Category Archives: Marketing & church growth

Liberal religious tracts?

“The Internet is the tract publishing venue of the 21st century.” Thus spake Chris Walton, editor at UU World magazine and uuworld.org, as well as the author of the blog Philocrites. Chris was speaking to a meeting of ministers this morning at the Braintree, Mass., Unitarian Universalist church.

Unitarian and Universalist denominational organizations began as tract publishing organizations in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The two organizations continued to focus on generating and disseminating ideas through the 19th C. and into the 20th C. “We’ve lost that momentum,” said Chris, over the past few decades. Today, we’re neither generating nor disseminating many religious ideas.

Chris also noted how the number of publishing venues for Unitarian Universalists has been dropping — UU World magazine, for example, is down to a quarterly schedule –and he urged us to find new ways to disseminate our liberal religious ideas. “Sometimes what you have to say has a much larger audience” than your local congregation, Chris asserted. The Internet could be a good vehicle for distributing this writing to a national or even international audience.

Chris summed up by saying that currently the religious right is focussing on ideas. But that’s not happening on the religious left, and it’s time we got back into the world of ideas.

A great, thought-provoking presentation. At lunch afterwards, I happened to wind up talking with two ministers about blogs, the Internet, and liberal religion. One of my lunch companions said that all this technology is fine and good, “But who’s our William F. Buckley of Unitarian Universalism?” — in other words, who’s the writer whom people will read, and who will excite people about religious liberalism today?

I said, “He’s got red hair and he’s sitting two tables over from us — it’s Chris Walton. He was in the right place at the right time with his blog, he’s a darned good writer, and he stays abreast of all the current debates about Unitarian Universalism. Because he’s at the center of things, people keep sending him their ideas, and so he becomes more at the center of things,” I continued, waxing eloquent. “I got introduced to his blog by a minister in her thirties who said, ‘Do you read Philocrites? I find it to be the one essential Unitarian Universalist publication I read.’ And I think she’s right, especially for people forty and under. It’s partly by luck and partly through skill, but whatever the reason, his is the one blog you have to read.”

It’s all true, and I’ll go further than that. If you’re looking for something to give to friends whom you think should be Unitarian Universalists, send them to Chris’s blog (www.philocrites.com). So far, it’s the best example of a 21st C. Unitarian Universalist tract.

Churchgoing makes you richer…

…assuming you live near your co-religionists. At least, according to an economic study by Jonathan Gruber, research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research:

Gruber’s results suggest a “very strong positive correlation” between religious market density, religious participation, and positive economic outcomes.” People living in an area with a higher density of co-religionists have higher incomes, they are less likely to be high school dropouts, and more likely to have a college degree.” Living in such an area also reduces the odds of receiving welfare, decreases the odds of being divorced, and increases the odds of being married. The effects can be substantial. Doubling the rate of religious attendance raises household income by 9.1 percent, decreases welfare participation by 16 percent from baseline rates, decreases the odds of being divorced by 4 percent, and increases the odds of being married by 4.4 percent.

By the way, Gruber’s research uncovers something that may explain why church attendance is so low amongst Unitarian Universalists…

His solution draws on the fact that individuals are more likely to attend religious services if they live near others of their religion (that is, where there is a “higher density of co-religionists” in Gruber’s terms). Catholics who live in more heavily Catholic areas attend church more than those who live in less Catholic areas. Further, living near others of one’s religion can be predicted by living near others in certain ethnic groups that share the religious preferences of your ethnic group.

…so if you belong to a small congregation serving a wide geographical area (as is the case here in New Bedford), wouldn’t average attendance be even lower? If so, yet another reason why small congregations (under 100 members) just aren’t sustainable….

So that’s what we’re doing here…

As I noted on November 9, Seth Goodin is my favorite marketing guru at the moment, and now I’ve started reading his blog. In a post from November 30 titled “Welcome to the Hobby Economy,” Goodin tells us why he keeps a blog:

Economists don’t know what to do about it.

It’s hard to measure, hard to quantify and a little odd to explain.

More and more people are spending more and more time (and money) on pursuits that have no payoff other than satisfaction.

