Best When Used By……

When my nephew was a toddler, he was getting a little fussy at a family gathering.  He had a little zebra stuffed animal but he wasn’t all that interested in playing with it.  When his attention was elsewhere, I hid the zebra under a couch cushion, then asked “Where’s the zebra?”  We searched together until we found it.  This was a big hit, so we continued to play “zebra hide-and-seek” for the rest of the day.  So the next time I saw my nephew, guess what he wanted to do?  :-)  Yes, I became the “zebra hide-and-seek aunt” every time we got together until he finally outgrew the game (or maybe he just lost the zebra).

Our congregations can get stuck in similar patterns with events or traditions but we don’t always notice when a committee or a program has outlasted its relevance. If we apply the Healthy Congregations® lens and understand the congregation as a system, we may notice the effects of homeostasis—the tendency of a system to maintain an equilibrium between its parts.  In systems, any change within the system elicits one of two reactions.  The first and strongest reaction is push-back:  the system wants to return to its previous “comfortable” state.  The other reaction is for the system to change and establish a new equilibrium of the parts, and a new homeostasis.  It’s the role of the leaders to help the system to respond to change based on the congregations core purpose rather than to react based on habit and individual desire for comfort.

What if we could stamp a “use by” date on committees or programs to remind us that we need to constantly reevaluate what our congregations are offering.  Are we serving our core purpose?  Is it relevant to people’s lives?  If it’s a tradition, does help reinforce a key part of our congregational identity, or is it a snapshot of a culture from our congregation’s history or story that may be interesting or sentimental, but doesn’t inform how we might live into our future.

One of my favorite examples is the church rummage sale. The decision to hold a rummage sale is usually based on a “fundraising income” line item in the church budget.  But let’s get on the balcony to look at everything involved.  Rummage sales take up a week or two of the congregation’s attention.  A large space needs to be set aside from other programming for the collecting, sorting and pricing of all of the stuff.  A large group of volunteers are needed to set up, staff the sale, then clean up afterward.  Most rummage sales don’t make very much money when you look at the profit compared to the volunteer hours.  Also not included in the calculus are the programs and participation not happening because of the rummage sale’s consumption of space, volunteer energy and time.

If a newer member (who is more likely to take a balcony view) invited to volunteer for the rummage sale questions the logic of hosting a rummage sale, they may hear explanations that are expressions of the homeostasis of the system:  “It’s a service to the community.”  (Really?  Buying our unwanted stuff?)  “It builds community to work together.”  (Maybe, but I’d rather be a part of a potluck or a chalice circle.)  “It’s an important fundraiser!”  (Let’s see…6 people working 3 hours a night for 5 nights to set up, then another 4 people to work 6 hours the day of the sale, then another 6 people to work 5 hours to clean up, and we made $500.  That works out to $3.47/hour for our volunteer time.)

Let us be open to checking the expiration dates on our programming so we can respond appropriately; replacing what is stale or sour with fresh and tasty alternatives.

In faith and service,

Rev. Renee Ruchotzke
Regional Leadership Development Consultant
CERG – Central East Regional Group of the UUA

Going Electric

“If congregations can change, they can grow.” That is one of the major findings of a survey of American congregations titled “Facts on Growth: 2010.” The survey produced by The Cooperative Congregational Studies Partnership (CCSP), analyzed responses from 11,077 randomly sampled congregations of all faith traditions in the United States. It measured change in attendance between 2005 and 2010.  You can read the full report at www.faithcommunitiestoday.org

Here, in a proverbial nutshell, are the other major findings:

• Congregations located in downtown or central city area are more likely to experience growth
• Congregations started since 1992 are most likely to grow
• Growth in predominantly white congregations is less likely
• Growth is correlated with a clear mission and purpose
• Joyful worship services and worship services that include children are associated with greater growth in the congregation
• Congregations whose members are heavily involved in recruiting new people have a definite growth advantage, as do congregations that use multiple methods to make follow-up contacts with visitors, that regularly invest in special events or programs to attract people from the community, and whose senior clergy spent priority time in evangelism and recruitment.
• Having congregational programs of all kinds is related to growth, especially young adult activities, parenting or marriage enrichment activities and prayer or meditation groups.
• Congregations with strong leaders, especially leaders 35-39 years old, are most likely to be in growing congregations.
• Congregations that say they are willing to change to meet new challenges tend to be growing congregations.
• Congregations with little or no conflict are most likely to grow.
• Congregations that saw themselves as not that different from other congregations in their area tended to decline in growth

