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Opportunities for Connection
CER Update ~ January 2025 |
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Featured Resource: General Assembly 2025 in Baltimore!
We invite you to join us for the 2025 UUA General Assembly in Baltimore and/or online from June 18-22—a chance to connect, reflect, and build a future that meets this moment with purpose and courage. This year’s theme, “Meet the Moment,” calls us to engage with the evolving challenges of our world, exploring fresh ways to deepen our faith and respond boldly to our mission. Across five days of powerful worship, insightful workshops, and community-building experiences, we’ll find inspiration together, reconnect with friends and colleagues, and return to our congregations renewed. Join us in person or online to be part of this transformative experience, where every voice matters and our shared vision grows stronger. GA Registration is now open and rates go up on March 31.
Now Accepting Program Proposals
If you are interested in proposing a program for the UUA GA 2025 EduCenter, the deadline is January 15. This platform will serve as a comprehensive educational hub for our event, allowing for a diversity of educational opportunities. Presenters have the flexibility to pre-record a video, present a live webinar, or do both. Presenters can also upload documents, dozens of photos, and contact information. In addition, presenters will have the opportunity to schedule an in-person meet-up for further discussion and Q&A. We are seeking impactful workshops and presentations that align with our theme, “Meet the Moment." Learn more at the GA website.
SPECIAL INVITE FOR YOUTH AND EMERGING ADULTS
Please share the message (YouTube) with the UU youth (14-18ish) and emerging adults (18-24ish) you know that they are invited to submit a proposal to present a pre-recorded or a live webinar at the 2025 General Assembly. The workshop can have an in-person meetup component. Visit the GA website to see what it sparks. If you have an idea but it seems overwhelming, you can email your friendly Lifespan Faith Engagement staff at youth@uua.org and they’re more than happy to accompany you through the application process or think with you about who you could partner with and even help you make those connections. |
Gather with UUs for Winter Institute
Winter Institute (WI) is a long-held tradition of gathering over President’s Day weekend for a mid-winter retreat at Salt Fork State Park in Cambridge, Ohio. This retreat was the brainchild of a group of Summer Institute (SI) attendees who wisely determined that a year between SI gatherings is just TOO LONG to wait to gather with extended Beloved UU Community!
This year we gather February 14 at 3 pm through February 17 at noon at Salt Fork State Park Lodge near Cambridge, OH. Registration is open! |
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From UU Institute
Reimaging Bridging: A Framework for Youth Ministry
This is FREE! And it's brand new. Bridging is a ritual of transformation for Unitarian Universalist youth who are transitioning to the first stage of adulthood. Reimagining Bridging: A Framework for Youth Ministry is not a specific curriculum, but instead is a non-linear framework with accompanying tools and resources to help Unitarian Universalists think differently about milestone events. You can find it at the UU institute. The class is free, but it does require that you create a free account to access the materials.
Now Free! Safety Class for Congregations
The UU Institute class, Threats from Without, Care from Within, is now available for free on UU Institute. Do note you will need to create a free account to access the class. This is a series of recordings from an all day online conference run in October 2023. The class is part of the new UUA Community Resilience Hub. |
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March is Small Congregation Month!
Join Us for Small Congregation Month (formerly Pi Day) March 2025. Three webinars on small congregation topics on March 5, 11 and 20 8:00 pm ET/5:00 pm PT with pre-work on UU Institute. Additional cohort convenings the fourth week of March, dates TBA.
Registration opens at the end of January - stay tuned! |
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Summer Institute (SI) is an intentional, multi-generational UU community that comes together each July for a week of fun, community and spiritual growth. Gathering for over 40 years, SI includes an active children’s program, a vibrant youth-led youth program, and a strong young adult community as well as many opportunities for the entire community to come together through dance, music, games, and worship.
In 2025, Summer Institute gathers July 6-12 at Oberlin College in Oberlin, OH. Our theme speaker will be Rev. Joanna Fontaine Crawford, speaking on the theme Live a Life on Fire: Change the World with Your Love. Learn more about SI and past activities at their website and their video (YouTube). |
Skinner Sermon Award Seeks Nominees |
The Skinner Sermon Award honors Clarence Skinner, the late dean of the Tufts College School of Religion in Medford, MA and a major voice of prophetic religious liberalism, and is presented annually to the preacher of the sermon best expressing Unitarian Universalism's social principles. It comes with a $500 honorarium.
We particularly encourage and invite sermons that speak to one of our four intersectional justice priorities (bodily autonomy inclusive of reproductive justice and trans liberation; decriminalization; democracy and electoral justice; and climate justice).
Submissions must be received by April 25, 2025. Submissions may be offered as a document of the sermon text and/or as a video recording of it being offered. Please be sure to include the author's name, address, church affiliation, phone number, email address, and indication of when and where the sermon was delivered in your email submission. Submit a nomination. |
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Sunday, January 26, 7-8:30 p.m. ET and Tuesday, January 28, 12-1:30 p.m. ET
Religious Education Curriculum: How is it working for us?
There are some patterns and pathways emerging as we notice what’s working and where we’re headed as UUs tending faith development in congregations. We’ll dive into models designed to help you find your place on the “curriculum continuum” and focus on what matters most for your congregation in this moment. Religious Education Meet-Ups are open to all professional and lay leaders engaged in the work of faith development in our congregations. Registration is free and required.
