Midnight in New York

The movie theatre was in the middle of the block, and the line to get in already stretched to the corner. It was forty minutes before the movie began. We had our tickets already — the early show was already sold out by the time we showed up, so we had bought tickets for the seven o’clock — but we figured that if we wanted to get seats together, we had better line up with all the others. Pretty soon, the line was twice as long.

Someone walking by to get to the end of the line said, “All these people must’ve started seeing Woody Allen films when they were in college and here they all are.” But several people had brought children and teenagers, so that wasn’t entirely true. Someone else said that there are three hundred seats in this theatre, but usually only a couple dozen are filled. Not tonight, though. A man standing behind us talked knowledgeably and at length about other Woody Allen films: “Remember the scene where they’re standing in line to see the movie in ‘Annie Hall’? … Then Marshall McLuhan walks up, and says … And Woody Allen looks out at the camera and says …” A woman said, “I can’t remember the last time I stood in line on the first night of a movie.” The knowledgeable man said, “It already opened in New York and L.A. This is just opening night for the Bay area. But at least it still hasn’t opened in Pittsburgh.”

At last the line started moving. We found two seats together, at the very back, with an aisle seat for my very long legs. A couple, maybe in their late twenties or early thirties, asked if the seats beside us were open, and we said yes. He went off to get something or other, and she said to us, “Do you think we’ll be able to see back here?” “It’s a small theater,” said Carol. “Those must be the last two seats left together,” I said. “Well, it’s much better to sit together,” said the woman. They came and went a couple of times, and on the last time in, he murmured an apology, and she said, “It’s our first movie together.”

I won’t tell you anything about the movie; anything I could tell you would spoil it. Except I can tell you that although the movie claims to be about Paris, it’s really about New York, like all of Woody Allen’s movies; everyone speaks with a New York rhythm, except the Parisians of course, but they might just be tourists. Come to think of it, many of the people in the movie theatre sounded like they came from New York — not the Bronx or Staten Island, mind you, but Manhattan.

The way out of decline

The Unitarian Universalist Association is in decline by many measures: number of certified members, average Sunday morning attendance, enrollment in religious education programs. Now obviously this decline is an average across all congregations; some congregations are growing and thriving, while others are declining. So is there a way out of decline?

I don’t believe there is some magic bullet that will infallibly cure decline. Nor am I an ideologue who believes there there is one root cause from which all decline springs — that is, I don’t believe that we’re declining because of our polity, or because we’re not Evangelical Christian, or because we’re mostly white. As a historical materialist, I do believe that there are some broad demographic trends that are pushing us in certain directions. But I also believe that every congregation finds itself in a slightly different and therefore unique setting, with a unique set of pressures and opportunities. Specific techniques for growth that work in my congregation may not work for your congregation, and vice versa.

Having said that, there are at least three obvious principles that can help us reverse decline.

Most obviously, good management over the long haul is probably essential for reversing decline. A congregation can have the most fabulous vision in the world, but you have to manage your congregation on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis, over a period of months and years, in order to realize that vision. Management is somewhat different than leadership. Management are those habits and practices that keep an organization running smoothly and efficiently, and that coordinate efforts towards the big goals of the organization.

It is worth noting that the nonprofit world is a competitive place. Like it or not, a congregation is just another nonprofit competing for people’s personal involvement and financial support. In a competitive marketplace, there will be forces pushing our congregations to use resources — money, staff time, volunteer hours — with increased efficiency. Therefore, increased efficiency through better management is a goal throughout the nonprofit world — and should be a goal within our congregations.

It is probably the case that a congregation will always need more than one person driving good management. We can’t just delegate management to one person, because if only one person is a good manager, that person is going to get tired out pretty quickly. Boards have to supervise paid staff and key volunteers with management in mind; they have to be sure that staff and key volunteers have access to training in appropriate management skills; and boards have to manage themselves properly. Ministers, religious educators, and administrators have to make sure they are constantly honing their management skills. Everyone management reponsibility has to take pride in being a good manager. In short, you have to build a culture where good management is the norm, where your key people are managing the organization for the long haul.