So what are we to make of this? Some factors, like location, age of the congregation, and community demographics may be difficult to impact. But look at how many of these factors are well within the ability of congregations to do something about: Having a clear mission and purpose, having joyful worship services (the study finds a positive correlation between electric guitars in worship and growth in congregations), engaging the congregation in recruitment of new members (see my previous blog on Friendship Sunday), implementing a variety of programs for people of varying ages, cultivating strong leaders, managing conflict, creating a niche. These are not all easy to establish, but they are certainly well with in the range of possibility if we are truly committed to growth.

The Reverend Dan Dick, Director of Connectional Ministries for the Wisconsin Annual Conference, said this, “Turnaround churches almost all agree: They knew what they needed to do before they did it. Churches that truly want to grow do so. Churches that want to serve do so. Churches that want to climb out of financial hardship do it. For every declining church you can name, there is a growing one just like it in most ways. The key difference? Declining churches expect their answer to come from the outside; growing churches take responsibility for their own solutions.” Rev. Dan goes on to say that, “The hard reality is that our own health, vitality and future rest squarely with us—no one else will guarantee them for us . . .”

And David Roozen, Director of Hartford Seminary’s Hartford Institute for Religion Research, which oversaw the Facts on Growth 2012 study, concludes, “The clear message…is that in today’s world growth and decline are primarily dependent upon a congregation’s internal culture, program and leadership, and therefore a congregation’s own ability to change and adapt.”

So it seems like it’s up to the members of the congregation to make the decision to stay or grow, to roll up their sleeves and to go about the difficult work of creating a stronger and more vital spiritual home. As a consultant, I would hate to think that you couldn’t do it without me. But I know this. Without a willing and committed congregation, you couldn’t do it at all. So find your focus, commit to your vision, prioritize your tasks and get to work. And it wouldn’t hurt to get out that electric guitar either.

With respect,

Mark Bernstein
CERG Regional Growth Development Consultant

The Hunger for Freedom and Order

I just finished book 3 of the Hunger Games trilogy and am looking forward to seeing the movie next week (or as soon as the rest of my family finishes the book). Of the many rich themes and biting social commentary, the one that stands out for me is how this dystopian society organizes itself.  The story highlights two competing human desires—one for freedom and the other for order. Order (and the safety that it promises) has the upper hand throughout most of the three books.

As fierce protectors of the free church tradition, Unitarian Universalists naturally drift toward the freedom part of the spectrum.  Thus, it is easy for us to poke a stick at the power and authority of President Snow and the Capitol, who oppress the residents of the 12 districts while providing bread and circuses to its citizens.  Their power is based on fear, with just enough hope thrown in to keep the oppressed from giving up completely.

In book 3, Mockingjay, we meet the backers of the rebellion—a remnant of District 13 that has been hiding underground since the previous rebellion 75 years earlier. They also exercise a high level of power and authority, but it is held with the implicit understanding that the rules imposed are for the good of the whole because they are at war with the Capitol.  Their power is also based on fear—the fear of the enemy—and they exploit that fear to manipulate the uprisings in the other 12 districts.

In order to be faithful, we Unitarian Universalists need structures of governance that use a minimal amount of power and authority.  We do need some order…but we also need the space for creativity and grace to make their presence known in our congregations.  We do need accountability…but an accountability structure that doesn’t unnecessarily constrain our leaders.

Unfortunately, our governance structures sometimes—unintentionally—undermine our congregations’ effectiveness.  We amend bylaws to address problems that should be dealt with via policies.  We adopt Policy Governance® when what we really want is for our leaders to be accountable to our mission or purpose.  We keep stewardship information secret so that people who have implicit accountability for raising money—such as the stewardship committee or the minister—are denied access to pledge information.

