Wy'east has some big decisions to make in the next month about where we will worship and what time we will worship. This may be the first that some of you are hearing of this. So today I am going to be laying out my understanding of the opportunities before us now. This is my understanding, after a year of listening to your hopes and dreams for Wy'east and after a year of seeing our financial and spiritual realities. Ultimately this choice of how and if we change will be made by you, by a congregational vote sometime in June.

This is certainly not the first time Wy'east has had to choose where and when to worship. I'd like to start today by telling or reminding you of some of Wy'east's history.

Wy'east came together in 1997 out of an interest in having an intergenerational spiritual community. The first informational meeting was at Grace Episcopal near Lloyd Center. After 9 months of planning, the first public worship service was at St. David's Episcopal. That planning group voted whether to worship in the morning or evening. Morning won by small margin.

The building search for morning worship space was difficult - public schools were expensive, no storage and could only be used on Sunday mornings - no evening meetings or classes.

It was looking like a big challenge to find a space to honor the vote to worship in the morning. Someone found Metropolitan Community Church on NE Broadway where Wy'east could have evening services. However, there were rats in the RE rooms and no kitchen access. There were lots of people who did not want to move from MCC but there was a supermajority in favor of moving and so the search for a new space began again.

In 1999, Wy'east moved to Trinity United Methodist on 39th and Steele. This was a big worship space, with offices, RE classrooms, playground for the kids and kitchen. At this time, the congregational membership was at around 100 adults. There were many conflicts in these years - too numerous and detailed to describe today but the result of all the conflict was that the congregation split in half - half left and half stayed. Wy'east then became a lay led fellowship.

Around 2003 it was clear that Wy'east no longer needed the massive sanctuary or the multiple RE rooms and so Waverly Heights seemed a good match. This intimate sanctuary with just two RE rooms seemed like a perfect place to heal and grow.

And here we are five years later. In many ways we have outgrown this space. Our children's RE program has grown considerably in the last couple years - this year in particular, I am happy to say. We often have four groups of young people meeting during the service and we have only two classrooms. We could easily make an additional group by splitting the large 3-6 year old group into two, if we had another space.

I think what is next in Wy'east's story is to try a morning worship service. Not because we don't do evenings well. We do and clearly there is an interest in evening worship or y'all wouldn't be here today. And I would like to continue to see, not a full worship service, but some spiritually enriching gathering that happens at Wy'east on Sunday evenings to honor that part of our history.

Wy'east has the clearest sense of mission that I have ever seen in a congregation. And it is not found in a mission statement but in the hearts of almost everyone that I have talked to who is part of Wy'east or interested in Wy'east. At its core, Wy'east is a family friendly spiritual community. That's not my vision of Wy'east. That is a vision that was here long before me and will probably be here long after I am gone. This impulse is in its founding and it is what so many of you dream of when you envision the future of Wy'east: a family friendly, intergenerational spiritual community.

There is this mission of being family friendly and yet we meet at a most unfriendly time for families. It is no wonder to me that we have so many kids from 3-8 years old. These are kids that are old enough to have an 8pm bedtime (or later) and they are young enough that they are not doing homework on Sunday nights. Sunday evening worship is a challenge for any family that feels that they want Sunday evening as quiet family time, a time to gear up for the week ahead, a time for doing homework or simply a time for those final hours of rest before the bustling week ahead.

We have found an option for morning worship and I want to be clear that we did not exactly seek out this space out of an interest in moving or worshipping at a different time. What happened is that last summer, our host congregation, Waverly Heights, let us know that they would be raising our rent from $650 per month to $1000 per month. You will see in the annual meeting today that this has really crippled our budget. There are some other factors too, but with this massive and unexpected rent increase we are not able to add any fun new staff or programs this year and it looks like we will end next year having gone through much of our savings.

At this time we have three options as I see it. We can either stay the course with the current staff salaries and rent costs and face the possibility of dissolution after two years, at best.

The second option would be for Wy'east to cut the staff and return being a lay-led fellowship with a budget for guest speakers but without a minister.

