As most of you know, at the beginning of the 2024 Pledge Drive we were a church in the early stage of recovery from the combined effects of sudden resignation of our minister, the COVID pandemic, and a drop-off in membership. That drop-off occurred as an outcome of both the minister’s departure and a number of our people moving out of the Bay Area for various reasons, including the high cost of living. We had to work our way through the effects of those impacts, and we took some big steps forward in that process.

Our church had gone through a somewhat similar circumstance several years earlier and had tried, with limited success, to deal with it by ourselves, with no outside help. This time we looked for and accepted professional help, which as it turned out was available from the nationwide Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA). We engaged the support of a newly formed ministeral team called “Hope for Us,” which exists to provide congregational conflict counseling This engagement lasted for a year and took a unique approach in which the counseling ministers, after an extensive round of interviews and a few meetings, invited everyone to acknowledge some level of responsibility for what had happened. Then they asked us to imagine and adopt new ways of engaging with the church and each other that could help keep the problems we had experienced from reoccurring.

So now we have gone through the first year of that process and are in a far better place as a community for having taken those steps. We are still collectively in recovery and finding our way while also doing what we’ve always done: holding meaningful worship services, maintaining a worthy religious education program for the youth of the church, supporting each other, and welcoming visitors in the hope and faith that some will find what they are seeking in our midst and keep coming back.

The church is working toward a strong and fiscally responsible recovery. Last year we hired Rev. Laurel Liefert, a dynamic and experienced minister who was ordained at our church about 12 years ago, as our half-time contract minister. Now we have extended her contract until at least May 2025 and possibly longer. In respect to other staffing needs we hired a great new Congregational Administrator. We plan to also fill or expand other essential part-time positions.

We’ve begun the annual Stewardship pledge drive for 2025, for which our theme is “Building on a Strong Foundation.” It’s the time of year when we ask members and friends of the church to commit financing to help offset the needs of the church for next year. The Stewardship drive is an opportunity for established members to renew and expand their support, and for those who have found the church in recent months to take part in the same ways. This year’s pledge drive is vital and valuable for the well-being of the church.

We feel confident that we can recover in membership, staffing, and finances to levels near those of just a few years ago, but such recovery isn’t automatic; it depends on the participation of everyone involved.

If you haven’t done so already, please make your 2025 annual pledge here:

Link to 2025 Pledge Form: https://uuoakland.breezechms.com/form/Pledge202425

Questions can be addressed via email to the Stewardship Team at stewardship@uuoakland.org