Fear underlies these kinds of situations as well:  Fear of backlash if a board passes policies that some members don’t like, fear that if we don’t measure our staff’s performance using hard data we can’t know if they are doing their job, fear that talking honestly about money might make all members of the congregation more accountable in financially supporting the congregation.

If you are in the process of reviewing your congregation’s governance structure (or perhaps should be thinking about it!), remember to invite hope to the planning table and keep fear in the other room.  We want our leaders to be able to lead whole-heartedly within reasonable expectations of accountability to mission and purpose.

In faith and service,

Rev. Renee Ruchotzk
Regional Leadership Development Consultant
Central East Region of the UU

Tossing Stones

A few months ago, my home congregation, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Delaware County (UUCDC) in Media, Pennsylvania, decided to host a “Bring a Friend Sunday” in an effort to increase awareness of our church and bring more potential members through our doors.  They approached me for assistance and I was only too happy to help since I had already been thinking about ways of making personal contacts as a way of increasing outreach in our congregations.

An early study (1984) conducted by the Institute for American Church Growth found that 79 percent began attending church after receiving such an invitation. Later studies reinforce this quite surprising finding that 70% to 95% of those that visit a congregation do so because someone invited them.  Yet, according to Rev. James Kubal-Kumoto, author of Making a Case for Unitarian Universalism, we UUs invite someone to our congregation, on average, once every 26 years.

So if “Bring a Friend” Sunday was to be successful, we knew we had to find a way to motivate our members to buck a very alarming and depressing trend.  One of the obvious barriers that we had to overcome was the tendency of Unitarian Universalists to reject any sort of evangelism, as if spreading the good news of our faith was somehow antithetical to our beliefs.  Certainly the idea of bringing a friend to our church with the intent of converting them to Unitarian Universalism would be a turnoff to many in our congregation.  So we decided to shift the focus of what we renamed as “Friendship Sunday.”  We announced to the congregation that the short term goal of Friendship Sunday was not to increase the membership of UUCDC.  The short term goal was to enable our friends, neighbors and loved ones to experience the place that has brought us such joy and meaning and to meet the other people in our lives who have also helped to enrich and inspire us.

In our forums with members of the congregation to discuss Friendship Sunday, I told the following story:

There was once a blind man sitting on a street sidewalk begging for money. He held up a sign which said: “I am blind, please help.” There were only a few coins in his begging bowl.  A woman walked by, took a few coins from her pocket and dropped them into the bowl. She then took the sign, turned it around, wrote some words on it and then put the sign back so that everyone who walked by would see the new words.

Soon the bowl began to fill up as more and more people dropped in money.  Later that day the woman who had changed the sign came to see how things were. The man recognized her footsteps and asked, “Were you the one who changed my sign this morning? What did you write?” The woman said, “I only wrote the truth. I said what you said but in a different way.”  What she had written was: “Today is a beautiful day and I cannot see it.”

When we invite people to Friendship Sunday, we told the congregation, the sign we’re displaying should not be, “We need more members.  Please help.”  It should be, “We have a beautiful congregation and a beautiful building and you haven’t seen it.”

Instructions were available for all members of the congregation on how to make the “ask.”  We suggested that they use the following as a template:  “On Sunday, March 17th, my congregation is having a “Friendship Sunday.”  There will be a service featuring a sermon by our minister and an informal reception following the service.  As you know, 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 to meet the people who mean so much to me.  Will you accept my invitation?”  We pointed out that in making this invitation, members are  only asking the person to experience something that is important to them, not to convert to Unitarian Universalism; that they are honoring the person by inviting them to meet others who are also important in their life; that they are being very clear and honest about the agenda and content of the day; and that they are making a straight forward invitation without bargaining, pleading or coercing, one where the other has the right and opportunity to say “no” without consequences or diminishing of the relationship.  We even offered suggested responses to questions like, Do people pray? Do I have to sing? Will I have to sign anything? Will I be asked to introduce myself?

