Category Archives: Liberal religion

A fictional story

The following is a completely fictional account of a conversation that I never had. It’s a conversation I could have had many times over, and it’s true that I’ve had similar conversations over the years, but this one is fictional. Do not imagine that I am talking about you or your congregation — this is fiction.

It’s that time of year, the time when religious educators in Unitarian Universalist congregations are gossiping about who quit their jobs this year, and why. I happened to be talking to Sue, an old friend of mine who’s Director of Religious Education (DRE) at First Universalist on the Beach.

“So I talked with ——, and asked her why she’s leaving,” said Sue.

“What’d she say?” I said.

“The usual,” said Sue. “Low salary. When they passed the budget this year, she finally realized that they were never going to get her salary up to guidelines in spite of all their promises.”

“How about you?” I said. “Last time I talked with you, you were talking about leaving.” Sue has been working at her new DRE job for a year and a half now.

“No, I’m going to stick it out for a while,” Sue said. “It’s a pretty good job. The money sucks, but it’s better than I could make working retail. I have flextime, so I can be there for my kids when I need to. And the minister pretty much leaves me alone. When I started, he told me, ‘Technically I’m your supervisor, but as far as I’m concerned you’re on your own.'”

“Actually, that’s pretty cold-blooded,” I said.

Sue was taken aback. She had left her first DRE job because of a new minister who micro-managed everything she did. Which meant that she was perfectly happy to be working with a minister who left her alone.

“OK, but he’s your supervisor,” I said, “which means he’s supposed to be offering support and guidance. That’s what supervisors are supposed to do. And he should be going to bat for you in the budget process, trying to get your salary up to guidelines.”

No need to recount the rest of this (fictional) conversation. It’s a conversation I’ve heard before. Many ministers supervise the staff in their congregation — yet many ministers seem to think that supervision means either (a) abdicating all responsibility for the employees they supervise, or (b) micromanaging everything those employees do.

Not that I’m a good supervisor yet, but I’m working on it. Over the years, I’ve found that good supervision takes a lot of my time. In the short term, it’s quicker (and easier) to abdicate responsibility or to micromanage — but in the long term, either of those approaches will lead to fast employee turnover and poorly-trained employees who don’t have the training and/or the resources to do their jobs. On the other hand, even though it takes more of the supervisor’s time and effort, good supervision will make the whole staff much more effective and efficient — which means the whole church will benefit.

If you’re looking for reasons why so many congregations remain small and ineffective, look at the supervisory skills of ministers for one such reason. But if you find ministers who are lousy supervisors, don’t jump to conclusions and blame the ministers — maybe you should blame a system that forces ministers to be supervisors without giving them adequate training and without giving them the time to supervise the staff — maybe you should blame congregations who don’t allow their ministers the time to be good supervisors. Actually, instead of blaming anyone, why not change the system so that your minister has the time and training to be a good supervisor of staff?

Just thinking out loud

We had a meeting of the Ballou Channing District Board at First Unitarian in New Bedford tonight.

“Hey,” said Don, one of the board members, “I was looking for directions on how to drive here, and I found your Web site. I like your Web site.”

“Yeah,” I said, “we’ve been working on the church Web site for some time and….”

“No, actually I found your Web site first,” said Don. “When you type ‘new bedford uu’ into Google, your personal Web site comes up first.”

“Oh,” I said. “My Web site comes up before the church Web site?”

“Yep,” said Don. “Oh, and I liked your church’s Web site, too.”

Hmm… my Web site isn’t supposed to come up before the church’s Web site. Unless maybe I’m thinking about this the wrong way. Yesterday’s New York Times Magazine has an article about how today’s pop musicians and singer-songwriters are building audiences with blogs and Web sites: “…this is a trend that is catalyzing the B-list, the new, under-the-radar acts that have always built their successes fan by fan.” Am I supposed to be marketing myself (and the church) the way the singer-songwriters are marketing themselves?

On the one hand, there is no doubt that Unitarian Universalism is a B-list religion and that Unitarian Universalist congregations don’t have the resources to mount massive media campaigns. On the other hand, I don’t think we can use the same online marketing techniques as the B-list singer-songwriters — creating a MySpace site, writing blogs, answering email, and then finding out which cities have enough fans to warrant staging a concert there. And I have to say I am a little surprised and uneasy that my personal Web site sometimes comes up on search engines before our church Web site — this blog is supposed to be a hobby for me, and I’m not sure I want it to become part of my job. I’m not quite sure what I think about all this. What do you think?

