Category Archives: Liberal religion

30 new congregations in 2008

At Reignite, Stephen reminds us of Lyle Schaller’s advice:

The single best approach for any religious body seeking to reach, attract, serve, and assimilate younger generations and newcomers in the community is to launch three new missions annually for every one hundred congregations in that organization. A significant fringe benefit of this policy is that it usually will reduce the resources for continuing subsidies to institutions that will be healthier if they are forced to become financially self-supporting.

For Unitarian Universalists in the United States, that would mean about 30 new congregations/missions in 2008. (But I estimate we’ll see less than ten new church starts this year.)

Coincidentally, the latest issue of UU World magazine came in the mail yesterday, and it contains a good article on the history of the fellowship movement. The fellowship movement, at its peak, resulted in over 50 new congregations a year:

The tenth year of the fellowship movement proved to be a high water mark for new starts in a single year. Of 55 fellowships organized in 1958, 33 have survived — more than from any other year. But from that peak, a slowdown began. The flagging energy and limited budget of the small staff were partly responsible. Munroe Husbands, the program’s director, had one assistant and a budget of only $2,300 in 1957, with which he was expected to start 25 new fellowships and service the existing ones. But there were also other reasons for the steady decline in new fellowships. Just as congregations reach growth plateaus, so did the movement as a whole. The program had already planted fellowships in the most promising com munities, leaving fewer targets for additional growth.

I’m inclined to question the conclusions of the last two sentences. While there’s no doubt that the movement reached a growth plateau in 1958, was that a cause of the declining number of new church starts, or a result? Inadequate funding for the major growth initiative of the denomination could be a big part of the reason for the decline that occurred in Unitarian Universalist membership from c. 1961, until a small amount of growth began happening c. 1980.

Rather than quibble about the past, though, I’m more interested in asking the question: what do we do now? Can we encourage grant-making bodies within Unitarian Universalism to stop funding existing congregations, and devote all their grant money to “missions” and new church starts? How about encouraging districts to re-allocate services from existing congregations to “missions” and new church starts (OK, given how self-centered many congregations are, that’s politically improbably, but a guy can dream)? How about allocating lots of funding for innovative “missions” like FUUSE and Micah’s Porch, instead of funding advertising in Time magazine? My district, Ballou Channing District (southeastern Mass. and Rhode Island) is going to have a Unitarian Universalist Revival this spring — should we be doing more of that?

What are your ideas? How would you encourage 30 new Unitarian Universalist congregations in 2008?

Big donors at church

Dad and I were just talking. Non-profit organizations that rely heavily on individual donations (as opposed to non-profits that rely on grants) typically recognize big donors in some way, e.g., in the annual report there will be listings of donors under categories such as “Platinum Givers,” “President’s Circle,” etc. Indeed, fundraisers tell us that big donors really like to be recognized in this way, and this should be one of the techniques you should use to cultivate your big donors.

Since Unitarian Universalist churches are heavily dependent on individual donations, it would make sense to publish such lists in a congregation’s annual report: “Channing Circle, giving $20,000+” and “Parker Patrons, giving $10,000-20,000,” etc. However, as an essentially egalitarian religion, we don’t want to leave out people with modest who means who happen to give a substantial percentage of their income, so Dad and I thought we’d include that in the categories of giving, e.g., “Channing Circle, those who give $20,000+ or 10%+ of gross annual income,” etc.

Would you implement such a system to reward big donors and stimulate increased giving in your congregation? Discuss.

Emergence in Chicago

Two posts about the same worship service at Micah’s Porch, a Unitarian Universalist emerging church/ mission in Chicago:

David Pyle’s account here.

ck’s account here.

In a comment on ck’s blog, I noted that this sound not unlike what Rev. Hank Peirce was doing in the 1990’s with his punk rock worship services, held at a club in the Boston area. Except that Hank wasn’t “preparing to launch a spiritually progressive church,” he was just holding worship service — oh, and the Ramones are not U2.

Correction

In an earlier post, I stated that the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) Board of Trustees cut off funding to the Steering Committee of Young Religious Unitarian Universalists. This statement was incorrect. The cut-off of funding to continental YRUU was not an action taken by the Board, it was taken by UUA staff. A statement on this issue has been issued by UUA staff today: Link.

