Thanks for participating in Open Question 1!

Thank you to everyone who attended the Open Questions service and discussion groups this last week. The topic was “Honoring the Past: How do we decide what to keep and what to let go?” with three prompts to help guide the discussions. The topics were introduced in the service, and discussed in small groups after coffee hour in Chu Hall. Comments, questions, and concerns were recorded and are now being tallied by COM and the Board.

We’ll be using the information gained to help plan parts of our programming this year, such as additional group discussions, as well as using information from this year’s open questions and other discussions and issues to help guide our Vision of Ministry for next year.

To remind folks who don’t know, Open Questions are a forum to get congregational input on important issues the Board is seeing come up. Results from last year’s Open Questions and additional discussions and issues guided the development of this year’s Vision of Ministry. A Vision of Ministry is designed to help congregations achieve goals that congregants are interested in pursuing. This year, the VOM includes: increasing focus on Social Justice work, improving our visibility in the wider community, preserving and sharing our history, and growing our member, friend, and youth engagement in our congregation and our work.

Our staff and the Board are working to help our groups and teams to see where they can help in these efforts. We look forward to seeing how you can help achieve these goals. The Board will support teams and committees in their work, and during the year, we’ll periodically assess how we’re doing on these objectives.

We hope to have the results from last week’s Open Question available soon – COM and the Board are working diligently to collate and summarize the many comments collected, so be patient with the process. Look for the summary in the MUUF News online.

If you didn’t have a chance to participate in the conversation, please see the Order of Service from Sunday with the three prompts on page 2, and if you would like to would like to provide input, please contact a Board member or email us at Board@muuf.org