Email [curse | blessing], part two

The second installment in an occasional series where I think out loud about using email effectively.

First off, reader and comics fan Craig pointed out this wonderful comic strip on the perils of email: Link. Thanks, Craig!

Next, here are some of my own current ruminations about email….

Spinning out of control (and how to stop)

Sometimes you have to use email to conduct business. The problem is that email discussions have this habit of spinning out of control. Sometimes people write things they later regret. Sometimes people stop reading carefully, and talk at one another instead of with one another.

Recently, I was participating in an ongoing email discussion. Another woman and I separately sent out perfectly innocent email messages that unwittingly stirred up strong emotions in someone else. That person sent out a very restrained reply, but suddenly it occurred to me that something was wrong.

Suddenly, it felt like things might spin out of control very quickly.

Fortunately two other people sent out nearly simultaneous email messages:– one person wrote, Let’s wait for our face-to-face meeting next week and discuss this there;– the other person wrote, This can wait until we have our next meeting. And our email conversation stopped immediately, while we wait for our next face-to-face meeting.

I’ve decided that when you’re communicating via email, you always have to be ready to stop and say, I’ll call you and we’ll talk on the phone — or, Let’s meet face-to-face and discuss this. In addition, I’ve decided that when you’re communicating via email, you always have to be ready to listen when someone says, Hey I’ll call you on the phone — or, Hey let’s meet face-to-face and discuss this. You always have to be willing to stop the email discussion at someone else’s request, and move to a more interactive mode of communication like the telephone or a face-to-face meeting.

The thing about email is that you often don’t know the emotional state of the person with whom you’re exchanging email. When someone else asks for a phone call or a face-to-face meeting, you have to trust that they really mean it. I’m thinking that when someone else asks for a phone call, the only appropriate email response is:– What are some times I can call you, and what’s the best phone number to reach you at? (or: What phone number are you at right now?) If someone asks for a face-to-face meeting, you can say:– When and where? That should keep things from spinning out of control.

Two other possibilities:– I believe that the better you know someone, the less likely it will be that an email discussion will spin out of control (which means that team-building for committees using email heavily is probably a good idea). I believe that having regularly scheduled face-to-face meetings helps a little to keep things from spinning out of control (because you know that you’re going to have to come face-to-face with those people).

But everything I’ve said here is up for debate. What are your experiences with email spinning out of control? What goes on when email discussions spin out of control? Once they start spinning, how to stop?

Next installment: Email [curse | blessing], part three

Hey, Massachusetts religious liberals…

This just in from the Religious Coalition for the Freedom to Marry:

Constitutional Convention Recessed Until June 14th

Yesterday legislators voted to reschedule the Constitutional Convention for Thursday, June 14th. We now have five more weeks to get the votes we need to stop the anti-gay amendment from going to the ballot box. Please contact your legislators and let them know that it is neither fair not just to write religious and civil discrimination into our Constitution.

If you’re a Massachusetts resident don’t forget to contact your legislators and tell them why you, as a religious person, don’t support the anti-gay ammendment. If you’re a Unitarian Universalist, you might point out that our clergy have been officiating at religious marriages since at least the 1960’s.

And astute reader Craig found a great online drawing that might help Massachusetts legislators understand why same sex couples should not lose the right to marry: Link.

Email [curse | blessing] pick one

Yesterday’s issue of The New York Times Book Review reviews a new book called Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home, by David Shipley and Will Schwalbe. The review was written by Dave Barry, and it sounds pretty much like everything Dave Barry has ever written, except that he doesn’t make any potty jokes.

Fortunately, the online version of the review has a link to the first chapter of the book. Here’s an excerpt that pretty much sums up the book’s purpose:

So what is it about email? Why do we send so many electronic messages that we never should have written? Why do things spin out of control so quickly? Why don’t people remember that email leaves an indelible electronic record? Why do we forget to compose our messages carefully so that people will know what we want without having to guess? We wrote this book to figure out why email has such a tendency to go awry — and to learn for ourselves how to email not just adequately but also well. Our Holy Grail: email that is so effective that it cuts down on email.

Those are good questions, and I think maybe I need this book. Some weeks, I spend two hours or more a day reading and writing email. Some days (today!) I find myself spending forty minutes carefully writing and rewriting an email message, when a five-minute phone call would have been more effective. Email is frustrating. Email is extremely useful. Somehow, I need to learn to make better use of email.

