Monthly Archives: February 2006

Web site revision, blog comments

Just finished revising the main Web site. The new, simpler design, should make it easier to navigate. You will find some new content has also been added, more to follow. Your comments and critiques are always welcome; please use the email address listed in the menu at left.

Web site stats for January show an uptick in viewed (i.e., non-robot) traffic: 757 “unique visitors” for the month of December, 883 January. It’s very nice to have more readers — thank you all! — but there’s been an associated increase in comment spam. I’ve been so vigorous about deleting comment spam, I may have deleted legitimate comments in error. If that happens to you, please accept my apologies and send the comment in question to me via email.

“Lovemarks,” conclusion

This is the final installment on Kevin Roberts’ marketing book Lovemarks: The Future beyond Brands.

One key point that Roberts makes over and over again throughout the book is the importance of getting out of the office and out into the field, coming into actual people who are (or aren’t) using your products…..

I discovered this first-hand when I was working in the Middle East for Procter & Gamble. Like other companies at the time, P&G’s research was done by the numbers. Sometimes it seemed to me that we did little other than to verify what we already knew. We were tied to benchmarks and followed norms. I found it tough to see the value of all this, so I spent as much time as I could out of the office, three weeks out of four.

My passion was store checks and home visits. After going through all the numbers, I’d head into Dubai and visit a hundred little shops in the Soukh and get myself invited into consumers’ homes. I talked wtih retailers, consumers, people just walking by. Irrespective of what the nubmers said, I got my insights from these connections….

How does this insight apply to churches?

Let’s first explore the ongoing complaints about denominational headquarters. In the Unitarian Universalist blogosphere, it’s hard to find anyone who actually likes denominational headquarters. And if you talk with actual church-goers, you’ll often hear things like, “They seem so distant from what actually goes on in our church,” and “The denominational magazine just has nothing to say to me,” and “The Sunday school curriculums just don’t apply to our church.” The sad reality is that many UUA staffers do not get out into ordinary congregational life; a goodly percentage of them don’t even attend church regularly; and when they do church visits, UUA staffers are far more likely to have lunch with the senior minister than to get themselves invited into an ordinary Unitarian Universalist household.

There are exceptions to this trend. The director of electronic communications at our denominational headquarters, a woman named Deb Weiner, is an active member of a local church (serving on the Board, sending her kids to Sunday school and youth group, deeply involved in the social life of the congregation). To my mind, her involvement shows in the high quality of the denominational Web site; no doubt there are problems with the Web site, but on the whole it appears to be responsive to the needs of actual Unitarian Universalists. (My only denominational involvement right now is volunteering for that Web site, because when I volunteer for Deb I find I learn about real live Unitarian Universalism.)

Another exception is the newsletter for lay leaders, “Interconnections.” The editor of that newsletter, Don Skinner, is a former journalist who knows how to listen to people and report what they have to say. His ability to listen well shows up in “Interconnections” — lay leaders consistently report to me that “Interconnections” is by far the denominational “product” they love best.

What applies to the denomination applies equally to local churches. I’ve done a lot of work as a religious educator, and I discovered that lots of people — ministers, lay leaders, directors of religious education, parents — think they know what kids get out of church, and think they know what kids need from church. But when I sat down and actually listened to kids, I found what they were getting from church was different than what adults thought they were getting. Adults think kids get lots of intellectual understanding at church. Kids report that Unitarian Universalist churches change their hearts; they may not know much about their faith, but they feel it, and love it, far more deeply than adults who didn’t grow up as Unitarian Universalists.

Remember, Roberts says that a “lovemark” is owned by the passionate consumer, not by the big corporation. In denominational terms, the lovermark of Unitarian Universalism is owned by the passionate Unitarian Universalist, not by denominational headquarters.

Therefore, any lay leader or denominational staffer or minister or whomever, has to get out and talk with passionate Unitarian Universalists one-on-one. I suspect that if all the top staffers at denominational headquarters made it a point to be active members in local congregations, and to get out in the field and listen hard to real live Unitarian Universalists, and let it affect them in their hearts — I suspect we’d see big drop in complaints about denominational headquarters. Same principle is true in local churches, where lay leaders and ministers have to make it a point to listen deeply and listen well to persons who are in the church. This doesn’t mean that you kowtow to every passing whim — but you do have to listen hard, and listen well.

