Policies and Procedures
December 8, 2008
Progress on the update of our church’s Policies and Procedures Manual is moving along, with a goal of completion in February by a Governing Board subcommittee consisting of Jim Gillis, Jen Shimkus and myself. At this point, our work on the finance policies is just beginning, but we have worked our way through most of the administrative, membership, religious education and communications policies. Along the way, we’ve encountered many challenges in developing policies that address sticky issues, and have tried to keep focused on addressing likely problems clearly, simply, fairly and in keeping with our Unitarian Universalist principals. It hasn’t been easy.
One of the most contentious the policies we are addressing is the policy governing announcements during service. Last year the Board received complaints that the length of announcements was detracting from the spiritual nature of service. When we tried to cut them down and changed the policy to allow only those late-breaking announcements that didn’t make it into the Order of Service, the result was that people didn’t have a live reminder of church activities, and participation in them fell. Both Rev. Josè and Rev. Bill Robinson before him told us that this is a common conundrum at U.U. churches.
We’re trying to aim for a point between those two extremes. Our subcommittee will propose a policy that does not prohibit people from making an announcement at the microphone if it is also printed in the Order of Service, but instead urges speakers to be brief and avoid becoming repetitious. Our goal is not to just develop laws that spell out just what is specifically prohibited, but in this case to create guidelines that ask church members to be judicious and considerate of the service and those attending. Ours is a covenantal church, and we believe that part of that covenant should be that we ask and receive that respect from each other. We don’t expect that this policy will work out perfectly, but to expect perfection of any such policy would be unrealistic.
We are also developing a chapter on social justice activities as well as one on safety policies, which we expect to include fire safety, confidentiality of records and the sex offender policy, among other issues.
If you have any questions or suggestions about policies or procedures, please speak to one of us. Our meetings are open (they do tend to be held at irregular intervals due to our packed schedules, so check with one of us if you’d like to attend) and we would be more than happy to speak with you about any policy.
~Meredyth Waterman
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