Sunday June 2, 2019
Worship Service at 10 a.m.
Our Annual Flower Communion is a celebration of the beauty and vibrancy of our beloved community. Each of us contributes our own gifts to the altar, as symbolized by the flowers you bring, and the splendor is expanded by our sharing. We will learn about and enact this cherished Unitarian Universalist ritual, we will marvel at how our Ends statements are being realized and wonder how we might more fully live our mission in the coming year. This is a service for all ages, though there will be child care for nursery through pre-K available. Following the service, is our annual church picnic (see below for details). Please bring some flowers from your garden or the store.
Important Message from The Board of Trustees
Dear UCE Members and Friends:
By now you will have seen Rev. Greg Stewart’s announcement about his resignation. I am writing to let you know that the Board is very grateful for all of Greg’s work for our community. Greg is a good listener and he has provided us with many insights about our congregation’s strengths and weaknesses. He has met with us and helped us reflect on ourselves–through exercises like the Scrapbook and the Decades service. We wish Greg the very best as he and Stillman move on to their next step. We will celebrate his many gifts to us at the service on June 9th-which will be his last at UCE.
The board is happy to announce that we have a plan for the next church year. Rev. Eileen Wiviott will serve as our Acting Senior Minister for the 2019-2020 year. We are so thankful that she has agreed to serve us in this capacity.
We are also hiring a new, part-time interim minister. Her name is Rev. Karen Gustafson and some of you met her at the No Agenda meeting in April. We will let you know more about this whole plan very soon, but for now, here are the high points: Rev. Gustafson will join us for a retreat in August and then officially be here 11 days per month from September through May. We believe she is an excellent choice to lead us through the interim work that our congregation needs to accomplish. She also will preach two sermons per month during the nine months she is with us.
Greg shared his news with us on late Wednesday last week.
That gave us only 3 days to prepare news of it for the Annual Meeting. We, as a Board, decided that since we had the makings of a plan-we would rather work intensively on that plan and have it complete before we presented it to you. We are sorry that the timing worked out this way—but we have done our best. We needed to put in significant time making phone calls and attending Zoom meetings in order to present a complete plan to you today. We hope you understand the complexity of this situation and why we felt we had to share it now, instead of at the Annual Meeting.
For detail about the financial aspects of this plan, please
click here. We will hold two Q&A sessions about Greg’s leaving and the new plan. Please come to one of these to learn more:
Sunday, May 26th- immediately after the 10:00 am service (meet in the Sanctuary)
Wednesday, May 29th – 7:30pm
We are genuinely excited about this new team of ministers who will help us navigate the year ahead-we can do amazing things together.
Sincerely,
Jeanne Kerl
President, Board of Trustees
From The Senior Interim Minister
Dear Members and Friends of UCE,
This has certainly been a year of both change and challenge at the Unitarian Church of Evanston. I have come to know so many of you well this year, and you’ve impressed me with your tenacity to build the world we dream about. Yet, as I said last Sunday, change is just about the only constant in life. So I write to inform you about another change on the horizon.
Effective June 10, 2019, I will be stepping down as your interim senior minister. It has been my pleasure to serve you in this capacity for the past eleven months. I’ve certainly grown as a minister at UCE, and I hope you have grown too. This is one amazing congregation!
This is not a decision that was made lightly; it has been months in the making. It’s a bittersweet decision for me, to be sure. The decision is entirely my own. I have not been coached or persuaded by anyone at UCE to take leave. I am doing this for my physical and mental health, and for my family’s emotional wellbeing. I believe this decision is ultimately best for the congregation as well.
Our Board of Trustees has been in contact with the Rev. Keith Kron, Transitions Director at the Unitarian Universalist Association, who is forging a path forward for UCE in light of this news. Additionally, the Board has been speaking with the Rev. Lisa Presley from the Mid America Region, UUA, in this regard. I’ll continue my work while I’m here, along with Rev. Eileen and the board-appointed Director of Religious Education Search Committee, of finding your next DLRE so you have someone in place as soon as possible.
I know that emotions will range from indifference to sadness to anger. Please know that I will continue to be accessible through my final day at UCE, June 9. I will miss so many of you for so many reasons. Thank you for the opportunity to be your leader. It has changed my life for the better.
Sincerely,
Rev. Greg Stewart
773/993-9310
Financial Impact of Ministerial Changes
This plan envisions going from two ministers to 1 1/2 ministers plus some additional administrative support, and provides us some additional financial flexibility compared to our approved budget.
First, the difference between Reverend Eileen’s total compensation as Acting Senior Minister and Reverend Greg’s total compensation is sufficient to allow us to cover the one month of overlap (Rev Greg will be taking his allotted vacation from mid-June through the end of July), pulpit coverage for dates when neither Rev Eileen nor Rev Karen will be available, and the two “below-the-line” items in the budget approved by the congregation on Sunday. Those items are additional raises for certain staff who are low in their salary ranges, and paying the full denominational dues set by the UUA.
Second, the difference between Rev Eileen’s current compensation as a full-time Assistant Minister and the cost of Rev Karen as Part-time Interim Minister is sufficient to hire a half-time Congregational Life Coordinator. This assistant will manage coordination and administrative functions related to membership, social justice, worship and religious education, among other duties, that are currently performed by ministers and senior staff.
