The pop news is buzzing about the current $540 million Mega Millions jackpot so many people hope to win. I don’t play the lottery because the odds are stacked against you and the life stories of those who win never seem that happy. But in our imaginations, we can imagine that much fresh money arriving for Unitarian Universalism. Or not: perhaps that too would feed dysfunction.
But what might be done with another $54 million.
Or what might you accomplish with $5,400 to do something new? Or $540? $54? It seems to me you need a goal and a plan before the resources do any good. But what might that be?
With $54-million I would endow a Home Mission Society, to fund church planting efforts in North America. And I would not entrust the funds to the UUA itself, but to an independent oversight board. I just don’t trust the UUA to use the funds wisely – their history is to pursue only one church extenstion model at any given time. And typically the model pursued is one that had peaked in other communities about 10 years prior.
Oh, and if I was being really pushy, I might require that the new churches funded by this Society be jointly affiliated with the UCC, NACCC, or ICCC. Just to push against the sectarian envelope!
I confess that we here briefly discussed what we would do – the lump sum vs yearly pay, and we came up with we’d have to save most of it for health care. If our one ticket proves the winning one, then I would take some of my share to help develop some sort of 21st century Missionary Rider – not sure if this means a visiting minister or a YouTube Evangelist. I look forward to being reminded of this after our number is drawn.