This has been a year of coming together as a community, of growing together in love.
One of our greatest achievements this year has come around the teaching of “ask and you will receive”. We have been blessed with wonderful improvements to our Center that aid us in our education and our ability to enhance our programs. We have learned to receive these blessings with gratitude and love knowing that the givers have been equally blessed.
On April 12, 2008, you are invited to join us in a day of retreat. This retreat is called Stepping into our Vision: Designing Our Future Together (a Mutual Ministry Review). We will together look at our successes in living our values and our vision and mission during the past twelve months. Together we will continue our conversation about what our desired cultural values mean to us in 2008.
We will:
• Look at the ways we have lived our mission, vision and values (MVV) in 2007
• Describe what we believe to be the underlying reason for selecting these values as core values of our church,
• Describe what we, as a church, must do to more clearly demonstrate our MVV
• Describe what individual or group behaviors would best model our MVV
• How would our MVV look if they were demonstrated in daily operations at NTUC (our biggest dreams for ourselves and our Center)?
You have told us your visions and dreams of what New Thought Unity is called to be and do in this world. As your leaders, we are carrying this work forward. This is truly an exciting time and as we sing together many Sundays, we know that, “…we are the ones that we’ve been waiting for.”
Service to our larger Unity Community
- Rev. Doris has continued to serve the Licensing and Ordination Committee of the Association of Unity Churches. This team assesses each Ministerial Candidate determining their eligibility for ordination. She is currently chairing the team to create new L & O standards for the Ministerial Program including the Masters of Divinity program candidates.
- We continue our work with MARCC (Metropolitan Area Religious Coalition of Cincinnati) for the Cincinnati Unity Churches. Mark Stroud is our Unity delegate at this time and Adrienne Mrozek is our alternate. Unity was voted into MARCC in November of 2006 as the 17th judicatory (religious denomination) at the annual Delegates Conference.
- We have increased our support of Fredrick Douglas Elementary School by refreshing their school supplies. More importantly we have begun working with them directly as tutors. We will be finding additional ways to serve our community outside our walls this coming year.
Staff Successes
We have made many staffing changes during the past year with great success as we continue to create the very best for NTUC in all ways. Not only are staff doing their jobs, they are helping to create and hold the spiritual consciousness of our Center and doing their jobs with great love and devotion. Each of the key staff will be presenting their achievements in their area for the past year.
