The email message from the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association (UUMA) was concise: “Your membership is going to expire in 60 days.” The question that now confronts me is whether I’m going pay their new, greatly increased fee in order to renew my membership. And therein hangs a tale.<\/p>\n
A couple of years ago, the leadership of the UUMA made what seems on the face of it to be a logical decision: they decided that they were going to hire an executive director to oversee the activities of the association. There had long been a paid administrator of the UUMA, but the volunteer board saw great possibilities in adding another employee, someone who was more than an administrator, someone who could provide leadership to move the organization in exciting new directions. So far, so good.<\/p>\n
Since the rest of this post will be of primary interest to a small number of my readers, I’ll continue it after the jump…<\/em> <\/p>\n The board brought this idea to the UUMA membership at several annual meetings; these meetings take place during the professional days for ministers, a few days just before General Assembly. They got some good feedback from the UUMA members who were there, lowered the membership dues from the higher initial proposal, and decided to proceed. I was not at these meetings due to the cost of staying in an expensive convention hotel another couple of nights. I chose to spend my limited professional expenses budget on attending General Assembly, choosing to attend to the business of the denomination than to attend to the business of a professional association. So right from the start, I removed myself from the decision-making process — you gotta pay to play, and I didn’t pay.<\/p>\n As part of this change, the UUMA revamped its mission, and decided to focus its efforts on providing continuing education opportunities, and opportunities for collegiality. UUMA volunteers and staff have set up a major new continuing education program: this February, the UUMA will offer a week of workshops at Asilomar conference center in California over a several-day period. I looked at the offerings, and there was nothing there that I found particularly interesting — or, to be more precise, given that this conference is going to cost the equivalent of a graduate-level course, there are many graduate-level courses in ministry that I would take before I spent the same money on a week-long set of workshops.<\/p>\n Of course the conference at Asilomar is also intended to provide collegiality, that is, time to hang out with other ministers and talk about subjects of mutual concern. But I already hang out with other Unitarian Universalist ministers and talk about subjects of mutual concern twice a year at retreats of our district UUMA chapter. And I meet regularly with two other ministers for mutual support and accountability. I decided I don’t need another, very expensive, conference at Asilomar to meet my needs for collegiality.<\/p>\n Gradually, I have come to the realization that the UUMA is restructuring itself to meet the needs of a certain subset of Unitarian Universalist ministers. That subset includes senior ministers of larger congregations who are relatively well-compensated; second-career ministers who have financial assets from their previous career that give them some additional financial stability; and ministers whose primary financial support comes from their spouse’s job. These ministers prefer to get their continuing education in an attractive setting like Asilomar, rather than schlepping to a grungy classroom in a nearby theological school, or taking an online class, or attending a low-budget workshop in a nearby church. This subset of ministers also prefers to get their needs for collegiality met in a group that draws other ministers like them from across the United States, with meetings that take place in hotel function rooms and high-end conference centers; they are not satisfied with meeting with neighboring ministers in the cramped, stale-smelling office of a nearby small church. The UUMA is restructuring to meet the legitimate needs and desires of this subset of ministers. I am not in that subset.<\/p>\n