Kevin Roberts has a cutesy name for this — “Xploring” — and he tells us how to do it:

Simply put, the Xplorer puts on a pair of comfortable shoes, grabs a backpack, and heads off. There are no one-way viewing mirrors. No projective techniques. Just interaction, observation, and lots of conversation.

Roberts would predict that such interaction would lead to increased respect and increased love for our denomination. I think Roberts is right. And I think this is a kind of marketing I can actually use.

Lovemarks follow-up: Link

Rainbow connection?

With the anti-gay assaults at Puzzles Lounge, it seemed like a good time for First Unitarian in New Bedford to fly a rainbow flag, as a sign of solidarity with the gay and lesbian community in New Bedford. So today, Carol and I walked down to Brewer’s Flag on 77 Forest Street.

We rounded the corner from County St. onto Forest St. “I wonder which building it is?” I said. I’m always worried we’re going to miss whatever building we’re looking for.

“I’ll bet it’s the one with all the flags,” said Carol, and sure enough, I could see a number of brightly colored flags just down the street. We got closer, and Carol added, “What a cute little building!”

Brewer’s Flag is in a lovely, friendly little brick industrial building tucked into a residential neighborhood. The building is right on the sidewalk, and you walk up five steep granite steps to get to the door. Once inside, we found ourselves in a high, bright little anteroom, from which you could see the back room where they sew the custom flags.

The owner, Penny Brewer, said she had three sizes of rainbow flags in stock: 2 x 3 ft., 3 x 5 ft., and 4 x 6 ft. I asked if she didn’t have anything larger. She might have a 6 x 10 ft. one in stock, but she doubted it. While she looked in her stock, Carol and I looked at all the flag paraphanelia — flagpoles, flagpole brackets, flagpole ornaments — and the flag decals, flag posters, sample flags of every sort, wind socks (Carol has been looking for a nice fish wind sock), holiday flags, Azorean flags, everything to do with flags.

The biggest rainbow flag in stock was 4 x 6 ft. Penny Brewer unfolded it for us to look at. Carol thought it looked big enough. “It looks bigger in the store,” Penny Brewer warned. The flag will probably be dwarfed by our huge granite church building, but we’ll figure something out. At the moment, the most important thing is to just get the rainbow flag flying.

On our way out, Carol looked back up at the building housing Brewer Flag. “What other city could you find a neat little flag store in a great little brick industrial building within walking distance of where we live?” she said. “I like New Bedford.”

So do I.

“Lovemarks,” third part

I’ve been writing about Kevin Roberts’ new book on marketing, Lovemarks: The Future beyond Brands [ Link to part one Link to part two]. Roberts’ main contention is that marketing has to move beyond brands to something new. Here’s one more take-away point from the book:

Brands vs. “lovemarks”

Throughout the book, Roberts says that the key to a new kind of marketing is to develop “emotional commitment.” To show what he means, he includes a table contrasting qualities associated with brands, and qualities associated with a new kind of marketing….

BRAND –> Lovemark
Information –> Relationship
Recognized by consumers –> Loved by people
Generic –> Personal
Presents a narrative –> Creates a love story….
Symbolic –> Iconic
Defined –> Infused
Statement –> Story
Defined attributes –> Wrapped in mystery…
Professional –> Passionately creative

Apply some of these contrasts to Unitarian Universalism:

  • On promotional literature for our churches, instead of giving Information, how about promoting a Relationship?
  • Instead of worrying about being Recognized by consumers, how about worrying about being Loved by people?
  • Instead of Generic statements about what “we affirm and promote,” how about Personal statements about who we are as persons?
  • Instead of Presenting a [historical] narrative of a church, how about Creating a love story of our life together in faith?
  • Instead of trying to Define exactly what we are (which too often involves negative statements of what we’re not), how about Infusing our living values through everything we do?
  • Instead of Statements about who we are and what we believe, how about Stories about our lives and relationships together?
  • Instead of Defined attributes, why don’t we just Wrap some things in mystery?
  • Instead of being Professional, why don’t we try being Passionately creative? (…and come to think of it, that’s exactly what I try to do here on this blog….)

