Just came back from a meeting of the brand-new Membership Development Committee here at First Unitarian in New Bedford. Some lay leaders got fired up about the possibilities for growing our congregation, and said, Hey let’s get together and talk about this. It was a great meeting and it got me thinking about a conversation I had on Thursday….
I was talking with Greg Stewart, the minister in the Reno, Nevada, Unitarian Universalist congregation. Out in Reno, they have nearly tripled in size in less than two years, from about 50 to about 150. Greg said something about the momentum they’ve built, and how it might be hard for them to stop growing if they wanted to… and I got to thinking….
My bet is that it’s hard to not grow a Unitarian Universalist congregation. We know there’s lots of people who long to hear our religious message. By some reports we already have more visitors per existing member than does a fast-growing faith like the Mormons. Logically, since we’re not growing and the Mormons are, we must be working pretty hard to keep people out of Unitarian Universalism.
I mean, think about it. When someone new joins a group you love, your initial inclination is to share your excitement to keep them coming back. You’d have to work hard to choke down your inclination to extend that basic human hospitality. It’s like inviting someone into your home, and then ignoring that person — which, if you think about it, would be draining. It takes an emotional toll to deny basic hospitality.
Therefore, it’s a lot less work to simply extend plain old hospitality to everyone who comes into one of our congregations. If we took the easy route and extended basic hospitality to all those newcomers, we’d grow quickly. Thus efficiency has become my new favorite argument for growing our congregations — it’s easier, and it’s less work, to grow!
I don’t know, I’ve visited some pretty inhospitable UU congregations. Congregations become inhospitable when the members become so embroiled in internal dialogue and personal history that it becomes hard for them to introduce new people into the conversation. When they reach this stage, it actually is very hard for them to extend plain old hospitality. (“What’s our church about? Ah, it’s a long story. Who wants to go through it all again one more time?”)
I bet hospitable congregations are the ones that do a good job of discovering who is visiting and helping those people to find something in the congregation to do that they’ll enjoy. They realize that they need to live in a constant state of welcoming brand new people.
Once they reach this point they probably do grow easily. So maybe the news is mixed: it might be harder than you think to get certain congregations to start looking outward into their communities again, but once you do, there’s reason to think they really will thrive. Here’s hoping, anyway!
Best,
Kevin
I would have to agree with Kevin and with you, Dan. Eliot Church (where I work) is very welcoming. However, I know of quite a few congregations that are not. One church I am familiar with had trouble convincing its new members that they weren’t the very last people in town to be interested in liberal religion! Sometimes (and tis isn’t just a UU problem) we get thinking that our community is so special that no one else is smart/enlighted/faith-filled enough to understand. This, I think is a real problem and one that we will have to work hard to overcome.