April 18 Board Meeting Highlights

At the April 18 Board meeting, your PUUC Board:

• Welcomed and signed a contract with Karen Moseley who will serve as PUUC Religious Education Coordinator until a new Director of Religious Education is hired later this Spring.

• Scheduled a Congregational Retreat for the weekend of Sept. 6-7, to renew consensus on PUUC governance, roles and responsibilities.

• Considered a recommendation from the PUUC/Piedmont Progressive Preschool Task Force and decided to invite the PPP to submit a letter requesting status as a PUUC sponsored group; their request will be on the agenda for discussion at the next Congregational meeting on June 2.

• Recommended having a PUUC Picnic on a Saturday in July to celebrate and bring together University and Salisbury members at a park between the two locations; Heidi Magi and Shakeisha Gray have agreed to coordinate the event. (Heidi says to expect ice-breakers and super-soakers!)

Please ask any Board member for more information about these items or other Board business.

In faith,

Lucy Neel, Shaun Allen, Lou Gardiner-Parks, Karl Hesse, Robin Mara, Evan Nash and Pam Whistler

PUUC Board of Trustees

What has the Social Justice Council been up to lately?

The Social Justice Council helps to facilitate various projects in which our council members and members of the congregation are interested. Our most recent project is the Guatemala exploratory trip.  This July, several members of the congregation will be traveling to Guatemala to meet with people in the Santiago region, to a village called Chuk Muk.  This region was devastated by civil war for decades and landslides in 2005. The purpose of the trip is to meet with members of their community to assess what needs they might want addressed in their community. The SJC would like to then facilitate future projects in this region based on the people's wants.

Other projects sponsored by the SJC are the first Sunday Food Drive.  This food drive has happened the first Sunday of the month for over a year.  The collected items are donated to Loaves and Fishes food bank.  Another group affiliated with the SJC is Interweave.  This group has sponsored three dances to raise money for their work advocating for LGBT issues.  They also collaborate with the youth of our church at the Charlotte PRIDE festival and sell t-shirts designed by the youth and proceeds benefit Time Out Youth, a community center for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth.

The Social Justice Council also strives to involve congregants in various social justice causes in our community.  We wanted to make everyone aware of a new petition that might interest our congregation.  A community member, Charlotte White, contacted PUUC and the SJC recently about a petition she started to ban plastic bags in Charlotte.  If you are interested in signing this petition or reading it, visit this website, http://www.change.org/petitions/plastic-bag-ban-in-charlotte-nc-stop-the-use-of-plastic-bags.

Amanda Armstrong and Brian Foster have been the co-chairs of the Council from 2011-2013.  This July, two new co-chairs will be taking over the leadership of the Council, Darla Davis and Virginia Gil-Rivas.  Both are current members of the Council.  Darla has been a UU for close to 40 years and associated with five UU churches during that time.  She joined our congregation in 1999 and was one of the original members to start social justice work at our church.  Her activism interests are equality in human rights specifically the immigrant justice, the elimination of torture which includes repeal of the death penalty, economic justice in the global economy, and the impact of climate change. Virginia has been a member of PUUC for several years.  She has participated on the Social Justice Council since joining our congregation.  She also is a founding member of PUUC’s branch of Interweave.  We welcome Darla and Virginia as our new co-chairs and thank them for their service to the congregation!

Amanda Armstrong, Co-chair, Social Justice Council

Update From the Personnel Committee

The Personnel Committee has been busy since we last wrote to you.  There are important updates we would like to share with you are copied below. We encourage you to be in touch with any member of the Personnel Committee with questions.  We will be around each Sunday to answer your questions.  Please look for the nametags with a smiley face, that’s us!

Some things we would like to update you about…

With the help of the Religious Education Council, we created a job description for a Religious Education Coordinator (REC).  This is an interim role.  The plan is for the REC to help out with mainly administrative tasks (religious education registration, email lists, class supplies) until August 8^th as we transition to a new Director of Religious Education.  A copy of the job description can be found here: http://www.puuc.org/contactus/staffdirectory.html. The Board has hired Karen Moseley to fill this interim position, at the recommendation of the Personnel Committee.  Karen comes with many skills and talents, including 7 years of previous DRE experience and 50 hours toward her Master’s in Divinity.  We hope you will introduce yourself to Karen as you see her on Sundays. Her first Sunday in the role will be on April 28.  

The Personnel Committee is now completing phone interviews for the Assistant Minister position.  Phone interviews will be complete at the end of April at which time we will hold in-person interviews.  The Personnel Committee has created the current job description based on the Chalice Lighter Grant Committee’s work as well as a review with the Pastoral Care Committee and Membership Committee.  The job description can be found here http://www.puuc.org/jobs.html.  Similar to any search process, the names of candidates are kept confidential, but we welcome any questions you may have about the process.  The final candidate will be presented to the Board of Trustees who decides on whether to hire the assistant minister.  We anticipate presenting a final candidate to the Board by June 1^st.  Once the Board has made a decision, the name of the new Assistant Minister will be presented to the entire congregation.  