In emotionally-charged issues like this one, misinformation can be harmful, and I apologize to my readers that I did not check my facts before writing my post.

Update: A denominational politics wonk has informed me that UUA staff makes funding decisions, which are reviewed by the Board’s Finance Committee but rarely challenged in practice. The funding issue should be seen as separate from YRUU’s status as a sponsored organization; sponsored organizations are designated by the Board, not UUA staff; and at this point, YRUU maintains its status as a sponsored organization.

About Unitarian Universalist youth ministries

Yikes.

A post by my evil alter ego, Mr. Crankypants, has managed to annoy people. Here’s the situation: The Board of Trustees of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) correction, UUA staff has cut off funding for the Steering Committee for the continental Young Religious Unitarian Universalists (YRUU). Mr. Crankypants tried to make the point that sometimes organizations have to cut back on programs that are no longer serving large numbers of stakeholders, and he drew an analogy between YRUU and General Assembly (GA), suggesting that maybe funding for GA could be cut as well. In one fell swoop, Mr. C. managed to annoy both the fans of GA, and the fans of YRUU.

But in his fiscally-conservative zeal for budget-cutting, Mr. C.’s post managed to ignore the deeper issues that came into play with the funding cut-off to YRUU. I’d like to list a few of the deeper issues that I see, to try to make it clear how the death-rattle of continental YRUU is merely one symptom of deeper problems among us. So here are just four of these deeper issues:

(1) Compared to mainline and evangelical churches, local Unitarian Universalist congregations have low aspirations in regard to allocating resources (financial, staff, and volunteer resources) to youth ministry. Evangelical and mainline churches aspire to having a youth minister, and often when a church is ready to hire a second minister that minister will have primary responsibility for youth ministries. Contras that with Unitarian Universalist congregations, where the norm is to aspire to a ten-hour-a-week “youth advisor,” and then when a church finally hires a second minister that minister is more likely to have primary responsibility for pastoral care for elders, than to have any responsibility for youth ministries.

(2) Compared to any other denomination in the United States, Unitarian Universalist gives less money to their churches, while at the same time we (on average) have higher incomes than most other denominations. This is appalling enough, but this low level of giving is typically coupled with a high level of self-interested entitlement — we want the local church and the denomination to provide high levels of funding to programs we value. This low level of giving, and this high level of self-interested entitlement means that groups that don’t have much money are most likely to find that ministries aimed at them will be cut first. Put this another way: The UUA Board of Trustees is always caught between a rock and a hard place — they face continual funding shortages, while at the same time they receive demands to provide services that directly benefit those who do give money — it’s no wonder they cut funding for YRUU, it’s just a wonder that our selfish denomination didn’t force them to do so much sooner.

(3) The general culture of Unitarian Universalism is to ignore youth and youth ministries. Compared to evangelical and mainline youth ministers, our paid youth advisors are poorly trained. Compared to evangelical and mainline ministers, most Unitarian Universalist ministers lack knowledge of, training in, and passion for youth ministries (I say this as a Unitarian Universalist minister who has spent some years observing his colleagues!). Lay people are just as bad: our local congregations usually consider youth ministries to be an add-on, not a central function of the church, and so budgets for youth ministries are non-existent, or are the first thing to go in budget crunches. Unitarian Universalists often have the self-fulfillingive attitude that “young people don’t want to come to church,” and so they behave in ways that tend to drive youth and young adults out of churches.

Did you know that the largest church in the United States, Willow Creek Church (ave. attendance 20,000 per week), began in 1975 as a youth ministry? Maybe we don’t like youth ministry because we’re afraid it will make us grow….

(4) In terms of theology, Unitarian Universalism is dominated by second-wave feminism (it is no accident that “Spirit of Life,” a second-wave-feminist anthem, is the most favorite hymn among us). Second-wave feminism did wonders for Unitarian Unviersalism in the 1970s and 1980s. But as we have learned from the critiques of womanist and third-wave feminists, second-wave feminism works best for well-to-do white folks who already have significant amounts of money, education, power — and second-wave feminism has been known to shut out people with less money, less education, less racial privilege, etc. I believe our over-reliance on second-wave feminist thinking has tended to seriously restrict access to power in our churches, allowing mostly white, upper-middle-class, middle-aged and older white folks to have power and influence.

