Dear Unity Family,
This letter is an update of things that are going on at Unity.
First of all, THANK YOU to all that serve in the many ministries of our community. You are strength of Unity, you keep Unity vibrant, loving and strong. We love you madly!!! And thank you to all that came to the Unity Service Fair on Oct 20. Many people signed up to volunteer in the many ministries of Unity. If you missed it and you are not serving in a ministry but would like to, there is still room for you. Please see the Bradford entrance hall board for places where the community could use your help.
What is it that keeps you coming back to Unity? What is it that you love about our community? During the next few weeks, we are going to be working on the Values for Unity Church in Albany and we truly want to hear from you. On Sun Oct 20 Unity Values workshop, we came up with a plan to have the whole community involved in the development of our community values. The values will state who we are, and what we stand for in more concrete ways than our mission and vision statements already do. Someone mentioned that she didn’t need the values to be in the community and continue serving the community. And that is probably true for most of us. But this work is then for the community, the community needs the development of value because it serves as a way to tell newcomers who we are; it helps promoting Unity; it helps you explain to your friends what Unity is all about in ways that are juicy and simple to explain; and it helps us with alignment with our mission, vision and values before we do any work or service on behalf of our beloved community. So be ready, because every Sunday, for 4 Sundays, you will have an opportunity to tell us what Unity means to you, what you think is the work of Unity, and what you love about our ministry.
Finances and Fun-d-raising. These are two new committees which are at the early stages of formation. The intention for the Finance committee is to provide a more stable structure for more accountability, consistency of reporting and long term planning. Under the current system, we change treasurer every year, the new treasurer needs to learn the system all at once and reporting styles then change dramatically from one year to the next. Practices and procedures then change each year. Having a finance committee will allow us to preserve historical wisdom and support the work of the treasurer.
Thank you to all that generously give monthly of you tithes to support our ministry. The church is doing great work bringing the Unity message to the Capital Region and enlighten hearts through music and unity principles. Many of you have generously provided additional funds to keep the music program strong by inviting guest musicians. THANK YOU! You keep touching our hearts. We are so grateful for a community that expresses its love and support continuously. We do more than other churches. We love and support both of our ministers Rev. Crystal and Rev. Roger, each with their own unique qualities. Yet, as you have seen from the financial reports, we need to adopt other practices that other similar churches and non-for-profit organizations do, that is, fundraising, to keep supporting all that we do. Thus, we are starting a Fun-d-raising committee with an initiative called: Giving Tuesday (Dec 3) where we will join a national campaign to raise donations for Unity. We will need your help to promote giving to Unity Church in Albany. For those of you who work in organizations that do matching funds, Giving Tuesday will be a great opportunity to ask your employer to match your contribution. And please keep an eye for helping us with other initiatives. At some point we will plan a Unity Fair, a pancake breakfast or other creative activities that we think would be good ideas to promote Unity.
Unity Church in Albany is celebrating its 35th incorporation anniversary in November. Keep an eye for the announcement to come celebrate and hear stories about how Unity Church in Albany got to its current location by using Unity Prosperity principles.
That’s all folks.
In loving service,
Karin(a) Reinhold