Compensation Detail:
Acting Senior Minister: The board has agreed to a salary (including housing allowance) for Rev Eileen of $80,750 (total compensation package of $109,482), which is the minimum of the UUA lead or co-lead salary range for our geography and our size congregation. This compares to Rev Eileen’s current Assistant Minister salary of $55,620 (total comp package of $77,320), which was well below the $72,500 midpoint of that range due to financial constraints in our budget. Rev Greg, with 25 years of ministerial experience, has a salary of $103,950 and total comp of approximately $146,000. We believe that it is important to compensate Rev Eileen fairly for the senior minister work she will be assuming, but we also recognize that she has not had the length and breadth of experience that other ministers have had.
Part-time Interim Minister: Compensation for Rev Karen is set at $4,000 per month for a planned 9 months plus a lesser amount for some planning work to occur in August. Her expenses include travel and housing expenses, and we are estimating the total cost at $53,000.
Congregational Life Assistant: To support Rev Eileen and the other program staff we plan to hire a half time assistant at a total cost of $22,000.
Financial questions? Please email UCE Treasurer Susan Comstock at Susan.L.Comstock@gmail.com or come to one of the two open sessions described in Jeanne Kerl’s email.
Sunday May 26, 2019
Worship Service at 10 a.m.
Memorial Day is a day to remember those whose lives have been lost in battle. As we honor fallen soldiers, we also recognize that war is fought on many fronts, and trauma can come in many forms. We are shaped by our stories and our scars and we can live through trauma with resilience and hope. There will be an activity for pre-K through 5th grade and childcare for nursery and pre-K. Rev. Eileen Wiviott leads the service.
As I Have Loved You
At the congregation where I was just before I came to you, I was in the choir with a remarkable director of music. Not only did she possess in abundance the skills needed to rehearse projects and develop talent in the congregation, she had a profound understanding of music and art as spiritual practice. I had sung in choirs my whole life, with excellent directors, but had never understood music as a spiritual practice until I worked with Elizabeth. Of all the remarkable experiences I had in working with her over the years, the one that really stays with me is this: when preparing the choir to get up from their seats to go to the risers, she would say: “What would it look like to the congregation if your trip to the front of the room conveyed not anxiety or urgency, but love for one another? As you approach the chancel, try to show your love for each other – let the congregation see what it looks like to care for one another.” Wise woman. She was not asking us to perform love – she was asking us to enact love, to make love visible.
I believe that our UU congregations generally – and yes, UCE specifically – deeply need to learn to become more loving. Likely this is true in every denomination. I don’t know, having only ever served this one denomination my whole life. But for UUs, I think this need manifests itself in a way peculiar to us. We have such good ideas. Our principles are truly wise and magnificent. So much so that we could spend a lifetime contemplating them, thinking them over, considering their nuances. This we must not do – that is to say, we mustn’t get stuck there. For our principles are only as wise as they help us to become more loving with one another, and to bring that love to the world.
In the not quite two years I have spent with this congregation, I have come to love it, and I have seen that you love one another. While admitting, though, that expressions of love are complex and layered – that it’s possible to convey love through a financial contribution, or food preparation, which expressions of love I see in abundance at UCE, for example – I wonder what would happen if suddenly each congregant here took it upon themselves to show the congregation what love looks like – not to perform love, but to enact it. At choir rehearsals, Elizabeth would say as we learned a particularly challenging piece of music: “our goal here is simply to become more loving,” and everything would suddenly shift, become easier and more beautiful.
Last night at the Meadville-Lombard 175th anniversary, a wise UCEvian asked me what advice I would have for the congregation, and the question brought me up short. I had been sharing some very pragmatic advice with some folks as I broke news of my pending departure to them, but it sounded a clang in my ears in the context of the wisdom we’d just heard from Rev. Jacqui Lewis, our keynote. She, an African-American Presbyterian minister, had sung the praises of our principles, and had said the world is truly desperate for them – so she had asked us 1) to get messy – to get down in the dirt of the need; 2) to risk – being foolish, learning something, being uncomfortable; and 3) to turn up the volume on our love, because that is what the world needs most of all.
I managed to answer the question put to me last night as we were seated there, but the question wasn’t finished with me, followed me home, kept me awake, was waiting for me as I awoke this morning.
My heartfelt answer boils down to this: love one another as I have loved you. Better yet, love one another as Eileen has loved you. 😊 Truly, Rev. Eileen is the named face of love for so many of us – I have heard on many disparate occasions, when congregants talk about what brought them here, what keeps them here, they say “the way Eileen greeted me in love.” Or picture our teachers, who are so often this face of love for our learners of every age. Whoever it is that represents love to you here at UCE, or anywhere, try to picture in your mind’s eye quite specifically what that abundant, extravagant love looks like. Then go and do likewise. All our wonderful lifespan religious education curricula will be enriched by this love, and smart as they are, they are nowhere without it.
I have loved this congregation, loved getting to know you, loved serving you. Please know that I will miss you, and think of you often and warmly – and that I will take your love with me as I go, and leave mine behind for you here. Thank you for who you will always be to me. Blessed be.
Sunday May 19, 2019
Don’t You Worry ‘Bout a Thing
Come feel the rhythms of life as our choir, Gregory, and guest jazz musicians lay down the beat for us. Nadav Simon, our guest percussionist, has selected our musical pieces based on their rhythm histories, and the choral sharing will be an outgrowth of their recent workshop with him. At the 9:15 service, Dr. Mary will share the story Love, by Matt de la Peña, and we’ll hear from our seniors bridging to adulthood; at our 11:00 service, we will celebrate our beloved teachers and the arc of our year of learning in religious education. Join us!