So I’m going to start a short series of posts on using email more effectively in churches and other small non-profits. Not that I know how to use email more effectively than you do — but if I put down some preliminary ideas, and you respond with better ideas in the comments, we might actually make some progress towards that Holy Grail — email so effective it cuts down on email.

First installment: Meetings via email

For those of us who sit on boards and committees, it is very tempting to save time by using email to conduct business outside of regular meeting times. In my experience, conducting board or committee business via email is ineffective when either (a) it takes longer to conduct the business via email, (b) the business is too complex to conduct via email, or (c) the business item is not presented well initially. Let’s look at these problems one at a time:

(a) It takes longer to conduct the business via email. Emotionally-loaded business items never translate well to email — email discussions have this uncanny ability to go from civil discussion to outright war in less than five seconds — meaning it’s much more efficient to conduct emotionally-loaded business face-to-face. Business items where not all members of the board or committee have the same depth of knowledge never work well via email — the knowledgeable people are constantly re-explaining to the others what’s going on — so here again, face-to-face is better.

(b) The business is too complex to conduct via email. Complex business items do not seem to translate well to email — people ask the same questions over and over again, or the original details get forgotten as the email discussion drags on and on — so it seems more efficient to conduct complex business face-to-face.

(c) The business item is not presented well initially. If you present a business item badly in a face-to-face meeting, you know instantly from the blank looks on people’s faces. Since you don’t get that kind of feedback with email responses, you can find yourself deeply involved in an email discussion only to realize that people have very different understandings of what’s being discussed — in which case, you’re probably better off cutting your losses and postponing the business item until your next face-to-face meeting.

So what kind of committee or board business does work well via email? Well, setting an agenda for a face-to-face meeting works well via email — little emotion involved, no depth of knowledge required, it’s a simple task. In another example, here at First Unitarian in New Bedford the Board of Trustees has to approve all building rental requests, and mostly these routine votes are done via email (in rare instances where a building rental proves contentious, the vote is postponed to a face-to-face meeting). Related to this, routine votes and approvals can often be effectively handled via email. Finally, email is very useful to distribute staff reports or subcommittee reports prior to a face-to-face meeting.

There must be other examples where committee or board business is conducted effectively via email — what examples do you have from your own experience? Has your committee or board come up with any magic techniques for carying out effective business via email?

Next installment: Email [curse | blessing], part two

Noted with comment

I’m lucky I’m a religious liberal, because religious liberals find absolutely no contradiction between the poetic truth of the Bible and the scientific truth of evolution. However, as reported in the New York Times on May 5, in an article titled “A Split Emerges as Conservatives Discuss Darwin,” that is not true for some of the candidates for the Republican nomination for President:

[T]he [Republican] party’s 10 candidates for president were asked during their first debate whether they believed in evolution. Three — Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas; Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas; and Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado — indicated they did not.

Silly boys:– saying they do not “believe” in evolution because their religion forbids them to. Yet their religion tells them that their God is omniscient and omnipotent. If their God is omniscient, then that God understands the difference between scientific evidence and metaphor; and if their God is omnipotent, then that God knows how to use metaphor in the Bible to communicate eternal truths.

Silly Sam Brownback. Silly Mike Huckabee. Silly Tom Tancredo. Don’t you think your God is smart enough to understand science and metaphor both? (And don’t you know that you’re embarrassing many of your politically conservative friends whose God is smart enough to understand that?)

In the comments, Philocrites, a.k.a. Chris, shows me where I’m wrong. I reply, admit he’s right, and try to recover my balance. Although I still say you should vote for one of the other Republican candidates.

Theological humor from a humanist

The recently deceased Kurt Vonnegut was a humanist, that is, he did not believe in God. On a number of occasions, Vonnegut riffed on his disbelief in witty and thought-provoking ways.

During one interview, Vonnegut told this story:

I am honorary president of the American Humanist Association… I succeeded Isaac Asimov as president, and we humanists try to behave as well as we can without any expectation of a reward or punishment in an after life. So since God is unknown to us, the highest abstraction to which we serve is our community. That’s as high as we can go, and we have some understanding of that. Now at a memorial service for Isaac Asimov a few years ago on the West Coast I spoke and I said, “Isaac is in heaven now,” to a crowd of humanists. It was quite awhile before order could be restored. Humanists were rolling in the aisles.

“Knowing What’s Nice” from In These Times, 6 November 2003. Link.

