universalist movement without the burden of a layer of governance that does not add value, to a level of ministry that adds value to congregations.
That’s the view of Jim Key, moderator of the Unitarian Universalist Association, past president of the Southeast District (formerly Thomas Jefferson District), and a member of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Beaufort, S.C.
As part of a Covenant of Understanding between the Southern Region Districts and our UUA, governance responsibilities will be handled by our Unitarian Universalist Board of Trustees and General Assembly, and our UUA Board of Trustees will take responsibility for linkage with the congregations of the Southern Region.
In an interview, Jim expressed a lot of enthusiasm for the plan, and provided answers to questions congregations have asked about it. Here are his responses, edited for length.
How will my congregation be represented without District governance?
Jim: As they always have been.
We are an accessible board of trustees, with linkage as the most important of all our activities in our policy manual.
Any congregation at any time can contact the board through the moderator. I get emails all the time, so direct inquiry is one way. And from time to time the board turns around and contacts congregations, sometimes with District and Regional support and sometimes not. We go directly to the congregations.
So the first thing I want to say is that nothing really has changed in terms of access to the board and vice versa. Since we’ve gone to policy governance, linkage is a primary objective of this board and it is done in a variety of ways.
Given the new web site platform, the board and IT director are exploring ways of how this platform could make it easier, more interactive as we do linkage. For example, before the board meeting or after a board meeting - when the agenda goes on the website, or after the board meeting when we report out - how we collect the information from individuals or the leaders (whether elected or called) to comment. And we've tended to see some of that as we've become more transparent, with live-streaming in Boston, our post-board webinars and with surveys. So I'd say that if the districts and regions do nothing, clearly we will proceed down the path of making it easier for linkage work between congregations and the board.
By removing district layers of governance, how will congregations benefit?
Jim: In the Southern Region there used to be roughly 10 on each board, 40-plus people. Now that's down by half and soon there will be no one working on governance. Think of all the people power of moving all those people with a passion about Unitarian Universalism into ministries as opposed to this fiction of supervising staff. Boards have never supervised staff although they thought that was one of their governance roles. So these people can now transfer their energies into all the other things a congregation needs, whether it is help with stewardship development, conflict resolutions, helping the missioning, on and on and on. The staff has specific responsibilities for that but now you have this, I use the term adjunct staff, or Elders that can multiply the reach of the staff exponentially, which couldn't happen when boards were seen as governance structures.
It seems that once we settle into this, congregations will have greater access to and greater support from volunteer Elders.
What I'm also hoping is that groups of congregations will see the need to develop their clusters, to make them stronger and more interactive and that will strengthen the historic connection between the congregations that was envisioned when we wrote the Cambridge Platform centuries ago. I’ve always felt the end result of all of this is stronger clusters, where congregations in closer geographic proximity can spend more time hosting meetings to bring resources to multiple congregations, not just one.
As a past president of the Southeast District and someone whose home congregation is in the Southern Region, what excites you most about what we are proposing?
Jim: The notion that we don't need a lot of people engaged in governance. It's not why most people move into leadership beyond their congregation, or even within the congregation. What animates people are what I choose to call ministries - whether it's social justice work, whether it’s youth leadership development, whether it’s organizing and deploying OWL programs - there's just more energy available to do these things, to move volunteers from board work and governance work into things that really add value to congregations.
What's pleased me, I almost want to use the word pride, is the speed with which this has progressed. When we first began thinking about this – the possibility of giving up co-employment, the possibility of making the organization smaller - it's exciting to see that my region has taken it much further than I thought was possible relatively quickly and very thoughtfully and I think will be a model for the rest of the country to consider.
As we demonstrate that people can move into lay leadership ministries, I think that's exciting. I see the result of that in my own congregation. They've opened access to some of these Elders to do some of this work at a rate and pace not perceived before and not available before. I already see the fruits of this stuff. I’m incredibly prideful – that’s not a good word, maybe humble is a better word - that the Southern Region leadership, the four very different districts with very different cultures of leadership and form and size and structure, to move in such a collegial way into a new way of being – I think that’s been achieved through the focus on relationship building that is so essential to the whole process.
It goes back to who we are, a covenantal faith. It demonstrates to me that we can return to our covenantal roots and build a stronger Unitarian Universalist movement without this burden of a layer of governance that did not add value, to a level of ministry that adds value.
Once it’s fully deployed and I'm out of the moderatorship, it will be sweet to look back and say, wow, who says we move slowly? Once we enter into a covenant to do something bold, people of good will can get it done.