Things to think about as we try to spread the word about our churches.

Next: final installment on “xploring”

Green winter

In some of the old New England records, you read about “green winters”: winters when it was relatively warm, and there was little snow. We’re in the middle of a green winter. Many lakes and ponds remain free of ice, and the ground isn’t even frozen. It’s nice that we haven’t had much snow, and it’s nice that our heating bill has been low. But a green winter often means more insect pests the following summer, to the dismay of gardeners and farmers. Worse yet, in the old days cold was thought to kill of diseases, so green winters were thought to bring disease; and here we are faced with the possibility of an avian flu epidemic following a green winter. I’m enough of a New Englander that I can’t just accept the gift of an easy winter; I have to search out something the disadvantages and disasters that must accompany something good; to a New Englander, there is no such thing as an unalloyed good.

“Lovemarks,” part two

As I said in an earlier post, Kevin Roberts’ new book on marketing, Lovemarks: The Future beyond Brands, has been making me think about how we market religion. When I ask people why they come to church, one of the most common replies is that they are looking for, or found, some sort of intimacy in a Unitarian Universalist church. Roberts has a whole chapter on the search for intimacy, in which he writes:

Intimacy was crushed over the course of the 20th century. Everyone was determined to reduce complex exchanges of buying and selling into fast and efficient transactions. Little wonder that the people visiting the mall figured something was missing from their lives. Where once the moment of choice was wrapped in an intimate relationship with the seller, it has often become a sterile experience in an aisle that stretches forever.

The same is true in religion. In our Unitarian Universalist churches, we have lost the intimacy that we used to get when most churches were part of the fabric of community life, and you’d see the same people at church, at P.T.A meetings, in the grocery store, at the town dump. To try to regain that lost intimacy, we try all kinds of things — candles of joy and concern, small group ministries, support groups — that sometimes lead to real intimacy, but too often result in false intimacy. As Roberts points out, people are very good at detecting falseness. This may be why we lose some many newcomers after just a year or two: initially attracted by intimacy, they soon find it is false.

I predict that real intimacy, if we can figure out how to make it happen, is going to be at the heart of any renaissance of Unitarian Universalism. According to Roberts, demographics alone supports this contention:

A new global trend — the rising number of singles.

  • In 1950, about 3 percent of the population of Europe and the United States lived alone. Today in the U.K., seven million adults live alone — three times as many as 40 years ago. The statistics bible Social Trends estimates that by 2020 one person households will make up 40 percent of total households….
  • The shift towards solo living is most pronounced in the big urban centers of the West — with over 50 percent of households in Munich, Frankfurt, and Paris containing just one person, while in London nearly four in ten people live on their own….
  • The growth in single-person households is mainly a result of an increasing number of 25s to 45s opting to live alone.

If we don’t want to fade away, we have to get those 25s to 45s into our churches, and that will almost surely involve offering a sense of true intimacy. And Roberts suggests three things that can foster a sense of intimacy:

First, empathy “so that we can understand and respond to other people’s emotions…. There is only one way to understand other people’s emotions, or anything for that matter. By listening.”

Second, we have to establish commitment “which proves that we are in the relationship for the long haul…. commitment can transform loyalty from an unthinking acceptance to a real state imbued with real emotion — Loyalty Beyond Reason.” As an example, Roberts cites the commitment Mac lovers have to Apply Computer. Apple can make mistakes and Mac fanatics still forgive them.

Third, and I believe most important for Unitarian Universalism, is passion “that bright spark that keeps the relationship alive.” If Unitarian Universalism is lacking anything these days, it’s passion. Yes, there are many of us who are passionate about our religion, but the religion itself offers little passion. Our “seven principles” are a wonderful statement, but they are cold and passionless.

To be continued Link

Why church administration is important, conclusion

To end my discussion of church administration, I’d like to look at two specific instances of applied church administration.

