Rogue Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship (RVUUF)

Current Congregational Packet includes:

Official Call to the 2010 District Assembly
Proposed Business Meeting Agenda
Proposed Bylaws Revisions
Nominating Committee Slate
District Assembly Delegate Details

November, December, January and February issues of The Parish Paper

PNWD Holiday Message by the Rev. Bruce Davis, Evergreen UU Fellowship, Marysville, WA
Current PNWD Chalice Lighter Call

“Standing on the Side of Love” Banner
News from Around the District
PNWD Holiday Schedule

rvuuf.org recently completed a major system upgrade [22-Dec-2009]. Although you may notice some cosmetic differences -- Calendar (regular meetings now 'repeat') and Slideshows (now display properly in newer browsers) -- everything else should generally work the same (or better). As with any "remodel" (and some long overdue cleanup & software updates), please Contact: Web Admin (Steve Weyer) if you notice any problems.

The Monthly Bulletin for Congregations is a collection of announcements and updates from the staff groups and committees of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) of Congregations, and from the Church of the Larger Fellowship (CLF).

Latest UUA Congregational Bulletin

This page lists current Policies and Procedures at RVUUF -- most recent additions & updates are indicated by bold Policy #. You can download an individual Policy, an entire section, e.g., Admin, or all sections (in a single file) [PDF format]. "TBU: To Be Updated"

Come Join Us as We Weave a Tapestry of Faith!

This year we will use the following UUA Tapestry of Faith programs to guide our explorations with our children and youth.

Preschool (ages 3-5): Wonderful Welcome
Welcome. Welcome in love. Welcome in friendship. Welcome in faith. How do we welcome? We welcome by sharing intangible gifts, those positive qualities that we all have inside us such as kindness, love, invitation, covenant and empathy. This program helps children understand and practice other values central to Unitarian Universalism such as friendship, hospitality, and fairness. Each session begins with a Wonder Box that contains a symbol of the session's theme. The Wonder Box engages the children's curiosity and encourages a spirit of inquiry and reflection.

Grades 1-3: Faithful Journeys
Children embark on a pilgrimage of faith, exploring how Unitarian Universalism translates into life choices and everyday actions. In each session, they hear historic or contemporary examples of Unitarian Universalist faith in action. Stories about real people model how children can activate their capacity to act faithfully as Unitarian Universalists –in their own lives, and they have regular opportunities to share and affirm their own stories of faithful action. Through sessions structured around the Unitarian Universalist Principles, Faithful Journeys demonstrates that our Principles are not a dogma, but a credo that individuals can affirm with many kinds of action. Over the course of the program, children discover a unity of faith in the many different ways Unitarian Universalists, including themselves, can act on our beliefs.

Grades 4-5: Windows and Mirrors
Mirrors in which they can see themselves, windows in which they can see the world. — Lucille Clifton, African American poet, writer and educator
Unitarian Universalism views our members' multiple perspectives as a blessing. Windows and Mirrors nurtures children's ability to identify their own experiences and perspectives and to seek out, care about and respect those of others. The sessions unpack topics that lend themselves to diverse experiences and perspectives—for example, faith heritage, public service, anti-racism and prayer. The program teaches that there are always multiple viewpoints and everyone's viewpoint matters. The metaphor of windows and mirrors represents the dynamic relationship among our awareness of self, our perceptions of others, and others' perceptions of us.

Grades 7-12: Exploring Our Values through Poetry
Poetry can be an accessible and profound tool in our spiritual practice as we journey toward becoming more conscious as human beings and as Unitarian Universalists. Poetry asks the big questions. So do youth: How do we live? What do we love? What deserves our faith? Who are we, and where do we fit in this universe? How do we keep our hope alive? Both poetry and youth are tireless seekers—of sense, justice, meaning, reason, hope, and sometimes just the plain old company of a good laugh. This program utilizes poems from all over the world and represents different cultures, cosmologies, genders, races, and times in history. Youth will learn how to sponsor a poetry slam in their congregation or community.

rvuuf.org hosts a number of email addresses & lists to facilitate church communication. Some @rvuuf.org addresses are for individual roles; others are for announcements, committees and interest groups. A group address may sometimes be referred to generically as a "listserv" (though we are not actually using LISTSERV software).

Why use a rvuuf.org address? When someone's email address or ISP changes, or someone takes over a new role, or the membership in a group changes, these changes are stored centrally, once -- so that you don't have to remember who is currently in a role or in a group, or update your own email program's address book.

What is the status of our current lists ? In Spring 2009, we migrated to a different email server in order to improve reliability and to reduce maintenance; thanks to Michael Donnelly for donating his time & server to host our email lists for the past several years. Although @rvuuf.org addresses look the same, and should generally function the same as before, there could be some differences, e.g.,

• some messages may bounce (senders and recipients verified differently)
• some messages may incorrectly be flagged as spam (check your spam folder/settings)
• amount of spam might increase/decrease
• some "inactive" group addresses were not transferred

Where can I find a list of @rvuuf.org addresses? current list [updated: 6-Nov-2009]; any recent Member&Friend printed directory contains a listing also.

