April ’19 Moderator’s Letter

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Greetings –

It’s always a busy spring and Easter season here at First Church.  Unfortunately, the sprinkler leak that flooded 3 floors of Buchan yesterday added additional work for all our staff.  This is asking us to be flexible as we adjust our scheduled meetings and activities here at church.  Many, many thanks to our sextons in particular who were on this immediately, and our office staff who are continuing work with insurers and re-scheduling meeting/event space.

The Board, at our April meeting, endorsed the following fine slate of candidates:

For Board of Trustee:

  • Cindy Cumfer
  • Brad Taylor
  • Andy Wilson
  • Leila Wrathall

For Nominating Committee:

  • Joyce Gotsch
  • Laura Jones
  • Betsy Riddell

From that same board meeting some other updates may be of interest to you.

We had an informative presentation from our church Development Exploration Task Force. We offered questions and direction to help them plan their work and focus. They will report back to the board on a regular basis. 

The Board endorsed on behalf of the congregation to ordain into the ministry our intern Mira Mickiewicz.  This will happen evening of June 16.

We adopted and are forwarding to the congregation for approval, the Final Budget for church year 2019/20. Both the budget and slate of candidates will be on the ballot May 19 (and in the mail to voting members prior).

Changes to the Board Policies will be voted on at the May 2nd Board Meeting and are available on our webpage and here. Many of the changes are housekeeping and updating. There are changes to the make-up of Board Officer’s Committee (BOC) that will help improve the communication between the committees, BOC and rest of the Board.

Please join us at our final forum for this church year, May 5 at 1:30 in Eliot Chapel.  We will screen the 2018 Ware Lecture by Brittney Packnett (~45 minutes), and lead reflective conversation after.

As always, if you have questions or comments, you can email us at board@firstunitarianportland.org.

I look forward to seeing you all in church . . .

In Gratitude, 

Kathy Ludlow