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Table of Contents
Connecting
Your Congregation
District
President’s Column
Qiyamah’s
Corner
Ministerial
Matters
Lifespan
REmarks
Field Staff
Calendar / Save this Date!
Your Wild(e)
Trustees Report
Chalice
Lighter Update/1st Annual NC Choral Festival
A Victory for
Poultry Workers in NC!
Mind the Gap
Walking
Lightly on the Earth
Rev. Bill
Sinkford to Keynote TJD Anti-Racism Conference / TJD Young Adult & Campus
Ministry Midwinter Retreat
GLBT Issues /
TJ District Fair Share
Beacon Press
/ Reflection on FLC / Request for Proposals /A Day of Possibilities
Open
Positions / Visit Northern VA!
Resources for
Congregational Leaders
Lay
Leadership Development / The Flaming Chalice
District
Calendar |
Lay Leadership Development
Harlan Limpert, the newly named Director for Lay
Leadership Development, has begun his work! He's following Peter Drucker's
fifth principle, "Seek first to understand, and then to be understood" in
approaching his role.
Conversations with district staff, headquarters staff, and lay leaders all
over the country, as well as his reading of voluminous materials created
by individuals and groups in recent years dealing with lay leadership
development will help ensure he doesn't "reinvent the wheel." He's
determining which specific direction to move, how to prioritize, and how
to measure success.
What has he learned thus far? There are some wonderful development
programs available to lay leaders, but they are often difficult to find.
Lay leaders are asking for a "well coordinated, effective, user-friendly
and spiritually grounded" system for lay leadership development. They'd
like a system whereby lay leaders throughout the Association who want to
contribute their time and effort can go to access leadership development
programs (and other resources) that are
* specific to their needs
* easy to find / discover / access
* easy to use
* available at convenient times
* of reasonable length
* affordable
* consistently high quality
The position he fills was created to help fill the need for such
development programs.. The mission is clear (well coordinated, effective,
user-friendly, and spiritually grounded), the vision is clear (make it
easy to find, register for, attend, and pay for great development
programs), and the goal is clear: to develop inspired, skilled, effective
lay leaders who can live out their lay ministries in our Association.
Exactly how we'll accomplish this will be the hard part. And it certainly
will take time. Still, all great tasks begin with a clear mission.
Everyone knows of enthusiastic people with new challenges who have charged
ahead and successfully "taken the hill," only to find out...it was the
wrong hill! Hopefully that can be avoided by learning from the past,
taking the best that exists, and adding to it.
The Flaming Chalice
The association of the flaming chalice with liberal
religion began in the late 1300’s with Jan Hus, a Czech priest who offered
the wine cup of communion, the chalice, to all people, not just priests,
because he believed in the equality of all people under god. For this
radical teaching, Jan Hus was burned to death at the stake. The flame
joined the chalice after that. And that flaming chalice was worn on cloaks
as a secret emblem of religious liberalism 600 years ago.
Just after the Second World War, the UU Service Committee and the American
Unitarian Association became serious about using the flaming chalice as
our symbol of liberal religion too. It has come to mean even more than the
equality of all peoples and the struggle for freedom of Jan Hus, profound
as those issues are. It means for us the fire of the human mind, the
burning glory of life, the flame in the human souls, the light of reason.
From a sermon by Rev. Judith Walker-Riggs, Minister of All Souls Unitarian
Church, Kansas City, MO. |