We held Friendship Sunday yesterday and it was a huge success.  We estimate that at least 40 people came as invited guests (we have a total membership of about 300) and our worship attendance at both services was much higher than average.  There were gifts for our visitors, a banner commemorating Friendship Sunday, an inspiring sermon on friendship by our minister, and wonderful music that filled the building and reached our souls.  The energy and the excitement in our building were palpable.  One member of the congregation told us that her friend grabbed extra information to give to her daughter and her family and then sent quotes from the order of service to her email list.  Cool, huh?

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. Or, one day, may bring another stranger seeking faith and hope to our doors.

If you’d like more information about our Friendship Sunday, contact me at mbernstein@uua.org.

With respect,

Mark Bernstein

CERG Growth Development Consultant

Door Sticky. Be Strong!

As I walked into the little bookstore(1) in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, I couldn’t help noticing this sign:

Door Sticky. Be Strong!

The sign didn’t tell you what to do (such as “Push Hard” or “Lift Up”), it told you how to be in order to deal with the door: “Be Strong.”

This sign made me want to make my own set of signs to hand out to my churches:

“Traditions Sticky. Be Adaptive!”

When I work with churches, many of the leaders want tools and techniques to help them in leadership.  We have lots of those and we do share them.  But I sometimes have a hard time helping leaders to understand that the most important tool they have is their own presence and functioning.  In other words, “Be Strong.”   “Be Adaptive.”  I might even add, “Be Wise.”

What do I mean by “wise?”

I’m currently reading the book This Odd and Wondrous Calling by Lillian Daniel and Martin B. Copenhaver.

They have a description of wisdom that resonates with my understanding of what “presence and functioning” means:

…wisdom is more than a single attribute.  It is more like a cluster of attributes, including a clear-eyed view of human behavior, coupled with a keen self-understanding; a certain tolerance for ambiguity and what might be called the messiness of life; emotional resiliency; an ability to think clearly in a circumstance of conflict or stress; a tendency to approach a crisis as an intriguing puzzle to be solved; an inclination to forgive and move on; humility enough to know that it is not all about you; a gift for seeing how smaller facts fit in with the larger picture; a mix of empathy and detachment; a knack for learning from lifetime experiences; a way of suspending judgment long enough to achieve greater clarity; an ability to act coupled with a willingness to embrace judicious inaction.(2)

Because we are the people of the Living Tradition, I believe that in order to be faithful, we need to develop the wisdom that allows us to keep Unitarian Universalism vibrant.  But our institutions resist change, much as a sticky door resists being opened. We just need to develop the capacity—the strength and wisdom—to meet the challenge.

In faith and service,
Rev. Renee Ruchotzke
Leadership Development Consultant

(1) Caliban Book Shop, 410 S. Craig St. Pittsburgh, PA
(2) page 109

Communication: Keeping it Real

George Bernard Shaw wrote, “The problem with communication is the illusion that is has occurred.” Is communication in our Unitarian Universalist congregations an illusion…or are we taking steps to ensure that information is shared openly and in as many different ways as we can think of? One sign of poor communication in an organization is the presence of rumors and gossip, the terrible twos of congregations.

Rumors are misinformation that is fabricated in the absence of accurate information. They begin when evidence pertaining to an important topic is ambiguous, concealed, or otherwise unavailable. When normal channels of communication break down, people seek alternate means of obtaining information and theorize on their own and with others to try to explain what is confusing or mysterious. Rumors are an attempt to provide structure in an uncertain situation, bring a sense of closure, and simplify complex situations.

Gossip, on the other hand, is information that may be more accurate but becomes problematic because it is spread outside formal informational channels. Gossip tends to be more trivial and nonessential than rumors. Gossip fills an information void, but it is also a way to bind people and communities together. It is talk with a social purpose and can create a sense of shared intimacy which enables bonding and a greater sense of belonging. It is when gossip is deceptive, arbitrary and mean-spirited that it begins to break down a community.

It is tempting to point fingers at people who gossip or spread rumors. But such behavior exists only if the system itself permits and enables it. In a congregation where such behavior is extreme, leaders should ask themselves several pointed and difficult questions:
• Do employees not feel safe communicating directly and truthfully?
• Do rumors or gossip hint of high anxiety or negativity in the organization?
• Do the rumors or gossip indicate that necessary information is being concealed?
• Do the rumors or gossip require a response from the leaders?