“Why should you have a blog?” they ask. “How are you going to make any money?”…

Of course, economists don’t really worry about this. They understand perfectly well that economics is able to easily explain that human beings pursue things that satisfy them.

“Hobby economy” sounds a little pejorative. Still, I think it’s a good concept that could also be applied to religion. Most human beings pursue religion because it satisfies them. You don’t have to make money at it. I happen to make money doing religion (although if I went back to sales, I could make a lot more money than I do now), but I do things like keep this blog, which brings in no money at all.

When we think about marketing religion, all too often we only think about hiring an ad agency and developing a major media campaign. That’s thinking of religion in terms of the business model of marketing. If we start thinking about religion in terms of the hobby economy, how would we do marketing? We’d invite people to join the regular meetings of our hobby group. We’d do things like keep a blog to promote our hobby, or have conferences to entice new people into our hobby. Any time anyone asked about our hobby we’d talk about it with passion and enthusiasm.

Not that we should abandon the ad agencies and the major media campaigns. Not that religion really fits into the “hobby economy” model. But it’s getting me thinking about marketing in new ways….

Just plain hospitality

Just came back from a meeting of the brand-new Membership Development Committee here at First Unitarian in New Bedford. Some lay leaders got fired up about the possibilities for growing our congregation, and said, Hey let’s get together and talk about this. It was a great meeting and it got me thinking about a conversation I had on Thursday….

I was talking with Greg Stewart, the minister in the Reno, Nevada, Unitarian Universalist congregation. Out in Reno, they have nearly tripled in size in less than two years, from about 50 to about 150. Greg said something about the momentum they’ve built, and how it might be hard for them to stop growing if they wanted to… and I got to thinking….

My bet is that it’s hard to not grow a Unitarian Universalist congregation. We know there’s lots of people who long to hear our religious message. By some reports we already have more visitors per existing member than does a fast-growing faith like the Mormons. Logically, since we’re not growing and the Mormons are, we must be working pretty hard to keep people out of Unitarian Universalism.

I mean, think about it. When someone new joins a group you love, your initial inclination is to share your excitement to keep them coming back. You’d have to work hard to choke down your inclination to extend that basic human hospitality. It’s like inviting someone into your home, and then ignoring that person — which, if you think about it, would be draining. It takes an emotional toll to deny basic hospitality.

Therefore, it’s a lot less work to simply extend plain old hospitality to everyone who comes into one of our congregations. If we took the easy route and extended basic hospitality to all those newcomers, we’d grow quickly. Thus efficiency has become my new favorite argument for growing our congregations — it’s easier, and it’s less work, to grow!

Purple cows

Peter Bowden, who writes the blog Live from UU Planet, came out to New Bedford for lunch today. Peter and I are both talkative and pretty intense, we are both interested in innovation, and we both happen to care a lot about Unitarian Universalism. We had a great lunch together.

We both think that Unitarian Universalism is far smaller than it should be. I would also say that we both think that much of Unitarian Universalism is, well, stuck in mediocrity. Those two thoughts are connected. Those two thoughts relate to a hypothesis that goes something like this: “If you try something and it doesn’t work very well, don’t keep trying it. It doesn’t work well!”

The basic unspoken motto in Unitarian Universalism for the past few decades has been, “Don’t rock the boat.” (How ironic that we count among our religious heroes someone like Theodore Parker who rocked the boat so badly we realized we needed the new boat he had designed.) We try desperately not to offend anyone.

Peter gave me a book on marketing titled Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable,” written by Seth Goodin. A “purple cow” is something truly remarkable and life-changing (Theodore Parker was a religious purple cow). Goodin looks at the success of companies like Starbucks and Amazon.com, and says the way to succeed in business these days is to develop remarkable products. What’s the opposite of being remakable, asks Goodin? –being very good.

Goodin offers this case study in his book:

The French subsidiary of McDonald’s recently subsidized and publicized a report that urged the French not to visit fast-food outlets like McDonald’s more than once a week. The report caused a worldwide uproar, and the U.S. parent company professed to be “shocked”!

Is this a bad strategy? Perhaps by being honest (and very different) when talking to their customers, the French subsidiary is building the foundation of a long-term growth strategy…. By acknowledging the downsides of the fast-food experience, prehaps McDonald’s France is reaching a far larger audience than they could ever hope to reach the old way.