Last, the hiring process for the Director of Religious Education is just beginning.  After seeking input from the Religious Education Council, the Personnel Committee submitted a job description to the Board of Trustees for review.  Once an agreed upon job description is created, we will post this to our website, the Liberal Religious Educator’s communication channels, the District and regional websites.  The Personnel Committee and Susie Benner, Chair of the Religious Education Council will conduct all the interviews.  We hope to have our Director of Religious Education joining us in August, but it will depend upon how interviewing goes and when they are available to start.  

In the meantime, please don’t hesitate to send us an email at personnel.committee@puuc.org or stop us when you see us.

Warm regards,

Gordon Bostic, Chair

Susan Jenkins

Susan Burns

The Personnel Committee

25 years of discovery at Piedmont UU Church from Rich Haag on Vimeo.

Making History

PUUC will add to its history next weekend when it celebrates the 25^th anniversary of its charter service in April 1988. Some charter members, ex-presidents and former members will join our current congregation on Saturday evening, April 13, at the UU Church of Charlotte (UUCC) at 7 p.m. for a special program and again the next morning at our church for the 9:45 and 11 a.m. services.  

Saturday evening’s program will include several videos, choir music led by our Music Director Wally Kleucker, music by several PUUC musicians, recognition of our two fellow congregations, UUCC and Lake Norman Fellowship, and some memory sharing by our former ministers, Reverends Liz McMaster, Wyman Rousseau and Karen Matteson.

Reverend Liz McMaster and Rev. Robin Tanner will give the closing benediction and light the PUUC chalice. The service will begin symbolically with the lighting of the UUCC chalice by Julie Blum and Ted Woolsey, who lit the chalice at the church’s birthing ceremony in December 1987 and again at its 10^th anniversary in 1997. You do not need a reservation or ticket to attend the wonderful program planned for 7 p.m. next Saturday! A dessert reception follows the program, and is open to everyone. Jeff Blum, our first president and PUUC’s founder, will pose a champagne toast to open the reception.

Rev. Jake Morrill, senior minister of the UU Church in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, will join us on Sunday morning, April 14, for both services, and be assisted by Rev. Robin. Wally Kleucker and the choir have prepared special music. A reception will follow both services on Sunday, April 14.

Much emphasis next weekend will be on the church we are now and are becoming. There are only a handful of members remaining from PUUC’s early years. We are a much newer, larger congregation, grown from the 46 who signed the original membership book and the 35 members on the roster when Wyman Rousseau came to PUUC in 1992. We are moving in directions we could only dream of years ago.

Our church had its beginnings in UUCC! An illustrated article about that is currently in the UUCC bi-weekly newsletter, and can be accessed on the UUCC website at www.uuccharlotte.org.

Anne Laukaitis has written an illustrated history of the church’s 25 years and it is available on the PUUC website. Two upcoming sections will highlight “Working for Social Justice” and “The Children of Piedmont.” A final short section will describe the events of the anniversary celebration. The church’s history belongs to every one of us, no matter how brief or long a time one has been a member.

Celebrating 25 Years

The History of Piedmont Unitarian Universalist  Church    1987-2012

THE IMPACT OF MUSIC MINISTRY

Several years ago, I was taking down chairs after a fairly uneventful choir rehearsal. The choir was preparing for the upcoming Christmas Eve service, and we had rehearsed, among other pieces, a choral version of Pachebel's Canon in D. The choir and I had gone over notes, practiced tricky spots of other anthems, and generally participated in an enjoyable but not remarkable evening.

I thought that I was the only one remaining in the church as I restored the room, when a woman from our congregation approached me. As tears streamed down her face, she related that she had been at another meeting across the hall from the rehearsal.

She heard the beautiful music that the choir was creating, and she shared the meaning and importance the music had for her at this particular time in her life.

The depth of her experience surprised me, especially since I had not considered how listening to a rehearsal, with all the stopping and starting, the dissecting of parts and reintegration into a whole, would be valuable to an outside listener. What I learned was that I can never know how the music I create - whether in rehearsal or in a Sunday service - will affect anyone who hears it.

This is the miracle of music. It reminds me of a Navajo prayer that I especially love:
  Beauty is before me, and beauty is behind me.
  Above and below me hovers the beautiful.
  I am surrounded by it. I am immersed in it.
  In my youth I am aware of it,
  And in old age I shall walk quietly
  The beautiful trail.

May we always be aware of the beauty around us.

Namaste,

Wally
music.director@puuc.org