Category Archives: Liberal religion

Search committees and the Web

Since many ministers (and to a lesser extent religious educators) in my denomination, Unitarian Universalism, schedule retirements or resignations to take place over the summer — that means that many Unitarian Universalist congregations are forming search committees right about now, getting ready to search for a new minister or religious educator. Today’s Wall Street Journal has an article that job seekers and members of search committees should read. The article, “How Blogging on the Web Can Help You Get a New Job,” by Sarah Needleman (p. B1), is aimed at job seekers, telling them to think about how they can control their image using the Web:

Job seekers who blog increase the odds that a potential employer will find information online that the candidate wants to be seen, says Debbie Weil, a corporate blogging consultant…. “Everybody has an online identity whether they know it or not, and a blog is the single best way to control is,” she says. “You’re going to be Googled. No one hires anyone or buys anything these days without going online first and doing research.”

If I were on a search committee, that would make me think, “Hey, candidates are going to Google us just as we’re Googling them!” Therefore, as the Wall Street Journal points out, why not consider shaping the online image of your congregation:

Some companies encourage employees to blog because they can use them to recruit others. When recruiter Harry Joiner was hired to fill two positions at Musician’s Friend Inc. in November, he used an employee’s personal blog to help sell his client’s rural location of Medford, Ore., to job seekers. “Candidate were using Medford as a reason not to consider the jobs,” he says. “As a marketer, I thought, if you can’t change it, promote it.”

The blog, by So Young Park, the company’s director of e-commerce…, describes her move to the area a year ago from New York City. It includes details about her work, … a bear sighting near her home, and related topics. While she started the blog to share information with family and friends back East, she acknowledges that it has also been a good resource for attracting job hunters.

I wonder if that kind of idea could help congregations in rural regions to attract top-quality talent.

Augustine’s just war theory

Mike Lee and Aaron Krager, two students at Chicago
Theological Seminary, are managing the excellent blog Faithfully Liberal, and Mike Lee has a couple of posts on Augustine’s just war theory that I found worth reading. In Augustine’s just war theory, Mike gives a summary of Augustine’s just war theory, based on the book Just War, Political Realism and Faith, by Bernard T. Adeney. And in Increasing technology and the just war, he has a nice discussion on how Augustine’s just war theory fares in light of nuclear war and other massively destructive war technology. Thoughtful reading for all you religious peaceniks out there.

A word about conflict

Conflict is everywhere, including inside congregations. If you’re part of a congregation that’s in conflict, it really helps to have tools to help you understand and manage conflict. One of the most useful models for helping manage conflict in a congregation comes from the Alban Institute. The model posits that there are five levels of conflict, and as the conflict escalates up to the higher levels it gets harder to manage or resolve the conflict — and the modle helps you understand how to lower the conflict to a more manageable level.

And you can read a great summary of the five levels of conflict online, at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Rockville’s Web site. In fact, go read it now, so you’re familiar with this very useful concept before you find yourself in a congregational conflict:–

Link.

Update: the blog “Speaking Truth to Power” has an excellent piece on the limitations of this model: link.

My sense is that the Alban Institute model would not be very helpful for congregations in the middle of revelations of clergy sexual misconduct.

Speaking as one religious professional among many, I personally have found the model useful in certain high-conflict settings, used as one among many diagnostic tools that can help orient me to what’s going on around me — in such situations, if I determined that the situation was at or above level three conflict, I would know that it would be wise for me to seek outside help (at level three I’d be looking for a consultant for me, at level four+ I’d be looking for outside intervention). And I have found that lay leaders and religious professionals can often make effective use of the model for conflicts up to level three.

Thanks to uugrrl for pointing out the very real limitations of a potentially useful model — and for sharing the fact that grief counseling worked so well in her congregation’s situation. (And uugrrl, sorry for not posting my comment at your site, but Blogger refused to recognize my usename….)

Happy geeky networking Easter

So while the rest of you were enjoying your family Easter dinners, Carol and I were observing the holiday in our usual fashion — each sitting in front of our laptops. I spent the evening reading up on the Semantic Web. I got particularly interested in a subset of Resource Description Framework, or RDF. RDF is a way of presenting information on the Web that is machine-readable, and therefore which will make it much easier to find exactly what you’re looking for when you search the Web.

What I got interested in is a subset of RDF called FOAF, which stands for “Friend of a Friend.” Here’s what FOAF-Project, the creators of FOAF, claim:

The Friend of a Friend (FOAF) project is creating a Web of machine-readable pages describing people, the links between them and the things they create and do.

For example, FOAF-Project is working on a FOAF browser, which would show you the links from one person’s Web site to their friends and family and co-workers. The current FOAF specifications also allow you to specify your workplace, interests, contact information, and even your Geek Code.

