Category Archives: Marketing & church growth

Where did they go?!

Nine years ago, I served on the old Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) Pamphlet Commission. We were the ones responsible for producing all the pamphlets for the denomination. Back then, the World Wide Web was still new and shiny and full of untapped potential. During my time on the Commission, I said we should offer the text of all pamphlets for free on the UUA Web site. This idea provoked strong opposition, both from other members of the Commission, and from UUA staff.

People said, “If we offered them for free, we wouldn’t be able to sell printed versions.” I said, “So what? The point of a pamphlet is to reach as many people as possible. We’ll reach more people online.” People said, “But if we offer them for free, congregations will print them up on their own printers.” I said, “So what if they do? Some small congregations can’t afford pamphlets any other way, and they’re the ones who need the pamphlets most. The congregations who can afford pamphlets will find that our printed versions look so much better that it will be worth it to purchase them.” People said, “But what about copyright?” I said, “Not a real issue. You retain copyright, but put a notice offering permission of any Unitarian Universalist congregation to print as many as needed.”

Finally, I tried to make my real point. I said, “This is not about printed materials at all! We should be concerned about making our pamphlets easily available on this shiny new medium, the World Wide Web.” But I was ignored.

Then the Pamphlet Commission was dissolved, and UUA staff took over producing pamphlets. And lo and behold, suddenly one day the full text of all the pamphlets was available online. Hooray! We did the right thing for once!

Well. Sort of….

Just now I went to the UUA Web site to try to find a pamphlet online so I could send the URL to a newcomer to our church who wanted to know more about Unitarian Universalism. But apparently the texts of most of our pamphlets are no longer available on the UUA Web site (or if available, so hard to find that they might as well be unavailable). And when the text of a pamphlet was available, said text was accompanied by a long and nasty-sounding copyright notice. (Update: Chris found the old pamphlets page archived here. Thanks, Chris!)

I’d love to be proved wrong on this (Update: Deb proves me wrong here — Deb has long been a strong advocate for making pamphlets freely available on the Web. Yay, Deb!). I’d love to have someone show me the easily accessible Web page where I can find texts for every current UUA pamphlet, so I can share those pamphlets with our newcomers. I’d love it if every UUA pamphlet came with a Creative Commons 3.0 (by-nd-nc) license, so I could freely reproduce the texts of pamphlets on our church Web site.

And if someone can’t prove me wrong — if UUA pamphlets are mostly available only as dead tree resources — then maybe it’s time to gather a group of people who actually understand new media, a group that would write and produce free online pamphlets (text, audio, video) under a Creative Commons license.

Why go to church…

I found the following in the journals of Lucy Maud Montgomery, a nice statement of the personal reasons why someone would bother going to church regularly. This is the entry dated August 23, 1901:

I sometimes ask myself why, after all, I go to church so regularly. Well, I go for a jumble of reasons, some of which are very good, and others very flimsy and ashamed of themselves. It’s the respectable thing to do — this is one of the flimsy ones — and I would be branded a black sheep if I didn’t go. Then, in this quiet uneventful land, church is really a social function and the only regular one we have. We get out, see our friends and are seen of them, and air our best clothes which otherwise would be left for the most part to the tender mercies of moth and rust.

Oh, you miserable reasons! Now for a few better ones!

I go to church because I think it well to shut the world out from my soul now and then and look my spiritual self squarely in the face. I go because I think it well to search for truth everywhere, even if we never find it in its entirety; and finally I go because all the associations of the church and service make for good and bring the best that is in me to the surface — the memories of old days, old friends, childish aspirations for the beautiful and sacred. All these come back, like the dew of some spiritual benediction — and so I go to church. [The Selected Journals of L. M. Montgomery: Volume I: 1889-191, ed. Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 262]

Statistics, precision, and slide rules

A number of Unitarian Universalist bloggers have reported on the recently released Pew Forum U.S. Religious Landscape survey. However…. I’d like to suggest everyone be more cautious about trying to calculate exact number of Unitarian Universalists in the United States based on this survey.

The survey reported that 0.3% of United States residents are, to use the Pew study’s exact terminology, “Unitarian (Universalist)”. First question I asked was, How accurate is this number? Well, we don’t know how accurate this number is because unfortunately the margin of error for the Unitarian Universalist subgroup is not reported. Can we extrapolate the margin of error from another subgroup which has approximately the same percentage, e.g., Hindus with 0.4% of U.S. residents? No, we can’t because a different survey methodology was used for Hindus — the survey boosted the sample size of certain low-incidence groups (Hindus, Buddhists, and Orthodox Christians) by calling additional pre-screened households.

It is worth noting that the worst margin of error they report for a religious subgroup is plus or minus 10.5%; this for Muslims, with 0.6% of the population, or twice the sample size for Unitarian Universalists. I would expect that the smaller the sample size, the larger the margin of error, so I suspect the margin of error for Unitarian Universalists is greater than or equal to 10.5%. But really we don’t even know the margin of error.

Another problem is revealed when you Continue reading →

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?

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.

Towards a manifesto for emergent Unitarian Universalism

Mr. Crankypants’s post yesterday prompts me to try to put together a creative, positive statement of what emergent Unitarian Universalism might look like. Below you’ll find some brainstorming on the topic. Add your own ideas in the comments.

The context — Emergent Unitarian Universalism recognizes that the culture around us is changing rapidly. We know that our core theological message is a saving message for these postmodern times, and we have no interest in adapting our theological truth to fit these times. But everything else we do is up for grabs — worship styles, organizational structures, hymnody, management, openness to newcomers, everything — as long as it doesn’t compromise our core theological message.

