UU President Bill Sinkford writes to his fellow Unitarian Universalists:
We’re no longer way out on the margins, and we no longer need to confine our message to the little side streets in our UU neighborhoods. We can take our Good News to the center of the public square with some expectation that it will be favorably received.
His prescription?
We can stand up in the public square and consistently and clearly voice our commitment to the inherent worth and dignity of every person and our commitment to a world communty with peace, justice, and liberty for all. We can take action inspired by these commitments.
This certainly sounds good, but that’s not what his Mormon friend suggested at the beginning of the piece:
Proportionate to our size, he said, Unitarian Universalists do a better job of attracting visitors than do the Mormons. But, he added, we do a terrible job keeping them. “If your churches were half as successful at integrating and retaining members as we Mormons are,” he concluded, “then Unitarian Universalism would be the most dangerous church in America.”
It seems, then, that we could use some more attention to the practices of community. Shouting it from the rooftops won’t help (and we’ve been doing that so long that if it was going to work, it would have worked by now). Making sure people are integrated–and know they are integrated–into the circle will do much more to help.
Good topic. Making people feel welcome, integrating them into the life of the congregation, signing them up as members–all much more difficult than just getting someone to come by and check us out. There are a lot of techniques, but I’ve heard that what people really pay attention to is: the Sunday service itself (quality of the worship); the music (is it bearable?); and the RE. Those, in turn, require having people involved and responsible, which means needing more people to come and get involved–at times, the equilibrium can get skewed, as the groups grows and evolves. All thoughts on this topic most welcome!
Children’s RE is an obvious place to start, but adult RE is sometimes neglected. And then it’s not age-based (which helps with “absent” age-groups). We’ve been using an RE class for 20 and 30somethings this year, and we look to get a half dozen new members out of it by the end of the summer.
Good point. One of our most successful adult RE classes was a highly informal and permeable (join whenever…) group that read through A Chosen Faith. And our little choir could be thought of as adult RE, though it’s more daunting to join, for some.