After spending some hours reading up on FOAF and related topics, I came to the conclusion that FOAF is a great idea — or at least it will be a great idea, if it is actually ever implemented in a user-friendly way.

As it turns out, there are other ways to accomplish similar kinds of things. There are the commercial social netowrking sites that allow their users to do this sort of thing. Anad as any blogger knows, your blogroll is actually a social networking tool:– it’s a list of other bloggers with whom you have some connection (however fleeting). However, a blogroll doesn’t give you much beyond a bare link.

But the blogging software I use actually implements a kind of social networking called XHTML Friends Network, or XFN. Embedded in my blogroll are markers that tell what kind of relationships I have with the bloggers I link to. If you go to RubHub, an XFN search engine, and enter the Web address of my blog, you’ll get a list of all the bloggers I link to, along with what I claim is their relationship to me. You can then in turn check out those bloggers, and see their relationships to still other bloggers. (Oops — although I’ve requested that they add my site, they haven’t added me yet….)

XFN is still pretty new, and still not widely used. But even so, it gives you a taste of what it could be like to embed machine-readable relationship information into your Web site. Someday, I’d like to see every Unitarian universalist blogger linked up through some such scheme — whether FOAF or XFN or what-have-you. It would make it far easier for readers and bloggers to explore the large Unitarian Universalist web on the Web.

And I got so involved in this fascinating topic that I forgot to call my dad, as I usually do on Sunday evenings. Sorry, Dad! I’ll call tomorrow.

Open source Bible

Some of my favorite online videos are how-to-do-it videos, like Make TV. So I figured I’d make a how-to-do-it video for post-Christians — a video on how to do open source Bible. (4:44)

(And yeah, I’ve listened to your criticisms, so now I’m scripting the videos. Past videos were way too non-linear.)

Quicktime video — Click link, and where it says “Select a format” choose “Source — Quicktime”. Wait until the file downloads to your computer, and then click play. This should work for dial-up connections, and offers higher-resolution for all connections.

Note: video host blip.tv is defunct, so this video no longer exists.

Two more blogs…

OK, it’s turned into a night of serious blog surfing. Two more blogs worth reading — this time, they’re both Unitarian Universalist blogs…

Not Muslim Anymore is the religious journey of a former Muslim who has become a Unitarian Universalist. As someone who grew up as a Unitarian Universalist, I love hearing how people who came from other faiths become Unitarian Universalists. And I’ve been particularly interested in the Muslim-to-Unitarian-Universalist path ever since I met a former Muslim in another UU congregation congregation I served. Fascinating blog. Serious snark.

Faith and the Web marks the return of Anna Belle Lieberson, who formerly blogged at Talking UU Technology. Started on April 1, Anna Belle promises “excellent websites for churches and other faith-based organizations.” In just five days, she’s posted lots of great ideas. Anna Belle is particularly good at combining PHP and CSS, so there is lots to look forward to with this blog.

Clear Blogging

A while back, I mentioned I had started reading the book Clear Blogging: How People Blogging Are Changing the World and How You Can Join Them by Bob Walsh. Now that I’ve read most of the book, I want to say a little more about it.

This is quite simply the best book about blogging I have yet seen. We are ten years into the blogging phenomenon now. Technically, blogging has evolved from a few geeks hand-coding Web sites to carry entries in reverse chronological order, to wide availability of easy-to-use publishing platforms that require no technical knowledge. The result of this technical evolution is that millions of people are now writing and reading blogs, and blogging has really changed the way many people exchange information.

In Clear Blogging, Bob Walsh gives an excellent overview of the state of blogging today:– from the way blogs have changed the national political landscape to the way blogs have changed personal life. I’m going to focus on two chapters in his book, both of which apply directly to post-Christian congregational life. At the end of this post, I’ll give a broad overview of the book, and tell you why you should read it.

Congregational blogs?

While Walsh is really writing about the corporate for-profit world in the “Building Your Company Blog” chapter, much of what he has to say applies equally to congregational blogs. So when he makes his most important point — that a company blog can increase sales — that applies to congregational blogs as well. Blogs build Web site traffic; blogs give potential buyers (or potential new members) a personal sense of what you are all about; blogs are a very efficient and very directed form of marketing. All this means that congregations should be taking a serious look at incorporating blogs into their marketing mix.

However, in order for congregations to incorporate blogging into their marketing mix, it’s going to mean a change in the way most congregations perceive marketing. Walsh interviews Richard Edelman, a blogging CEO (my comments are in square brackets []):

Q. Corporations [and congregations!] tend to be known for their hierarchies more than anything else. How does the idea of people [e.g., ministers and staff] just saying what they want on the company’s dime at their blog go over when you talk to other CEOs? [or how about to congregational boards?]

