Hallie Bowie, President of the Board of Trustees (she/her)

Presented at the Spring Congregational Meeting April 25, 2021

As president of the Board of Trustees my work focuses on the activities of the Board. You can read my Report of the Board’s work since my report last December in the May Reporter. But I want to recognize that many aspects of our Church life have been going strong without much if any attention from the Board of Trustees over this past year. This includes the ongoing work of our many volunteers in things such as the Community Garden and Meal, Whole Foods Distribution, children’s religious education, UU Women’s Association, pastoral care associates, queer ministry, Racial Justice Taskforce, Anti-Racism Audit Team, Financial Stewardship Committee, and more. Even the groups the Board has had on our agendas do much work that doesn’t involve us. I am continually amazed by the things our volunteers accomplish. On behalf of the congregation and the wider community, thank you!

As much as our church has accomplished over the past year, I also want to recognize that this has been a very difficult year for all of us. Not being able to come together in person has been hard in ways we still don’t fully understand. While Sunday Zoom services have been better than we could have expected, they are not a replacement for worshipping in the same space. Brian’s music and the virtual choir have been beautiful, but they aren’t the equal of raising our voices together. On top of this loss, we have gone through a tremendous amount of change. Already before Rev. Kate arrived, we were dealing with the early months of the pandemic, moving to Zoom services, re inventing the community meal, having totally new ways of coordinating committee meetings, and upending the religious education program. An interim ministry is intended to be an opportunity to make the most of changes that are bound to happen when a congregation gets a new minister. Those changes are always hard, and we have been dealing with them on top of a disturbance that has reached into every aspect of every one of our lives and lasted for months, with little ability to predict or plan for the future.

Things are improving, but we will be dealing with the effects of the pandemic for many more months in various ways. We need to recognize this and be kind to each other. Know that we need to be even more mindful than usual about communicating with each other. Be patient when people don’t seem to process what you have said. I attended a

session the UUA put on last week about how congregations can navigate the coming months. They suggested we take things “Holy Slowly”. We are all impatient. We want things to be different now. But even going back to more in-person gatherings will be yet another change, and require still more adaptation. Remember we are here to support one another. The UU Church of Akron supports one another beautifully. But it’s going to continue to be harder than usual for a while longer. Please remember to be extra kind to one another.

My December Report detailed Board activity between June and December 2020, so I won’t recap that here. This provides a brief summary of the work we have done since then, organized according to our Strategic Plan focus areas.

• Loving Communities: We created the Neighborhood Pods network in February. Since then, we have defined geographic clusters to help members who live in the same area to better support one another, and identified pod leaders for each group. This is an evolving ministry, and one we hope will really start to develop as warmer weather makes it possible for small groups like this to safely meet in person.

• Intellectual and Spiritual Exploration:

o Alease and Bay did a great deal of work creating a survey to gather information about what members would like for Adult Religious Education and had a very good response. At the Board meeting later this week we will be charging an Adult Religious Education committee, and we hope to begin offering adult RE classes by next fall if not sooner.

o Welcomed Elizabeth Reilly as our new Commissioned Lay Minister, recognizing the hard work she has done to receive this accreditation, and welcoming her continued contributions to our congregational life.

o Later this week, the Board will consider changing Abby’s status from Acting Director of Religious Education to simply Director of Religious Education.

Social Justice Ministries:

o Created a Donation Station building to be constructed on the church property. This will support our partnerships with Margie’s Closet, providing gender affirming clothing for trans people, as well as Yahab, Freedom/New Journey House, local nursing homes, and anyone else who needs things.

o Expanded our support of the immigrant community by providing a dedicated phone line. This will allow us to expand our work in getting people to legal, medical, and service appointments, as well as better connect people with the support, information and community resources that are available to them.

• Stewardship of the Earth:

o Hosted a viewing of the movie Paris to Pittsburgh. In her outreach for that, Laurel Winters forged connections with other UU Congregations in our region, as well as the Portage Trail group of the Sierra Club.

o Provided informational articles for the Reporter.

• Building and Grounds:

o Installed a Bipolar ion generation system in Hannah Hall and the church offices to provide better indoor air quality and improve safety in those areas of the building. This system was installed by a certified EDGE contractor. The acronym stands for Encouraging Diversity, Growth & Equity and is a program by the state of Ohio designed to encourage better equity in hiring practices.

• Other Board work included:

o Approved the purchase of a new church software system, which will streamline our church communications, pledge collections, and provide a new directory for connecting with each other. Once the basic data has been transferred from the current system, we will get to work on making this updated directory available to the membership.

o Renewed the lease with Fairlawn Village Preschool through May of 2022 and committed to working towards a renewal agreement by December of 2021 for the school year that will start in September of 2022.

• The Board continues to monitor the Covid-19 pandemic and to consider when and in what ways it will be safe for us to gather in person again in larger groups. We will be discussing this later this week. While the number of cases in Summit County remains high, just this past week the numbers have started to come down again. We are hopeful that increasing immunizations will continue this trend and the coming months will look much different than the past year for congregational life.

Our work together at UUCA has helped to make 2020 a little brighter than it would have been without our efforts. I’m looking forward to all we will accomplish together in 2021!