Category Archives: Marketing & church growth

How to get young adults in your congregation

If the title of this post caught your attention, you might want to read a recent article on Alban Institute’s Web site. Here are the opening paragraphs:

“On the cubicle where she works all day, Abby pinned a picture of a church. Where many would keep a photo of family members or beloved pets, Abby has an image of a brownstone building on the Cambridge Common, and she looks at it whenever she feels anxious or unmoored. At 25, Abby has seen more life than the average young adult. She moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts from the West Coast when her high-school sweetheart husband had an opportunity to pursue a graduate degree there. Not long after they relocated, however, the marriage fell apart and left Abby in a city with no stable job, no friends, and no family. What she did have, though, was First Church in Cambridge (FCC), a church she had first found with her husband and that had later helped her through the transition to singlehood. She now views the church as her anchor, and as she considers options for graduate school herself she is seriously considering staying in Cambridge so she does not have to leave the church behind.

“FCC is, in many ways, a typical mainline congregation. The music is usually classical, the liturgy rooted in Christian history and decidedly traditional. Boards and committees make many of the church’s decisions through a conventional governance structure. The ministry staff includes a senior pastor, an interim associate pastor, and a lay minister of religious education. The community where the church is located is highly-educated and liberal, and the church’s stance on social issues reflects this environment. What makes the church truly different from many of its peers is not just that it is growing–many churches do that–but the demographic category that is growing most quickly: Post-collegiate adults in their 20s and 30s. At one New Member Sunday in early 2008, out of 30 new members, 27 were under the age of 35.

“What is their secret?”

To find out the secret, read the whole article. “Setting the Welcome Thermostat,” on Alban’s Web site. (And lest some smug Unitarian Universalists think we have the third tension perfectly balanced, remember that some younger people perceive a doctrinaire theological hegemony of humanism in some UU congregations.)

Web site = front door

Because I don’t have any duties at the Palo Alto church this Sunday, I checked the Web for worship services at other Bay area Unitarian Universalist congregations. I did not feel welcomed by several Web pages.

One congregation’s Web site made me click through the home page and still other page before I found Sunday morning information, and even that page didn’t tell me how long the service lasted, what else might be happening on Sunday morning, what most people wear, what kind of music I might hear, etc. Another congregation prominently displayed information from last Sunday morning, including a reminder to set my clock ahead. Another congregation’s Web site didn’t display properly on my just-updated Firefox browser; I eventually found Sunday service information in the monthly newsletter, which was a huge PDF file.

Then I found the Oakland Unitarian Universalist church’s Web site. Right at the top, it tells me that I’m welcome. There’s a prominent link for newcomers to plan their first visit to the church. There’s a big picture of Sunday’s preacher smiling, and a short description of what the worship service will be. (Please note that the San Mateo Unitarian Universalist church, just a few blocks from our house, also has a good Web site, but I wanted to check out one of the other congregations in the Bay area.)

Peter Bowden likes to say that a congregation’s front door is not the door at the front of your physical building, it’s the front page of your Web site. Your Web front door doesn’t have to be snazzy, but it does have to be open and welcoming to all. Homework assignment: go check out the front page of your congregation’s Web site. Come back and tell us if your congregation’s front door is open and welcoming to newcomers or not.

Sean says it’s a revolution

A few minutes ago, I was talking with Sean of the blog Ministrare — he’s here at the Palo Alto church while Amy, our senior minister, is on sabbatical — and he showed me a video that he likes. He put the video up on his blog, and I’ll embed it here, so you can watch it, too:

 

 

Over on his blog, Sean says that he believes we religious liberals are not ready for the social media revolution. I think Sean is mostly right.

But I can find some bright spots, places where we do use social media well. Here in Palo Alto, we’ve been piloting a podcast for Sunday school teachers, and the teachers tell us they love this venture into online learning. And although I write my blog on my own time, I find that some people in the congregation do read it, and what I have written here has sparked some very interesting conversations in the face-to-face congregation. When we do use social media, what we do online strengthens and reinforces what happens in our face-to-face congregation.

So I’m ready to embrace the social media revolution. I think it will make congregational life that much better. What do you think?

Finding bright spots

Carol and I are reading Switch: How To Change Things When Change Is Hard, by two brothers, Chip Heath and Dan Heath; we both have jobs that call on us to implement social change, we both know how hard it can be to implement change, so we are both interested in new approaches to making change happen.

