In addition to NTAUUS, our member congregations are also affiliated with the Southwestern Unitarian Universalist Conference
and the Unitarian Universalist Association.
The 2009 Annual Report can be viewed
here in PDF (440 KB) format.
Our churches are "congregational" in that each of the 1,041 congregations in the United States, Canada, and overseas is autonomous. Each congregation has a unique personality, owns its own property, is democratic in polity and operation, and is governed entirely by its members.
The congregations unite in the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations (UUA) to provide services that individual congregations cannot as easily provide for themselves. The UUA, an association of free churches, provides resources including religious education materials and ministerial training and accreditation. The larger body also gives us a national and international presence.
In North America, each congregation is associated with one of the UUA’s nineteen Districts. The mission of the UUA Districts is to serve as a resource for local congregations and to help extend Unitarian Universalist influence in the larger community.
The Southwest District, also known as the Southwestern Unitarian Universalist Conference, includes most of Texas (excluding the El Paso area), all of Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana and parts of Tennessee and Missouri. The Southwest District also includes the city of San Miguel de Allende and several emerging congregations in Mexico.
Rev. Susan Smith is the District Executive for the Southwest District and serves as the UUA's local presence. Her office is the first to contact about UUA services and your relationship to the Association.
Program Consultants, employed in most Districts, serve the District in specific program areas based on local priorities. The District staff can render direct service to UUA congregations, including consultations on a wide variety of congregational issues such as long-range planning and organizational development, ministerial transitions, leadership training, and conflict management.
Districts are governed by Boards of Trustees who develop policy and support local congregations in efforts to grow, develop, and extend Unitarian Universalist ideals. Each District elects a member to the UUA Board of Trustees, the policy-making body for the UUA.
In the 1960's, members of the North Texas churches joined together to form NTAUUS, the area 'cluster' of congregations. The purpose was to cooperate in using a short-lived federal program to build a low-income housing apartment complex. With parenting and health classes on-site, ours was the very ideal of what HUD intended. When Raible Place was sold in 2003, the proceeds were used to form an endowment to be used in helping build our congregations, and possibly for another housing project.
Encouraged by the success of Raible Place, NTAUUS has continued as a way of coordinating the efforts of our congregations in North Texas. These local connections are vital, since our District is so large and district gatherings are often far away. NTAUUS projects have included coordinating a pulpit exchange program, workshops and seminars, purchasing large quantities of grocery gift cards for fund-raising, sponsoring advertising campaigns, and even helping secure a minister for the cluster. We also helped in the formation of our newest congregation in Southlake, Pathways Unitarian Universalist Church.
NTAUUS is governed by a Board of Directors made up of two representatives appointed by each congregation, or for our larger congregations, one director per every two hundred members. The Ministers of each participating congregation and the Southwest District Executive form an Advisory Board that the Board of Directors can consult when required. We elect our President, Vice-President, Secretary, and Treasurer for two-year terms of office.
For additional observations on the history, and thoughts on the future, of NTAUUS, read An Address by Mike Elsberry, Association President from 1993 to 2008.
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