What would happen if you told the truth [in your marketing]?

In the spirit of being honest with “customers,” let me tell some truth about Unitarian Universalism:

Contrary to popular belief, when you join a Unitarian Universalist congregation, you cannot “believe anything you want.” You must believe, with all your heart and soul and mind, that love can transform the world. Contrary to popular belief, it is not easy to be a Unitarian Unviersalist. If you are a Unitarian Universalist, you will care deeply about making this world a better place for all persons, to the point where you devote your whole life to that end. Contrary to popular belief, Unitarian Universalism is not a comfortable religion that asks very little of you. Unitarian Universalism requires you to give substantial amounts of your time — like fifteen to twenty hours a week spent in spiritual practice, doing sabbath with your family, participating in worship and small group ministries, reading and study and reflection, using your gifts to help your congregation thrive — and substantial amounts of your money — like twice the amount of money you now spend each year on movies, electronics gadgets, and Starbucks coffee combined. And it will make you happy to give that time and money because your will be transforming the world with love.

You know, if we told these truths about our faith, we would upset some people who are now in our congregations but we would also probably grow like crazy. And thanks, Peter, for getting me all jazzed up about our shared faith.

Link to new series on marketing churches.

One reason liberal religion is dying

Doubtless you know that even given the most optimistic figures, Unitarian Universalism is growing at about one per cent a year. Since the population is growing at a faster rate, that means we are in fact shrinking. You may not know that other liberal religious groups such as the United Church of Christ and the Ehtical Culture Society are shrinking even faster. Overall, it seems that liberal religious groups are fading out, so don’t be surprised when they stop teaching evolution in your community’s schools.

Why is liberal religion is fading from the American scene? There’s more than one reason, but I’m not going to point the finger of blame at some other group. I’m going to look at my own profession, ministry, and show how we ministers are helping to cause the decline of liberal religion.

In large part, liberal ministers are trained to be the sole pastor in a small church. Our training assumes we will be the only preacher in a congregation, assumes we will be intimately involved in the daily lives of members of our congregations, assumes we will be generalists who will have a hands-on role in every aspect of congregational life. We largely buy into each and every one of those assumptions.

On the other hand, our training assumes we will not be working with another minister (or a team of other ministers), assumes we will not have to train lay leaders to carry out ministry (because of course we’re going to do all ministry ourselves), assumes we will not need specialized knowledge in specific areas of congregational leadership. And we ministers buy into each of these assumptions as well.

We ministers assume there is a standard progression for advancing in our profession. It goes something like this: We pay our dues for a couple of years as an assistant or associate minister, a job seen merely as a resume-builder. Then we pay our dues for five to seven years in a small, pastoral-size church where the pay is low. Finally, we plan to move up to being the boss minister at a mid-size or larger congregation where at last we’ll reach the salary level we hope for.

But there’s a real problem with our “standard progression,” because we make the assumption that we can bring the same set of skills to each of the three steps of this progression. Worse, we assume that the set of skills we can bring to each of these three stages is the set of skills needed by the sole pastor in a small church. Let’s see why these are false assumptions.

As an associate minister, what we really need is a set of specialized skills for a relatively narrow area of ministry. An associate minister is usually charged with a relatively narrow slice of congregational life, such as pastoral care, religious education, church administration, or some combination of these. By contrast, there are other slices of congregational life that associate ministers rarely have to bother with, such as preaching and representing the congregation in the community, etc.

We ministers hope to become the boss minister of a larger congregation one day. Yet should we wind up in one of those positions, we find that we are ill-prepared for the duties which face us. As the sole minister in a small church, the minister expects to be a part of everything, but in a mid-size or larger church the minister has to learn to stop micro-managing. Then too, a minister accustomed to a small church finds him- or herself ill-prepared for such tasks as training laypeople to be lay ministers or worship associates, or supervising multiple staff members, or planning at least a year in advance for all church activities, or running multiple programs, or delegation. Worse, ministers who are trained to be the sole pastor have no skills (and sometimes no interest) in working effectively with other ministers or other religious professionals such as professional administrators and professional religious educators.

