Last Saturday, the Eastrose board held a very successful half-day planning session to discuss and prioritize actions for the coming year ahead. There is a lot on the horizon for us all. Stay tuned to Petals for announcements!
On Wednesday evening, the board, church staff, worship team, and others in leadership positions received an extremely helpful briefing on being lay-led from Reverend Sarah Schurr, our UUA regional expert on small and lay-led congregations.
We learned that there is a big shortage of ministers of all faiths nationwide, so many congregations just like Eastrose will be lay-led for a period of time. Sarah advised us on ways to handle the impact on Sunday worship services, pastoral care, staff supervision and other areas.
Lay-led means that Eastrose won’t have a professional minister for the time being. Instead, members of the congregation will use our experiences and talents to meet the needs within the church and in the larger community. While it might seem unusual to folks familiar with traditional religious communities, there is a long history of lay-led Unitarian Universalist communities and there is much support and consultation available from the UUA and from other lay-led churches nearby.
On Sundays we will be hearing from a diversity of voices – something that is well in line with our values. Over the years many members of the congregation have provided their reflections as the guest speaker on a Sunday. Maybe one of you would be interested in doing so? We can also expect to share services with other churches in our cluster. The national UUA has a number of excellent complete services available to us online and Sarah pledged to help Eastrose with finding guest ministers from time to time. With our multi-platform capability, we are able to bring in speakers from anywhere in the country.
We do not know how long we will be without a minister, but the board will continue our search in the coming year. We’ve learned many lessons these past several months which will serve us well going forward.