In an Alban Institute article entitled The Sabotage of Rumors, Arthur Paul Boers describes two primary principles for disabling rumors, gossip, secrets, and third-party complaints. First, since secrecy is one of the primary problems, churches and leaders should not keep secrets about secrets. Exposing secrecy can be risky, but when secrets are revealed, anxiety usually decreases. Refusing to keep secrets about secrets, Boers continues, means naming and addressing unhealthy behavior, not ignoring it and hoping it just goes away.

The second principle, according to Boers, is this: “viruses cannot be spread if we do not spread them. We disable rumors, gossip, secrets, and third-party complaints, by refusing to pass them on or perpetuate them. Rumors can be undermined by providing prompt and accurate information about decisions and process. Correct information is especially important when rumors are apt to spread or are already spreading.”

Transparency is the watchword. The more trusting and honest the leadership and the more willing it is to share information willingly and lovingly, the less room there is for unhealthy communication habits to germinate and grow. It’s also helpful to develop a “communication road map” that outlines appropriate channels for finding out needed facts, expressing concerns, and relaying information. If you are worried about the safety of a child, whom do you talk to? If you have a concern about the minister, where do you go to express that concern? If you are angry about the worship service going on too long, where do you go to be heard? And if the concern isn’t addressed at the first stop, whom do you talk to next?

Above all, what leaders need to instill in their congregations is a sense of trust. As Jack Welch said, “Trust happens when leaders are transparent, candid, and keep their word. It’s that simple.”

And that’s no illusion.

With respect,

Mark Bernstein
Regional Growth Development Consultant

Religion is Wasted on the Young

Following are some of the findings from the 2008 online YaYA Resolution Survey completed by congregational leaders during the period February 1 – April 1, 2009. http://www.uua.org/documents/yaya/08-09_cong_report.pdf

• 29% of young adults (ages 18-25) never lead or help lead worship services
• 26% never provide music in worship
• Only 20% of the congregations surveyed actively assess how welcoming its worship services are to young adults
• 23% provide young adult small group ministry
• 33% provide intentional pastoral care to young adults and their families on a regular basis
• 78% do not have young adults serving on their worship committee
• 87% do not have young adults serving on their governing board
• 40% do not have young adults volunteering as religious education teachers
• The median annual budget line for young-adult-specific ministry and programming is $500.
• 83% do not provide financial support for district young adult programming
• The median number of young adults who served as a delegate for their congregation at General Assembly over the past ten years was 0.

So, what are we to make of this?

Is it that young adults are not interested in congregational life? Perhaps to an extent, but it would be a circular argument to say that this is so based solely on the above statistics.

Is it that there are simply too few young adults in our congregations to make a statistical difference? Maybe so. The survey does reveal that 59% of the congregations surveyed report fewer than 10 young adults among its membership.

Whether it’s a question of attraction or inclusion, it’s clear that young adults have very little impact in influencing life in most of our UU congregations. And the problem can easily compound itself. If a visiting young adult sees little activity among other young adults, he/she will be more reluctant to either join the congregation in the first place…or to get involved in congregational life if they should join.

I believe that we need to cultivate our youth. We need to lift up young adults in our congregation by asking them specifically what they want from the church community and then doing our best to give them that. It may mean changes in traditional worship or modifications to traditional rituals that have defined church life. It may mean revisiting our mission or the way we engage in community. We need to move over and let our younger members share and act on ideas that stimulate them and excite them about being part of a church community. We need to ask and we need to listen and we need to change.

In the YaYa Resolution Survey, congregations were asked for the top ways in which they believe the congregation could improve its young adult ministry. Answers included increasing outreach, having more attractive worship services, creating small group ministry, developing a campus ministry, and inviting young adults to serve in leadership roles.

But here’s the kicker. When asked if congregations currently had plans in place to make these changes, 59% responded “no.”

Let’s stop talking about it, and start doing it…before we waste more time and more young adults.