Along with good management, you have to have good leadership — once again, over the long haul — and once again, there has to be more than one good leader. A good leader always has his or her eyes constantly on the big picture. A good leader is someone who is able to motivate other people to work towards a compelling shared vision. And a good leader is also skilled at good followership; a good leader knows when it is time to follow, as well as when it is time to lead.

Permit me to add what should be a too-obvious point: if you are not relying on your senior minister as one of your key leaders, that’s a little weird. Some ministers are not good managers, but if you don’t trust your senior minister to lead, you need to ask yourself some hard questions: do you not trust your senior minister because that person is incompetent, or do you not trust your senior minister because you are unable to trust ordained clergy or any authority figure? If you feel you can’t attract good leaders to be your minister, you will want to ask yourself why that is so: is it because you are unable to offer a financially attractive package, or is it because you have a pattern of hiring less than competent leaders, or is it because your congregation holds ministers in contempt such that they can’t be effective and/or leave quickly? These may be difficult questions for you to answer, because it’s going to be hard to get straight answers from anyone. But it is wise to answer them straight, because without good leadership from a visionary senior minister, I think you’re going to find it’s difficult to reverse decline.

I would also suggest you’ll want to ask the same sorts of questions if you can’t attract good lay leaders. If you find that your best lay leaders are getting burned out, and maybe even leaving the congregation after a stint in a formal leadership position, you’ll want to figure out why, and fix that problem. Reversing decline is a long-term effort, and you need leaders who can stick around for the long haul.

With solid management and visionary leadership in place, the next step is cheerful and dogged persistence to reverse your decline.

Every congregation will be in decline because of a different set of reasons. If you’re lucky, the reason for decline will be obvious. Maybe your congregation is unable to ask confidently and consistently for financial support. Maybe your congregation avoids all risks. Maybe your congregation’s physical plant has deferred maintenance that results in an unsafe, unattractive, messy, dirty, and/or smelly building. Maybe your congregation has a secret history of misconduct by clergy or lay leaders. If there is an obvious reason why you’re in decline, the solution is obvious. If your building is smelly, dirty, and unsafe, you can create a management plan to fix it up, etc. And you keep at it, cheerfully and doggedly, until the obvious problems are solved.

More likely, there won’t be an obvious reason why you’re in decline. Then your task is more difficult. You can spend years trying to sort out all the subtle and complex reasons why you’re declining. Or, more practically, you can focus on positive action: determine what your compelling vision is, articulate it clearly to the congregation and the surrounding community, and turn your compelling vision into reality.

This is an iterative process; that is, you start out with a rough idea of your compelling vision, try to articulate it and bring it into reality, and when you fail to articulate it and make it real, figure out why you failed and try again. Then go through this process again several more times, and the whole time you’re doing this you should be constantly paying attention to managing the congregation more efficiently, and constantly paying attention to informal and formal feedback loops that tell you honestly whether you’re succeeding or not. You keep trying, and failing, and getting better at it, and trying again, and failing but not so badly this time, over and over again, until you get good at whatever you’re doing.

If Unitarian Universalists have one weakness these days, it’s that we lack a certain amount of stick-to-it-tiveness. In social justice, we are afflicted with the “cause-of-the-month” syndrome. When it comes to growth, we’re afflicted with a similar lack of persistence — if we don’t see immediate and rapid growth, we start saying to each other, “Well, but there’s more to growth than numerical growth.” Both social justice and growth require dogged and cheerful persistence. Nobody’s going to end racism in a year; nobody’s going to reverse congregational decline in a couple of months. Our planning horizons for growth should be this Sunday, next year, five years from now — and twenty years from now, looking ahead to the next generation. This iterative process takes years — years of trying things and admitting failure, years of building up small successes until they become big successes.

There is no magic bullet to end our decline. Every congregation is going to face unique problems, and what works in someone else’s congregation may or may not work in yours. But some things we can be sure of: we need good management, good leadership, and cheerfully dogged persistence.

