Read this week’s newsletter here: The Weekly Liberal Sept. 13

In this week’s Liberal, Rev. Jen Crow writes:

Many of you are participating in our capital campaign, Not for Ourselves Alone: Building an Inclusive Future, by giving of your resources as we strive to create a church home that better reflects our values and magnifies our mission. We’ve been dreaming about an updated worship space, with new carpet, fresh paint, an accessible chancel and assistive technology for those with hearing loss. We’ve learned that our Religious Education wing can support the addition of a third floor and we’ve sketched out ways to renovate our existing space to make better room for our children and youth, our small groups, and our offices. Tuckpointing work on the outside of our sanctuary building will begin any day, so that we can seal the envelope of our worship space and prevent further water damage now and in the future.

Your building team has been hard at work for over a year listening to your hopes, centering our values and our mission, and aligning what we want with our budget. During this time, we’ve also been in conversation with Shir Tikvah, the synagogue that purchased our old building over on 50th and Girard, our colleagues in faith and in our quest for justice, about sharing this space here at 34th and Dupont, together. We’ve been dreaming about what shared space would look and feel like, knowing that if we could make it work, not only would we grow in the depth of our relationship across congregations, but that we would magnify our missions, too, as we reduce our collective environmental footprint and share in the costs of maintaining this space.

Last month, your Board of Trustees shared their enthusiasm for the potential of this possibility, and directed the ministers to fully explore this co-location opportunity, knowing that it has the potential to help us better serve our mission and fulfill our financial obligations to the future. This means that we are putting our current plans for renovation and construction on pause as we engage in a fast-track feasibility discussion with Shir Tikvah. We are moving forward, committed to engaging with Shir Tikvah with open hearts and hard work to see if we can co-locate for the greater good of both congregations and our unique missions. I’m beginning to find myself saying that our inclusive vision of Not For Ourselves Alone might be completed Not By Ourselves Alone.

Co-location raises a number of questions that your church leadership is committed to answering, questions like: How is First Universalist’s mission enhanced (or challenged) by co-location? Can co-location magnify the social-justice work of the two entities or does it cloud our work? How do we optimally deliver distinctively Unitarian Universalist spiritual formation opportunities to children, youth, and adults in a shared facility? What might be the legal and financial structure of the co-located entities of First Universalist and Shir Tikvah? These questions and more have been raised and we will, over the next few months, begin to answer them. The board and perhaps a half-dozen working groups will do our best to shape our responses and, working often with similar groups at Shir Tikvah, try to understand how co-located space could brighten our future. Given how fresh the decision to proceed in this good-faith exploration is, we have not yet designed the arc of and all the aspects of congregational engagement, but it will happen; we want to hear your questions, your excitement and your worries. And we hope you will share in our spirit of curiosity, possibility, and good faith discernment as we go forward.

In faith,
Rev. Jen