Switch starts with some basic human psychology: human beings are governed by both emotions and rational thought; human beings respond to the situations they find themselves in. Therefore, say the brothers Heath, to implement change we have to use both thoughts and feelings, and we have to create situations where change is easier rather than harder.

The second chapter of the book is titled “Find the Bright Spots” — but, they warn, finding bright spots is harder than it might seem. Human beings tend to focus on the negative aspects of life. To demonstrate this, they give a wonderful case study.

A pharmaceuticals company is having difficulty selling a new allergy drug. The company hires a consultant to help them figure out what’s going on. The consultant finds three saleswomen who are selling twenty times as much of the new drug as salespeople elsewhere. The consultant says to himself, “Ah, ha! there’s a bright spot. I’ll investigate that, and maybe I’ll learn how to improve sales elsewhere.” The consultant goes to investigate. He finds that these three saleswomen are teaching doctors and allergists how to administer the drug — it has to be administered intravenously, which is very unusual for allergy drugs. So he takes this finding back to the pharmaceutical company, and tells them that if they have their sale force start teaching doctors and allergists how to administer the drub, they’ll increase sales. And what does headquarters do? They refuse to believe in the bright spot, and they investigate the three saleswomen to find out why they have an unfair advantage over the other salespeople.

Recently, I discovered a bright spot in our congregational life here in the Palo Alto church. We are an introverted congregation; there are plenty of extroverts here, but the majority of us are introverts. But if I make public this bright spot (as I am, in fact, doing right now), I had better take into account the tendency of human beings to focus on the negative aspects of life. Like this imaginary conversation:

Ordinarily Negative Human Being: “What, we’re an introverted congregation?! That means no one will ever talk to newcomers!” Me: “Actually, that’s not true. We introverts excel at one-on-one conversations. We also do very well in structured social settings such as congregations.” ONHB: “We’re all introverts, no wonder we tend to be quiet in worship services!” Me: “Which means our quiet, mellow worship services well feel welcoming and calming to people whose lives are too crazy busy. Which is most everyone in Silicon Valley.” ONHB: “People will think we’re all geeks!” Me: “Umm, we are in Silicon Valley, half the population is geeks.” ONHB: “Oh yeah. Well, maybe it’s good we’re an introverted church.” Me: “I think so. I like our calm, peaceful church, where people have really interesting conversations, and where our worship style is calm and low-key. I like the fact that there are other geeks like me, including engineer geeks, science geeks, theology geeks, finance geeks, and many other kinds of people who are quietly passionate about things.”

Life or death

A recent post on Mike Durrall’s blog keeps haunting me. Mike quotes William Easum’s The Church Growth Handbook:

“Churches grow when they intentionally reach out to people instead of concentrating on institutional needs. Churches die when they concentrate on their own needs. This is the basic Law of Congregational Life.”

Churches die when they concentrate on their own needs — that about sums it up.

Post-Boomer spiritualities

On his UU Growth blog, Peter Bowden provides a link to a couple of interesting essays on “Faith Formation in 2020” on the “Lifelong Faith” Web site, with links to one essay on “Thirteen Trends and Forces Influencing the Future of Faith Formation in a Changing Church and World,” and to another essay on “Four Scenarios for the Future of Faith Formation in 2020.” I’ve done a preliminary reading of these two articles, and while I have my doubts about some of the material I also found plenty to think about.

In the “Thirteen Trends” essay, some of the usual trends are mentioned — the drift away from organized religion in the U.S., the increasing diversity in the U.S. population, the growing willingness to identify young adulthood as a separate developmental stage, etc. It’s nice to see all these trends collected together in one place, but mostly I didn’t see anything really new. However, the section on “The Rise of a Distinctive Post-Boomer Faith and Spirituality” was quite good, drawing on research by Robert Wuthnow, and work by Richard Flory and Donald E. Miller. Flory and Miller define “four emerging forms of the post-Boomer spiritual quest”:

Innovators are those who represent a constantly evolving, or innovating, approach to religious and spiritual beliefs and practices. Many of these are newer, less established groups that are affiliated with the “emerging church” movement, while others are established churches and ministries that are innovating within their own traditions. Innovators demonstrate a desire for embracing the emerging postmodern culture, and within that context are engaging in a spiritual quest that by definition is one that must change and adapt — innovate — to meet the changing culture currents.