Emergency preparedness

I recently talked with Christana Wille McKnight, a Unitarian Universalist minister who works as a chaplain in a nursing home. Christana mentioned that the health care industry is taking seriously the possibility of an avian flu epidemic, to the point of making fairly detailed emergency preparedness plans.

Not that there are any firm predictions about an avian flu epidemic — no one knows if or when an epidemic will occur, nor if a mutated avian flu will even be deadly. However, from an administrative point of view, it makes sense for all congregations to engage in at least a basic level of emergency preparedness planning. And while the specific possibility of an avian flu epidemic might give us an opportunity to motivate our congregations to put basic emergency plans into place, anyone who was working in a church on September 11, 2001, knows at a gut level that an emergency can arise at any time. Better to have at least basic plans in place now than try to scramble to put something into place at the last minute.

Here are some elements of basic emergency preparedness that most congregations could easily put into place in less than a month:

  • Functional telephone tree that can be used to contact every member of the congregation
  • Plan for checking on shut-ins during an emergency
  • Up-to-date list of members and friends of congregation who work in health care and public safety
  • Plan for supporting health care workers and public safety employees in an extended emergency
  • Plan for building use in case of natural disaster (flood, storm, earthquake, etc.)
  • Ministers, lay leaders, and staff are not overworked so that if an emergency happens, they are not exhausted at the start of the emergency

    • In certain regions, churches will wish to engage in more specific emergency preparedness (earthquake preparedness in California, etc.). Similarly, the possibility of, say, an avian flu epidemic will prompt us to engage in planning specific to that possible emergency. So for an avian flu epidemic, we might do the floowing:

    • Plan to use church communication channels for public health or emergency messages (this implies contact with public safety authorities)
    • Alert congregation to possibility of closing down church services in case of quarantine
    • If appropriate, plan for using church building and facilities as emergency wards or morgues

    In closing, we can ask: Why should churches worry about emergency preparedness? From a practical standpoint, people in churches are aware at some level of the possibility of an emergency, and we might as well address this openly; at the very least, by so doing we’ll reduce congregational anxiety. From a theological standpoint, churches exist in part to help people get through extraordinary moments in their lives (birth, passage into adulthood, marriage, death). But these extraordinary moments are not limited to predictable life passages; they also include crises that go beyond individual lives; so emergency preparedness is simply an extension fo our core theological mission.

    Boundary violations

    In my Unitarian Universalist tradition, some experts estimate that over fifty per cent of all Unitarian Universalist congregations have experienced an incident of clergy sexual misconduct since the 1960’s; that is to say, within living memory. Church consultant Deborah Pope-Lance has said that the effects of clergy sexual misconduct are pervasive, that is, they pervade every part of church life, and persistent, that is, they persist for decades after the misconduct ended. Clergy sexual misconduct is one instance of what are more generally termed “boundary violations,” where someone in power violates the boundaries (physical, emotional, spiritual) of people over whom he or she has power. I’ll focus on clergy sexual misconduct here only because it is so widespread.

    After clergy sexual misconduct has occurred, and after the perpetrator has been removed from the congregation, the work of healing can begin. However, healing a church after boundary violations can be a long, protracted, unpleasant process. Indeed, in spite of best efforts, boundary violations can kill a church, or choke it so that it stays small and useless. Obviously, then, it is extremely important to heal a church after boundary violations.

    There is now a fairly extensive literature on healing churches after boundary violations, which you should consult if you are in such a church. However, I have not seen anything in that literature that specifically addresses church administration as a way to promote healing. Having now served in two churches in which there had been clergy sexual misconduct, I have become convinced that good church administration can foster a safe environment in which healing can proceed more quickly; and it should be obvious how this can lower a church’s anxiety, which can in turn promote healing.

    Additionally, good church administration helps a church set up, maintain, and negotiate good boundaries. When a clergyperson violates sacred boundaries by engaging in sexual misconduct, that can cause people in a church to question all boundaries within that church. Good church administration sets up boundaries based on safety and on theological principles; it maintains boundaries through clear procedures and clearly demarcated power structures; and it can help persons negotiate boundaries by ensuring that boundaries are open and visible to all.