But in 1999, he told the story differently. This is from the book God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian:

I am honorary president of the American Humanist Association, having succeeded the late, great, spectacularly prolific writer and scientist, Dr. Isaac Asimov in that essentially functionless capacity. At an A.H.A. memorial service for my predecessor I said, “Isaac is up in Heaven now.” That was the funniest thing I could have said to an audience of humanists. It rolled them in the aisles. Mirth! Several minutes had to pass before something resemble solemnity could be restored.

I made that joke, of course, before my first near-death experience — the accidental one.

So when my own time comes to join the choir invisible or whatever, God forbid, I hope someone will say, “He’s up in Heaven now.” Who really knows? I could have dreamed all this.

My epitaph in any case? “Everything was beautiful. Nothing hurt.” I will have gotten off so light, whatever the heck it is that was going on.

(I love the way he throws in that wry “God forbid.”) In 2006, he proposed another, different epitaph for himself:

No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious and charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful.

If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC.

“Vonnegut’s Blues For America,” Scotland’s Sunday Herald, 5 February 2006. Link.

So of course the article isn’t really about his epitaph at all, it’s about how the rest of the world perceives the United States. A few paragraphs later, Vonnegut wrote: “Foreigners love us for our [blues]. And they don’t hate us for our purported liberty and justice for all. They hate us now for our arrogance.” The epitaph, in other words, isn’t for Vonnegut so much as for the increasingly theocratic United States.

But analyzing Vonnegut’s humor is like analyzing one of Louis Armstrong’s solos. If you gotta analyze it, you’re never gonna know.

Church marketing 101

“Change something significant about the appearance of your church at least once a month.” –Standard advice from church marketing experts.

First Unitarian in New Bedford sits right at a busy intersection, the corner of Union and County streets. While you’re waiting on Union Street for the traffic light to change, your car is right next to a huge building made out of granite, with a sign saying “First Unitarian Church.” Yet over and over again, newcomers tell us, “You know, I’ve driven by this building for years and never really noticed it.”

We need to follow advice straight out of Church Marketing 101: change something about the appearance of our site and/or building every month, something significant enough that people will notice our building. Otherwise, our building blends in and becomes just another unnoticed historic building in historic downtown New Bedford.

Problem is, we have very little in the budget for this kind of thing. Even so, we have already managed to plan a few things that won’t strain our budget:

  • April: We hung new signs on our fence. The new signs are easier to read, and they (finally) have our Web site URL prominently displayed. Due to budget constraints, we had to go with relatively inexpensive plastic signs which we plan to replace in another fiscal year.
  • May: We’re planting bright spring flowers under the new signs.
  • June: We planted Dutch iris bulbs that should start flowering in June.

We’re also going to take a look at our other sign that’s right at the intersection of County and Union — maybe we’ll wind up hanging smaller seasonal signs under it, or perhaps displaying a rainbow flag for a month. It’s going to take some creativity to come up with ten or twelve inexpensive ways to change the appearance of our site and building!

Redundancy

Maybe it’s the flu, maybe it’s just another cold, but I’ve been less than fully functional for the past five days. I feel like I’m walking around in a world full of jello. People look at me and say, “What’s wrong with you today?” “Uh…,” I respond, “uh, I’ve got a cold or something.”

All of which brings up an interesting point in church administration. At eleven o’clock this morning I realized that I was doing little more than staring at the pile on my desk and the unread email on my computer screen. Then I realized that I have a really long day tomorrow. So I came home, had some chicken soup, and now I’m going to bed. And probably no one will miss me at church, unless someone calls and asks for me directly.

One design feature that every administrative system should have is redundancy. Any administrative system that is too dependent on just one person is too vulnerable — if that person resigns, or gets sick, the whole system grinds to a halt. Therefore, church administrative systems should be designed so that if one person has to step out of the system, the rest of the staff and volunteers can immediately step in and take over.

At the most basic level, this means that filing systems should be understandable to everyone, computer passwords stored in a secure but accessible place, etc. At a higher level, staff and volunteers should have basic knowledge of the jobs of people around them, and training in what to do in case of someone else’s absence.

The key concept in this whole discussion is that administrative systems are designed — which also implies intentional thought, overarching goals, and ongoing maintenance.

The implicit conclusion for all this is that smaller congregations (under 50 active members, which is determined by average worship attendance in my denomination) will have the most vulnerable administrative systems, because the absence of one individual will have a proportionately greater impact — which means that small congregations like mine really have to concentrate on designing a robust, redundant administrative system.

I hope this all makes sense. My brain feels like it’s full of jello, so I’m not sure if what I just wrote is nonsensical or sensical. Is “sensical” a word? I’m going to go take a nap.