Hey Look! It's three members of YOUR PSWD Board of Trustees. From the left: Tom Loughrey, UUA Trustee; Nancy Edmundson, Vice-President, and Ellen, YRUU Board representative.

The Board met last weekend for its annual retreat in Palm Springs, and they set an intention to connect more with congregational leaders this coming year. They are excited and ready!

If you want to keep up to date with PSWD news, make sure you are subscribed to PSWD-L. The Board email list is also open to subscribers (you can read the emails but cannot post as a non-Board member). Subscription information can be found at www.pswduua.org.

We are going on a Road Trip for Justice!

We are doing it ... a group of young adults and their allies are jumping in vans and heading onto the open road, embarking on a Road Trip for Justice to learn all we can about Climate Change and the impact it has on California water. We'll travel from Mt. Shasta to Sacramento to the Delta to the central Valley - over 1500 miles, dozens of stops, and culminating in leading the Sunday morning worship at UU Church of Fresno.

Keep in the loop by checking out our blog: http://uuroadtrip.blogspot.com/.

Yes!!!!

Liz and Tera at BCM

Liz and Tera, originally uploaded by psdlund.

Yes, this year the UUA Big Complex Meeting was as filled with spirit and good energy as this photo suggests.

Each year all the UUA District Staff come together for six days to collaborate and share ideas so we can better serve and minister to our districts and congregations.

This year we spent several days working with Congregational Services. I made a great connection with Nancy DiGiovanni from the Young Adult and Campus Ministry Office - we are plotting to get her to our District Assembly! We also learned how to ask powerful questions, we engaged with the Report on the Summit on Youth Ministry, we talked about how to do our work with a lens on multigenerational congregations, and of course I left with a long reading list. :)

It is so wonderful to get re-energized and rejuvenated by this time with colleagues.

Resource Pick of the Month!

Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation by Eboo Patel

Eboo Patel’s book has a central thesis: What would our world be like if we (meaning people who honor pluralism in religion) had gotten to the 9-11 hijackers and the London bombers before the religious fundamentalist groups had?

Patel knows how to tell compelling stories. While finding the answer to that question, we learn about his personal journey in rediscovering his faith and his path into activism which eventually leads to him founding the Interfaith Youth Core, which is based in Chicago and is growing every year (find out more at www.ifyc.org).

While reading his book I cried, I laughed, I got angry, I got inspired, I got recommitted to my own faith, and I started thinking about my spiritual practice in a whole new way. Patel has a great analysis of what we are doing wrong in our youth ministry programs and what we need to do to make them relevant, engaging and fun!

An added bonus: this book is published by Beacon Press.

September Resource Pick - Balancing Acts: On-Line Safety Class

www.neari.com/trainingcenter/

Thank you, UUA, for creating this FREE, relevant, easy-to-navigate, informative online safety class! This class will benefit religious educators, ministers, RE Committee members, Youth Advisors, and Board members who want to understand more about their fiduciary responsibility when it comes to the safety of children, youth, and vulnerable adults.

This online class is very well-organized and is in small sections so the learner can move through the class contents in short segments of time. The system allows the user to stop whenever necessary and log on where you left off.

It is a multi-media teaching tool, with text, audio, and images. Each section ends with a short quiz, testing ones proficiency with the materials. It took me around 2 hours to complete the entire course.

Here is an AP story about this online course: http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/08/03/online_course_helps_churches_deal_with_sex_offenders/.

August Resource Pick - Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good Causes

“Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good Causes”

By Andy Goodman and Cause Communication

FREE for non-profits!

www.agoodmanonline.com

Many thanks to Rev. Sarah Gibb Millspaugh who told me about this resource at General Assembly. I love it!

Every page has at least one good tidbit on how to make your presentations even better. Whether you present at Board meetings, RE Committee meetings, give sermons, or lead trainings, I think you’ll find something here that will enable you to deliver your message more effectively.

In it, you’ll learn specifics about what works well and why (and what doesn’t work and why), how to do better powerpoint presentations, how to organize your presentations for maximum impact, and more.

I found out I do some of the don’ts, and I’m looking forward to my next workshop so I can incorporate these great ideas!

This resource is great for religious educators, ministers, board presidents, and any volunteer in the church who needs to make effective presentations, and it might be the basis for a good short adult faith development class.

youth ministry or YRUU or both?

I just returned from the UUA Summit on Youth Ministry, a 60 person gathering (30 youth, 30 adults), the culmination of a 2-year process put into place by the UUA Board of Trustees to assess how our Association needs to proceed in order to create vital, meaningful youth ministries.

At the end of our five day Summit, we came away with one overarching theme: We ask for a fundamental shift in Unitarian Universalism - a shift to a multigenerational, congregation-based youth ministry in which youth ministry is central to the articulated mission of the UUA.

Much more about the Summit will become known as our Summary Report is refined and working groups are created. For now, we are given that theme and it is up to each one of us - that means you, too, and not just me or the Summit participants - to figure out which piece can we take and do well?

What will it mean for us to make a shift out of a program-based approach to youth “work” and move into the fullness of a ministry to and with our youth? A ministry to and with our youth must be much more grounded in the faith development of all our youth. It will require a deep understanding of racial and sexual identity development in regards to our youth of color* and youth who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning. It means that any adult who is doing sustained ministry to and with youth will need to have theological grounding in Unitarian Universalism, a clear Unitarian Universalist identity, and adeptness at pastoral care. It means that after years and years of youth being on the sidelines of our faith, that we finally grow up and take this ministry seriously - we fund it, we train our leaders, and we put it at the center of congregational life.

By shifting gears into youth ministry, it begs the question about what to do with YRUU (Young Religious Unitarian Universalists), a continental, district, and sometimes congregational youth program. The question was called at the Summit, and in the next many months conversations will take place among continental YRUU Steering Committee, the Summit Implementation working group, and the UUA Board to figure out what role YRUU will have within this new focus. I tend to think it can be a both/and approach rather than an either/or.

I’m ready to find out which piece I can take and do well. Let’s go do it.

* This is an acceptable term within many communities, though perhaps not all and perhaps not yours. I ask for your understanding with this language.