Hello UUYO newsletter readers! This year is my sixth and final year as your Board President, and final year on the Board – and what a year it has been! We are now several months into virtual gatherings and overall the input from most folks has been positive. At our Board meeting in February I recall Louisa Berger bringing up COVID-19 as a possible impact to our congregation and I remember thinking “Nah, that’s not going to be a big impact for us.” Clearly my view of the future is not to be relied upon! Kudos to Louisa for having the clarity to recognize what was heading our way and starting preparations. As I write this, I see a headline in today’s Washington Post that there are currently 170 COVID-19 vaccines in development in various stages of that process. We’ll see how that works out for us all in the coming months. Hopefully it will be an opportunity for humanity to come together rather than to further divide ourselves. Time will tell, but we all have the opportunity to be part of how that develops.
Back to our Board meetings, as soon as it was clear in the Spring that we needed to adapt, the Board started meeting virtually via Zoom every week to keep up with rapidly changing needs of the congregation. While we’ve since returned to monthly meetings, along the way we secured money from the endowment to build up our ability to broadcast remotely while still maintaining a presence at 1105 Elm Street. Ever since, we have been presenting most of our services from the Sanctuary combined with regular participation from worship participants in their homes. We have a high quality camera in the Sanctuary along with a computer that supports online video processing and allows me, along with Lola Lewis, to run the online portion of the service from our homes. We work together with Tim Raridon doing the sound in the sanctuary and have settled in to a standard procedure for videography and sound that only rarely presents issues. I have learned a lot about sound and video production in the process, and have had the honor to get to know Lola and Tim more than I’m sure I would have in any other context. We post recordings of our Zoom meetings on YouTube and provide links on our website or you can search for them on YouTube under “UUYO Sunday Service”. Check them out if you miss the regular time for the service.
If you haven’t participated in other virtual activities yet, check out the church calendar for many virtual gatherings throughout each week where things like yoga, storytelling, social justice, Plant Ahead Ohio, and many other groups routinely get together and stay connected. As Rev. Joseph regularly states in his welcome message on Sunday, we are keeping in touch with folks who are close by but also far and wide, from folks I’ve talked to who are just far enough away that it was always a bit too much to make it to 1105 Elm on a Sunday morning, and extending to those friends and members who have moved far away or who have only recently tracked us down after COVID led us to do online services.
The Board has been encouraged that our online approach, previously thought to be highly undesirable when compared to our in-person tradition, has been found to be remarkably engaging while providing additional flexibility that allows people to join us when time or travel issues would have made their participation less likely.
This month the Board continues its discussions about long term planning for continuing to incorporate online services even after we start gathering in person together again. We recognize that we’ve tapped into a need that has been unmet that we now know how to meet. It will be a fun challenge for us to learn what it takes to do this, but we’ve got the time to work it out it seems. Anyone who would like to get involved, just let Rev. Joseph, me, Tim, or any Board member know and we’ll be happy to talk to you about what you would like to do. I’ve found it very rewarding to be able to contribute my technical expertise to this new area of our lives together.
We are starting to plan out ways we can build our online musical performances to include more people. There are both technical and people-related challenges involved in making that happen. Jennifer Boyd and Jeff Crouse are looking at ways we can bring music to our Christmas services this year while still being fully online. This will hopefully include some form of virtual choir and maybe instrumental participation as well. Stay tuned for more on this, and speak up if you are intrigued and want to participate in making this work. It should be a lot of fun and a creative challenge for all who participate.
Our Black Lives Matter efforts have been a rousing success. We used funds from several sources, primarily a bequest, to purchase 100 BLM yard signs to give away. Almost immediately those were gone, so we had 100 more made. We’ve now gone through several thousand dollars and 700 signs and we still get people stopping by or calling the church asking for them. This effort, together with the fact that we have a BLM banner on the front of the building, led an area organization to reach out to us recently and ask us if they could provide a donation to further our efforts. Of course we said yes, so that will provide some seed money to continue these efforts. For anyone who has had the opportunity to drive around Youngstown and even surrounding ‘burbs, check out how many BLM yard signs you see. Chances are pretty good that they came from UUYO. If you would like to help with a donation to this effort, please send an email to office@uuyo.org. We are reaching out to other area congregations and non-profits to see if we can raise additional funds and participation to do many more signs. Please let Rev. Joseph know if you are interested in being involved in this effort.
I’ve felt a great energy and excitement in our virtual gatherings and I hope you do too. If you know of anyone who has not felt included in our online life, please contact the office and we will work to include anyone who has challenges to participating online. In this time of social distancing, our virtual participation in UUYO community life can be a refuge that keeps us able to face the realities of these times.
Even though we have not been meeting at 1105 Elm, the building continues to require routine maintenance and care. If you would like to help with maintenance of the building, please contact office@uuyo.org. We do have some activity that happens there, other than frequently having Rev. Joseph lead services from the Sanctuary, we have had Sarah King back in the office on Saturdays and Sundays. We’ve worked with her to accommodate safety to our and her satisfaction, and have found that while some remote work is ok, as she is still doing on Fridays, being in the office helps her to get a lot more done so we are carefully supporting this. There is also a food distribution group that uses the building on Thursday mornings to create meal packages for delivery to area residents in need. We have provided access to the building to this group at no charge and work with them together to make sure the building is cleaned appropriately between uses.
You can be proud of the way your UUYO community is supporting our wider community throughout these times of disruption and change. I am excited to see that we continue to pay our bills due to our generous membership pledges and donations. Watch for our 2021 stewardship program to start up in the fall and please begin to consider how you can continue to support UUYO’s mission both with money and participation. Our mission succeeds when we have both, so please begin to consider how you can strengthen your support of UUYO in both ways in the coming year.
Thank you for all you do to make UUYO the strong and vibrant community that it is, and keep in mind that we depend completely on our membership to keep the community going strong.
Thank you!
Andy Crabb
Board President