A. I think there’s a real trade-off between control and credibility. If you are too much of command-and-control kind of person [or congregation], blogging is probably not for you, but you’re also probably not in tune with what it takes to be credible in this world….

I hope congregations — and the Unitarian Universalist Association — take note. Congregations should really start thinking about credibility…. (For the record, I do not blog on company time — I write this blog solely on my own time.)

Blogging professionals

Every minister who is blogging or who has ever considered blogging should read Walsh’s chapter “Professionally Blogging, Blogging Professionally.” While Walsh focusses on the traditional professions of law, medicine, and ministry, all other religious professionals — directors of religious education, congregational administrators, etc. — will find much that is useful and relevant.

Walsh covers the obvious ethical questions, and gives us enough specifics to really make us think. Doctors actually have a code of conduct covering what they post on the Web; that’s something we ministers should be thinking about.

For ministers and other professionals, Walsh also points out how blogging can build your career. Most obviously, if you’re looking for a job Walsh shows you how a blog can help your job prospects. Yet for those of us who aren’t looking for a new job, a blog is still a way to communicate with various constituencies, and let people know who we are and what we stand for. As a working minister who has been blogging for more than two years, I found this to be the single most useful chapter in the book.

The rest of the book

Anyone who blogs will find lots of useful tips and ideas in Clear Blogging. For example, even though I think I know something about blogging, I learned a lot about feeds and blog usability and search engine optimization — indeed, I’ve already implemented several of Walsh’s tips on this blog.

And anyone who just reads blogs will find lots of useful information, from very practical things like how to post good comments on blogs, to big-picture ideas like the way political blogging is changing democracy.

Definitely, a book worth reading — just make sure you read it soon, because blogging is changing so fast this book will be outdated in a year or so. (Let’s just hope Walsh updates the book to keep up with changes!)

Do I need to remind you that this blog is completely non-commercial and ad-free? I reviewed and recommended this book because I wanted to, not because anyone asked me to do so, or paid me to do so.

Great theology, but…

Theology and society

Somehow, I missed Diana Bass Butler’s book The Practicing Congregation: Imagining a New Old Church when it first came out in 2004. Butler has excellent insight into the current state of congregations in North America, and I find myself returning to the book again and again First Unitarian in New Bedford and I navigate the changed religious landscape of the early 21st C.

One key insight that Butler offers is that when things go wrong in your congregation, maybe you shouldn’t try to point fingers at blame at anyone in particular:

In the midst of [congregational] conflict, people often fail to recognize the obvious. What if no one can be blamed? What if no one is at fault? Many changes, conflicts, and tensions do not arise from factors within religious communities themselves. Rather, these things are the result of institutions reacting and responding to larger cultural changes — trends, ideas, and practices outside the church building [emphasis in original]….

As I think back on some of the congregational conflicts I have witnessed over the years, that strikes me as a very useful insight. Even in conflicts that have arisen from identifiably egregious behavior — clergy sexual misconduct comes immediately to mind — I believe that in some cases the egregious behavior has been able to infect a congregation only because the congregation’s natural “immune system” has been seriously weakened because the congregation is no longer well-adapted to the world around it.

Butler points out that the past fifty years have seen major cultural shifts in the surrounding culture:

The congregational experimentation in the 1970s and 1980s was the result of cultural shifts that occurred in the two decades immediately following World War II: the rise of the middle-class meritocracy, suburbanization, the birth of the baby boom generation, expanded access to college and university education, the civil rights movement, feminism, Sunbelt immigration of whites and northern migration of blacks, and the turmoil over Vietnam. All these changes unhinged traditional American religious patterns and called for greater clarity about the Christian message and greater authenticity in Christian congregations.

Obviously, you could substitute “post-Christian” for “Christian” and come up with the same conclusion.

UU culture and theology

For most Unitarian Universalist congregations, these cultural shifts in the surrounding culture paralleled a theological shift within many or most of our congregations — the shift from liberal Christian to post-Christian positions. (Not coincidentally, 1971 is the first time I am aware of a Unitarian Universalist leader referring to our movement as post-Christian.) But what I see is that our social patterns didn’t get updated to match our theological changes.

Butler continues:

Some churches rose to the challenge, but many did not. In a wave of social change (and often unreflective resistance to it), many congregations lost their ability to retain younger members or attract new ones. Congregations often suffered because of the gap that developed between their internal inherited practices and external cultural realities.

