Day: September 11, 2020

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Greetings from your Board of Trustees, who are digging into the work of the new board year with virtual meetings and real-life excitement about the board goals we have agreed upon for this year.

This year’s board of trustees consists of newly-elected board members Andrea Delorey and Doug Powell and five continuing members of the board — Sara Steen (who went above and beyond by agreeing to add a fourth year to her board service to help us maintain continuity in the face of all the change that 2020 has brought), Glenn Pearson and Brendan Mahoney, who are beginning their third and final years of board service, Debbie Gentry, who is starting her second year, and me, Sue Sullivan, on my third year of board service and the first of two years of Board Presidency.

At our annual board retreat in August (conducted mostly on Zoom), we settled on the following five goals for the year:

• Strengthening our financial and fiduciary literacy: making our financial oversight a whole-board affair rather than the sole domain of the finance committee, and further refining our financial policies and our monitoring practices.
• Beginning the work of becoming an anti-racism board: educating ourselves and making explicit our collective commitment to anti-oppression work, to seeing with a multicultural lens, and to recognizing and changing racism as we find it in our personal interactions and our institutional policies and practices.
• Making previously identified necessary policy book revisions and creating a system for updating both the policy book itself and the monitoring schedule we created to ensure compliance with our policies.
• Completing our Restoring Wholeness narrative and archival materials: our commitment to the congregation to be compassionately transparent about Foothills’ history of misconduct so that we speak our truth clearly, establish and support healthy boundaries through policy and monitoring, and communicate our commitment to maintaining a safe congregation for all who seek beloved community in Foothills.
• Beginning the process of rewriting our church bylaws and getting the congregation’s input and feedback on them prior to a future congregational vote. To be effective guidance for the board, the Ministry, and the congregation as a whole, bylaws should represent policy governance as we currently inhabit it and the best governance practices as identified by the UUA and other large policy governance churches in our denomination.

The board also set our schedule for the year and will meet on Zoom every third Thursday of the month from 6-8:30 pm.

We are excited to dig into this work, to communicate it out to you regularly, and to further the work of previous boards who recognized the benefits and utility of policy governance in living out our mission more efficiently, joyfully, purposefully, and creatively!

In faith and courageous love,

Sue Sullivan
Board President[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Katie Watkins

Katie believes the best things in life are the result of collaboration and diverse perspectives coming together to produce something greater than any individual could. She is passionate about systems, efficiency and collaboration for better community outcomes. She loves dreaming up the big picture and drafting the roadmap to make it happen. She has a background in operations, fundraising, communications and program development, as well as over a decade of nonprofit management experience in Northern Colorado.

Her greatest joy in life comes from her family. Her husband, Steven, a principal at Wellington Middle School, and daughters Emmaline and Esmae are the lights of her life. Together they love mountains, music and all kinds of food. She is passionate about women supporting other women in all stages of life and especially through the critical moments that make or break us. She believes that one of the most important things in life is to be kind.

Being outdoors makes her soul come alive. It always roots her in gratitude and is one of the reasons she loves living in Fort Collins.

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Colorado weather has always been a little chaotic, and 2020 has brought all kinds of talk of us living in end times, but this week’s start of ash falling from the sky one day followed immediately by snow falling was next level apocalypse. 

The painful eeriness of this moment was captured really well this week when the Washington Post (and other national news outlets) picked up Foothills’ member Scott Denning’s photo of his home.

It’s an incredible photo, but what really struck me was the fact that they ran the photo without recognizing that Scott is a nationally renowned expert and speaker on climate science. He’s spent the better part of the last couple decades trying to get people to acknowledge and act before extreme weather like we’re now experiencing became a reality! And here, once again, his message was set aside while we marvel at this strange world we are living in.

It’s fitting that they missed the link though. In this world where we so often fail to diagnose the reasons for this strangeness and these struggles, and where instead we end up blaming each other, or the most vulnerable – and we never really solve any of them! It’s maddening! And heart wrenching!

And yet….what always inspired me about Scott’s talks, and what you could see in his imaginative reflection last Sunday is that he always reminds us – it’s never too late to act.  It’s always too soon to give up.  There are always choices ahead of us that can make the world better.  We always have a part.

It’s a good reminder about our climate and our earth, and it’s a good reminder in these days overall.

In these times where optimism can be hard to find, I’ve really felt that sense of perseverence alive in our church lately.  As we say in our values – a joyful resilience to keep going not with life as a slog, but as a gift.  It’s available in the invitation to virtual Buckhorn this Friday, and it’s in the upcoming chance to sing with our virtual choir – no musical talent required!   And it will definitely be the spirit of our upcoming Auction – check out all the fun details below.

Thank you for all the ways you continue to show up and with joy – let’s do it again this Sunday at 9 and 11 as we wrap up our Re-Opening (Your Heart) series with a service on what it’s time for in our lives, and what it’s not.  See you there.

With love,
Rev. Gretchen[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Rev. Gretchen Haley

Rev. Gretchen Haley has an audacious ambition for the liberal church, believing in its capacity to transform lives and our world by way of hyper-local relationships and partnerships that inspire the unleashing of courageous love. She oversees worship, community resourcing and outreach, and the intersectional work of our justice teams. She also serves as chief of staff, and ministry lead to the Board. In all of these, she is inspired by the commitment of the countless people who show up to do the sometimes-messy work of the church, and who are leading us to live into our mission for Northern Colorado as it is growing and changing. Her ministry is infused with her relentless curiosity about most things, especially the big stuff of theology, the beauty of creation, the magic of collaboration, and the joy of pop culture. She’s all in on adrienne maree brown’s emergent strategy, and finds solace in the trails in and around Fort Collins. She moved to Colorado from Washington state over 20 years ago for grad school in theatre, and knew immediately that she would never leave. She and her amazing partner, Carri, have 2 teenagers, Gracie and Josef, who both relish and resent being PKs, and who keep her grounded, frustrated, inspired, and humbled, everyday. She is basically obsessed with her two dogs, both large mutts, Charlie and Archer.

Responsible for: Worship, Community Resourcing and Outreach, Justice Ministries, and Congregational Leadership