Stewardship and the Health Crisis

We’ve been getting a lot of calls about the current health crisis and its effect on Spring Annual Budget drives, fundraisers and capital campaigns. What should we do? People ask. 

My home congregation, the Edmonds Unitarian Universalist Congregation, is just north of Seattle, the city that’s had the worst outbreak of the virus. When this health crisis broke, our congregation was in the late stages of the annual budget drive. Also we have our primary fundraiser, the auction, scheduled for the end of the month. So, from an up close and personal perspective I know why folks are asking these questions! Our response was to take the recommendations of the local health authorities and we cancelled all services and meetings in our facility. So what should we do?

My recommendations are:

1. Don’t change your goals – change your methods. Be flexible but stay the course.
2. Most importantly, we must, each of us, and as congregations, anchor our response to this crisis in our core values. My minister for faith and justice, Rev. Ceclia Kingman, in her live streamed sermon last Sunday, focused on the values of kindness, compassion, justice, and gratitude. 
3. Use the phone. Be sure to check in with the people you’re working with, by calling and asking how they’re doing. Don’t just send an email. A big part of stewardship is taking care of each other! Hearing someone’s voice can make a big difference.
4. Develop new skills. We’ve found we need to quickly develop some new skills. Because we are not hosting any meetings or Sunday services at our facility we’re learning fast– how to stream our services and develop pastoral care virtually, how to teach everyone to use Zoom for meetings, how to conduct faith development classes and, most importantly, how to keep connected.
5. Get the message out in as many different ways as possible, and do it more often than you might otherwise. Email, website, social media, phone calls. Maybe even snail mail. In the past you might have been wary about sending a message too often, but when we have no methods for face to face reminders we need those extra online and phone reminders.
6. Include your message in your congregation’s virtual gatherings. Host virtual gatherings for members to talk about the health crisis and your congregational response, and include your messaging about the annual budget drive. 
7. Make individual visits and calls. This is a fine time to make one on one visits. Just be sure to wash your hands before and after, and (of course) don’t go if you’re even the slightest bit under the weather. People can feel very isolated during this crisis. A visit could be just the thing! And you’ll collect their pledge. If you can’t visit, make individual calls. You might also text folks and don’t expect everyone to listen to a voicemail. 
8. Read the recommendations from the UUA. There are resources on how to adapt church to our current circumstances.
9. Don’t panic. We UUs are creative, resourceful, generous people.