Appropriators refer to those churches and ministries that seek to provide a compelling and “relevant” experience for participants, both for those in the audience and for those who are performing in the service or event. In this, both churches and independent ministries seek to create these experiences through imitating, or appropriating, trends found in the larger culture and ultimately popularizing these through their networks into a particular form of pop-Christianity primarily oriented toward an individual spiritual experience.

Resisters refer to what are primarily Boomer-initiated efforts intended to appeal to Post-Boomers by focusing on the “recovery of reason” and resisting postmodern culture within Christianity. They hoping to reestablish the place of the written text and rational belief as the dominant source for Post-Boomer spirituality and practice.

Reclaimers are seeking to renew their experiences of Christianity through the history, symbolism and practices of ancient forms of the faith, such as those still found in the liturgical traditions, thus reclaiming the ancient symbols, rituals and practices of these traditions for their own spiritual quest. Reclaimers demonstrate a quest that takes them on a journey to ancient Christian traditions in small, family-oriented congregations through which they pursue their desire for spiritual development.

Obviously, this has been written for a Christian audience. But you can find these four trends within Unitarian Universalism:–

There are a few Innovators within Unitarian Universalism, though they mostly get forced out of the mainstream of our methodologically and liturgically conservative congregations. We have a few Appropriators within Unitarian Universalism, although most of them are trying to appropriate white middle class Boomer culture (e.g., the new hymnal supplement), which means that they really don’t represent post-Boomer spirituality. There are a few Reclaimers, who often meet in smaller groups for worship and service — UU neo-pagan groups meeting for rituals, UU Christian groups meeting for lectio divina or communion, UU Jewish groups, etc. There are also the Resisters — Post-Boomers who are being encouraged by older humanists to adopt an agenda of strong rationalism, with a heavy reliance on written texts (not scriptures, mind you, but rational texts), as opposed to visual arts, music, movement, etc.

The question is whether or not we Unitarian Universalists have really engaged with post-Boomer spirituality at all. What do you think? Outside of the Sunday school and youth group, is your Unitarian Universalist congregation engaging with post-Boomer spiritualities in any significant way?

A modest proposal concerning franchises which market the “UU” brand

Follow-up post, 14 October

Hello, dear readers, Mr. Crankypants is ba-aack! Yes, your favorite curmudgeon (and Dan’s evil alter ego) is here again, still referring to himself in the third person, and still criticizing anything he thinks is wrong with the world.

Today, Mr. C. would like to talk with about the absurd business model used by Unitarian Universalist congregations. You see, as it stands now, Unitarian Universalist congregations operate under a sort of franchise model. If your congregation has the Unitarian Universalist franchise in a given location, that means your congregation has the exclusive right to market the “UU” brand in that location. Thus we have the Prime Rule of UU Franchises: No upstart Unitarian Universalist congregation may set up shop in your location.

There are exceptions to the Prime Rule. (1) If your congregation has an internal conflict, and half your members leave and form a new congregation nearby, the Powers That Be will frown upon the new congregation for a time, and then accept them fully as a new franchise. (2) If your congregation chooses to spin off a new congregation near your present location, the Powers That Be will not frown at all, but will applaud your alleged entrepreneurial audacity.

Now consider this scenario: A certain Unitarian Universalist congregation — call it “UU Church of Halfdead” or UUCH (pronounced “ouch”) — has been the only franchise of the UU brand in a certain city for the past century. Now UUCH’s membership is down to just 20 people — oops, make that 19 people, one of them just died. All the members are over 70, there is no program for children, and UUCH has no intention of changing anything in order to attract young people (“young” being defined as under the age of 60). Did Mr. Crankypants mention that UUCH has no Web site, they never advertise, and they have no sign on their building? Most people in the community don’t even know they exist. And all they do is use their endowment to maintain their big, old, ramshackle church building.

So what do you think would happen if some enterprising and entrepreneurial folks decided to start up a new Unitarian Universalist congregation in that city? Let’s say it’s a store-front church aimed at people in their 20s and 30s. The Powers That Be would gnash their teeth and decry the efforts of those entrepreneurial upstarts. The leaders of UUCH would weep and wail and call them poachers. Everyone would make big frown-y faces at the entrepreneurial upstarts and tell them that they are Bad People. Never mind the fact that UUCH consistently gets rid of all newcomers. Never mind the fact that a store-front church aimed at Generation Y will be utterly different than a dying church for people over 70. No, we would gnash our teeth and wail wildly, because every UU congregation, no matter how dysfunctional, has an exclusive franchise!