Finally, I’d like to say that while it will be easy to keep on ranting and raving about the death of YRUU, I don’t think it will get us anywhere because it won’t address these deeper problems. Instead of ranting, I’d like to suggest that we all need to get active in the budget process of our local congregations and advocate for increased funding of youth ministries; we need to increase our own personal giving to our church to between 2% (for incomes under US$20,000) and 10% (for incomes over $150,000), or a quarter of your discretionary spending for high school and college students; we need to raise our expectations of how we will reach out to youth and young adults. Above all, we all need to do some serious theological work and reflection, because if we can’t articulate the religious reasons why we do youth work, we’re not going to get anywhere — oh, and by the way, if you try to use the “seven principles” to do your theological work for you, remember that they are a product of second-wave feminism, and thus the seven principles are part of the problem not part of the solution.

OK, I’ll stop ranting now — and go and write a check to my local congregation.

No assumptions

Thinking about UU Emergence (an awkward term, but there it is) means thinking about what will draw emerging generations to our churches. I remember when I was a 20-something attending a UU church, many of the cultural references in sermons had no emotional resonance for me: I didn’t get why the Korean War was fought, I didn’t remember the day JFK was shot, etc. Fast forward two decades: now I read Beloit College’s very useful Mindset List, which attempts to help us older folks understand the worldview of this year’s 18-year-olds:

Beloit College’s Mindset List® for the Class of 2011:

Most of the students entering College this fall, members of the Class of 2011, were born in 1989. For them, Alvin Ailey, Andrei Sakharov, Huey Newton, Emperor Hirohito, Ted Bundy, Abbie Hoffman, and Don the Beachcomber have always been dead…. [etc….]

Beloit’s list is a little tame. Over on the blog Charlie’s Diary, Charles Stross and commenters offer their own additions to the Beloit College list, often from a U.K. perspective:

Nobody they know expects to ever hold a job for more than three years.
Homosexuality has always been legal. Abortion has always been legal….
Nobody they know who is under 36 and not already a home-owner expects to ever be rich enough to buy a house….

Not that preachers can’t make references to Watergate and Sid Vicious, it’s just that we can’t assume that anyone will know what we’re talking about. Maybe that’s a more general issue with postmodern culture: there are fewer things we can assume that everyone knows….

Mr. Crankypants is a fiscal conservative

Over on FUUSE, Bart Frost reports that the Steering Committee of Young Religious Unitarian Universalists (YRUU) have announced that their funding will be cut off as of June 30, 2008. Bart reprints the letter from the YRUU Steering Committee Facebook page which announces the funding cut. Bart adds that this effectively means the end of YRUU Steering Committee; and presumably this also means the end of YRUU as a semi-autonomous entity. Fiscal conservative that he is, Mr. Crankypants is quietly pleased by this announcement.

It’s too bad this had to happen, but Mr. C. has the sense that the continental YRUU hierarchy has made itself increasingly irrelevant over the past decade or so. YRUU-sponsored continental events, such as the now-defunct Continental Conference (ConCon), looked like insider events, restricted to the very few teens who could afford to attend; continental YRUU offered local congregations few or no services; and in general, YRUU has been largely irrelevant to the lives of the teens that Mr. Crankypants has gotten to know in local churches. So it makes sense to cut off denominational funding to YRUU, since that money served only a small minority of all Unitarian Universalists; better to reallocate that money to a line item in the denominational budget that serves more people.

Of course, if you’re a fiscal conservative like Mr. Crankypants, you’ll see some parallels here between the YRUU situation, and General Assembly (GA). GA serves a few people very well, but they are a tiny minority of all Unitarian Universalists. GA can feel like an insider event that is often restricted to those who can afford to attend (very few congregations can afford to send lay leaders to GA every year). Although it often does provide a great experience to the lay leaders who can manage to attend, GA offers little in the way of direct services to congregations (and congregations, not individuals, should be the primary stakeholders, since they are the entities that foot the bill for GA). So it makes sense to cut back on funding to GA, since that money only serves a minority of all Unitarian Universalists.

As a fiscal conservative, Mr. Crankypants is fond of appropriate budget cuts (especially when such cuts are made in conjunction with an increased emphasis on fundraising, and in reference to needs of stakeholders). Shall we be pleased that the denomination’s Board of Trustees is taking a hard look at where they might cut fat in the budget? We shall, as much as we may miss that fat when it’s cut. Perhaps the Board will next turn their attention to cutting fat out of GA….