With Respect,

Mark Bernstein
CERG Regional Growth Development Consultant

Leadership for the Zombie Apocalypse

This past Sunday, the boys in my middle school class used their check-in time to describe their latest strategies for the Zombie Apocalypse.  This meme has been permeating the culture of the millennial generation lately, from Facebook postings to Humans vs. Zombies games  on college campuses.  Even the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have gotten into the act by publishing a Zombie Apocalypse preparedness guide.

I love a good apocalypse story.  I like the initial part where—in order to survive the initial onslaught—we humans go into hyper-problem-solving mode. The engineering part of my brain savors a good puzzle.  But the really interesting apocalypse stories—Stephen King’s The Stand and George Stewart’s Earth Abides being a couple of my favorites—follow the initial catastrophe with a story of realistic humans reimagining how they will adapt to the altered version of their world.  Such two-part apocalypse stories provide an example of the difference between adaptive and technical challenges.

Preparing for a Zombie Apocalypse is basically a technical challenge.

(I might even argue that preparing for a Zombie Apocalypse is “work avoidance” because—frankly—it seems less daunting to deal with the brain-sucking undead when compared to real-and-present issues such as fracking or climate change…)

Let me share the back story of the CDC jumping on the Zombie Apocalypse bandwagon (or maybe we should call it the Monty Python “bring out
your dead” wagon).  Andy Goodman’s Free Range Thinking newsletter tells the story of how the challenge of getting Americans to read about how to prepare for a disaster led to some creative and courageous leaders at the CDC to create the zombie-based disaster preparedness guide.  Learning how to prepare for a disaster—whether it be a hurricane or a zombies at your door—is basically a technical challenge.  Figuring out how to get the American people to pay attention to your carefully crafted preparedness guides was the main mission of the CDC—and that is the adaptive challenge. I love that a few folks at the CDC had the imagination and guts to use the zombie meme to that purpose.  Sure, they had some critics who reacted negatively.  But they had over two million hits on their website within a week…and their campaign cost less than $100.

Our congregations are facing some really crucial adaptive challenges in the next decade.*  But if the CDC—a stodgy government agency—can respond to their adaptive challenge with such courage and creativity, there is no reason why we—the people of the living tradition—can’t do the same.

In faith and service,
Rev. Renee Ruchotzke
Leadership Development Consultant

*For more on these challenges, read Robert Putnam’s American Grace and John Roberto’s Faith Formation 2020.

The Purpose-Driven Pledge

As the holidays wind to a close, many congregational leaders are looking ahead to the spring stewardship campaign. What they may not realize is that the integrity of their leadership during the rest of the year has as much impact on stewardship as the campaign method itself.

What successful non-profits have known for years—and churches are just beginning to learn—is that people give money—even in a weak economy—when they are confident that their gift will effectively serve a higher purpose.

An important book on Stewardship that has been making the rounds is Not Your Parent’s Offering Plate by J. Clif Christopher.  Although it is
steeped in Christocentric theology, its basic points can speak to Unitarian Universalists with a little theological translation.

People give money if they can change lives.

What is your congregation’s purpose or mission?  Are you serving in a way that makes a real difference for actual people? Or are you just maintaining a beloved building and underwriting the programming that keeps your members happy and comfortable?

People give to people.

Are you finding ways to share the stories of the people whose lives are being changed? Perhaps there is a youth struggling with their gender identity who found a supportive community within your walls.  Maybe you sponsored a family of refugees as they tried to establish a new life in a strange country. Or perhaps you open your doors once a month to homeless families as a part of an interfaith organization.

Serious givers expect accountability to mission

As Clif Christopher states in his book:

It is the people leading that church and those programs that make the difference. When they have confidence in those people to perform, gifts follow.…. People know that programs are just words on paper until others take them and put those words into action. Only then do lives get changed. So, though I may like a certain program or idea, I do not give to it without having supreme confidence in the people who are going to be in charge of carrying it out.

