UUA Trustee Tidbits

Joan Lund, August 2012

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GA has been over for a month and you have probably had ample opportunity to go on our UUA web site to read, listen, and learn about the many events, activities, and workshops that are of interest to you. From my perspective and those with whom I have spoken, GA was a marked success. I have written a report that will go out in the District e-news. In our ongoing work looking at the long-term future of Unitarian Universalism, during the spring and through the summer, the UUA Board of Trustees (BOT) has been involved in various aspects of a process called scenario planning.

The practice of scenario planning begins with the definition of a focal issue or decision. The BOT asked the question: What differences do we want to make in Unitarian Universalism, for whom and at what priority by the year 2050? The purpose of scenario planning is not to pinpoint future events but to highlight large-scale forces that push the future in different directions. It's about making these forces visible, so that if they do happen, the planner(s) will at least recognize them. It is about helping make better decisions today. The practice of scenario planning is not difficult to describe but is can be difficult to do with skill and expertise. The "issue": The future of our UUA. The BOT has brainstormed a long list of key factors and environmental forces that might influence the outcome of our UUA future and determined two trends: 1) more people becoming spiritual, not religious, with less interest in organized religion; and 2) differences in wealth, class, and income, with an increasingly unstable economy. Each trend is assumed to either continue, or reverse, and the four different combinations then make up the four different assumptions of the BOT's self-selected four teams.

From the trends, four teams emerged: 1) As the income gap grows and the economy becomes unstable, more people turn to religious and church life. 2) As the income gap grows, and the economy becomes unstable, people continue to leave organized religion. 3) Greater income equality stabilizes the economy, with a substantial increase in religious and church life. 4) Greater income equality stabilizes the economy, as people continue to leave organized religion. I am on this Team.

Each Team will meet three times by conference call prior to September with the end goal to write a "story" identifying trends and other issues related the assigned assumption. Youth and Young Adults will be invited to comment on the scenario work and add their own. After the scenarios are finalized and distributed to the BOT in September, they will be considered as part of our ENDS review in October.

Your Florida District Trustee realizes there may be questions and/or confusion regarding what has been described in the column. It's a lot to digest. Because I may write further on this topic and your thoughts are important, I would like to hear from you. Thanks ... and continue to enjoy our long, hot summer!