This was certainly true of Unitarian Universalism during the 1960s and 1970s — those were the decades when we saw a precipitous drop in membership, and when young people stopped being a part of our congregations. In the next passage from Butler’s book, but I’m going to substitute “Unitarian Universalist” for Christian, and change a few other phrases, so that it sounds as if she’s talking directly to us:

…Congregations often suffered because of the gap that developed between their internal inherited practices and external cultural realities. And, more than occasionally, they suffered because their particular pattern of congregational life was considered coterminous with “Unitarian Universalism” or “liberal religious theology,” hence confusing a historical moment in American culture with theological vitality and eternal truths. In short, many mid-twentieth-century Unitarian Universalists enshrined the social pattern of their congregations as something akin to eternal truth!

And that’s just what happened in the the 1960s and 1970s.

Then in the 1980s and the 1990s, social change continued and even accelerated, through the twin processes of detraditionalization, and the disestablishment of the 1950s civic religion. The end result? Many or most Unitarian Universalist congregations today follow social patterns straight out of the 1950s. Our post-Christian theology is increasingly relevant to the world around us — but that theology is trapped in outdated congregations.

I hope I have piqued your curiosity enough that you will now go read the rest of Diana Butler Bass’s book, and find out how to update your congregation to match the changed society around you. It’s available from the Alban Institute.

Just a reminder — this blog is completely non-commercial and ad-free? I discussed this book because it interested me, not because anyone asked me to, or paid me to do so.

Post-Christian congregations in post-Christendom

“Post-Christendom” is a term used by a small group of theologians (primarily European Anabaptist theologians, from what I can see) to describe society after the death of the 1700-year-old concept of “Christendom.” The Roman emperor Constantine linked Christianity and Empire, and in Europe and European-dominated lands they’ve been linked ever since — until recently.

Here in the United States, with an avowed Christian in the White House and Christians dominating Congress and the courts, it may sometime feel as if we are becoming a more Christian country. But even here, church attendance has been dropping slowly for decades, and we’re seeing increasing numbers of persons affiliated with non-Christian religions, as well as seeing increasing numbers of persons with no religious affiliation at all. Now when someone offers a prayer at a graduation, it’s no longer unremarkable; instead, it has become an act of defiance. At the moment, Christendom in the United States appears to be dying.

So where does that leave those of us in post-Christian congregations? For some post-Christian congregations, the death of Christendom has probably helped somewhat, because now it is more socially acceptable to join a post-Christian congregation.

I can’t speak for all post-Christian congregations, and really I can only talk about what I’ve seen in a handful of Unitarian Universalist congregations that have become post-Christian. Mostly what I have seen Unitarian Universalist post-Christians who seem pleased that Christendom is dying, but who forget the extent to which Unitarian Universalism has been supported by Christendom.

And yes, we have been supported by Christendom. Here’s one example: Up until very recently, most of our best new members were “come-outers,” those who had “come out” to us from Christian churches. They found it easy to enter Unitarian Universalist worship services, because our worship services felt very familiar — we have hymnals and sermons and things like that, and the come-outers knew how to do hymnals and sermons and things like that. But as Christendom slowly dies around us, more and more of our new members have never set foot in a church before, so that our worship services may feel a little strange or uncomfortable. Yet we are not good about trying to integrate these newcomers into a Unitarian Universalist worship subculture that is increasingly divergent from mainstream culture.

Take another example: Sixty years ago, such a large percentage of the population went to church that it was easy for Unitarian Universalist congregations to get new members. Tons of people just walked in our doors to check us out, and we barely had to advertise. It was as if dump trucks full of potential new members backed up to our doors each Sunday, and unloaded more people. Sure, we didn’t have a great retention rate and we lost a lot of these visitors, but who cared? –the dump trucks would be back next Sunday to dump more through our doors. Unfortunately, we didn’t notice that those dump trucks stopped running between 1960 and 1970, and we have few ideas about how to integrate the kinds of newcomers we now get.

And one more example: In the 1950’s, at the height of what has come to be called “civic religion,” children had prayers and Bible readings in public schools, families read the Bible and prayed together at home, and there was a rich ecology of religious education throughout society. So when children came to Unitarian Universalist Sunday schools, they had lots of knowledge about religion and all we had to do was teach them that Jesus isn’t God, the Bible isn’t literally true, and that there are other religions out there besides Christianity. Today, typically the only time children learn anything about religion is when they come to Sunday school — which means most kids get about 20 hours of religious instruction a year. Yet we still run our post-Christian Sunday schools as if it’s the 1950’s.

So you can see that on a pragmatic level, we continue to act as if Christendom is in place, and we continue to act as if our place in Christendom is to offer an alternative to Christendom. Even though we think we are post-Christians (and in our hearts, many of us are post-Christians), we run our congregations as if we were still in 1950’s congregations, in a land dominated by the civic religion of Christendom.

So what do we do about this? On Wednesday, I’ll offer some suggestions for post-Christian congregations in a post-Chrsitendom world.