As a function of the social action council, I would like to conduct a more thorough priority survey. We need to be a little more clear about our goals. The result of collating the survey should be a sort of platform that explains what Emerson's positions are on everything we might care about. The current survey results are almost adequate to build such a platform, but I'm not going to try right now, because I know it wouldn't be representative enough.
We also need to communicate with membership all the things we are doing. There's this Afghan refugee initiative that's basically Ellen Norton and a couple of other people working on a shoestring budget. That's not organized through Emerson, though they did spend a good chunk of last night's SaC meeting discussing it
even though it wasn't on the agenda
this is a draft, it's okay to be snarky right now
As of April 2025, the Social Action Council has provided programming for two Sunday services. We decided it was enough of a good idea that Ellen is going to find out what weeks are avaialable for the remainder of 2025 and we will have a conversation as a committee about how many more weeks we want to fill and what we want to talk about.
Currently on the drawing board:
- something LGBTQ-focused that David would help put together
- something income disparity related by Ellen and Linda whose last name escapes me.
I'm going to try to make the issues we cover roughly match the survey responses we get. No promises. We will need to repeatedly ask the congregation for grace, because where we put our effort isn't going to quite match our stated priorities for a while.
All this builds up to a new relationship between Social Action and Worship. Sunday Services become one of the tools that Social Action uses to advance its agendas, and Social Action becomes part of the bureau we consult for programming.