community

Annual themes inspire, motivate Dallas congregation

From March’s InterConnections feature story, now online at UUA.org:

It is, of course, every congregation’s desire to have most of its members actively engaged in personal growth, in deepening their spiritual development and working to improve the larger community and the world.

There’s a lot of all of that going on at First Unitarian Church in Dallas, which has embraced a congregation-wide theme this year: Year of Engagement and Service, or YES!

The YES! theme invites friends and members to get involved in social action and civic engagement projects outside of church, ranging from increased involvement in their neighborhoods to engaging with the world at large. They are encouraged to join one of three YES! “tracks,” focusing on their neighborhood (Neighbors), the Dallas metro area (Community), or the world itself (Global).

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Growth

Moving into the community with ministry

The blog Ministrare, written by UU minister the Rev. Sean Dennison, has a message about making our congregations and our ministries more visible by moving out into the communities we live in.

Quoting from the Episcopalian website MinistryBestPractices.com, and adding his own thoughts, he notes: “So much of good ministry is being visible in the community. And that doesn’t mean having well-lit signage. It means not just name recognition––not just being known––but being known for the right things.”

He continues: “Can people in our cities, towns, and neighborhoods tell what we believe by our actions? I’m proud that many Unitarian Universalists went to Arizona to protest SB 1070 because they believed it to be racist, unjust, and cruel.  But I want to know what the people next door to our churches know about us.”

The website he drew from makes reference to a church in Georgia that sold its buildings and is using the proceeds to work out in the community, using the slogan, “The Church has left the building.”

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