Why I disagree with Jonathan Edwards (but like him for it)

I love reading Jonathan Edwards, the great eighteenth century evangelical New England minister, perhaps the greatest American theologian of that century. He writes well, good rational eighteenth century American prose filled with vivid images and solid common sense. And because he is such a clear writer, I can better understand why I disagree so strongly with his theological position. This passage, from his sermon “Knowledge of Divine Truth,” beautifully summarizes one of Edwards’s principle axioms, an axiom with which I could not disagree more:

“There are many truths concerning God, and our duty to him, which are evident by the light of nature. But Christian divinity, properly so called, is not evident by the light of nature; it depends on revelation. Such are our circumstances now in our fallen state, that nothing which it is needful for us to know concerning God, is manifest by the light of nature in the manner in which it is necessary for us to know. For the knowledge of no truth in divinity is of any significance to us, any otherwise than as it some way or other belongs to the gospel scheme, or as it relates to a Mediator. But the light of nature teaches us no truth of divnity in this manner. Therefore it cannot be said, that we come to the knowledge of any part of Christian divinity by the light of nature. The light of nature teaches no truth as it is in Jesus. It is only the Word of God, contained in the Old and New Testament, which teaches us Christian divinity.”

I couldn’t disagree more with Edwards; yet it is his clarity in stating this axiom that allows me to understand why I disagree with him. This leads me to conclude that there is no use in putting forth unclear arguments. If people disagree with you, they will figure it out sooner or later; better that they figure it out sooner. And better that they have a clear understanding of why they disagree with you.

This, I think, is why I have such a feeling of distaste for the Seven Principles. The prose is mushy, and seems to veil strongly-held beliefs behind weak assertions of generalized platitudes. Of course I believe in democratic process; but what do you mean by democratic process, and in what sense is this a religious and theological matter anyway? Of course I assert that every person has inherent worth and dignity, but do you make that assertion for the same reason I do? — are you making that assertion from the standpoint of natural law, or from the standpoint of Universalism that knows the power of God’s love, or what? The Seven Principles are unclear, and therefore easy to affirm but difficult to disagree with; this is their big weakness.

Reasons for decline

In yesterday’s post, I talked about the numerical decline of Unitarian Universalism, and asked why we are declining. Readers left thoughtful and interesting comments giving their ideas of why we’re declining. In tomorrow’s post, In Thursday’s post, I’ll suggest some ways we might reverse our numerical decline. Now are some of my thoughts about why the numbers of certified members of Unitarian Universalist congregations are declining:

(1) During the Great Recession, congregations have been facing budget shortfalls, and one obvious way to cut costs is to reduce the number of certified members. Congregations pay dues to the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) and to their local district for each certified member; fewer members means less dues to pay.

(2) UUA salary guidelines are pegged to congregation size, so a congregation that is hiring a new staffer may have motivation to have fewer certified members in order to drop down to a lower salary range in the guidelines.

(3) People who come from no previous religious background may see no benefit in becoming members of a congregation, or may not understand membership.

(4) Membership is declining because there are fewer people in our congregations — more on this in this next set of comments.

Now, here are my thoughts on why Sunday morning attendance is declining:

(1) The target audience for most Unitarian Universalist congregations is upper middle class white people living in wealthy suburbs. This is a declining group. Whites are headed towards being a minority group in U.S. society. And younger white people are returning to live in cities, and often can’t afford to live in wealthy suburbs.

(2) Patterns of religious participation are changing. Instead of participating in a traditional congregation, people in the U.S. may be doing something else. They may choose to attend occasional weekend workshops in spirituality; or may choose to adopt a home-based “do-it-yourself” approach to spirituality; or may be experimenting with alternative religious communities such as intentional communities, the so-called “new monasticism,” etc.; or may choose to participate in two or more religious communities simultaneously (possibly with a lower level of commitment in each); or may be experimenting with the various forms of online religion; etc.

(3) Many Unitarian Universalist congregations have become de facto ethnic churches — white upper middle class enclaves. Such ethnic churches are increasingly unattractive to younger people who are accustomed to living and working in multiracial, multicultural environments.

(4) Sunday is no longer a day when no one has anything to do (except for real estate agents). Many people work on Sundays; children have sports and extra curricular commitments on Sundays; adults have sports and extra curricular commitments on Sundays; etc. On top of that, people these days are used to 24/7 shopping online, gyms that are open until late, etc. — we are a society that wants to be able to do what we want, when we want. This is one reason why voting by mail has increasing so quickly. yet most of our congregations offer only one service on Sunday mornings.