Although the language is simple, the implications for congregational leaders are profound:

• Know your purpose
• Serve that purpose with integrity
• Share the stories

And last, but not least:

• Invite others to support that purpose with you

In faith and service,

Rev. Renee Ruchotzke
Regional Leadership Development Consultant
Central East Region of the UUA

Small Wonder

A few years ago, the state of Delaware hired a marketing firm to come up with a new motto to represent their territory.  What they came up with was “It’s good to be small.”  Now, if I had paid a firm what was probably a lot of money and that’s what they came up, I would ask for my money back.  But if we want to apply this motto to the small congregations in our faith, I think it would work well.

Goodness knows, there are certainly a lot of them.  In the Winter 2010 issue of The World, we were informed that there are more congregations in the UUA with fewer than 100 members (534 to be exact) than there are with more then 100 members (510).  While the percentage of small congregations is large, however, the percentage of actual people who are Unitarian Universalists and go to small congregations is relatively small as well.  According to the UU World article, only 16% of the voting members of UUA congregations belong to churches with fewer than 100 members.  The article concludes that individual UUs are more likely to be familiar with mid-size to large congregations than small congregations, even though there are many more small congregations.  These statistics are not dissimilar when compared with other religions in the United States.  In the article, Small Churches Struggle to Grow Because Of The People They Attract (The Barna Group, 2009, Ventura, CA), we learn that the average church across all denominations attracts less than 90 members on a typical weekend.

So size does matter…and one can see how easy it is for UUs in small congregations to get a complex about all this.

So it is important to emphasize the advantages and the blessings of small congregations, what one might call “the bigness of smallness.” During a workshop at the Metro New York Defying Gravity Conference last November on Long Island, I asked participants to call out the positive aspects of being a small congregation.  Their responses included, a deeper more intimate community, quieter and more contemplate worship services, room to grow, and the opportunity to become a niche congregation.  Kennon L. Callahan, in his book, Small, Strong Congregations ( Jossey-Bass, Inc., 2000), cites several positive characteristics of small congregations.  They include a focus on “one excellent mission”, “compassion-driven”, offer “widening circles of belonging”, maintain a “consistent spirit of self-reliance”, consistently “live and share as a team”, have facilities that are “just enough” for their one excellent mission, and open “many doors of giving.”

I believe that a strong and vital small congregation is one that emphasizes quality over quantity.  The mistake that many small congregations make is thinking that their identity is only defined by how much they can grow in numbers.  In fact, the congregation that focuses on making a clear and distinct difference in the community; that focuses on developing their UU identity and richly exploring our faith and its meaning in their lives; that creates a sense of belonging where all members feel a commitment to contribute to congregational life; that creates and lives by covenants that enhance communication and reduce conflict; will be the congregation that remains strong and vital and stands the best chance of attracting new members to the fold.

In their excellent book, Big Ideas for Small Congregations (Spirit of Life Publishing, 2007), Jane Dwinell and Ellen Germann-Melosh list six steps to change and growth.  They are:

1. Determine who you want to be: what size, how long it will take you to get there, and who you will attract.

2. Make sure your worship and RE program is strong, interesting, and spiritually relevant

3. Clean up any old conflicts or tensions that may drive away newcomers.

4. Become truly hospitable.  Check your appearance, parking, signage, order of service, newsletter.  Create a greeting and follow-up protocol.

5. Develop an organizational structure that will be the best one for the size you expect to be.

6. Commit to one social action project that will express your faith and bring your congregation into the life of your local community.

The irony is that these suggestions are not very different from what one would make to larger congregations.  In small congregations, however, without the bureaucracy and the complexity of the organizational structure, it might be easier to implement these suggestions.

One thing is for sure, though.  Small congregations are not going away any time soon, nor should they.  As the Barna Group notes in the study cited earlier, ”Small churches play an important and valuable role in the religious landscape of America. They reach millions of young adults who have no interest in a larger church setting. They have tremendous potential for building strong community, as well as spiritual foundations. And small churches often grow into larger churches once they develop significant internal leadership and creatively overcome their resource limitations…After all, the goal of every church should not be numerical growth but spiritual health and vitality.”

In other words, small rocks!

With respect,

Mark Bernstein

CERG Growth Development Consultant