UUA’s Faith Development Co-Lab, a joint working group of the Lifespan Faith Engagement and Congregational Life offices, sponsors this quarterly gathering. |
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30 Days of Love 2025
January 20–February 14
Join Side With Love for 30 Days of Love 2025! Beginning Monday, January 20th through Friday, February 14th, this annual event offers spiritual nourishment, political grounding, and shared practices of faith and justice over four weeks. These offerings are for individuals, families, religious professionals, partners, and communities who need soulful sustenance for the work of liberation and justice. Find everything on the 30 Days of Love 2025 on the Side With Love website starting January 20. Subscribe to our newsletter to get an update when content is available. |
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Side with Love has a number of events coming up. Be sure to check their website for new events near you.
UU the Vote 2024 Celebration
January 14 at 5pm PT / 8pm ET
Join UU the Vote, Side with Love and key partners for this celebration as we mark and honor the incredible work of UUs in 2024 to building and growing our democracy. Please come and invite your congregations' democracy, UU the Vote and justice teams as we dig into our work ahead. Registration is free and required.
UU Climate Justice Revival Facilitator Training
January 15 at 4 pm PT / 7 pm ET
Are you one of your congregation's facilitators for the UU Climate Justice Revival? All facilitators need to join one of our 2-hour Facilitator Training Sessions. Come learn how to be the best facilitator you can be for our congregation's Revival! Registration is free and required.
Good Trouble 2024 Celebration
January 28 at 5 pm PT / 8 pm ET
Join UU the Vote for this special event for Good Trouble Congregations honoring and marking the incredible leadership of congregations who worked to achieve Good Trouble status in 2024. Congregations will be contacted in early January once all data has been submitted and vetted to affirm your submitted work. Please invite your team, congregation and folks who made it happen! Registration is free and required.
2024 UUA Social Justice Award Nominations Wanted!
Bennett Award for Congregational Action on Human Justice and Social Action
The Bennett Award for Congregational Action on Human Justice and Social Action honors a Unitarian Universalist congregation that has done exemplary work in social justice and is accompanied by a $1,000 cash award.
Submissions must be received by April 25, 2025. Submissions consist of a short description form, and if applicable, a testimonial from a partner organization or community group, and any relevant media about the congregation's justice ministry, including news articles or photos. Submit a nomination. |
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The Support of Community
by Beth Casebolt
If you have seen this lovely meerkat pop up in some of our staff photos and wondered why it was there, the CER Staff has a mascot.
At a staff retreat in December of 2017, the CER staff did a team building exercise that in a round-about way brought up the idea of how we, as a team, were like meerkats. While each of us had specialty areas, we all had general skills and would do what needed done, like meerkats do to protect their home.
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The following events sponsored by CER are upcoming in the region. For full details and a complete list visit the CER Calendar Page. Also, please note, if you are mailing a check to the regional office to pay for your registration, you must write the name and date of the event in the memo line. Otherwise we may not get it properly credited.
If you are looking for Sparks Modules for Religious Educators or Our Whole Lives Trainings, check the full calendar on the UUA website.
- Taproot: A National BIPOC Gathering ~ January 8, 2025, 8-9:30 pm ET, online.
- RE Quarterly Meet Up, January 26, 2025, 7 pm ET, online. Two date options
- RE Quarterly Meet Up, January 28, 2025, 12 noon ET, online. Two date options.
- Taproot: A National BIPOC Gathering ~ February 12, 2025, 8-9:30 pm ET, online.
- Winter Institute, Feb 14-17, 2025, Salt Fork State Park Lodge, Cambridge, OH.
If your congregation or cluster has an exciting project that could use funding from our Chalice Lighter Program, our next Intent to Apply deadline is February 1 for grants to be awarded in May 2025.
Congregations are hiring, check out the UU Job Board to see what is available. |
Mosaic Lifespan Anti-Racism Curriculum Series Info Sessions
Curious about the new Mosaic Lifespan Anti-Racism Curriculum series? Come learn more and get your questions answered at these drop-in info sessions!
UU World Launches Digital Newsletter
Want to stay updated on the latest from UU World? You can now sign up for the magazine's free twice-a-month emailed newsletter, Wayfinder, which launched in October. As a Wayfinder subscriber, you will get the latest news and storytelling from UU World to help you chart a course that aligns with the Shared Values of Unitarian Universalism. Expect moments of insight, inspiration, joy, spiritual nourishment, and more! Sign up at the UU World website.
The Spark RE and Music Leadership Professional Development Programs provide Unitarian Universalist Religious Professionals learning communities where they can easily access applicable skills and tools for religious leadership. Courses are also open to interested lay leaders. Check out the lists of classes, these are great resources!
The UUA has a Disaster Relief Fund for those who want to make a donation to help congregations who have faced losses due to tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfires and more. Please donate if you can. Learn more about the work of the Disaster Relief Fund. We are Better Together.
The UUA is hiring for several positions. Find job descriptions and application information at their Job Openings webpage. |
Central East Region
PO Box 425, St. Clairsville, OH 43950
Unitarian Universalist Association
24 Farnsworth Street, Boston, MA 02210-1409 |
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