The annual Congregational Meeting will be held at 11:45 am on April 26. The Board has been discussing the process and logistics for the meeting. The meeting will be held through Zoom. Any Congregational members who cannot access the Zoom application on their computer or smartphone, and instead are calling in to listen via telephone should contact Darlene Sarkela to get an absentee ballot. She will also assist you in submitting the ballot.

We have a quick update on the Congregation’s application for funding through the Payroll Protection Program. Our application has been approved and the funds will be made available in the near future. It is important that the Congregation decides on whether to accept these funds as soon as possible.

The Board has also taken several important actions that we want you to know. The first is that we have elected two new board members to the board to fill vacancies in terms that are not due to expire this year. This is the recommended practice under our by-laws. We want to introduce our two new board members and will include pictures and brief bio’s in the weekly update next week:

o Wendy Endress has been appointed to fill the one-year term remaining following the resignation of Sara St Clair.

o Jason Martinelli has been appointed to a two-year term following the death of Rob Radford.

The Board has completed a summary report on the Congregation’s progress toward our Ends policies, as required by the OUUC by-laws. The report is attached to the bottom of this article.

The process of the meeting will be different than our usual Congregational get-together. We have researched our bylaws and the laws governing non-profit organizations and feel certain that the following procedures allow us to conduct a legal meeting of the Congregation. The process we will use is:

– OUUC members will be sent an invitation with the link for the meeting several days before the meeting and again on Sunday morning. (If there are questions regarding your membership status please contact Darlene Sarkela (liberalfaith@ouuc.org).

– You will need to sign into the meeting using the link and required password.

– All attendees will be muted except the chair and recognized speakers.

– We will suspend the Roberts Rules of order formal address for this meeting.

– We will use the chat feature in Zoom to make a request to the chair. (This feature is located on the menu bar which comes up on the bottom of the screen on my PC.)

– Members will be recognized by the chair.

– The “Participants” button on the bottom of the screen will give us a count of connections. Board members may need to count heads in the windows if we do not have the required 61 separate people connected to assure a quorum.

– Voting will be done by physically raising your hand in the window. (Members of the board will take screen captures to facilitate the counting. This is the way that we have voted in the past and it may take a minute or two to get all the screens.)

We have scheduled a practice Zoom meeting on Saturday (4/25) at 1:00 pm to give folks a chance to get better acquainted with the Zoom technology before the meeting.

Monitoring Report, Ends Policy Statements

Olympia Unitarian Universalist Congregation

For April 26, 2020 by Board of Trustees

As required in the bylaws of the Olympia Unitarian Universalist Congregation (OUUC):

1. “The Board shall provide an annual report to the Congregation before the annual spring meeting on progress in pursuit of OUUC Ends statements. The Minister shall provide for a report on all the ministries and the finances of the congregation. “

The following is a report on the progress regarding the congregational Ends Policies.

The current Ends Policy (Policy 1 of the OUUC Governance Policy Manual) reads:

The Olympia Unitarian Universalist Congregation is a liberal religious congregation where:

1. We expand our knowledge, deepen our understanding, and strengthen and live our Unitarian Universalist identities.
2. Our hearts are filled with experiences of wonder, awe, and connection to the spirit of life and love.
3. People of all ages, identities, and circumstances are welcomed and connected in our loving community.
4. The Olympia Unitarian Universalist Congregation responds to the needs of a changing congregation and world.
5. Our lives, and those of the larger community, are meaningfully changed through our collaborative work for justice.
6. We advocate for environmental justice and practice care for the Earth.

In the last year of Reverend Eric Posa’s tenure with OUUC, the Board implemented, with the Minister, a monitoring schedule for all governance policies and worked to follow this schedule throughout the year. This schedule included monitoring of the Ends policy statements largely through a congregation-wide survey.

As this process unfolded it was clear that measurement of progress on the Ends statements was difficult at best and in some cases not possible. The ways in which these statements were formulated makes it very difficult to measure progress in anything but very subjective and anecdotal ways. In addition, the burden of producing the monitoring reports for the other policies and carrying out the monitoring activities had become overwhelmingly time-consuming.

After discussing this situation with Reverend Gear, the board decided, at it’s September meeting, to suspend the monitoring of the Ends Policy Statements pending a review and possible revision over the next year. This will occur in the second year of Reverend Mary’s ministry with us.

Please take some time over the next several months to review the current Ends Policy statements. The congregation will begin discussions next fall to review these important statements which guide our community in actions that we are making and for whom.

Fritz Wrede, President