April 24, 2019
Dear Members and Friends,
Care and connection of the congregation includes being mindful of the wellbeing of our church staff and the programs they lead. After consultation with both LJ Francoeur, Director of Religious Education, and the Religious Education Committee, the Board has approved a change to LJ’s job. For the remainder of this church year, LJ will job share with Emily Samuel, so that she may continue to provide religious education programming and also meet the needs of her young children. This change represents no increase in hours for the position nor pay as Emily and LJ will share current hours and pay between them. Emily brings a wealth of RE experience from her previous church, and will no longer be on the RE committee as she will be a supervised employee of FUUSE.
April has been an extraordinarily busy time for the Board of Trustees, and change is afoot! Following our spring retreat in March, we were able to work toward one of our goals immediately: Care and connection of the congregation during this time of transition and renovation. To that end, we are pleased to tell everyone that we have secured the Phillips Chapel on Phillips Exeter campus as our home away from home during the renovation. Phillips Chapel is a lovely space, and practically speaking, this means we will have use of this space every Sunday from the start of church in September through December 2019 from 8:30 to 1 pm. These hours will ensure that we continue to have meeting space for coffee hour, RE and other important after service activities.
Given that we will be using a new space, the Board sees it as a priority that the first Sunday be a time when all can attend. With that in mind, the first Sunday service will be on September 15th, the week after our annual retreat at Camp Huckins. During the coming year, there will be many changes and some challenges, and it is particularly important that we find ways to be together as a spiritual community for rest and renewal as well as for worship. We are looking forward to the retreat as a time to be together at the end of summer followed by a reunion at Phillips Chapel the next week and are excited about this schedule change as it means no one needs to choose the retreat over what will be an important welcome back.
As you know, the Renovations Committee has been working very hard and has distributed full bid/permit documents to prospective bidders for the construction with bids due by May 6th. Look for further updates from the Renovations Committee in the coming weeks.
Reminders of upcoming events:
May 4 Stewardship Auction, items to Karen Patnaude no later than May 1May 19 Budget hearing after service in the sanctuary for congregational input and questions
May 21 Budget hearing 7 pm in the sanctuary
The Board of Trustees*******************************************************
On Thursday April 18, 2019, the FUUSE Board of Trustees held a meeting in the Sanctuary to receive the recommended budget for FY2020 from the Finance Committee. The results of the Annual Fund were presented by members of the Stewardship Committee: 115 households pledged $201,291. There are approximately 17 households who typically pledge but have not yet responded, so the Board discussed waiting for a period while those households considered renewing their annual pledge. No formal second appeal is being made, but the Board wanted the knowledge of the ~$12,000 shortfall to be known to the congregation in advance of the Budget briefings in May and the Annual Meeting in June
The Finance Committee presented a ‘bare bones’ budget significantly reduced from the Annual Fund target of $230,000 in pledge income. While needed funding for the music program has been increased, this is accomplished by making sacrifices in other areas. Cuts in the budget included elimination of the cleaning service ($8900). This most controversial cut was made in part by a desire to avoid cutting staff compensation and by the understanding that for half of the year, services would be held at another site Options discussed included seeking lower cost services for just the Parsonage, cleaning less frequently, and relying on FUUSE volunteers for larger portions of the cleaning tasks.
Finance has recommended using $10,000 from the General-Purpose Fund to partially balance the budget, but the budget includes 5.6% deficit spending despite the deep cuts. The 5.6% deficit spending is above the recommended metric for deficit spending established by the Finance Committee and supported by the Board. Another $3,000-$7,000 in pledged received would benefit FUUSE programming in many ways.
The Board made some further cuts to the budget presented, but expressed the strong desire to attract more pledges to the Annual Fund before the May 9th deadline for publishing the budget to FUUSE members in advance of the Annual Meeting on June 2nd. The current proposed budget is available online in the FUUSE Church Management System. You can click on this link to view it
If you have not pledged but typically have in the past, please consider what FUUSE programming means to you and pledge what you can.
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Dear FUUSE members,
On Saturday March 30, the Board of Trustees held our annual retreat. The retreat is an important opportunity for us to check up on our own work as a board. Specifically, we reviewed our goals for this past year and assessed how well we met them. Based on this, we set goals for the coming year as well.
Perhaps the most important task of the retreat however, was developing a vision statement for ourselves. We broke into small groups and developed vision statements in each group. One group centered their thinking on Kendra’s ideas for a vision, one on values grounded in our UU principles, and one on activities. It was important to us, as we worked on the vision that the work and thinking were connected to our mission at FUUSE.
After this initial step, we came together and synthesized these three drafts into one cohesive vision. You can see it written below. We invite your reflection on our vision statement as we consider how our vision translates into concrete goals and actions as a faith community.
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"All who walk through our doors become part of a spiritual community brimming with hope, inspiration and renewal to empower us to be agents of change in a world in crisis. We create this community together, celebrating our interdependence. We will act with intention about all parts of congregational life, including growth , meeting challenges, and our commitments to one another. We will be public about our work - engaging, hopeful, playful, effective."
The spring is a very busy time for the Board of Trustees as we finish our annual fund drive, build next year’s budget and prepare for the Annual Meeting on June 2nd. We have decided to hold an additional Board Meeting for the purposes of reviewing the budget proposal from the Finance Committee in the sanctuary on Thursday, April 18th at 7pm. All are invited to attend and observe this meeting. Please come in through the sanctuary doors only as there is another meeting in the social hall at that time. In May, we will hold a series of budget hearings so that members and friends can learn about the proposed budget in advance of the Annual Meeting.
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September 2018
Dear FUUSE members and families,
The Board of Trustees would like to welcome you back to church for what we hope will prove to be a spiritually fulfilling and wonderful year. We have recently met and would like to let you know what we will be working on in the coming year.
We have identified three major priorities at this time:
Pacing ourselves — given that the church is on the threshold of our major renovation project, we feel that we need to be aware of and realistic about the work we take on as a board in order to keep the renovation and all that it will entail front and center for the year.
Communication - in any community, spiritual or otherwise, communication is crucial in order for members to feel valued and heard and as a way to face both challenges and triumphs. To that end, we are committed to sharing a short and specific letter with the congregation every month after each board meeting so that members may know about our work.
Joyful celebrations - as a board, we all agree that we always need more of these. We are living through stressful times, and the value of joy cannot be overstated. We are kicking off the church year with a pancake breakfast on September 30, cooked by us in conjunction with the senior youth group. It is our hope that each committee will develop their own idea for a joyful celebration to host at some point during the year. Both the board and the program council are available to advise and assist in scheduling celebrations.
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