First Thoughts…..

    So, I’m home from my first meeting of the UUA Board! After getting some much needed sleep and catching up with parish life back at my home congregation, I’ve had time to think about the experience and to report to you about the good work I believe we are doing on behalf of our congregations. 

    You can be confident about the dedication of the Association’s board–though we have fun when we can, the workload is intense and the days are long.  Because this is the start of a new two-year cycle in which committee assignments change and new board members like myself get oriented, the meeting started even earlier than usual.  When you add to that the continuing work of the board to move to a model of policy governance and to wrestle with the unique challenges this mode of governance represents for a religious community, you get one VERY long total meeting, with lots of working groups and a retreat embedded within it!

   The toughest part of this first meeting for me was the workshops on policy governance.  I am just not a fan, and reading John Carver’s book, "Boards That Make a Difference," only made things worse for me.  It was hard to be in a room filled with people who have been working hard to gain clarity between the role of the UUA board and the UUA staff (something the Carver model does very well) while fighting the nagging feeling that we were all signing up to be on the board of the United Way.  My great fear: In the desire to create clear firewalls, policy governance asks religious institutions to give up their relational  character.  My great hope:  that I’m wrong about my great fear.