So here’s a modest proposal:

Assume that actual and potential Unitarian Universalists constitute 0.5% of the total U.S. population. Any Unitarian Universalist congregation that draws an average annual attendance of less 0.5% of the total population of its service area loses all right to have an exclusive franchise, and opens itself up to the possibility that an entrepreneurial congregation-planter could come in a start a new congregation within that service area. We’ll let existing congregations determine the exact boundaries of their service areas — they can make those service areas as small as they like, so as to be able to claim an average attendance of 0.5% — but entrepreneurial congregation planters can plant new congregations anywhere outside of defined service areas. Congregations which choose not to determine exact boundaries of their service areas automatically give permission to entrepreneurial congregation planters to determine those boundaries for them.

If this modest proposal were adopted, someone might start up a new Unitarian Universalist congregation in a store-front near your present church! And what if the only way you could combat that new upstart congregation was to actually welcome newcomers, to jazz up (literally) your worship service, and to ditch your old Policy Governance (TM) or other outmoded organizational structure — that is, what if your only defense was to change the way you did church, and make it better than it was before?

Mr. Crankypants believes this is what is called a “disruptive” proposal… well, it would be disruptive if their were any such thing as a Unitarian Universalist who was also an entrepreneurial congregation planter. Sigh. Even so, it’s still fun to think about.

Uncle Bob’s challenge

I went over to Martha’s Vineyard today to visit with Uncle Bob and Aunt Martha one more time before we move to California. Uncle Bob, a life-long Unitarian (he grew up in All Souls Church in Washington, D.C.), asked me, “So, do you think Unitarian Universalism can grow?”

“Yes, I think it can grow,” I said. “But I’m not sure it will grow.”

This got us started on a long discussion of what is needed to make Unitarian Universalism grow. Uncle Bob, who worked as an executive at GTE for many years, understands marketing. He said that he thinks the big challenge for Unitarian Universalism is to come up with a short, easily remembered summary of what we stand for.

“Well, I think we could do that,” I said.

“OK,” said Uncle Bob, “but no one has done it yet.” He added, “What you come up with has to be short, pithy, and easy to remember.” We both agreed that meant that the so-called “seven principles” were not adequate for our purposes, because they are too long, don’t really say much, and are difficult to remember.

“How about this,” I said. “First, from our Unitarian side, we know that there is an essential unity to everything, to the universe. Second, from our Universalist side, we know that the destiny of all people is bound up together, and therefore we work for the salvation of all humanity. Third, we are post-Christian, which means that although we come from the Christian tradition, we don’t accept any of the traditional Christian creeds and doctrines.”

Uncle Bob didn’t like the term “post-Christian.” “I don’t know what that means,” he said. This is supposed to be a short, easy–to-remember definition, and so we don’t want to have to engage in a lot of explanation. I said that he was right, but what I wanted to do was make sure that we affirm the Golden Rule as a basic moral principle. Then Uncle Bob added another point: we affirm freedom of conscience. I wanted to phrase it that human beings have freedom of will (i.e., I wanted to affirm Arminianism), and we went back and forth on what exactly we meant by this.

We argued all this back and forth for a good three quarters of an hour. We never got to the point where we completely agreed on exact wording, but we came to a general agreement on four points. Here’s how I would summarize these four points (Uncle Bob would put them differently):

  • We affirm the essential unity of all that is. [Unitarianism]
  • The destiny of all people is bound together, so we work together to save the world. [Universalism]
  • We follow the Golden Rule, not creeds or doctrines. [Non-creedalism]
  • We have the freedom and the responsibility to shape ourselves and the world. [Arminianism]

Obviously, any such short list is not meant to be comprehensive, it is only meant to give a concise summary; if people are still interested after hearing the short summary, we could then trot out the “seven principles” or whatever else we might wish. Equally obviously, such a list is not meant to be binding on anyone — you don’t have to use this list, it’s just another possible tool to use to help explain who we are to newcomers.

I am not entirely happy with this list — some of the individual points are too wordy, and not memorable enough. And maybe four points is too many to remember. But I think we’re getting close to meeting Uncle Bob’s challenge — close to having a short, easy-to-remember list that would help us to explain the core of our religious faith to newcomers.

What do you think?