So am I.

The last decade was our first as a church. Prairie was affiliated with the Unitarian Universalist Association in March, 1999, and hired me as its first, full-time minister in August, 1999. (The church called me as its settled minister five years later.) Prairie celebrated its 10th birthday last March. At the end of that last decade of the 20th Century, you'll recall we were in fear of something called Y2K, the end of computer life as we knew it. It didn't happen.

But we have had a lot to live through and ponder in the past decade: the horror of 9/11; the banking crisis and recession; and the election of our first African American president.

Our church grew from its first 45 members, to 60 members by 2000, to about 135 members now. We are in our third school and may need to find a larger school or site for our church soon. We ran out of candle holders at our Christmas Eve service! Our attendance is regularly 80 and often more than 100, including our children.

During the past decade, we also went from having a volunteer run our religious education program to our current coordinator, Kristin Famula, who works 25 hours per week, along with a paid high school youth advisor, Melissa Bishop, and three paid childcare staff. With about 25 volunteers, who do everything from Lunch Bunch on first Sundays to teaching the sexuality curriculum, Our Whole Lives, our programming for children and youth is second to none. I am enormously proud of how our church welcomes our young people into its worship space and as full participants in community.

As I look toward this new decade, I imagine Prairie becoming even more vibrant, building upon our strong foundation as a caring community.

Most of us feel very much "at home" at Prairie, but we have been intentional about calling ourselves a community, rather than a family. A family has distinct borders and tends to draw clear lines about who is in and out of "the family." Our community has porous borders, and we work continuously at defining and re-defining what it means to be truly welcoming to all who seek sanctuary in our space.

We want to become a liberal religious beacon in our far southern/eastern metro area, a community that welcomes all open-minded and open-hearted spiritual seekers.

This century and these times call for our kind of Unitarian Universalist faith. We are in the process of creating genuine beloved community, while at the same time redefining what it means to be religious, ethical and spiritual in our pluralistic, multicultural society and world.

It has been a wonderful journey so far, and I very much look forward to what we will do together in the upcoming decade as we continuously re-envision the "liberal religious light on the prairie."