Update, Feb. 14: Follow-up post here. Before you post a comment, please go read the follow-up post.

Singing together

In the spirit of thinking out loud…

Today’s New York Times has an earnest article about community singalongs (on the front page of the Arts and Leisure section), which got me thinking. The article, “Shared Song, Cultural Memory” by Ben Ratliff, starts off like this:

EAST LANSING, Mich. They meet on the first Monday of the month at the Universalist Unitarian [sic] Church here, not to worship but to sing. Just to sing. There are song leaders, some with a guitar or banjo or an autoharp, but this isn’t a class or a choir; the singers, not the leaders, choose the tunes. Most hold copies of a spiral-bound songbook of folk music called Rise Up Singing. They perform songs like “Keep On the Sunny Side” and “This Land Is Your Land.” No one minds a voice gone off-key.

From Hawaii to Santa Cruz to the Philadelphia suburbs, in living rooms, churches, and festival tents, similar gatherings — called community sings, or singalongs — draw together the average-voice and bring old songs into common memory.

Anyone who has hung around mainline churches, or folk music circles, long enough will recognize the phenomenon Ratliff describes — although I have heard them called “song circles,” or even “Rise Up Singing” after the book that is commonly used, but not “community sings” (which is perhaps a midwestern term?). The Unitarian Universalist church I grew up in has a monthly song circle they call “Rise Up Singing,” which last I heard was attracting about twenty people a month. Summer church camps of all denominations frequently feature informal group singing sessions. It’s a fairly widespread phenomenon, worth paying attention to.

This is a long post, so I’ll put a break here — read on if you’re interested! Continue reading →

To go, or not to go?

I’ll be going to General Assembly, the annual gathering of United States Unitarian Universalists, this June. Many other Unitarian Universalists have decided not to attend this year, because General Assembly will be held at the Fort Lauderdale convention center — which, as it happens, is within the security boundaries of Port Everglades, a bustling port that requires government-issued identification for anyone who enters — which means that “for better or for worse, it will be the United States government that decides who can or cannot be with us — in worship, in community, and in our plenary sessions,” according to Rosemary Bray McNatt. That’s a pretty creepy thought.

I’ll be going, in spite of the creepiness of the United States government checking my identification before I can enter a worship service. I guess I have never believed that General Assembly is an open meeting. For more than half my working life, I have worked jobs where I would have found it difficult to find the money to pay to travel long distances and stay in hotels for five days while attending General Assembly — assuming that I could have even gotten the time off from work.

General Assembly has always erected huge economic barriers to participation by many (probably most) Unitarian Universalists. Every once in a while, that fact is mentioned in passing, but it is usually dismissed offhandedly. I find it harder to dismiss this fact. The central purpose of General Assembly is for duly appointed delegates from congregations to transact the business of the Unitarian Universalist Association in an allegedly democratic process. The economic barriers to attendance at General Assembly — barriers which keep many potential delegates from attending — mean it’s not a real democracy.

Then there’s the undeniable fact that having thousands of people travel each year to General Assembly releases huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the air. Other denominations, much bigger than ours, get along fine with general meetings every second year, or even every four years. With the latest projections that the Arctic ice cap will melt by 2013, how can I in good conscience get on a jetliner to attend a meeting that I feel does not need to be held every year? How can I in good conscience contribute to the desertification of central Africa and the flooding of Bangladesh, just so I can attend General Assembly every year? (I’ll be taking the train again this year instead of flying, which will cut my pollution enormously — about 990 lbs. of CO2, as opposed to about 1,930 lbs. if I flew, or 1,160 if I drove, according to carbonfund.org.)

So why am I going to General Assembly this year? For the simple reason that I volunteered to serve as a reporter for the UUA Web site. From a selfish point of view, this is a fantastic learning experience for me, a chance to hang out with geeks, videographers, photographers, writers, and editors who are all far more talented than I. Less selfishly, I feel that reneging on my commitment at this late date would be worse than tolerating the insanity of security checkpoints.

As for next year, I don’t know. The insanity of security checkpoints hasn’t stopped me this year, but the idiocy of an effective economic oligarchy and the heavy environmental cost may well keep me away from General Assembly next year.