December 6, 2023

"Long gone are the days when we can just hang out with one another."
–Rev. Byron Tyler Coles
(UUA Southern Region staff)

Friends,

A few weeks ago I spent a Saturday afternoon at a gathering of Unitarian Universalists from across Tennessee and participated in a workshop on collaborative ministry offered by Tyler Coles and Cameron Young, both part of the UUA staff serving the Southern Region. (It was a joy to meet and talk with UUs from around the state!)

Cameron & Tyler (echoing ideas I’ve heard here and there over the last several years now) suggested that now is a quite new time for us, as UUs and as faith communities. We are still figuring out where we are, how things will work going forward, and how best to engage in our communal lives and projects right now. It may not be the best time for long-term strategic planning, we heard, but it is perhaps a time for prophetic imagination. I understand “prophetic imagination” to combine ways of thinking and planning that are prophetic in the sense of speaking to the current moment (not foretelling the future) and imaginative in the sense of creatively engaging with present and future possibilities. 

To me, this feels like an open-ended and inviting way to think about how to embody our congregational values going forward. What can we imagine doing within and beyond our walls to create the shared ministry imagined by GNUUC’s Board at the beginning of the fall for the 2023-24 church year? In case you haven’t thought of that “annual vision of ministry” recently, here it is:

Together, we will find a new way to be a smaller congregation that is loving and justice-seeking. 

We will do this by focusing our ministries around Radical Welcome, Kindness, and Empowerment.

We recognize that finding our way will require grace and courage to change, to encourage new ideas, and to share responsibilities across the entire congregation.

Perhaps we can’t discern the present (let alone the future!) well enough to picture clearly what lies ahead of us, but maybe prophetic imagination can inspire us to play with possibilities. As you read that vision of our year’s ministry, what do you imagine we could do or be? How can we build more connections, among ourselves perhaps, but especially with the wider communities surrounding us? What new ideas do we need to embrace in order to be radically welcoming, kind, and empowering? 

Send me or the Board (Board@gnuuc.org)  your thoughts, if you want…

Yours in prophecy and imagination, 
Rev. Denise
RevDenise@gnuuc.org