As E.B. White says it, I want you to improve and enjoy your day. I hope you understand that I and this church seek to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Only when these are balanced do we have a whole community, it's only in enjoying and improving, when being both comforted and challenged, that there's religious and spiritual integrity and courage, the kind that it takes to create and build a faith community. Maybe it's just because I see things from a different perspective than you do, but I would sleep a lot easier if I knew that this congregation will be here in another 44 years x 3, as strong if not stronger than today. I want to be convinced that this is the way it will be - I want to know for sure.
Nothing really can guarantee it.
And they all have to do with clarity - clarity of mission, vision and covenant, three ingredients integral to the life of any faith community. The primary purpose of the Association is to serve the needs of its member congregations, organize new congregations, extend and strengthen Unitarian Universalist institutions, and implement its principles. This is vision , it's our Association's vision - a vision of the Beloved Community. That's our vision of an ideal, of our best, of what we want. Finally then, the covenant.