(5) Services in many Unitarian Universalist congregations do not have particularly high production values. Opera singers are having to learn how to act — no more planting yourself center stage and singing as loud as you can — so that opera can survive in competition with TV, online videos, video games, etc. Just so, those who lead Sunday services need to incorporate stagecraft, visual excitement, etc., into their skills — it’s no longer enough to plant a preacher behind a pulpit.

(6)Many Unitarian Universalist congregations have lessened their commitment to providing programming for families with children — more on this in this next set of comments.

And here are my thoughts on why religious education enrollment is declining:

(1) Professional religious educators are a dying breed. The economic situations of most congregation has led to cuts in religious education staffing. Positions calling for a minister of religious education are being downgraded to director of religious education, or associate or assistant minister. Full-time positions are disappearing, and part-time positions are losing hours. Sabbatical leave for religious educators is almost unheard of. As a result, religious education as a profession is not attracting many high quality candidates; many religious educators are part-timers who take the job because it’s convenient, not because they are actually inspired to do religious education as a career. Furthermore, the number of career religious educators (trained professionals who plan to make this their career) is dwindling; in the past, career religious educators helped support the untrained, part-time and temporary religious educators.

(2) UUA and district support for religious education is down. Many districts have replaced district religious education consultants with district program consultants. Staff and funding for the religious education department of the UUA has been cut.

(3) The UUA religious education department is inward-focussed and seemingly unaware of wider developments in the fields of religious education, and education more broadly. The UUA’s religious education department has insisted in recasting itself as the “Lifespan Faith Development” department; but religious education is a well-recognized field with an international professional organization, scholars doing relevant research, and many practitioners in other liberal denominations and faiths; whereas “faith development” is a field restricted to a few developmental psychologists following in the footsteps of James Fowler. Two examples of the inward focus of the UUA when it comes to religious education: while the rest of the U.S. prioritizes assessment within education, the UUA still focusses on curriculum; and while the broader educational world grapples with all the new insights from cognitive science, UUA materials show little or no influence of cognitive science insights.

(4) Current congregational leadership is often drawn from empty nesters and retired people, some of whom don’t want to spend money on kids. In more than one congregation, I’ve actually heard older people advocate that their congergation be a sort of “over-55 community.” Even one or two people like this can be enough to scare away families with children.

(5) The religious education programs of too many congregation are woefully out of date. Our best curriculum guides are from twenty or more years ago — and in any case, today’s families are accustomed to educational programs that are driven by assessment, not by curriculum. Youth groups still mostly operate using a model that became popular about 1970. Sunday school facilities are typically outdated, and often have a lot of deferred maintenance.

Time to panic

According to a story released today on the UU World Web site, total membership in Unitarian Universalist congregations dropped again this year, from 164,196 members to 162,796 members. If I did my math right, this represents a drop of about 1.58%. (The story incorrectly states that these represent the numbers of adults, but some congregation allow legal minors to become full members; therefore, it is more accurate to simply say the number of members has dropped.)

Since U.S. population is growing at about 1% a year, that means Unitarian Universalism is shrinking even faster considered as a percentage of the total population. But there’s an even bigger reason to worry about the decline, because as UU World reports:

“Registration in religious education programs fell for the fourth consecutive year. It dropped 2.1 percent to 54,671.”

Religious education programs has been perhaps our most effective entry point for adults in their late 20s through early 40s — they bring their kids to Sunday school, then sometimes stick around after their kids grow up. Dropping religious education enrollments indicate that we are going to see dropping numbers of adults in the 25-45 age range.

If you’re not panicking yet, UU World also reports that:

“Average Sunday attendance showed a decline for the first year, falling by 1,539 people. That’s a decline of 1.5 percent to 100,693 people.”

A drop in Sunday attendance often precedes a decline in membership, since usually someone stops attending services months or even years before ending formal membership affiliation. The drop in attendance prompts me to predict that membership will continue to decline next year.

