InterConnections Tipsheet

Mark Bernstein, growth development consultant for the Central East Regional Group, composed of four districts of the Unitarian Universalist Association, has written a blog post describing the creative way that his home congregation held a “Bring a Friend Sunday.”

He said the UU Church of Delaware County, in Media, Pa., declared that the goal of the day, which it called “Friendship Sunday,” was not to gain more members but was simply to “enable our friends, neighbors, and loved ones to experience the place that has brought us such joy and meaning.” He said leaders asked members to invite their close friends to come by telling them “this is a community that is very important to me, a place where I feel at home. As someone who is also important to me, I want you to see this place and meet the people who mean so much to me.”

Bernstein said about forty people came as guests. He added, “Not all of our guests in attendance yesterday will become members of our congregation. But they now have a better understanding and appreciation of what our faith tradition is all about and perhaps they will help us spread the good news of Unitarian Universalism as they travel about their world. Like a stone tossed into a pond creating ripples that radiate out, Friendship Sunday created ripples that may influence others we have not yet met, or in ways we may never know.”

The Rev. Dr. Terasa Cooley, the UUA’s director of Congregational Life, writes on her blog “Learn Out Loud” about changing perceptions of membership in our congregations. Using the example of a young adult friend who is very involved and considers herself UU, but has not “signed the book,” Cooley asks, “What do we have to learn from her story? Perhaps the future of Unitarian Universalism does not depend upon more people ‘signing the book.’ Perhaps it depends upon us adjusting our understanding of what connection and commitment are.”

Cooley also writes about encouraging congregations to focus outwardly rather than simply being satisfied with creating communities of like-minded people. “What if we move from the (perhaps arrogant) statement of being ‘like-minded’ to seeing ourselves as ‘like-hearted’—coming together to offer our gifts to the world?”

The Unitarian Universalist Association is asking for a new piece of information from congregations this year as part of the annual Certification of Membership process. For the first time the UUA is requesting the number of non-member UUs in a congregation. Congregational leaders have until February 1 to complete this form online.

One other change is that the time period for which financial information is requested is different this year. Leaders are asked to submit the actual operating expenses of their congregation for the most recently ended fiscal year rather than the budgeted amount for the current fiscal year.

The certification process opened November 15. To complete the form log into the Data Services Login Page for Congregations. When you are logged in you can certify your congregation’s membership and statistical data. Do this by selecting “Begin Certification of Membership 2011.” You can also update the congregation’s mailing and meeting addresses, phone number, email, etc.

Although anyone at your congregation can be authorized to input the congregation’s membership number on the website, the number that is entered must be certified as accurate by a minister or officer of the congregation. Certification numbers are used by the UUA to determine the number of delegates each congregation may send to General Assembly.

An organization has been created to support congregational staff members who work with membership issues. The group, Unitarian Universalist Association of Membership Professionals [UUAMP], was officially created at General Assembly 2011.

The organization is open to anyone who is a paid staff member of a congregation and who works with membership issues. Marie Murton, Membership Coordinator at Fox Valley UU Fellowship, in Appleton, Wisconsin, is president.

She notes, “Membership professionals are in a unique position to help our congregations grow in many ways. Not only do we help people join the congregation, but we also help those members grow on their spiritual paths and in community.

“Though there are fewer membership professionals than most other staff positions, more and more congregations are understanding the importance of having someone dedicated to the membership role. UUAMP is an effort to make sure congregations have a place to go for membership questions and concerns.”

The website has a comprehensive list of membership resources, including information about workshops, webinars,  how to welcome and integrate new people, and how to create a membership professional position.Membership also includes access to an email list, Mem-Pros and other opportunities to problem-solve with other membership professionals. An annual membership is $40.

Multicultural Welcome: A Resource for Greeters in UU Congregations, is a 12-page document created by the UUA’s Multicultural Growth and Witness staff group to help congregational greeters respond well to every person who comes through the door on Sunday morning.

This greeter resource grew out of a workshop at General Assembly 2010 called Multicultural Membership Journey, which explored what it means to welcome people of various identities.

Alex Kapitan, the staff group’s Congregational Justice administrator, says, “This brand new, brief training resource for greeters builds awareness around how our congregations can be fully and truly welcoming, explores how to integrate membership with our lived faith and social justice work, and offers strategies for developing competencies of inclusion and practicing your welcome.”

The resource invites greeters to use role play to think about what it would be like to be welcoming to someone who is blind, uses a wheelchair, has a strong foreign accent, didn’t complete high school or go to college, wears a cross, or has an ambiguous gender identity.

General advice: Greet everyone, including people who are not new (demonstrating care for everyone). Ask open-ended questions. Listen without interrupting. Let people tell you about their theology rather than you anticipating it. Allow them to not answer your questions if they choose.

