Monthly Archives: February 2008

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?

Interfaith peace witness

For some months now, I’ve been planning to head down to Washington D.C. for the Christian Peace Witness for Iraq on March 7 — the weekend just before the fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. I arranged to take a week of vacation at that time. Even though I’d call myself a post-Christian, I’m still someone who tries to follow the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, and as such I found last year’s Christian Peace Witness to be the most theologically significant opposition to the unjust war in Iraq. We worshipped first, protested second; that felt like the right thing to do. And the protest took the form of standing in witness, in the spirit of what Rebecca Parker and Rita Nakashima Brock wrote in their book Proverbs of Ashes:

Salvation begins with the courage of witnesses whose gaze is steady. Steady witnesses neither flee in horror to hide their eyes, nor console with sweet words, ‘It isn’t all that bad. Something good is intended by this.’ Violence is illuminated by insistent exposure.

Last year’s Christian Peace Witness for Iraq also represented the largest single act of civil disobediecne in opposition to the Iraq War: some 222 people were arrested for crossing police lines and praying for peace in front of the White House.

This year: March 7, 2008

In addition to Christians, last year’s Christian Peace Witness for Iraq included Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, and post-Christians like me. In recognition of this religious diversity, this year’s peace witness is being co-sponsored by an interfaith group calling themselves Olive Branch Interfaith Peace Partnership.

Workshops begin on Thursday, March 6, at 6:30 in the evening (along with civil disobedience training, required for those planning to be arrested). Worship services will take place on Friday, March 7, at noon (I’ll be worshipping at All Souls Unitarian Universalist church); and the interfaith witness and nonviolent action will take place at 2:30.

If you can’t make it, why not sponsor an interfaith peace witness in your own community, similar to the Christian prayer vigils that will be taking place. If you are going to the peace witness on March 7, let me know and maybe we can connect at All Souls Church.

Eclipse

Carol remembered that we were going to be able to see a total eclipse of the moon tonight. The almanac said the eclipse would begin at 8:43; at nine o’clock I remembered to look out our front window. It’s a little hazy here, but I could see the moon pretty clearly: already, the circle of the earth’s shadow has covered a significant portion of the bright disc of the moon.

When I was a child, I seem to remember a number of winter nights when my mother would stay up late to watch partial or total lunar eclipses; or would set her alarm clock so she could awaken in the middle of the night to see them. I only remember seeing one or two, if they happened early in the evening; I was never interested enough in astronomical events to miss sleep for one. I don’t remember the other members of our family being all that interested in eclipses, either. But in memory, my mother never missed a lunar eclipse.

Beginning of lunar eclipse

Lunar eclipse as of 9:00 EST, New Bedford, Mass.

Sleepy & out of it

The chest cold that I’ve had since November has managed to come back again, with a vengeance. I didn’t go back to the church after lunch, just stayed home and took a nap. And then later I took another nap. In spite of the naps, I was sleepy all day.

This has been a bad winter for illness; Ted at church has accurately described this winter as “the winter of mucus.” I heard that more than once this winter, the health clinics here in the city had to close their doors early because they had too many people to manage. Seems like everyone has a cold, and now a nasty version of the flu is going around.

Enough said. Time to go to bed.

What happens when you get to the end of the day, and you haven’t gotten half the things done that you needed to get done? You know the feeling.

Yeah, I know, you’re supposed to be cool about it: hey, it’s not that important if thus and such doesn’t get done, after all you got some important things done.

Or you’re supposed to say: I will be mindful of all the good things in this world, I will be mindful when I do the dishes, and that will keep my mind from jumping around.

But at the end of today, I still haven’t gotten done the things I had hoped to get done: I haven’t paid those bills.

I haven’t answered all the email messages awaiting me. I haven’t cleaned the kitchen, or even done the dishes. I forgot to brush my teeth this morning.

And now it is late, and far past the time I had hoped to go to bed, and I will get up tired in the morning.

That’s what you do, day after day, just hoping that some day something good will come of it. Problem is, mostly when something good does come of it, you’re too tired to notice.

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.

A poetic politician? Hard to believe….

I try not to write about politics here, but I am always willing to write about efforts to resist the anti-intellectualism that is dominant in the United States today. Columnist Ben Macintyre, writing for the London Times, has uncovered poetry which was written by Barack Obama “for a college magazine at the age of 19.” Macintyre’s assessment of the poems? — “Surprisingly good.” Apparently even Harold Bloom, the critic who is the self-proclaimed guardian of the “Western canon,” likes Obama’s poetry. Hillary Clinton, while not a poet herself, at least has no less than Maya Angelou to write poetry in her defense. Link to Timesarticle.

For the record, Macintyre reprints one of the 19-year-old Obama’s poems:

Pop

Sitting in his seat, a seat broad and broken
In, sprinkled with ashes,
Pop switches channels, takes another
Shot of Seagrams, neat, and asks
What to do with me, a green young man
Who fails to consider the
Flim and flam of the world, since
Things have been easy for me.

No it’s not Maya Angelou, but yes, Obama’s poem is “surprisingly good” — and, given the current anti-intellectualism of the political scene, I find it utterly surprising that a U.S. politician even cares about poetry. We can only hope that this will start a trend of U. S. politicians aspiring to be smart and well-educated, instead of aspiring to be badly-educated corporate hacks.