On Sunday, March 3rd, Unity Church in Albany will hold its Annual Membership Meeting at 12:00 PM following the 10 AM service.

The Board of Trustees invites and encourages everyone in the community to attend.  Your consciousness and energy are an integral part of this spiritual community and we will all be blessed by one another’s essence and presence at the meeting. If you are an active member of our church, you will be asked to vote for three new board  members for the coming year. The meeting will be a hybrid of Zoom and in person.  The link is the Sunday fellowship link. (See below.)

This will be a hybrid meeting both in person at church and on Zoom using this link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81225938152?pwd=VVpzL0lTUVBpUHJSTUw1TVlacnF2Zz09

Meeting ID: 812 2593 8152   Passcode: 051660  OR  Dial in:  +1 646 558 8656 US (New York)

Meeting Agenda

• Opening prayer
• Welcome
• Honoring and blessing the outgoing Trustees for their gift of sacred service
• Bylaws Committee report
• Nominating Committee and Election
• Treasurer’s report
• Announcements regarding upcoming classes and ways to get involved
• Discernment of 2025 congregational representative and alternate
• Closing Prayer

As noted in the agenda, we will conduct the election of three new members of the Board of Trustees at the March 3 meeting.  The meeting is open to everyone– – Active Members, inactive members, and non-members alike.  Only Active Members, however, are eligible to serve as Trustees, vote for the Trustees, and/or serve on the Nominating Committee. We must have a quorum of 15% of the Active Members in order to hold this election.  Please come and vote!

During the meeting, we will use a google e-voting process and will also have paper ballots for anyone who is there in person.

This year, we have three roles to fill:
Two full-term trustee positions (each is a three-year term) and one alternate trustee position (a one-year term).  The positions will be awarded to the candidates based on the number of votes each person receives. The two candidates receiving the highest number of votes will fill the two full-term positions and the remaining nominee will be our alternate trustee.

Nominees

The Nominating Committee is pleased to present well-qualified candidates for the three board openings. Each of these individuals is a spiritually-grounded member of our congregation and has demonstrated their willingness to be of service to our community, and beyond.

They are (in alphabetical order):

Ursula Lauper

Hello everyone!  I’m deeply honored to have been nominated for the board.  My personal history with New Thought communities goes back to the many years I lived in Colorado, where both Unity and Science of Mind are widely popular.  I attended Unity Church in Boulder, CO, and was a member of Mile Hi Church in Denver.  

With that background, it was natural for me to check out the local Unity when I moved to Albany. I would stop by periodically and began attending services regularly in the fall of 2022. Some highlights for me have been the retreat last spring and stepping in to help the music team with sound. (And yes, I’m a particular fan of a certain singer-songwriter, Mark Shepard! 😉) Thanks to these experiences I decided to become an official member this winter.  While I have a fulfilling career at the state health department and have come to love living in the Capital Region, I found that it’s THIS Unity community that gave me the gift of a true sense of home and belonging here.  

My personal spiritual practice has always involved doing my best to walk my talk in all areas of my life.  When I’m designing and implementing a new program at the health department, I see my role as expressing the ideas and actions that want to work through me while supporting those blooming in my staff and collaborators.  This practice has been a major contributor to my success in developing a nationally recognized team, designing award-winning programs, and obtaining millions of dollars in grant funding.  As a Unity board member, I would bring this same care, sensibility, and skillset to nurturing our community and our collective resources.  I thank you for your consideration.

Christopher Quick

Hello, my name is Christopher Quick.  I have been a member of Unity of Albany since August 2023. Part of nurturing my spirituality is attending Sunday services and as many programs and events put on by Unity as possible. Meditation helps me to bring me inner peace and calmness. Being with like minded people helps me feel at home. I feel a sense of spiritual connection with everyone I meet at Unity! 

Volunteering and sacred service brings me a sense of purpose and fulfillment.  I am certainly not a stranger to chipping in. Oftentimes I can be seen ushering on Sunday mornings, helping out with hospitality, or donating time and talent for the building and grounds committee.  I also joined the Random Acts of Kindness group to make “love packs” which are handed out to people in need. 

My spiritual path has long been one of reflection and introspection where I continually ask myself if I handled myself the way God would have me act. My eyes were opened to spirituality by my grandmother who herself was a healer. I grew up as a Methodist Christian at Norton Hill United Methodist Church near Greenville, NY.  I have fond memories of that place, but as I grew older I noticed that the God I was hearing about was angry and jealous.  People who didn’t pray a certain way or think a certain way were condemned to hell. That led me to explore different religions, and spiritual authors like Gary Zukav and Brian Weiss. 

Like I mentioned before, volunteering and sacred service brings me a sense of purpose and fulfillment. I have a background in construction and landscaping. I believe this will come in handy (as it has in the past) for the redevelopment of the backyard area of the church. I can’t wait to get started

Tim Sigrist

Hello Unity friends. My wife Deb and I moved to Albany in the spring of 2020, to be closer to our kids and grandkids. We moved from Rochester, NY, where we discovered Unity about 8 years ago. We’ve been Unity members of Rochester, and now Albany for a combined 7 years. We stayed connected to our new community at Unity of Albany during the lockdown like many of us– watching the live-streamed services, and zoom meetings. I also feed my spiritual life with my meditation practice. I took a weekend training at the Buddhist Society in Rochester a dozen years ago. I go to the “green cathedral;” I tramp in the woods weekly in winter; more often in summer. I feel the spirit clearly in relationships and action!

I was president of the board of the Rochester Catholic Worker’s St. Joseph house for 36 years. Deb and I were both involved in that community in many ways for those years. My desire for social justice, and knowing how important it is to work on issues with other people in community, is why I help lead our Social Justice Circle at Unity. I’m also an usher and part of the Hospitality team, and generally love to volunteer consistently where I’m needed. I’ve worked with Paul Frament to get to know our neighbors by attending the Beverwyck Neighborhood Association meetings, and even helped host them at Unity a few times. 

My career orientation has been working with people. I’m an active listener and I’m not averse to hard work. I was a teacher for 27 years, a nurse for 18 years, a CASAC drug counselor for 5 years. Finally, to round it out: a painter many summers and a garbage man for 5 ½ years. The most important “capper” though, is my parenting, which I shared with my wonderful mate and mother to our 3 boys, as we supported them to manhood.

As I mentioned earlier, I volunteer easily and follow through consistently. I’m very positive about our present community and I know that a stint on the board will help me appreciate our community even more.  

Or join Zoom by phone:1-646-558-8656 (New York) Passcode:676954156