Mission Peak UU Congregation
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"A Spiritual Community of Caring Hearts and Open Minds"

 


Mission Peak's Spiritual Portrait		 Rev

Rev. Barbara Meyers Ministry

Quarterly Report to MPUUC Board of Trustees

March 2006

 

To the MPUUC Board of Trustees,

 

The following is a list of the activities I have engaged in during the last quarter as part of my endorsed community ministry. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

 

Yours in faith,

 

 

 

Rev. Barbara Meyers

 

Education

Caring Congregation Program

There are a number of activities with regard to the Caring Congregation curriculum:

  • RE classes taught twice with different age levels
  • It will be taught again at SKSM in the fall
  • Will give a presentation at GA in June
  • Have a UUA grant to spread the curriculum to other districts and set up a self-sustaining structure for it. Made a plan for activities on behalf of the grant

Classes and Seminars Given

  • Leading a six-session Old Testament Class
  • Attended teacher training at Starr King School for the Ministry in preparation for teaching a class on Mental Health and Religion next fall

Classes and Seminars Taken

  • Client Forum 2006, a conference for mental health clients
  • A UU Urban Ministry conference
  • A Wellness-workshop that talked about recovery from mental illness
  • A workshop on Dancing with Depression
  • MPUUC Spiritual Retreat (I presented part of this)
  • Center Days education for ministers on disaster preparedness

Healing

Support Groups

  • Continued co-leading new interfaith support group for people with depression and sadness.
  • Strengthened an existing support group for families of those with mental illness

Mental Health Referral List Created A confidential referral list of local therapists, psychiatrists and programs has been created.

Pastoral Associates chair

Continue to be chair of Pastoral Associates program. Recruited a new pastoral associate, and a helper for Caring Circle work.

Spiritual Direction

Prepared to begin spiritual direction at the request of an individual.

Priestly

  • Worship leader for service on "The Care of Difficult People" on February 5
  • Officiated at a wedding after giving pre-marital counseling to the couple
  • Guest minister at Aptos congregation speaking about "Living with Depression"
  • Worship Associate for Christmas Eve service

Social Justice

MPUUC Social Justice Area Mental Health was chosen as one of three focus areas for social concerns work in our congregation.

Community Awareness

  • Mental Health pages on MPUUC web site get 60% of hits to MPUUC web pages.
  • UU World will publish an article about my ministry

'Not in Our Town - Fremont' Mental Health Subcommittee

The focus of this effort is to obtain Crisis Intervention Training (CIT) for police officers in Fremont and Newark. This training which helps officers understand how to handle psychiatric emergencies is available in hundreds of communities throughout the US, including San Jose and San Francisco. We have met with an officer in the Fremont police department who has had the training and also with the local NAMI justice committee. Both are very supportive and want to participate. We are in the process of meeting with many community leaders and with the Alameda Co. Behavioral Healthcare Services management. We also have support of other local communities who have the training.

Involvement of Entire Congregation in Mental Health Efforts

We have been looking for ways that non-task force members can participate in the mental health ministry. The following is a list of volunteer activities that they might do in order to help in this work. We chose these as our top priorities for this year:

  • NAMI walk organizer or participant
  • Give gift packets for mentally ill people.  Tasks are: get the gifts, wrap them and deliver them. Possibly do this in conjunction with NAMI's yearly activity.

 

Other

  • Met with Community Ministry Advisory Committee about every 6 weeks.
  • Chaired Mental Health Task Force about every 6 weeks
  • Met with Committee on Ministry from MPUUC monthly
  • Met with mentor Dave Sammons every month
  • Attended monthly meetings of the Tri-Cities Ministerial Association
  • Read a number of books on religion and psychology
  • Money management. Created bank account for my ministry

 

  
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