The resource was developed by Janice Marie Johnson, the Rev. Alicia Forde, Susanna Whitman, and India McKnight. It is available free online.

The Rev. Naomi King, a Unitarian Universalist minister from Plantation, Fla., posed the following question in the UU Growth Lab on Facebook:

Is your community living missionally or attractionally? When we devote our energies to making our congregations attractional, we’re providing a service that can be consumed, and we’ll be rated and expected to produce a high-grade consumable product, usually without a comparable budget. I’d argue that that rarely equips people for a life-changing spiritual quest, and it does even less for truly changing this world for the better.

It does tend to feel great for the consumer, though, (while creating) super-high anxiety for the service providers. When we’re living missionally, we’re on an astounding adventure together, in a multitude of ways, to transform this world for greater goodness, to be changed ourselves, and to give thanks and praise along the way.

The anxiety in missional congregations is more evenly distributed because everyone has their part to do as part of the questing company. Everyone’s gifts are important, and everyone bears big responsibilities about saving the world. Risk is there, failure is present, but failure is embraced as a chance to learn. Risk is just part of meaningful life.

The mission is more important than comfort, because we’re on fire with the passion of that mission . . . Is yours an attractional community model of growth or a missional community adventure model of growth?

Find out more about the UU Growth Lab here.

The number of friends you have at your place of worship has more to do with how happy you are than does theology or spirituality, says Chaeyoon Lim, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who led a study, “Religion, Social Networks, and Life Satisfaction.”

The study is reported in the recent book, American Grace by David Campbell and Robert D. Putnam. Lim and Putnam, of Harvard University, found that people who have three to five close friends in their congregation are more likely to report they are extremely satisfied with their lives than those people who attend a place of worship but don’t have close friends there. The full report is available as a PDF here.

“To me, the evidence substantiates that it is not really going to church and listening to sermons or praying that makes people happier, but making church-based friends and building intimate social networks there,” Lim said.

People like to feel that they belong, Lim said. “One of the important functions of religion is to give people a sense of belonging to a moral community based on religious faith,” he said. “This community, however, could be abstract and remote unless one has an intimate circle of friends who share a similar identity. The friends in one’s congregation thus make the religious community real and tangible, and strengthen one’s sense of belonging to the community.”

Unsure about how much to ask of young adults in your congregation? Andrew Coate, a young adult in Maine, offers one perspective at his blog “thoughts ON.” Here’s a sampling from a blog entry titled “Dear Church”:

If I offer to hold an adult RE class . . . don’t market it as “for young adults.” My voice deserves to be heard . . . by the entire congregation. . . when you ask my ideas on getting more younger people in the congregation and then I give those ideas, the next step is for you to respond to those ideas in a productive way, even if that productive way happens to be, “right now our church probably can’t swing this, but what if we did X instead?”

Want a way to spot guests on Sunday morning and build connections with members? Install a digital photo frame in your foyer. Jefferson Unitarian Church in Golden, Colo., did that a year ago, and it attracts people every Sunday, say staff members.

Digital frames, placed on a desktop or mounted on a wall, can hold more than 100 photos that are presented in a repeatable loop. Dee Ray, public relations chair at JUC, says photos can be loaded directly into the frame or you can use flash drives and SD memory cards, which can be loaded at home with different sets of photos and inserted at church.

Ray uses a graphics program that labels photos on their surface with the date, event, and names of participants (if practical). Ray chose a 15-inch frame for JUC. A 15-inch frame costs around $200 and a 10-inch one $80. Some frames can include music as well.

“I’ve gotten many compliments on this addition to our commons area,” she says. “People love to watch it. Those who have been around for some time get a feeling of nostalgia, and newer folks get a visual cue to the many programs we offer at JUC and a sense of the fun and excitement of our church life.”

A photo frame has the added benefit of giving first-timers something to engage with if they are not being spoken to. In July it can also be loaded with photos from the annual General Assembly, sharing that experience with those who did not attend. One precaution: Find a place for the frame where viewers won’t block traffic.

An Alban Institute Congregational Resource Guide––Tools for Ministry with Senior Adults––is available as a PDF here. The guide, for those who work with senior adults, offers help to understand the spiritual, psychological, familial, socioeconomic, and medical dimensions of a person’s life.

The guide includes ways to make home visits with seniors more meaningful. A “Parish Spiritual Assessment Tool” helps ministers and lay care teams get to know senior adults better and provides ways for elders to share their needs and concerns.

The guide also includes formats for planning special worship services that honor seniors in the congregation, helping them plan their memorial services, and remembering those who have died.