    From a theological standpoint, church administration promotes healing from clergy sexual misconduct by creating a (metaphorical) safe space in which trust and covenant can be restored between persons, those in leadership roles, and the Sacred. Church administration is not sufficient by itself for healing after clergy sexual misconduct, but it can be a key, even a necessary, component.

    Summary and conclusion

    Church administration differs significantly from administration in the business and non-profit worlds, because church administration is informed by theology. Two theologies in my tradition that can inform adminsitration are feminist theology and ecological theology. Safety becomes a key issue for church administration; safety can encompass physical, emotional, and spiritual safety, as well as emergency preparedness. Finally, church administration is an oft-overlooked tool for promoting healing after such boundary violations as clergy sexual misconduct.

    In conclusion, although church administration is often a low priority for clergy and lay leaders, I find it to be central to my ministry. I hope that this series of short essays on the subject will promote further discussion of the issue. Because standard theological education in my tradition neglects administration, ideally, I’d like to see a book-length study of the theology and practice of Unitarian Universalist church administration aimed at ministers, staff, and lay leaders.

    Back to first post in the series

    “Lovemarks,” part one

    Carol has been reading Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands, a new marketing book by Kevin Roberts, CEO of the renowned marketing firm Saatchi and Saatchi. Roberts says that we’re seeing the end of the dominance of brand names and brands. I believe there are brand names in religion, too: many of my co-religionists conceive of “Unitarian Universalism,” not as a religion, but as a sort of brand name.

    Now, I don’t like to think of a religion as a brand name, nor of people in churches as “consumers.” But Roberts reminds me that you have to listen to the people you’re serving to see how they’re thinking and feeling. So in churches maybe we have to engage in two-track thinking. On the one hand, we want to move people away from thinking of church in terms of a consumer item or a brand name. On the other hand, we have to recognize that Unitarian Universalism is treated as consumer item with a brand name, by at least some newcomers, and by at least some people already in our congregations.

    Indeed, lots of folks, both at denominational headquarters and in the Unitarian Universalist blogosphere, have been trying to think of Unitarian Universalism as a brand name. Denominational headquarters has been marketing Unitarian Universalism under the brand “The Uncommon Denomination”; the blogosphere has been talking about things like “the Unitarian Universalist iPod strategy.” But Roberts suggests we need to move beyond brands to a new approach to marketing. In the passage below, Roberts tells us why brands are finished — and I’ve included comments in square brackets about how the Unitarian Universalist brand is finished:

    Brands are out of juice. They can’t stand out in the marketplace, and they are struggling to connect with people. Here are six reasons why:

    1. Brands are worn out from overuse…. Making sure the flowers in reception conform to the brand guidelines just shows you are looking in the wrong direction…. [Just like making sure we Unitarian Universalists are supposed to mention the “seven principles” when we talk to newcomers.]

    2. Brands are no longer mysterious. There is a new anti-brand sensibility [in religion, this may well be an anti-denominational sensibility]….

    3. Brands can’t understand the new consumer. The new consumer is better informed, more critical, less loyal, and harder to read. The white suburban housewife who for decades seemed to buy all the soap powder [and run all the Unitarian Universalist churches] no longer exists. She has been joined by a new population of multi-generational, multi-ethnic, multi-national consumers [and we Unitarian Universalists are still marketing to the suburban white folks]….

    4. Brands struggle with good old-fashioned competition…. If you’re not Number One or Number Two, you might as well forget it [and Unitarian Universalism isn’t even in the top twenty!]….

    5. Brands have been captured by formula. I lose patience with the wanna-be science of brands…. Formulas can’t deal with human emotion. Formulas have no imagination or empathy.

    6. Brands have been smothered by creeping conservatism. The story of brands has gone from daring and inspiration to caution and risk-aversion [and certainly risk-aversion and caution have been the hallmarks of Unitarian Universalist efforts to let the world know about us]….

    That’s a quick summary about why we have to move beyond brands. In the next post: “Lovemarks” and intimacy….

