Board Members attending: Lynn Roberts, Don Hawkins, Carrie Keith, Richard Hoffert, Scotty Zilinsky, Rod Debs, Gary Collins, John Bacon, Dora Farmer, Melanie Harper, Andy Bergensen

Others attending: Fred Boyer, Mary Valdez, Karen Armstrong

Minutes from previous meeting: Minor changes were made to the minutes and they were approved by all.

The Finance chairs have received a caution about a congregation officially endorsing a political candidate, such as encouraging members to vote for a particular candidate or party, allowing a candidate to speak to a group in the building, or even handing out literature for a candidate. These activities could cause loss of the Fellowship’s tax-free status. This may divide a congregation and it’s important that we not conduct any partisan political activities at UUFEC. The board asked Don Hawkins to write a Chalice article about this. The upcoming contribution commitment canvass was discussed. It will be different because it is going to be an all member canvass. A training session will be held on March 18. This weekend Don and Daisy will be mailing out a canvass brochure with a letter and a summary of the vision budget. By Tuesday, the membership will know that from March 18 to March 25, we will be gathering contribution commitments. Each person involved will be assigned two people to talk to about their committment. Scotty asked if members are allowed to just send their pledges in. Don said it was ok but we want to educate people one-on-one about the budget. It costs $2,000 per week to keep our fellowship up and running. On March 18 at 7:00 p.m., the Contribution Commitment Team meets for training and Daisy is doing a fantastic job of getting this together so that the team can complete the task within one week. Vision budget was presented, discussed, and approved.

Everything is now in Quickbooks. Gary passed out a profit and loss statement showing us another good month with good donations. The Bo Turner event made $50.00. Our income is higher than anticipated and we are right on target. The admin section is $1,400 higher because dues were paid a month late. The rollover of $13,000 was left over from last year. Finance had earmarked this for the minister’s salary. We have cash left over in the checking account and it was moved to last month. Any amount less than $1,700 is ok for the deficit. Overall, for the year, we are $10,000 behind what was pledged. Fundraising makes up for some of that. Some pledges will not materialize because those people have stopped coming. There was no correlation between the letters that when out regarding the vision budget and contribution commitment and an increase in pledges. We were predicting to spend $8,000, and only spent $2,700. Reconciliation of the checking and savings show there is $22,097 is checking and $21,142 in savings. Two people in Finance have to approve expenditures. We will have an A/C expenditure someday. Davidson Loehr made $871, Bo Turner made $50. The fundraising line was moved.

Karen presented some solutions to the problems with the current children’s programming. She also asked the board for some guidance on this issue since it has become a stalemate in the committee.

1. There is a need for parallel programming for children during adult RE classes, to make adult RE more accessible for parents, recognizing the staggering importance of small group ministry in the attraction, retention and nurturing of families.
2. There is a lack of meeting space for our senior high youth during worship hour RE classes.
3. We are experiencing a severe shortage of teacher volunteers, and one of the main reasons given by potential volunteers for not volunteering is that they are reluctant to miss out on the adult worship services.
4. We wish to offer more opportunity for our adult members to interact with our youth both during formal classes as well as during shared group activities occurring at other times of parallel programming.
5. Our leadership would like to encourage the presence of our youth at adult worship services, in order to welcome them into and familiarize them with our faith's worship service traditions before they become adults.
6. Our youth RE classes are in need of a full hour of classroom time, which is not presently the case, since youth are in the adult service until the Story For All Ages, many times a full half hour into their scheduled class time.

1. Offer a complete hour of RE classes for all ages prior to the adult worship service on Sunday mornings. During the hour for worship, the elementary youth will be participating in structured, shared group activities and the junior and senior high youth will be attending the adult worship service.

Spacing will be as follows: Nursery youth in nursery, Elementary in Piper Room, Junior high youth in Stage Room, Senior high youth in Minister's Office or off site, Adult Ed in Board Room or in back of sanctuary, Choir at the front of the sanctuary

2. Offer pre-worship hour senior high and adult RE classes with structured social/project/group activity hour for elementary and junior high youth. During worship hour, elementary and junior high youth would join adult worship until Story For All Ages, and then hold one full hour of RE classes, dismissing at 11:45. Senior high would either attend worship services or volunteer as classroom aides in younger RE classes, or participate in structured group activities (both social and spiritual) outside the fellowship, such as attending area churches, social work, planning sessions for sr. high youth events, etc. This proposal also comes with a second level of change, whereby we institute a monthly "Family Worship" service, attended by all ages, and planned for by minister and DRE to appeal to all intellects. (It has been suggested that we not label this service specifically, just institute the service, in order to avoid inducing intergenerational anxiety or resistance amongst older members) Keep adult RE classes on non-Sunday morning schedule and provide structured group activities for children's parallel programming during these presently occurring and future classes. Sunday morning youth RE classes remain concurrent with the adult worship service, with a few variations presented in Proposals 3A and 3B.

