Recently in Between Us Category

The following is from a UUA document on Membership Growth. It is important to understand that a congregation can not create sustained growth simply by adding numbers. A congregation must also help people grow spiritually, relationally and developmentally in response to the challenges of the world.  

I recommend that we think about how congregations grow, and think about how we can apply these lessons because it will help Throop Church become the welcoming, inclusive, and active congregation that we have promised to work together to build.

"When we think of membership, we tend to think of numbers. Yet membership in a 

Unitarian Universalist congregation is as much about quality as it is about quantity.

Unitarian Universalist congregations exist because of the free choice of their 

members to be "gathered" into covenantal relationship with one another.  

 

To put these points into a historical perspective, the concepts of free choice and 

gathered were fairly extraordinary in the days of the early colonial Puritan settlers. Prior to this evolution in church governance, people went to the church of their own parish, which was a geographic location and, thus, an involuntary assignment of membership. The new concept of church became known as the free church. As current members of Unitarian Universalist congregations, we continue the covenantal relationship to "walk together" despite our differences in theological perspective. Walking together implies undertaking a journey of making meaning, which is very different from adherence to a creed.

Membership is a dynamic process rather than a single act. It begins when one makes the conscious choice to formally affiliate with a particular congregation--yet that decision marks the beginning of the membership journey rather than its end. In More Than Numbers: The Way Churches Grow, Loren Mead outlines four dimensions of growth and states that a growing, vital congregation would most likely be attending to each of these four aspects of membership: 

 

• Numerical growth is best calculated by tracking how many attend per week at Sunday morning worship, in Sunday school, and at adult religious education programs. This number represents the active members and is also tied to the size of the budget and the number of activities offered by the congregation. The number of people who are reported by each Unitarian Universalist congregation to be active members is the number the Unitarian Universalist Association certifies annually. 

 

• Maturational growth represents opportunities for members to deepen their faith and spiritual roots, as well as to increase their understanding of the spectrum of religious possibilities. This kind of growth also includes the ways in which, and the depth to which, the congregation cares for others. For maturational growth to occur, a congregation must empower members to contribute their unique talents and gifts for the well-being of the whole.   

 

• Organic growth is growth of the congregation as a functioning community and an institution that can engage with other institutions of society. The term refers to healthy internal organizational structures such as policies, processes, practices, and programs; recruiting and succession-planning practices for leaders; evaluation mechanisms for programs, volunteers, and paid staff; and practices that deal with conflict openly and honestly. 

• Incarnational growth is the ability to take the meanings and values of 

Unitarian Universalism and make them real in the world outside the congregation. A congregation must be able to build itself into a religious community in which people can deepen their spiritual life, be challenged to live out their faith, and engage in the larger community to make the world more loving and just." 

By Rev. Clyde Grubbs

The people of our nation and our state are in engaged in a time of decision there is much anxiety and there is much concern.  So many people are in motion, reaching out talking to neighbors, contributing what they can.  There is much energy, and some of what we witness is dangerous.

Late last week a young woman working for a political campaign claimed that she was mugged and beaten by a supporter of opposing candidate. It came out that this young woman was lying, she was trying to provoke a scandal. The mugger it was said was a Big Black Man. The woman making the false accusation is a young white woman.  Some in the media joined in the hysteria. Shame on them.

Too much of election 2008 is about image and posturing, and inciting racism and fear of the other. Let us be calm and determined to move through this time and then join in a time after the elections when we can be part of the healing.

May we be open to this time in our lives, and may we avoid getting caught up the temptations of this moment.

May we be sober in this time of high expectation and patient with the process.  

This a time of high anxiety,  let us be calm and present to moment.  

By Rev. Clyde Grubbs

Renee Descartes absurdly observed "I think, therefore I am." This put the individual consciousness in contradiction to all that existed outside of that consciousness, to all "perceived" data and even to other people. This Enlightenment world-view that gained hegemony in the "Western" mind has been characterized by this subject/object split. 

