Youth Sunday and Joyce’s Retirement Celebration
This church year is nearly over but we still have some important events coming up. May 3rd is both Youth Sunday and our retirement celebration for Joyce Zaugg. Joyce is retiring at the end of May after twenty-three years as our Director of Religious Education. The youth will present the congregation with an intergenerational service and they have been working hard so you won’t want to miss it. We will also celebrate Joyce’s career both during the service and afterwards at a retirement lunch being held at the Betty Ehart Senior Center starting at 12:30 p.m. We hope you will all be there as well!
The Future and Budget Concerns
By this mailing, we will have had our Annual Meeting and voted on a budget. Hopefully, the outlook will have improved since the presentation of the preliminary budget, which unfortunately included a significant deficit.
Thanks to the hard work on the part of our congregation and our professional staff, our programs have achieved a very high quality. We don’t want to lose ground now as this could have a long-term impact on our church. There are many aspects of church life that may be affected if we cannot increase our projected income for the next year. As of mid-April, we did not have sufficient pledge commitments to maintain our current level of programming.
Our congregation can persist, through good times and bad, as long as we stand together. We have done this before. In the face of uncertainties, changes, and occasional disagreements, it is our commitment to hold dear this congregation and everything it stands for that makes this a unique and wonderful community. We have something here worth protecting and preserving. This takes time, talent, and treasure. By being a part of this congregation, we are a part of something much larger than ourselves and whatever each of us can do makes a vital difference.
Building Project Town Hall Meeting
The Building Project Steering Committee will be holding a Forum and a Town Hall Meeting on Sunday, May 10th to present and discuss the Charge to the Architect developed by the Building Plans Subcommittee. Please see pages 11 and 12 for more details from our BPSC Chair, Rick Bolton. We hope that many of you will be able to take part as we begin this part of the process toward our new church building.
General Assembly
There is still time to register for the General Assembly being hosted by our Mountain Desert District this year. GA will be held in Salt Lake City from June 24 to June 28. You can take a look at the agenda and other information at this web site: <www.uua.org/events/generalassembly/>.
Kersti Rock
2008-2009 Church President
