I am pleased to welcome Rev. Tandi Rogers to the Congregational Life staff. Her new role will be Innovation & Network Specialist. This comes in the midst of reorganization at our UUA to enhance our support for growth, outreach and innovation. Rev. Terasa Cooley, our UUA’s Program & Strategy Officer, will soon share more details about the changes we are pursuing in a follow-up blog post. Today, I want to focus on Tandi’s new role.

 

Previously, Tandi served as our UUA’s Growth Strategies Specialist, partnering with Rev. Stefan Jonasson, Director of Growth Strategies and Large Congregations, to make up our UUA Growth Office. Together, they have given our congregations and our UUA many gifts. As researchers, they have helped us understand and adapt to current and coming trends. They’ve brought a new rigor to assessing the impact of our services. And most importantly, they’ve inspired and equipped us to be more bold in pursuing new models of doing church.

 

Although we face tightened budgets and the retirement of Stefan Jonasson, we are committed to continuing this emphasis on research, rigorous assessment and innovation. To accomplish this, we are pursuing a networked approach to our growth services. Instead of continuing a Growth Office with a new director, growth strategies and support systems will now be developed and implemented through cross-departmental teams. Tandi’s work will focus on these systems of heightened collaboration. In particular, she will help us:

• develop deeper partnerships between field staff and headquarters departments,
• ensure an expanded and more integrated approach to supporting “Congregations and Beyond” efforts,
• assess programming to make sure we are helping congregations adapt to 21^st century challenges, and
• offer research support throughout our entire system.

More simply put–and as her title suggests–we are asking her to help all of us stay connected and focused on innovation.

 

All those familiar with her work know that Tandi is the perfect person for this job. She has a passion for teamwork and a wonderfully creative mind. The entire Congregational Life staff and I are thrilled to have her as our partner. And we look forward to all the ways she will help us partner with you.

 

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Reverend Scott Tayler, Director of Congregational Life, our UUA.

Congregational Life Mission:  Serving Interconnection, Innovation & Impact