Florida District Unitarian Universalist Congregations

Quick Link List

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District Annual Assembly

 March 23 – 25, 2012
Hosted by the UU Church of Jacksonville

Our theme this year, Crossing Boundaries, challenges us to ask:

• What is our role in facing the challenges of a multi-cultural society?
• What is our responsibility and opportunity to engage issues of human dignity and civil rights regarding historically marginalized people in our region?
• How can identity-boundaries be gates to community rather than walls of fear and distrust?
• What theological considerations frame our approach to engaging spiritual and ethnic diversity?

This District Assembly offers practical learning and a hands-on experience to guide our reflections.
Come ready to reach deeper on issues multi-culturalism, ethnicity, racial justice, immigration and human rights.

District Assembly 2012 Flyer

District Assembly 2012 Online Registration

District Assembly 2012 Downloadable Registration Form

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Time, Treasure & Talent:
A Stewardship Primer

Facilitated by Reverend Susan Smith, District Executive of
the Southwestern Unitarian Universalist Conference
February 4, 2012
Hosted by Unitarian Universalists of Clearwater

What are the three ways of raising funds that every congregation should do every year?
What is more valuable than money?
What motivates volunteers?
These are just some of the topics that will be covered in this workshop
dedicated to improving the stewardship culture of your congregation.

Each participating congregation needs to have 5 leaders participate
in our UUA’s FORTH Stewardship Self-Assessment.
Please review the survey preview before completing the survey.

Event Flyer

Registration for this event has closed.
Please contact the FLD office if you plan to attend and have not registered.

Survey Link

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Southern UU Leadership Experience

  February 19-24, 2012
Orlando, Florida

The Southern Unitarian Universalist Leadership Experience (aka SUULE)
offers participants an opportunity to combine practical leadership tools
with spiritual and theological grounding to maximize their
congregational leadership potential.

Nominations for SUULE candidates may be made from October 15 through January 15

Learn more

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What’s All This Talk About Regionalization?

Our Unitarian Universalist Association Faces This New Age

“New occasions teach new duties,” asserts one of our great hymns.
Our UUA is learning just that in this time of great change.
You perhaps have heard of “regionalization” and a restructuring
of how our Association works with congregations,
particularly around District services.
The Florida District is part of the Southern Region.

To learn more about this, you are invited to hear this presentation by
the Reverend Teresa Cooley, Director of Congregational Life.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0vIFWyxrY8&feature=player_embedded
It is an engaging and clear articulation of what’s emerging.

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General Assembly 2012

 June 20-24, 2012
Phoenix Arizona

General Assembly 2012 will be a gathering with multiple ways of
engaging in justice work for people of all ages. Joining with
the people of Arizona, we will worship, witness, learn and
work together. We will leave General Assembly grounded
in our faith, energized for justice and with resources to
bring this work home to our congregations. Learn more

Program Proposals Now Being Accepted

New GA Resource Blog Available
Cooking Together: Recipes for Immigration Justice Work

Notes from Rev. Kenn – January 9, 2012

Florida District Board approves DA & GA gifts campaign

The Board is eager to support youth, young adults, and traditionally marginalized people’s participation in this year’s transformative Florida District Assembly & UUA’s historic Justice GA in Phoenix. Accordingly, last month the Board approved the creation of a special fund to provide transportation, lodging, and program fee assistance. Your Board members and staff already have committed their participation in this effort.

Look for a special letter in the next few days seeking your gifts. The goal is to raise $5,000 so we might empower 5% of our youth and young adults to attend DA or GA. In addition to direct gifts, donations of hotel points or air miles will be welcome.

For now, we ask you to talk with your leadership to schedule a special gifts offering in the next few weeks to make this truly a congregationally supported effort.

Meanwhile, mark these dates:

The Florida District Assembly, “Crossing Boundaries – A Ministry of Inclusion” in Jacksonville, March 23-25.
The UUA Justice General Assembly, in Phoenix June 20-24.

With gratitude for all your ministries, Rev. Kenn

Board Notes – January 9, 2012

As I have discussed here before, your Florida District Board met a year ago with the three other District Boards in our Region: Mid South, Southeast, and the Southwest Conference. Out of that meeting, we developed The Orlando Platform.

The Orlando Platform gave expression to two compelling opportunities:

• Enhancing the impact of professional staff by deepening & sharing expertise, taking advantage of new technologies, and improving organizational efficiency.
• Better engaging our volunteer leadership to build a stronger faith capable of meeting the religious challenges of our times:

1. Working across congregations in new ways and with an unprecedented level of collaboration to advance our faith and values.
2. Offering direct support to our individual congregations in becoming the vital and visible community institutions that our faith demands.

Your Florida District Board and the Boards of our sister districts within our Southern Region, together with our Regional staff have been working for the past year, taking steps to implement the Orlando Platform. Each of us has moved forward, creatively imagining and implementing new ways to be true to our Unitarian Universalist faith, cooperating, collaborating and building on each others ideas and steps through this process.

