With this offering, appearing every month, the Board tries to convey to the whole Fellowship what issues the Board is thinking about and what all that thinking and discussing adds up to so far.

• blip   blip blip •  blip  •          blip!  •

Unlike the radar in an airport control tower, the Board’s radar is magic! Air traffic controllers know that every blip on their screen is an actual airplane, carrying actual people, which must be brought safely to Earth without delay. So, too, the Board’s radar shows blips that demand immediate action: nearby blips. But unlike the air traffic controller’s radar, the Board’s radar also has distant blips for planes that might never land, or maybe might land next year, or the year after that. Sometimes the Board, in a paroxysm of visionary thought, thinks up a blip that it feels ought to be on the radar and just hauls off and puts it there. Then the Board must eventually decide either, alas, it’s a plane with no wings and removes it from the screen, or it’s a plane capable of a smooth landing and the Board keeps it on an approach path.

What blips stand out this time?

 

 

Distant blips

• Chili Cook-Off

Last month, this was a nearby blip, but a welter of attention-hungry issues has shifted our focus away from chili. I know. How can that be?? Away from chili???? We may be running around wildly trying to do other things but we haven’t lost our primal connection to chili. We’ll do the cook-off. Someday. Maybe in May?

• Covenant

The Board discussed how to create a congregational covenant. We agreed (in my interpretation of the discussion) that the process should be as all-inclusive of AUUF members and friends as possible. Everyone should feel that they contributed to writing the covenant. After all, it is a document we will all be living with and all relying on.

 

Nearby blips

• Official policies

The Board is working on a Child Safety policy. After making no progress at all on it at the March BoT meeting, considerable progress was made both before and during the April meeting. It is highly likely that a final version will be approved at the May 1 BoT meeting.

• Mission Statement

The proposed AUUF Mission Statement as of late March was: “AUUF is a welcoming and caring community dedicated to challenging the mind, nurturing the spirit, and transforming the world through the pursuit of truth, love, and justice.” Sweet! I couldn’t resist giving it some visibility in the Blips column. Say it out loud; it rolls off the tongue! Hubba hubba.

• Structure of the Committee on Ministry

One definition of ministry is: everything a congregation does to fulfill its mission. To the extent that that is true, the Committee on Ministry (CoM) is a rather important AUUF committee. Our CoM has been leading the effort to create a new and improved mission statement. At the moment, there is no policy governing how long CoM members will serve, how to stagger terms, how CoM members will be chosen, and even how many CoM members there should be.  At the April Board meeting, we continued discussions about these questions.

• Business Meeting

The Board set the date for the annual Business meeting: May 21, after the service.

• Into the world…

By the time you read this, AUUF will have had a table at City Fest on April 29 at Kiesel Park. Woo hoo!!! This is the first time we are taking our beautiful purple canopy out in public. We hope to get out to more events to tell the Auburn-Opelika-Lee County area that we’re here and we’re like no other church around here. True that!

Here’s blipping at you, kid.

~Over and out

~Peter