It’s one of those winter nights: blowing snow, freezing fog, not a fit night for any creature to be out. It’s a good night to sit at home and think somber thoughts….

I had lunch today with another minister; she’s in her twenties, and like me has times when she despairs of Unitarian Universalism — the churches that go into complete denial when faced with the stark choice between changing and dying; the worship services that lack meaning and spiritual depth but which cannot be changed because “that’s the way we’ve always done it”; this denomination that continues to shrink relative to the growing population of the United States. Perhaps worst of all, she pointed out that Unitarian Universalists, for all our blather about social justice, give less money per person in charitable donations than any other denomination.

We talked about how you can accomplish “culture change” within the institution of the local church. Can change occur from within Unitarian Universalist churches? Or is there too much inertia within the system to allow for meaningful change? We didn’t come to any conclusions, but we agreed on the need for change:– it’s change or die, change or lose most of Generation X and the generations after them. I don’t care what you call that change — the term “UU Emergence” is useful only because it points people to the rich conversations that have already happened in evangelical and Jewish circles — but whatever you decide to call it, change has to happen.