    Candlelight vigil at Puzzles Bar in New Bedford

    In the wake of last night’s anti-gay hate crime in New Bedford, the Marriage Equality Coalition of the SouthCoast organized a candlelight vigil at Puzzles bar, the site of the hate crime at 426 N. Front St. I drove over with Ann Fox, minister at the Fairhaven Unitarian Universalist church, and Lisa Eliot, the director of religious education at the Fairhaven church.

    “What street number is the bar again?” asked Ann, who was driving. Just then Lisa pointed out the flashing blue lights: the police had blocked off N. Front St. for the vigil. We found a parking place within sight of one of the police cars, and walked a block to the bar.

    Several people already had lit candles. I brought over 100 candles left over from our church’s Christmas Eve candlelight service, and I began passing them out to anyone who wanted one. One or two gay couples felt safe enough to quietly hold hands. I saw the core members of NBPI, several ministers, and several Unitarian Universalists. The crowd kept growing, until I estimate over 200 people were present.

    Right at 7:00, Andy Pollack from the Marriage Equality Coalition welcomed everyone, explaining that the Coalition organized the vigil because at the moment, they are essentially the only gay/lesbian political organization on the South Coast. David Lima, interim executive minister of the Inter-Church Council, gave the invocation. Then Andy introduced the bartender of Puzzles who was there at the time of the attack.

    The bartender told essentially the same story you can read in the New Bedford Standard-Times Web coverage of the incident. He said what he witnessed was far worse than any horror movie, any gory slasher movie, that he had ever seen.

    According to the bartender, the attacker came into the bar and showed an I.D. that said he was 23, though it now appears that was a false I.D. The attack started after the attacker had been in the bar long enough to have a couple of drink. The attacker struck his first victim from behind with a machete, and almost immediately the attacker was jumped on by the bartender and the other patrons in the bar. The attacker kept lashing out with the machete and a small hatchet that he carried; he was overcome by the others, disarmed, but then reached down and pulled out a 9 mm handgun, shot upwards at the bartender and another man who were on top of him. Everyone backed away, the attacker stood up, and then shot the face of the first man he had hit, and shot into the head of another man whom he had knocked down. The third shooting victim was a mentally challenged man in his early twenties who emerged from the restrooms at just that moment accompanied by his mother; the attacker shot him in the abdomen.

    The bartender managed to get everyone out of the building, and went back in. As he went back in, the attacker grabbed him, put the handgun to the bartender’s head, and pulled the trigger; but the gun was out of ammunition. “That gun ran out of ammunition so I could be here tonight,” said the bartender, who cried intermittently as he told this story to us, “so I could be here tonight to tell you this story. He could not silence my voice! [cried of “yes” and “amen” from the crowd] We must not be silenced!” He urged us all to stand up and speak out against all hate crimes directed at gay and lesbian people.

    Barney Frank was unable to be present, but he did send a statement which was read by one of New Bedford’s city councillors. Tony Cabral, state representative, spoke compelling about the need to be tolerant of all persons no matter what their race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. Bev Baccelli of the Marriage Equality Coalition spoke next, pointing out that while it is no longer OK to use words like “kike” or “nigger,” it is still considered socially acceptable to say “fag” or “dyke,” and this must change. Bev Baccelli also said that her office was getting calls all afternoon from news outlets across the country, and they all asked what kind of city New Bedford is; to which she replied, “New Bedford is just like any other city in this country. A gay man or a lesbian woman is harassed each an every day in some city somewhere in this country. New Bedford is just like your city.”

    Mayor Scott Lang arrived a little late, so he wound up speaking last. He said the police and the city will not stop until the attacker is brought to justice. But, he added, we will have to do more than take care of the legal end of things. The city must come together and put an end to hatred of all kinds. Lang was very serious, and very compelling. Ann Fox gave a very short closing prayer, and led the crowd in singing “We Shall Overcome.”

    I saw maybe seven or eight reporters scribbling in notebooks, and there were at least three video cameras; I know the Associated Press picked up this story, so watch national news media for coverage of this vigil. Also, I heard a rumor that the primary suspect, an 18 year old New Bedford man, has been apprehended, but this could not be confirmed — follow news media for more on that aspect of the story, too.