In the Florida District:

• The Board has been re-visioning the role of the District and the district board in growing our faith, in supporting our congregations, in serving Unitarian Universalism now and in the future. We are broadening our vision to serving the faith in addition to our Congregations, including the many thousands of self-identified Unitarian Universalists who are not connected to our churches.
• The Board has adopted the Unitarian Universalist Association Ends as its own Ends, aligning its work with the Unitarian Universalist Association.
• The Florida District Board, along with our Mid South and Southeast District Boards, has entered into a covenant with our District Staff and our Unitarian Universalist Association Director of Congregational Life regarding the employment of our District Staff. Together we have agreed that the employment and management of our staff will be the responsibility of the Director of Congregational Life. This change provides for professional management of our staff and leadership that is consistent across our region, to better facility the staff collaboration that is already occurring.
• Regional staff has been broadly collaborating, recognizing and developing areas of expertise that can be utilized to great advantage across the Region, providing webinars, district, cluster and congregational workshops, direct assistance to congregations, and significant professional and collegial support to each other.
• We are creating vision of a Circle of Elders, leaders of all ages committed to our Unitarian Universalist faith as a whole, who would assure the overall “Wellbeing and Expression” of Unitarian Universalism across the Florida District. They would lead cross-congregation faith and justice initiatives, and serve as expert adjunct staff in specific functions such as transitions, congregational governance, and stewardship.

As a part of this work, the Florida District Board is proposing to reduce the size of our Board to five members. The Board retains the fiduciary responsibility for governing the Florida District consistent with Unitarian Universalist Association ends and in collaboration with regional staff. The Board will have primary responsibility for appointing members of the Circle of Elders. The Board will encourage and specifically support the visionary work of the Circle of Elders.

We will be proposing at Florida District Assembly in March bylaws amendments to authorize reduction of the Board membership, providing for a period of transition.

We are excited about these changes, and believe they will provide the foundation for broader vision, growth of our faith and opportunities for significant meaningful service to the faith for committed lay and religious leaders. Watch for more information about these proposed changes. Contact your District Board members. Talk about it within your congregations.

Be faithful.

Rachel R. Christensen
President, Florida District UUA Board of Trustees

Trustee Tidbits

Joan Lund, January 2012
jlund@uua.org or 813-931-9727

Last month the column indicated a request from the Arizona Immigration Ministry that the UUA Board of Trustees (BOT) put forth a resolution calling on President Obama to adopt the UN Declaration of Rights of Indigenous People, which is related to the Doctrine of Discovery. The Board is moving forward on this request, including making certain information will be forthcoming to UUA congregations and the resolution will be published in the tentative GA agenda.

The origin of the Doctrine of Discovery dates back over 600 years starting with Christopher Columbus setting foot on the island of Guanahani and performing a ceremony to “take possession” of the land for the king and queen of Spain. Forty years previous to Columbus’ landing Pope Nicholas V issued to the King of Portugal the Bull Romanus Pontifex, declaring war against all non-Christians throughout the world, specifically sanctioning and promoting the conquest, colonization, and exploitation of non-Christian nations and their territories. Thus, Columbus understood he was authorized to “take possession” of lands he “discovered” that were not under the dominion of any Christian rulers”. The grim acts of genocide and conquest committed by Columbus and his men against the peaceful Native peoples of the Caribbean and the future U.S. were sanction by the Catholic Church at that time. The lesson learned is the papal bull(s) are but two clear examples of how the “Christian Powers” viewed indigenous peoples as “lawful spoils and prey of their civilized conquerors.

In 1823, the Christian Doctrine of Discovery was adopted into U.S. law by the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice John Marshall, who observed that Christian European nations had assumed “ultimate dominion” over the lands of America during the Age of Discovery, and that upon this “discovery” the Indians had lost “their rights to complete sovereignty, as independent nations.” Although they retained a right of “occupancy” in their lands, Indians were subject to the ultimate authority of the first nation of Christendom to claim possession of any given region of Indian lands. Indian rights could be ignored as “heathen”.

The history continues with many court cases and this Doctrine was used by the U.S. to act with many decisions including but a few: circumventing the terms of solemn treaties that the U.S. entered into with Indian nations, despite the fact that all such treaties are “supreme Law of the Land, anything in the Constitution not withstanding”; stealing the sacred Black Hills from the Great Sioux nation in violation of the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie which recognized the Sioux Nation’s exclusive and absolute possession of their lands.

Thomas Jefferson once observed when the state uses church doctrine as a coercive tool, the result is “hypocrisy and meanness.” Circumventing the U.S. Constitution as a means of taking Indian lands and placing Indian nations under U.S. has proved Jefferson right.

Next month the plan is to write about the UN Declaration of Rights of Indigenous People. Please know I continue to enjoy hearing from you. Happy and Prosperous New Year to all Florida UUs and your congregations.

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