Selects: Be Prepared, Be Kind

It's annual meeting season again, and a colleague told me Friday that she shared the post below with her congregation when it first came out, and planned to share it again that day.

If you shared it before and want to share it again, you need a new link, as the old link goes to the old site and I wanted you to have a new link for sharing (and also because because we are humans with attention spans the length of a sneeze and we forget what we learned if we're not reminded).

Hope this helps make your meetings smoother and more effective:

Annual meetings usually include some ‘state of the congregation’ reports, some mission and vision celebrations, recognition of leaders and projects and maybe some transitions. Sometimes there will be policy changes or a bylaw amendment. Usually, there will be an election of officers. And, those meetings include budget approvals.

It’s the budget I want to talk about.

Those budgets usually have been reviewed in open board meetings and sometimes special budget town halls. Sometimes more than one.

WHY?

Because those board meetings and town halls are when when discussion and explanation and reasoned debate can happen, in preparation for the annual meeting.

WHY?

Because annual meetings are already long and sometimes tedious, especially if there are questions about policy or bylaw changes, or if there’s a lot of news to share (for example, if there’s a building project or a major personnel shift). And honestly, most people do not care about the fiddly points of the budget, as long as the lights stay on, staff get paid fairly, and programs are supported.

• The Annual Meeting is NOT the time to renegotiate the minister’s salary, or to suggest maybe we don’t need a minister.
• The Annual Meeting is NOT the time to go through and decrease by nickels and dimes the programs you don’t like in order to give a few hundred more to the one you do like.
• The Annual Meeting is NOT the time to bring your quibbles about how much (if anything) we give to the UUA’s Annual Program Fund (formerly Fair Share), to support the work of the Association.
• The Annual Meeting is NOT the time to suddenly freak out about spending a dime on programs because you personally had a rough year.
• The Annual Meeting is NOT the one time of the year you should show up in the building or any of the events to make your displeasure with the congregation known.
• The Annual Meeting is NOT the time to complain about the budget if you are a non-pledging member.

Instead…

• The Annual Meeting IS the time to come having at least read the budget, and gone to the prep meetings if you cared about that (or not if you trust the people in the room).
• The Annual Meeting IS the time to come having read the other material, or at least have scanned it.
• The Annual Meeting IS the time to engage thoughtfully and respectfully - even if there is some disagreement.
• The Annual Meeting should be a time of good congregational work and great congregational celebration.

Please do your preparation, and please be kind to one another. It’s been a really long year on top of a series of really long years, and, to quote a ten year old I know who chose to not engage in a fight with his older brother, ‘I’m too tired…. it’s just not worth it.’