Amend the Ends

Now that we’ve completed three opportunities for anyone in the congregation to attend a presentation about policy-based governance and have made sure that every household has received a brochure describing it, we on the Governance Task Force think we can stop with the educational portion of our charge and move on to amending the Ends!

If you had been observing our meetings lately, you would either be groaning or giggling.  We have spent a great deal of time trying to get our terminology right.  It seems ridiculous, but when we talk about the Ends Statements (and we will be talking about them a LOT), we’re not sure what we mean by that.  At first, I thought of the three broad statements that we published in the brochure as “the” Ends Statements.

1. The people of UUCA have a deeply meaningful, transforming, liberal religious experience.
2. UUCA is a radically hospitable, spiritually vital and supportive community.
3. UUCA is a visible leader and partner, making a positive impact in our community and in the world.

But the more we work with this, the more it seems like all the points of detail under these main statements in the Governance Document are the Ends Statements.  So what are those broad sentences?  Just introductory paragraphs?

To be fair, the original writers (last year’s Governance Task Force) did a great job of getting us started.  And they even used other congregations’ documents as models.  The thing is, I don’t know how other congregations are actually USING their Ends Statements, but ours have become confusing as the Executive used them to guide his staff’s work plan for the year.

So, time for a rewrite.  We expected this, but I doubt we expected to still be struggling with the question of what Ends Statements are supposed to be.