The core theological message — Our core theological message is not a single statement, but a web of ideas. Historically, our core message grows from liberal theology of the Christian tradition. The insights of feminist, African American, and Two Thirds World liberation theologies have become central to us. Based on liberation theologies and other theologies of freedom, we value our differences of age, gender, race, national origin, class, sexual orientation, physical ability, and theology. We are bound together, not by a creed, but by covenants: We come together in the Spirit of Love to seek truth and goodness, to find spiritual transformation in our lives, to care for one another, and to promote practical goodness in the world. We know that all human beings (indeed, all sentient beings) share the same ultimate destiny, and we know that we have the free will to effect change in our lives and in the world.

We share our core theological message with Unitarians and Universalists and other religious liberals around the world, and we recognize (and value) the global diversity of our message.

Theses for change

Worship services need not take place only on Sunday morning. Ministers, other staff, and lay leaders who resist holding worship services at other times may be viewed as reactionary holdouts from the 1950s.

The emergent generations value mystery and tradition, so traditional church buildings and candlelight and ritual are assets.

The emergent generations often have never been a part of a church or religious institution before, so church leaders must assume a complete absence of knowledge about religion and religious practice at all times.

The surrounding culture is faceless and anonymous, and people are crying out for a sense of community. Thus our churches must stop being Continue reading →

Oh my goodness, is this another rant…

For once, Mr. Crankypants is somewhat proud of his stupid alter ego, Dan. Back on December 6, Dan wrote about the new Jewish independent minyanim as reported in a New York Times article (link). Dan commented on how some of us have noted the similarities between these minyanim and some of what was going on in the Unitarian Universalist young adult movement a dozen years ago, back when Dan was still a young adult (Mr. Crankypants refuses to admit that he will ever be anything but a young adult).

Turns out that back on November 26, the Jewish blog Synablog noted the same New York Times article, and drew the connection between the minyanim and the evangelical Christian emergent church movement (link). Synablog’s post is titled “Emergent — Yes It’s Happening Among Both Christians and Jews.”

It’s happening among the Jews and the evangelical Christians, but of course not among Unitarian Universalists — who are theologically liberal but methodologically rigid — who seem to be ignoring the fact that the world is changing rapidly around us;– rapid change which requires that Unitarian Universalist worship services and the very structure of all religious communities must change as well.

The radically inclusive theological stance of Unitarian Universalism has kept us growing, ever so slightly, in this postmodern world;– but we continue to aim our advertising and our worship services squarely at the people who are already here. We do religion as if it were still the 1950’s, when civic religion ruled, when everyone got the basics of religion from the surrounding culture, when a town could vote the town’s only Jew as “most Christian citizen,” when you didn’t have to market your church because the surrounding culture acted like a dumptruck that backed up to your front door each week and dumped off tons of potential church members (with no effort on your part). Today, Unitarian Universalists live in a 1950’s time warp: Let’s just forget about the postmodern generations, they don’t really belong here anyway (and besides, who wants all those young adults in our churches?).

Grrr.

Oh my. Has Mr. Crankypants been ranting again about the same old topics? Given how methodologically rigid Unitarian Universalists are, ranting would seem to be a waste of Mr. C.’s time, except that it is sooo satisfying. There’s something about throwing a good hissy-fit that just makes you feel good all over….

Three pointers for success

Seth Godin offers three pointers on making a small business succeed his blog. Looking them over, I think apply equally well to small church success:

Small business success
Three things you need:
1) the ability to abandon a plan when it doesn’t work,
2) the confidence to do the right thing even when it costs you money in the short run, and
3) enough belief in other people that you don’t try to do everything yourself.

Quick thoughts on how each of these points can apply to churches:

1) Knowing when to abandon a plan: I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently, and I feel that part of knowing when to abandon plans that don’t work is having good data so that you can have some objectivity when judging a plan. Two examples: (a) A year and a half ago, we changed our advertising plan, cutting our ads in the big daily newspaper from weekly to every other week, and putting more resources into smaller weekly papers and shoppers, and the Web. Lots of complaints about the reduced number of ads from current members, but we noticed that the number of visitors doubled, so instead of abandoning our new plan we stayed the course — because we could prove that we were getting results. (b) We have an explicit goal of increasing worship attendance, and so we began to tweak our Sunday morning worship service to make it more celebratory and more fun. The worship service felt pretty good but attendance numbers didn’t budge, so we knew that we had to tweak some more. Then suddenly beginning last May we started to see our numbers rising by 20-30% — now maybe we’re headed in the right direction.

2) Do the right thing in spite of short-term cost: From my experience, I’d say the biggest example of this point in churches is — deferred maintenance. Any examples from your experience?

3) Believe in others so you don’t do everything:Given the rate of volunteer burnout in small churches, this last point may be a bigger problem than I had thought. Could it be that part of the reason small churches don’t grow is that we don’t put enough trust in potential new leaders? I’ll have to think about that….

Thanks to Carol for pointing out the Seth Godin post.

The 5% solution

Those of us who are Unitarian Universalist ministers working in southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island received an interesting and provocative email message from the executive committee of our local ministers group. They asked: If we were to have 5% membership growth in district congregations in the next year, how do you envision us using our district resources to be most effective? (For those of you who aren’t Unitarian Universalists, the “district” is our middle judicatory body.) I wasn’t quite sure how I would answer that question. An advertising campaign? Training sessions on how to welcome newcomers? What would really help us reach that goal of a 5% increase? I would be really curious to know what my readers think.