We are part of nature, and we thrive when we live in harmony with our natural world, with Mother Earth. However, the Enlightenment world-view makes identity with nature impossible, and results in a profound alienation from our interconnected cosmos, and from that which people call by many names, that which in our faith tradition many of us refer to as "God,"  "the Holy,"  "the Creator," and "the Source of All."  

Unitarian Universalism arose within the Enlightenment and shared the world-view of subjective liberalism ("the Other is hostile to my freedom;" "The best community is that which leaves me alone.") as opposed to social freedom ("I cannot be free unless everyone else shares in freedom;" "solidarity and mutual responsibility enhances individuals to realize their full potential.") In the last part of the twentieth century, Unitarian Universalists began to question their alienation from the natural world, and whether their embrace of subjective liberalism was compatible with their longing for loving community.

What are the consequences of the Western or Modern world view, the view that objectifies Mother Earth and all creatures of the earth and sky?  It strikes me that this world view alienates human beings from the Creation, from each other, from their own innermost selves and from the mystery in which we live and move and have our being.  

Will Tuttle, Ph.D., 'The World Peace Diet'  writes:

"The spiritual connection between animals and humans grows out of

understanding that we are all expressions of eternal benevolent

consciousness, and as we acknowledge this interconnection and live in

harmony with it, our lives become prayers of compassion and healing."  

It is my contention that the Enlightenment world-view has rationalized racism, total war, and untold violence against human beings. In other contributions, I will develop these points more fully. Let it suffice to observe that because our sensitivity has been dulled by factory farming of animals we are desensitized to the mass murder of whole peoples. By objectifying animals, we harden our hearts. People whose hearts have been hardened in the past have simply called their enemies "animals" or "savages" before the began their genocides.

The way we produce food and bring it to consumers is destructive to life and flows from profound alienation from our own nature. Unitarian Universalists now have the opportunity of discussing and acting on their own relation to the our Mother the Earth in a a study action initiative that our congregation is beginning. Ethical Eating: Food and Environmental Justice raises many possibilities of looking at our assumptions and make affirmative responses to restore our relation to the world, and to that which we may call Holy.

Our species has evolved on this planet with the support of nutritive conditions given to us, and through the benefits of abundant resources. Over the centuries, homo sapiens, working together in communities, have been able to create cultures that can remember the lessons they have learned and apply those lessons to finding solutions.  Within those cultures we have erected institutions -- complex sets of human relations that continue over time, that facilitate needed social functions in the areas of governance, production, finance, medicine, education, security, and religion.  But, it is those very institutions, the ones that concentrate our collective power, that endanger us today.

It began in a few countries early in the so-called "industrial revolution." It expanded slowly, over more than three centuries, and today it embraces the whole world in a  global economy based on domination -- domination over both people and nature, by corporations.  We are depleting the resources of our planet; most critically its deep, rich agricultural soils, its biodiversity, and its groundwater, stored during the time of the Ice Ages.

The leaders of the key institutions in the major nations of this earth appear to be under the illusion that no fundamental change in direction is required, that we can find technological solutions that will allow the corporations to continue business as usual. But if we continue along this road, the world's economic and social structures will collapse.

In the past, grass roots movements have discovered ways to make changes in the direction of major institutions.  Consider the rise of organized labor, the consumer rights movement, the civil rights movement, the women's movement, and the environmental movement of the past. While we have seen more and more grass roots movement toward more sustainable economics and agriculture, there is much more to do.

In the words of the Earth Charter (2000), "We stand at a critical moment in Earth's history, a time when humanity must choose its future. As the world becomes increasingly interdependent and fragile, the future at once holds great peril and great promise. To move forward we must recognize that in the midst of a magnificent diversity of cultures and life forms we are one human family and one Earth community with a common destiny. We must join together to bring forth a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace."

Because of the urgency of this task, I am committing my ministry to the Great Turning, the effort to make the turn away from catastrophe and toward earth community.  I will open a discussion with you on how we together can accomplish this vital task.