Board Mandates vs. Healthy Community: Not A Duality.

In the Steering Committee's meeting with the board last spring, it became clear that the District boards do not have a broad enough mandate to be able to provide all the services that a strong young adult community needs. There are, in fact, three categories in which our young adult organizing can fall: what the board must do, work that the district can do, and work which the district cannot do. These are illustrated in the Venn diagram below and are explained presently:

The work that the board must do consists of to-do items, goals, and benchmarks that the board receives directly from the UUA. The board is held responsible for meeting this mandate. It will consistently pressure its young adult committee to meet these benchmarks. The board may also be obligated to appoint the replacement to a young adult committee that is not meeting these benchmarks.

Aside from what the board must do, young adults can also organize and volunteer to do work that the district can do, which I will call district-accountable board work. This is work that deals with legality, policy, the district budget, allocation of district resources, and lobbying for power within the UUA. The young adult committee can provide resources to congregational boards and recognized congregational groups but not necessarily to individual young adults seeking to do work within congregations.

Outside of this board lies what the board cannot do. Outside of the board mandate lies anything that does not directly serve congregational boards and existing congregational groups. This includes things that indirectly support congregational boards or the health of Unitarian Universalism as a whole, such as: support for individual organizers, district-wide conferences, the maintenance of a network of individuals, and the health of an ecstatic liturgical tradition. An organization doing this work must be run by grants or donations and organize separately from UUA and District boards.

About two years ago, I envisioned a model in which there were two sets of Young Adult committees. On the inside, the YA Steering Committee would run whatever District Programming fell under the mandate of the board. On the outside, a Programming committee would plan conferences and network events such as potlucks and Soulful Sundowns together to create healthy space for the movement as a whole. Additionally, the Outreach committee would promote these events and build the UUYAN network from congregations and the general public through field organizing and maintaining the "bridge" with YRUU and young groups.

It seems quite clear that our community needs have outgrown the structures of the UUA, and our transition towards independent structures is a reflection of that reality. What's more, our community offers a radical critique of the hierarchical nature of the UUA, and seeks a new way of organizing church community. We seek a democratic politics and a participatory liturgy.

It is within this wider framework that we can ask questions like: how do we create the community we want ten years from now? How do we include people from the wider community and grow our own? How is what we called "youth and young adult programming" in the past different from our congregational life?