First Unitarian Stewardship

A conversation with Linda Tartaglia about joining First Unitarian and getting involved in the church community. Brian Shea: How long have you and your family been members of the church? Linda Tartaglia: About 2 years now. My husband Jim attended first, and then I started in the spring about a year later and by the end of the summer/early fall, that’s when we became members. Brian: A few months ago I was ushering and Jim was the welcome person in the front of the church. So we were just kind of chatting and it was funny because I think our family joined around the same time your family did, but I just assumed you had been members for a long time. You know when you go into a new place you assume that everyone has been there for a long time? So he was like, “oh yeah, we just joined relatively soon”. And he had mentioned, that he was brought up in the Catholic Church. Linda: Yeah. Me too. Brian: My wife and I as well, so we were kind of chatting abo

"We wanted to be part of what made the Church a place we were drawn to." This week's post is an interview with Emily Miller and Jim Burakiewicz about their experiences as new members of the First Unitarian community. Before you began attending First Unitarian, had you been attending another church or other faith community? No, not since childhood. Emily had explored Unitarianism before, but had not found a place that fit. Jim had been brought up Catholic and had not attended church for years. How did you hear about First Unitarian and what made you decide to visit? Emily had initially found First Unitarian and was interested in its history. We were both looking for a deeper community here in Worcester and decided that First Unitarian was a place to look for it. Why did you decide to become active participants in the church community? We found that everyone was so welcoming and friendly that we wanted to become contributing members of the church. As a path of

You might remember that as part of last year's campaign, the Stewardship Committee coordinated in-person visits with members of the church. The purpose of these visits was to chat about members' experiences at First Unitarian, the four goals of the Stewardship campaign* and member pledges. The core of these conversations was about participation . We discussed questions like: How are you feeling about your connection with the church? Are there any groups, volunteer activities or leadership opportunities that you'd like to be more involved in? What are your thoughts about this year's stewardship goals? Do you have any concerns? My Experience as a Visiting Steward Our family officially joined First Unitarian at the beginning of 2016. And while we had attended sporadically for years, there were lots of people we didn't know. So when Ellen announced that the Stewardship Committee was looking for volunteers to be visiting stewards, I thought it would be a fun way t