3. Variations of Proposal 2

A. First variation: 10:00-11:00 Sr. high youth (possibly jr. high as well) RE classes, then at 11:00, these youth will join adult service for the sermon section of the service

10:30-10:45 Elementary (possibly jr. high as well) join the adult service up until the Story For All Ages, then begin RE classes, dismissing at 11:45

Keep adult RE classes on non-Sunday morning schedule, but add sr. high youth RE classes at the same time.

B. Second variation: Offer the elementary and junior high structured group activity parallel programming during these presently occurring and future classes, and remain offering their RE classes on Sunday mornings concurrent with the adult worship service, (beginning after Story For All Ages) but extending their dismissal time to 11:45. Senior high youth would attend adult worship services on Sunday mornings. Any and all change at this point will necessitate additional staffing, since we are essentially proposing that we double our program hours to create parallel programming for the children to run concurrently with adult RE. While we will not be utilizing a formal curriculum for the second hour sessions, it will still require planning, supplies, staffing and coordination. In order for this to become a reality, the congregation must provide more funding for these needs. We can perhaps reduce the funding needs for staffing by recruiting more volunteers, but this has proven quite difficult for even the current one-hour programming. Attempts to move the RE sessions outside the Sunday service timeframe have not improved volunteer response.

4. RE recognizes some change is necessary and options must be considered, particularly the parallel programming issue for children during adult RE. The other proposals have been suggested as a way to address other areas of concern. The recruitment problem remains not only constant, even a bit amplified.

The board recognized the difficulties and agreed to offer guidance on this issue. The board requested RE to offer their best proposal. The board will support the RE proposal on a trial basis.

Lynn read an email from Daisy regarding the events coordinating committee and there was some discussion about scheduling fundraisers. Rev. Debs suggested getting together a task group involving Scotty and others to resolve.

New Business:

CUUPS: Mary Valdez gave a proposal regarding the addition of CUUPS (Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans). She passed out a UUFEC CUUPS progress report and a proposed set of bylaws. The purpose of CUUPS is to stimulate pagans in a more intellectual environment, i.e., the fellowship. Mary, Carol and Chris Dewey, and Danyeal Phire are members of Continental CUUPS and also our fellowship. This allows us to create a chapter at UUFEC. CUUPS and UUFEC would work together and be able to get funding through UUFEC. As a chapter, Rod stated it would offer legal protection as a religious group against being threatened. They would be UUs but function like the Humanist group. Mary stated Jacksonville and Pensacola have good chapters of CUUPS. Lynn stated that they would have to go through Building Use and it sometimes has a fee attached if you use the kitchen. The fees are taken out of the "profit" of the group. CUUPS would like to have fundraisers and give all profits to UUFEC. Rod stated that there are no fees for use of the building. An example of a fundraiser they would propose would be a masquerade ball in the fall. CUUPS would give all contributions to their group to the fellowship. Rod stated he was on the National CUUPS board and Richard asked if we have to maintain a percentage of UUFEC members in CUUPS. Rod stated that at some fellowships it has been mostly non-UUs. Rod recommends that it should be fun the same as the other committees. The board agreed to bench the proposal and make a decision at the next meeting so everyone can read the bylaws.

a. Fred presented the Committee on Ministry Policies and Procedures. The Board agreed to review and consider this item at the next meeting. He also discussed that there will be a ceremony for the installation of the new minister. Judy Riley and Fran Boudolf are the heads of that committee. All mid-south ministers will be invited.

b. Don mentioned that "joys and concerns" is mixing with announcements during the service. Dora stated that at the RE conference she heard that this was addressed and a minister stated it in a way that it was understood what was appropriate and what was not. Karen said this is a common concern and Rod suggested specific offenders be spoken to who are abusing this time. It was decided that the Committee on Ministry look at this issue and Fred was present so he agreed to offer a solution.

The board talked about replacing Cam as VP due to her resignation. Lynn stated that there are three outgoing board members this year; Andy, Carrie, and Dora.

Since GA is so far away, we can only pay for one member to go. Last year three members were paid for.