How do I contact the Email Administrator to change an email address, be added/removed from a list, ask questions, provide feedback, report problems, create a new list, make a list public vs. announce-only vs. member-only, etc.? See: mailadmin or Contact: Email Administrator; our Office Admin may need to verify your status when being added to a committee; new lists, esp. for discussion topics, will need to conform to our Email Policy (see below).

Who can send to a rvuuf.org address? Usually anyone (even outside RVUUF) can send email to our individual and group addresses. However, in the future, there could be special lists with just a few authorized senders:

• announce: important/urgent church-wide announcements sent to all Members&Friends
• announce2: for other misc. RVUUF announcements; you may choose not to receive these additional messages (i.e., opt-out) by contacting mailadmin
• a working or interest group could be configured so that only members of the group could send messages to the group

Why don't we publish email addresses directly in web pages, like john.doe @rvuuf.org? These embedded visible addresses are very easy for spammers to scan and harvest automatically, despite techniques intended to "obfuscate" addresses. We have chosen to list addresses elsewhere, and you can use the Contact Us form, available at the top of every web page; select Web Admin (there) to request that your role be listed as a contact "Category", e.g., "SomeCommittee Chair" (with your email address hidden).

Could we offer addresses for individuals and non-RVUUF interest groups, e.g., john.doe @rvuuf.org, bungee.jumping @rvuuf.org, etc.? Supporting individual email accounts and/or various group addresses may be technically possible, but that would increase the demands on our limited support staff (and mail server) -- plus we need to clarify church-related usage in our Email Policy.

Should a RVUUFian have his/her own email address? Yes. Although some RVUUFians share an email address with a partner/family, it would be best if each individual had his/her own separate email address -- this could reduce confusion in sharing an Inbox (e.g., user1 deletes messages intended for user2), maintain more confidentiality, reduce likelihood of a full Inbox when away, and in the future, enable more fine-tuned web login on rvuuf.org to access more sensitive documents & info (each user corresponds to a unique email address, with certain roles & permissions). You can obtain an additional email address from your ISP account provider (usually), and from free services such as AOL, MSN, Yahoo, Google, etc. (Whether to use web-based "webmail" or to configure your email client application to handle multiple email accounts will be left for you and/or your tech support guru to decide).

What is our email policy? Our email policy & guidelines (current RVUUF policy) are in the process of being updated and formalized as part of a more clear, comprehensive, and consistent RVUUF Communication Policy that could cover all internal & external communications involving different media & purposes -- email announcements & discussions, all forms of static & interactive web site content, print (flyers, newsletters, Order of Service inserts), radio & podcasts, TV & videos, advertisements, public presentations, .... Stay tuned. Volunteer for the Communication Committee.

How are our email lists implemented? We are currently using Google Apps, which is handy especially if you have your own domain and are a non-profit. With fewer lists (or a different host), we might have used MailMan; we also considered forwarding group addresses to Google Groups. As noted earlier, we are not using LISTSERV.

What's next? In addition to maintaining current email groups and adding other relevant interest groups, and creating a Communication Policy, we plan to explore other ways to facilitate discussion, e.g., forums where email could be used to post content & send notifications about new items, but the discussion itself would be organized & archived on the web site (email is not really the best medium to facilitate long or complex discussions esp. involving file attachments).

Questions? mailadmin [Contact: Email Administrator]

This page is an initial attempt to collect in one place the important documents that describe how RVUUF functions. Others?

All documents are PDF format.
(Some documents may eventually require member-only login access).

Editors: Louise Holmes and Ann H. [2010-]
   (Julie Excell [2006-2010]; Don Black [?-2006]; Kate Cleland [2000-?])
Janet Dolan, ad manager

The Rogue Unitarian is our monthly newsletter.

A printed and mailed version is available for an annual $15 subscription. Visitors may sign the RVUUF guest book to receive 6 complimentary issues. Pledging members and friends receive the paper newsletter free of charge. Anyone may download the online version (below).

*2-month summer issue

To read or print the online newsletter, your computer needs PDF viewing software such as Adobe (Acrobat) Reader; Mac OS X users can use Adobe Reader or the built-in Preview application. Note: these documents may be large and may take a few minutes to transfer if your internet connection is slow. To download the file for later access (rather than view online), right-click the newsletter link (ctrl-click for Mac users) to display a pop-up menu containing a Save/Download option. For other platforms & technical information, see our Browsers page.

Newsletter articles about the newsletter:
Jun-Jul 2010: From your (outgoing) Newsletter Editor
Apr 2010: New Editor(s) Needed p.4
Jan 2008: Reading our Newsletter Online p.5
Oct 2007: Calendar & Events p. 3 (photocopied calendar does not appear in online version of newsletter)

Denominational newsletters:
PNWD: Congregational Packet
UUA: Congregational Bulletin (monthly)

The following slideshows display a picture automatically every ~3 seconds, or you can

• hover the cursor over a picture (or number) to pause
• click on a picture to advance sooner to the next picture
• click on a number to resume at that picture

IE8 note: If photos shrink to 'postage stamp' size, try the View > Refresh menu command --
or use Firefox, which many consider to be a more reliable, compatible, speedy and secure web browser than IE.