A common result of all this is that a minister trained in the habits of small church ministry winds up in a mid-size or larger congregation. He or she begins to micromanage lay leaders and committees, can’t delegate tasks, alienates professional staff, doesn’t know how to adequately supervise support staff, with the final result that the congregation actually sinks back into being a small church. At last the minister feels comfortable again, so the church stays at that size — and everyone wonders why they can’t grow the church.

If we ministers really want Unitarian Universalism to grow, we should start acting like ministers in larger congregations. We should engage in continuing education to learn how to supervise support staff. We should learn how to work in the same congregation with other ministers, starting with deep reflection on what habits we have that prevent us from working with other ministers now. We should learn good project management skills which will help us to delegate. We should give up our savior complexes which tell us that only we professional ministers can minister to and save people in our congregations. Etc.

Some final points– Did you know that essentially all of the growth we have seen in Unitarian Universalism has come in large congregations? Did you know that in aggregate, small churches are losing members while still requiring lots of support from districts and denomination? Did you know that because of cost-of-living and salary trends, it now requires 175 or more members to adequately fund church staff? Did you know that unless you have an average of more than 200 men, women, and children at worship each week (counting summer months — and don’t bother with how many people have signed the membership book), yours is a small church?

So, fellow ministers, it’s our choice. I’m well aware of the attractions of being in a small church — the coziness, the intimacy. But if we ministers make that choice, it sure looks to me as if we are also choosing to kill off liberal religion. In other words, in a world that desperately needs strong liberal religious voices, there are some big moral implications if we choose to remain small-church ministers.

12 days of magic…

Though I don’t have time to experiment with online audio for the foreseeable future, while I was packing up some things for our move to Massachusetts I ran across the project that initially made me aware of what you could do with religion and audio.

A year ago, I was serving temporarily as minister of religious education at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, California. The facilites supervisor there was a fellow named Mark Johnson, a talented musician and visual artist, who had a degree in film studies (now you know why he was working as a faciltities supervisor — no money in the arts).

Mark was a Pentecostal, I a Unitarian Universalist, and our religions overlapped in three crucial areas — the importance of Spirit, integrating religion and the arts, and trying to get kids interested in our religious heritage. So one Sunday he recorded a chidlren’s story I did in the worship service, cleaned up the sound, and added a beat and sound effects to it. We put in a minimal amount of time — it took me a few hours to prepare the story but I would have had to do that anyway, and it took Mark about an hour and a half to produce the recording — but in spite of that the results were pretty good. Check out a compressed mp3 version of “12 days of magic” here. It’s the wrong season, but hey….

We talked idly about producing other stories from the Christian tradition, trying to produce something children and youth might actually listen to. But Mark had a new baby in his life, and I moved here to Geneva, Illinois, so we never got around to it.

But wouldn’t that be cool? I mean, podcasts of sermons are fine and good, but they’re kinda boring. The UUA’s “Drive Time” recordings are well-produced and fine for church geeks like me and boring for most people. But wouldn’t it be fun to do something with a little more… pizzazz?

Just throwing the idea out there, hoping someone picks up on it.

Ending the church year — or not

The end of the church year is coming up, and we’re all getting ready for summer, when things slow down. But I wish our liberal churches never slowed down, and I also I predict that within a few years, the most successful Unitarian Universalist churches will no longer take a break in summer.

In fact, I believe worship attendance patterns are already changing, and we ignore this change at our peril. This past weekend was Memorial Day weekend. On Memorial Day weekend last year less than a hundred people showed up, so even though this year we’ve been averaging well over 200 men, women, and children at church each weekend, we expected a light turnout for Memorial Day.

Our expectations were wrong. In spite of the beautiful sunny weather, we totaled over 160 people at worship, including the usual half a dozen newcomers visiting us for the first time. Fortunately, even though we didn’t expect that many people, we were prepared just in case that many people did show up. The senior minister was preaching, and we had a full church school program ready. I’ll bet this church may pick up two or three of the newcomers who visited this weekend, just because we were prepared.

