"Men have never done much when the heart has been cold; and what have they not done, what have they not subdued, when the heart has been quickened to generous emotions?"
William Ellery Channing
"We are often called to do the difficult, if not the seemingly impossible, and it is vital to our spiritual growth that we not ignore these challenges."
Janice Marie Johnson
"To attain happiness in another world we need only to believe something, while to secure it in this world we must do something."
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Here is where we have been - moving from the old church structure on Victoria Street to a new beginning at Mesa Verde Drive East with room to handle immediate needs and room to grow.
Here is where we are - seeing near-overflow attendance at Sunday services and wondering how to handle the situation. Many ideas about this have been proposed.
Where are we going?
Reverend Sian and I have conducted a series of Town Hall Meetings after services twice monthly in January and February. The first set concerned brainstorming of ideas that members and friends thought could be directions OCUUC might take in future. These meetings were designed to be open to any ideas but not yet to solutions of problems or accomplishing goals.
The next pair of meetings looked at evaluating the top five concepts on a simple Pro and Con evaluation of each idea - again, not meant to solve or accomplish goals yet.
All of us, leaders and participants had difficulty not jumping to solutions.
The one startling concept, for me, was something like "We were promised a sanctuary" when we moved but we still don't have it. On further reflection and discussion with some of you who went through the transition and the move the concept became clearer to me as "We promised ourselves a sanctuary."
So, how do we fulfill that promise to ourselves? The Town Hall Meetings so far are a beginning to that process. There is much work ahead including, probably, hiring an independent consultant to evaluate our capabilities of completing that promise and producing a plan or two which means something like a Strategic Plan and a Long Range Plan.
A strategic plan involves focusing on the mission, vision, and overarching strategy of our church. Strategic planning is an ongoing process, where OCUUC leaders need to continuously evaluate resources and initiatives, and determine how to prioritize. Other than time to formulate it, there is no timeline associated with a strategic plan.
A long range plan puts into action those things necessary to accomplish the strategic plan and includes a timeline for achieving those goals.
Shall we begin? I think it’s an excellent time for us to focus on planning for a new sanctuary at 2845 Mesa Verde East. Are you with me?
Don Martin president@ocuuc.org