I've finally decided to give up on this antique blogging software and move on up to WordPress. So there's a new address for Phil's Little Blog on the Prairie: http://philontheprairie.wordpress.com/. If you check out the first post there, you'll get a few details about why I'm moving. Unfortunately, Earthlink's ancient software doesn't allow me to export posts from this site to the new one, so I'll leave this address functioning for folks who want to reference something I've posted here. The new feed, by the way is http://philontheprairie.wordpress.com/feed/. See you over at WordPress!

I'm at home watching Henry at the moment. Okay, I'm not actually watching him--he's taking a nap. But this does give me a little time to write a quick post about something that I've had on my mind every since the Prairie Star District's Executive Committee meeting a week or so ago. We spent a good portion of that meeting making plans for our August retreat with the PSD Program Council at Shalom Hill Farms, and it looks like one of the big topics is going to be moving beyond our Vision 2010 and begin thinking about what the future of Unitarian Universalism in Prairie Star might look like.

 

At one point, we started to speculate on we how might arrive at some goals for 2015, etc., and that's when I was reminded of something I had heard a month earlier, at the Convocation for students graduating from United Theological Seminary in New Brighton, Minnesota. I made a mental note when I heard this from David Schoen, one of the guys responsible for the "God is Still Speaking" campaign of the United Church of Christ (his exact title is Congregational Vitality Initiative Coordinator). He mentioned how once, when he was looking into Jewish commentaries about the scene in the Torah where God replies to Moses' question about who God is by saying "I AM" (or "I am what I am, I am what I have been, I am what I will be"), he found one of the commentaries that had this great interpretation of what God's name really means: “I will be what the future demands.”

 

And that got me thinking about goals for the future in Prairie Star. You see, the Vision 2010 has lots of great ideas in it, lots of hopes and dreams. And a considerable number of them have actually been achieved. However, there's been an incredible number other good things that have happened since that vision was cast in 2000, things that we couldn't even imagine then: new congregations starting on their own, added staff, advances in technology. While the vision may have helped us somewhat to get were we are today, I think it was really something else, something akin to interpretation of God's answer to Moses.

 

So rather than coming up with a list (long or short) of things we'd like to see by 2015 (or 2020 or whenever), I'd like to see us come up with a vision that we can make happen right now instead of having to wait 10 or 20 years. And it goes something like this: I envision a Unitarian Universalist faith for Prairie Star that helps us all to become what the future demands. I don't know what kind of congregations we'll need to serve people in 2020 or even 2015. And I don't know what kind of district structure we'll need to help those congregations, either. But I do know that we'll need to have people who are prepared for what the future demands, and I think we need to start being those people today. I've got a feeling that this is where the future of faith development is.
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Sorry I haven't posted in awhile, but it has been a pretty busy week or two. Once Julia and Henry David and I returned from Winnipeg, we had a night to ourselves, then my mother and niece arrived from Elkhart, Indiana to stay for a few days. And the next day Julia's sister and her daughter flew in from Vancouver for a long visit. Then I had the Prairie Star District Executive Board meeting to attend. (Photos here. It was a good meeting...we discussed plans for next August's Board/Program Council Retreat). In addition to all of this, I got a call from Rockford, Illinois from a family I had officiated a wedding for when I was the ministerial intern there (photos here). The father of the family had died, and they wanted me to do the memorial service. Thing is, of all the weddings I've performed, this man was the only father-of-the-bride that I remember (he was a big guy, literally and figuratively). So I said yes, which meant flying down to Rockford on Monday, meeting with the family, going to a hotel and putting together a service (including a eulogy), then leading the service the next day. Very busy, indeed. To top it all off, Henry David's been sick since last Friday (he's just getting better today). So. Busy, busy, busy. I'm looking forward to catching up on work at the office and getting ready for GA, which is just a couple of weeks away!
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