It’s also clear that it’s especially important to have regular worship services, with your regular ministers(s), beginning in mid-August. Why? Because that’s when newcomers are most likely to check out your church, and they need to see what your worship services and church school will be like the rest of the year. If there’s no place for children to go (except child care), and if the worship service features well-meaning but inexperienced worship leaders, the huge number of newcomers that comes in August will never return. In fact, there is no longer a “slow time” — churches have to be at their best all year round.

I now believe that one of the forces that’s holding back liberal religion is our habit of closing down in the summer time. Not to be too cynical, but if church is so unimportant that you don’t need it in the summer or on holidays, why bother coming the rest of the year?

I want to be a part of a congregation that believes every week of the year is important. (And even if I can’t make it to worship, I’m not so selfish as to think that church schould shut down, just because I’m not there!)

What about you?

Unitarian Universalist “iPod” strategy

You can check out “Coffee Hour — Where UU Bloggers Mix It Up” for a discussion of how to keep Unitarian Universalism from slipping into decline. They pose the question this way:

“So it’s time to put your imagination caps on. Think big about what “big changes” you’d want to see in UUism. What would your “iPod strategy” for UUism look like? What would it take to get there? And would any of your “iPod buyers” end up “making the switch” (and give up their old PCs for new “UU Macs”). Or would that even matter? Would a bunch of new “UU iPod” owners be enough?”

Feeling crankier than usual (which is pretty cranky!), I couldn’t resist offering my own answer, which I will paste in below…. Those of you here in the Geneva church have already heard versions of this tirade, so feel free to skip reading it once again here.

In some ways, we are like Apple. We already have a great product — an open, liberatory theological message which is not based in creedalism. We know from looking at the demographics that there are millions of people out there who would fit right in. It’s even pretty clear that we are getting more curious visitors than many other religious movements.

I believe our problem is that most of our congregations actively reject newcomers. At one level, it’s a sociological problem. Most of our churches are so-called “pastoral-size” churches which would rather die than give up the sense of false intimacy that arises when you have less than 150 active members (i.e., less than 150 average weekly attendance at worship and church school).

Perfect example — try telling many UU congregations to give up the sharing of joys and concerns, and you’ll cause an enormous uproar. Yet joys and concerns clearly turn off many (even most!) newcomers, because joys and concerns represents the congregation as a small, tight in-group, where if you don’t know everyone’s first name and if you don’t feel comfortable sharing personal problems in front of a group, you just can’t fit in. (Yeah I know you like them, but you’re one of the few that stayed.)

I’m of the opinion that congregations of about 300 active members represents a good, stable size that balances between the ideals of our polity and economic reality. Wouldn’t it be great if we had such congregations scattered throughout the United States, no more than a 30 minute drive apart? Of course, when you suggest to most UU congregations that once they reach their goal for growth they could do new church starts thirty minutes away, again you meet up with enormous resistance, as if such a thing were unthinkable. It’s that false sense of intimacy again — “Why, then I couldn’t see my friends!” — but if they’re really your friends, you’ll figure out a way to stay in touch that needn’t involve meeting at church once a week.

Rather than Apple, we’re more like Wang — remember them? They produced the first commercial word processors. But they got too attached to their mini-computer platform which died when micro-computers came along — they didn’t understand that mini-computers were just a means to an end, not an end in itself. Just so, we Unitarian Universalists have become attached to this false sense of intimacy, mistaking it for the real work of liberal religion.

Our real work needs to take place on the congregational level. We have to start taking a hard look at ourselves, understanding which of our behaviors actively reject newcomers. All the ads in the world won’t work if we reject people once they arrive! Having a great theological “product” is useless if we scare people away before they can hear our theology!

So yeah — it’s up to each one of us — we each have to take full individual and personal responsibility for the fact that Unitarian Universalism is fading out. We have to stop blaming our decline on the UUA, or on the surrounding society — our fate is in *our* hands. So what will you do, personally, to make sure newcomers are actively welcomed and integrated into your congregation? Will you actively support an additional worship service? Will you help with new church starts? Will you rein in joys and concerns? Will you talk with newcomers at coffee hour instead of just your friends? It’s up to you and me, my friends, no one else — and we *do* have the power to turn things around, if we choose to.