The Ministerial Search Committee has been moving forward with the search process. We have submitted our Congregational Record to the UUA where it is currently being reviewed. Once the Record is publicly released, we will share it with the Congregation. As those of you who attended the focus groups may remember and as we have noted in previous updates: Per UUA requirements, a decision must be made on any internal candidate prior to any other ministerial candidates being considered. This may be different than what many people in the private sector are used to, but it is designed to protect ministers and congregations. As this part of the process unfolds, we would like to share findings from our fall data collection efforts.

Survey: Here are some key takeaways from the survey, which was completed by 216 of you.

Respondents were asked to identify the roles where it was most important that we had a strong minister. Here are the top five roles (all had over 50% identifying as very important):

1. Presenting inspiring and challenging sermons

2. Leading the overall ministry

3. Prophetic role—Imagine our future

4. Fostering a sense of community

5. Sunday services

Here are the top five programs that members thought were most important for themselves, ERUUF, and its future (in order of total responses).

1. Sunday morning/worship services

2. Choir/music ministry

3. Children’s RE (identified as very important for ERUUF and its future)

4. Racial Equity and Inclusion (essentially tied with #3)

5. Social Justice

It is important to note that small group ministry was one of the top programs of importance to individuals and that additional programs were also important to significant portions of our congregation.

Focus Groups: Here are the most important themes that came from the 132 members who participated in 21 focus groups.

The five top measures of success from our new minister’s first year would be:

1. A vibrant, diverse, and welcoming membership.

2. A clear sense of excitement and engagement

3. A minister who knows and has listened to the congregation

4. Inspiring and motivating sermons and Sunday services

5. A strong multi-generational experience

Focus group participants identified the following top five strengths for ERUUF (these strengths are consistent with those identified in the survey):

1. We are an accepting and welcoming community.

2. We are a large congregation with lots of ways to get involved.

3. We have a strong social justice program.

4. We have great music.

5. We are diverse, a mosaic with lots of different people.

And here were the top five challenges we faced:

1. The flip side of being large is that it can be overwhelming and hard to get to know people.

2. It can be challenging for people to start new groups or take on new roles; we sometimes operate in silos.

3. We need to continue working on our diversity.

4. We need additional attention to multigenerational work, including RE, youth, young adults, and families.

5. We need to pay additional attention to social justice issues.

Our new minister will have access to the full set of findings from the survey and focus groups to help inform their work.