Congregational President

In 2016 I reluctantly said yes to joining the Board of Trustees of UUCB, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley. I ran unopposed and won. At first I couldn’t figure out what the board meetings were all about and what the real issues were. Who was running the Church? We spent most of our meetings discussing the process of governance and real issues must have been addressed elsewhere. It was pretty obvious it wasn’t the board. Before I had figured that out they told me the Vice President was too busy with job and family to run the nominating committee, would I to the nominating committee and be the acting Vice President? The next year the Vice President, now me, reluctantly became the President.

Like most mainline churches in these times we had the usual problems: a large old building sitting on very valuable real estate, growing deferred maintenance, a large staff and an elderly and shrinking congregation. When I joined the board our longtime co-ministers had just retired and we were in the two year interim where a search committee looked for a new minister. We had an interim minister I couldn’t seem to get in step with. The real leadership of the Church was diffuse and fragmented; the choir, religious education, the grounds committee, chalice circles, the personal theology program, the men’s group and a humanist group.

70 miles away we had a cabin in the woods in bad disrepair, our retreat center. At home we had a financial management mess, law suits and bad tenant relations. We had a congregation deeply divided and everyone passionately protecting their idea the church’s identity. I was the person most visibly in charge and still trying to get a handle on it when the new co-ministers arrived and I became President. Together we dealt with lawsuits, finding new tenants, and trying to find out where the money was. Before we found out where it had gone we ran out of cash for payroll. The real problem had been the financial manager without good supervision borrowing from Peter to pay Paul and covering up the mess it created. We were short and now Peter had to be paid.

The property in Sonoma, Freestone, had been a getaway for members since the 1970s. I wasn’t as sensitive as I should have been to how cherished the property was to an important minority of the congregants. I saw it as a piece of property in desperate need of repair and restoration with funds we didn’t have and a resource we were barely able to use with only a few congregants committed to it. At a big congregational meeting a majority just short of 2/3s voted to sell the property. We didn’t reach it.

Ironically the board is trying to sell Freestone again some five years later. This year they’ve changed the majority to 50%, but the vote hasn’t happened yet.

After my term was up, I served another year on the board supporting the new President and then gratefully went off the board. My Unitarian Universalist enthusiasm, my UU faith, was barely intact. I had a new respect for people who can make democracy work, particularly direct democracy like the UUs. I don’t know how they do it, leaders who can speak the truth without pissing people off. Then the pandemic came and now years later I’m still a member of UUCB albeit with a much lower profile. Our cash flow problem was saved by Federal Pandemic relief for employers which the church tapped very successfully, other problems were postponed and recently hired co-ministers left.

The church continues on, maybe unsubstainable, maybe not, but always struggling and so it goes with or without my help. I do know in 50 years there will still be a UU Community in El Cerrito with or without a Church. It will not be easy. I think the people there now are better able to deal with the strife. There have been three more board Presidents since, all of them reluctant to have taken the job.