Bill MacMillan
Denise and I joined UUFR in June 2007 and joined the choir within our first month. I am a Music Event leader for monthly music community groups we support—I have led Song Swap for about 6 years; I manage the Meetup Account for UUFR music events; I initiated and led the UUFR Coffee House event for 4 years and then worked with a small group of musicians to transition leadership successfully to others. I support Folky Friday as vice-chair. I perform special music in Sunday Services several times a year and have also provided music for a local Food Kitchen, and UUFR Auctions, and for the Ministry of Music group. I have been Sound Engineer for services and community events (held off hours at UUFR). During the pandemic, I initiated the use of Zoom meetings for for music gatherings including weekly choir rehearsals, Song Swap, and Folky Friday. I also engineered choir videos during the pandemic. I served on the music director search team. I have taken UUFR’s anti-racism classes. I served on the now-defunct Program Council for about 3 years. I was Board Secretary for two years and have been asked back by two Board Presidents to back fill as Secretary about 3 total years served. I served as the Foundation (endowment) committee treasurer. I have provided Google Drive training classes to several Boards and was also asked to provide training to other committees as well. I served as Worship Associate for a couple of years when John Saxon was our Lead Minister. I have been active in a UUFR covenant group for about 15 years.
I started my career as an Air Force officer, where I was quickly given mission commander responsibilities for a 35-person flight crew performing technical reconnaissance duties around the world. I led the crew in mission preparation before our flights, and then inflight during data collection. Over the next 20 years, I went on to serve in several roles as a team or crew leader for both air and space missions. My final assignment was with US Strategic Command as a war plans analyst. All of these roles involved coordination, communications and to some extent, negotiations. As follow on to my AF career, I worked for Harris, HP and Oracle as a software product manager. Product managers coordinate the work of marketing, pricing, software product development, setting product roadmaps, leading customer technical visits, approving product documentation and working with product testing groups. My product’s customers included worldwide telecommunication companies (like AT&T and Verizon, Deutsche Telecom, and others) so I traveled to visit international customers many times a year. This work tied very directly to all the qualities you have listed, except perhaps for logistics. At UUFR, I have participated in boards and committees and other groups where planning and collaboration were a key part of our tasks. I think that I have good listening skills and enjoy working with others to accomplish team goals.
I have been an active UU since 1991. Denise and I joined UUFR one month after moving here in summer of 2007 from Nebraska (where we were active with 2UU church of Omaha). At 2UU, I served on several committees, including the Board of Directors (as president), Committee on Ministry, and also in choir. The month we arrived in NC, we attended Folky Friday (pre-Tom Atkinson) and soon became a musical participant in the UUFR music director’s Soulful Sundown services. Soulful Sundown was a monthly evening UUFR service that revolved around music and readings, led by then Music Director Dan Smith. That event showed us that we’d found a church home. Denise and I both joined the UUFR choir. Over the years I developed some deep friendships with our members, mostly revolving around music, and I have been very active in supporting UUFR choir, where I helped out in many ways with technical support for audio, as well as creating technology to help choir members master difficult pieces faster and more easily. I enjoy cooking and have been providing food dishes for UUFR social justice supported events (Love Wins, etc), the Friday Potlucks, as auction offerings and for the care team. My most memorable time while serving UUFR as Board Secretary came the UUA was asked the UUFR Board of Directors to put our Developmental Lead Minister on administrative leave, pending investigation. This experience was quite challenging on many levels, with perhaps my chief concern at the time being– how will we work to ensure UUFR survives as a healthy congregation? At that time the Board quickly needed to find a way: • communicate status to the congregation–despite privacy issues that prevented open disclosure • continue Sunday services • support and provide leadership for a now-leaderless staff • find and work with legal representation to prevent violation of contracts and privacy • develop working relationships with key UUA staff for the investigation and to help UUFR find both temporary and longer term ministerial replacements • to create a plan to bring a minister back to UUFR (which eventually meant bringing in James) with the buy-in of the congregation. Through that experience, I have learned how important it is to foster as much consensus and buy-in as possible as we make important decisions for UUFR. The process of searching for a minister is perhaps one of the most impactful and important activities a congregant can engage in. That will be my perspective if I am asked to be on the Search Committee.