The third option is to try something completely new. Accepting the possibility that we may have taken this evening service experiment as far as it can go and that it is time to try another way.

There might be a couple other options - becoming a surrogate congregation of another church in town or worshipping on Saturday evening - but one thing is clear. Staying the course is really not going to work beyond next spring. We just won't have the money to support the rent and the staff.

Last year, after we got the news of the rent increase, the board began the search for a new space. We found a couple options that were not available in the mornings or did not have compatible theologies. When I contacted Pacific Crest in February, they said that they were not interested in renting to anyone. But when the director, Becky Lukens, got word that we were a Unitarian Universalist congregation, she was interested. Becky has been impressed with the social justice stands that Uus have taken and she has multiple members of First Church on her board. So she called me back and we started talking. In the past few months there have been glitches in our negotiations, mainly over the timing of their million-dollar renovation of the building. The Wy'east board decided that it was too uncertain of a deal to inform the congregation about - a couple weeks ago Pacific Crest decided that they are putting off the renovation for another two years.

So I want to be clear with you. This space does not meet 100% of our needs. I'm going to tell you what I see as the major benefits of this space that the major drawbacks.

The biggest benefit is that it is centrally located on 29th between Couch and Davis, around the happening neighborhood of Laurelhurst. 28th street is bustling with restaurants and shops and it is close to multiple bus lines. This building is lovely from the outside. It has a courtyard on the corner that could be an outdoor worship space in the summer. There are at least four big classrooms, plus some bonus space that could be used for small groups if need be. The worship space seats 160 comfortably where as Waverly seats more like 70. Pacific Crest is an alternative 7th-12th grade school that we could potentially partner with - inviting them to our special events and partaking in theirs. They are very supportive and excited about Unitarian Universalism. PCCS leadership could also be mentors to us since they are a grassroots organization that managed to buy their own building so they could have something to teach us about buying our own building some day, hopefully soon.

And now for the drawbacks: First of all, the worship space. There is a reason why they are doing a million dollar renovation on this room. It was built as a Nazarene Church - in the sixties, I think. There is ugly carpet and fixed pews. For those with a decent sense of smell, it smells musty and for people who have allergies, this could be an uncomfortable place to be after a while.

The other big drawback is that since the classrooms are used by middle and high schoolers, we would need to child proof the classroms every Sunday. We would also need to set up the worship space each Sunday, which would probably take twice as long as it does now. We also would have to do our potlucks differently because there isn't a great big dining room like there is downstairs.

The good news is that a member of Wy'east has offered an anonymous challenge grant to pay for the deep cleaning of this space before we would even move in. This grant is contingent on members of the congregation stepping up to make this happen. There are two other people who have mentioned that they would like to each donate $500 to support this move. There is also someone who has stepped forward to lead a transition team of people who would make this move happen in the next couple months.

My sense is that Wy'east has taken this experiment of evening worship as far as it can go. Wy'east has been in lots of different worship spaces - big ones, small ones, varying theologies. Wy'east has tried being lay led and has also been led by multiple ministers - quarter-time, third-time and full-time.

So could it be time for another experiment by trying morning worship? It is an experiment. We can always change our mind if we don't like it.

After many conversations in the coming weeks, we will have a congregational vote on what to do - should we stay or should we go. I'll be available to chat today for 10-15 minutes immediately after the service and before the congregational meeting.

I want to be clear that if we do this thing, let's have fun with it. Let's do it with Joy knowing that Wy'east is taking one step closer to being who you say you want to be, becoming 'the family friendly spiritual community' Wy'east has always held so dear.

There are no guarantees that moving to a family friendly worship time will work, but I don't want to move to a family friendly worship time because it has guaranteed success. I want to do it because being a family friendly spiritual community is at the heart of who this congregation is and if we are not leading from our heart then we are leading from our fear and that is no place to be.

There is an old cynical saying that instead of running toward heaven, most people will take one step at a time away from hell. Let's not do that. No matter what we decide to do, let's go bravely and boldly toward what we most love. And if we are doing that, then what I can guarantee is that no matter how it turns out, we are going to feel good about it.