Dear Ones:
It happens a lot these days. I’m at the grocery store or a restaurant, the kids’ music or karate lessons, a memorial service at a local funeral home, a rally or protest—and I encounter someone from UUS:E. There’s an instant connection, a feeling of warmth, a sense of mutual understanding. We’re part of that wonderful Unitarian Universalist congregational family, attached to that beautiful, green, accessible building on Elm Hill in Manchester’s northeast corner.
That sense of connection is no accident. We share seven profound principles. We share a commitment to justice-making and peace-building. We share a faith-based loyalty to the earth. We share a common experience of Sunday morning worship that draws on many sources of religious wisdom, comforts us in difficult times, and sends us forth into the world with love in our hearts. We share a spiritual home! In a world where fear, anger, and injustice seem to be gaining ground, it matters that we have a place like UUS:E that we can call home—a place that knows us, holds us, challenges us, loves us. What a precious and valuable thing to have in our lives, and the lives of our children.
“A Place We Call Home” is the theme for this year’s annual appeal, which is fast approaching. Like virtually every year, we are asking for an increase in pledging in order to cover all those fixed costs that regularly increase—insurance, utilities, etc. We also hope to provide our staff with cost of living raises as well as cover the expense of 6-8 guest ministers during my sabbatical next year. We’re hoping to continue funding our growth efforts, which include offering innovative, relevant and (sometimes) entertaining programming and marketing it more effectively to the greater Manchester community. And one of the new programmatic ideas I’m very excited about is an investment in our youth ministry. We’re learning, like so many congregations across denominations, that traditional “youth group” models no longer work for today’s teenagers. So, our youth ministry team is proposing to spend the coming year experimenting with new models and a variety of new activities for our youth. While the old models don’t work, youth still need loving, nurturing spiritual communities that allow them to question, search, test out their values, and discover who they are. Youth need a place they can “call home,” and we fully expect to provide it. If you are interested in helping out with our “experilearn” year in youth ministry, please let me or Gina Campellone know. We’d love to include you.
Of course, our children and youth are not the only ones who need a place to call home. All of us need it, a place we can come for human contact, warmth, support, challenge and love. A place for beloved community. A place that not only reminds us to stay focused on our values and commitments, but sends us forth to overcome cynicism and despair with hope, to meet violence with peace, to counter hatred with love. UUS:E is such a place. Please make the most generous pledge possible to this place we call home!
With love,
Rev. Josh