Why are we declining? I’d love to hear your comments first. I’ll summarize some of my thoughts on the matter tomorrow.

The rapture and Aegle marmelos

I don’t usually bother linking to my sermons, but yesterday’s sermon just happened to serve as a commentary on the misfired Rapture of Saturday. Here’s the link. As you will find out if you read the sermon, the end of the world actually begins, not with earthquakes in New Zealand, but with the fruit of Aegle marmelos.

A comparison to the way Isaac Newton handled a similar situation is perhaps inevitable in our culture.

Not raptured

It’s easy to make jokes about the end of the earth that didn’t come yesterday at 5:59 p.m., as predicted by Harold Camping. There were so many things wrong about Camping’s prediction — the convoluted interpretation of the King James Bible, Camping’s past track record with false warnings of doomsday, the inability to see how culturally conditioned such predictions are, the notion that only one person would have access to such a prediction, etc. — that it’s really tempting to mock him. I did it myself, multiple times, this morning at church.

But it’s not really funnyr. Lots of people believed Camping, and some gave away everything they had thinking they wouldn’t need earthly possessions after yesterday. And everyone I know is capable of fooling themselves, and it’s a rare person who doesn’t delude themselves about something in their life; it’s better not to mock others about something for which we ourselves can be mocked. Finally, Camping’s well-publicized failure has brought out the anti-religion fundamentalists who are now gleefully declaring that because Camping was wrong all religion must be bunk.

I found one of the nicest responses to Camping’s message buried deep in story on the National Public Radio Web site:

“…people from more than one religion — and even a few atheists — admitted to being a bit introspective about the world on this particular weekend.

“That was true for Maddie Calhoon, a Unitarian Universalist from St. Paul, Minn., who was at a gathering Saturday night that guests renamed a ‘rapture party.‘

“‘We said, “We’re just glad we’re all together.” And it was a joke,’ said Calhoon, 24. ‘But of course it made me think about things, and about how I don’t reflect often about what I’d do if my time was coming to an end.’”

Nice response to this craziness: go hang out with some friends and reflect on what’s most important in life.

Raptured

I got on a BART train today at about two in the afternoon. An ad next to the door of the train proclaimed:

Judgment Day
May 12, 2011
THE BIBLE GUARANTEES IT!

At six o’clock, the predicted time when Judgment Day was going to come (725,000 days after Jesus was executed, or something like that), I was sitting eating dinner with some friends. “We’re still here,” someone said.

I just went to check the Web site of Family Radio — that’s the Web site controlled by Harold Camping, the guy who’s been predicting the end of the world. Their Web site is still up and running, and it still says:

Judgment Day
May 21, 2011
THE BIBLE GUARANTEES IT!
00 days left

And their radio station is still broadcasting (they stream it live on the Web site if you want to check it out) — and the announcer just said that he’ll back back again tomorrow.

I guess that means the Rapture is off. So what happened? Was it supposed to be 7,250,000 days, not 725,000 days? Does God count in hexadecimal? Or maybe God prefers prime numbers (this is a prime number year after all) so it’s going to be the next largest prime, 725,009?

I’m sure they’ll come up with some reason or another why the Rapture didn’t come today. And I would love to hear your speculations on where they did their math wrong.

Bike party

We came out of the theatre at about eleven o’clock and looked to see if it was safe to cross the street. A whole passel of bicycles was coming at us. “Bike party!” said one of the bicyclists as they came near. We watched for about five minutes as clumps of bicycles passed by. There was a break in the bikes, and I scurried across; Carol wiated for another couple of minutes for another break in the bikes before she got across. There were enough bikes that we weren’t going to be able to get the car out easily, so we stood on the sidewalk and watched. Hardly anyone seemed to be talking to one another, except that everyone once in a while someone say, “Bike party!” A few of the bikes were playing recorded music ranging from rap to norteno to classic rock. Two daredevils rode too fast and weaved in and out of the other bikes, but most people just rode along fairly sedately. It looked a little boring to me, but then I never was one for making long bike rides in a group. Finally, along came two motorcycle cops, a few stragglers on bikes, and that was it. We got in our car and drove home.