Paul Wilczynski's Observations

Peter Morales and more at SUUSI

I attended a talk by Peter Morales (the new president of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations) at SUUSI this past week. He spoke about "the future of our movement". I wanted to pass along several thoughts he spoke about.

• We have around 150,000 members, and the best estimate is that we get about 250,000 visitors per year. Our growth problem, then, is not marketing - it's sales. We don't need any more large ad campaigns to attract visitors, and he doesn't intend to do them.
• Visitors know about us when they walk in the door, from friends, the web, etc.
• The big question visitors have for themselves is "will we feel at home here?" Note that it's a question of feeling - not specifics like what the details of our theology are.
• Around 2/3 of our growth (about 1% a year) is from 60 congregations, out of several thousand. The largest single source of the increase is prisoners joining the Church of the Larger Fellowship!
• We have to decide if we're a club or a religious institution. (There's a lot of discussion that could be had just around this thought.)
• Our growth is, and will be, one person at a time - from one relationship at a time.
• We can't change our behavior about growth unless we are emotionally involved. We need a sense of urgency.

Regarding the last point: several other talks I attended spoke about growth being the result of emotional connections - not just "doing the right things". Speakers said that many churches do the same new-visitor types of things - separate mugs, contacting people, etc. Some churches are very successful and some are not; those that are successful demonstrate a true personal interest in the visitor on the part of the church person. But regarding contacting: one person said that if you're going to call someone who visited, you should do so by the next day - at the very latest. Don't wait several days or a week. People talked about inviting new visitors to dinner at their house.

It's more than the small talk that most of us can do ("Where do you come from?" "Where did you hear about about church"?). I'll confess that I can do small talk to some degree, but I don't know how to quickly establish an emotional relationship with someone who walks in the door. I think that takes a special kind of person.

One minister who is gay talked about his first experience in a UU church. He said that, about 1/2 way through the service, he was starting to fear that he didn't belong there and he wouldn't be accepted. He said the fear was coming at least as much from within himself as from anything he was experiencing. But as he was leaving, an older woman who was in the row behind him reached out to give him a big hug and said "I'm really glad you're here". He told us that he wouldn't be a UU minister today if it weren't for that personal and warm interaction. (Of course, not everyone likes hugs, but it's more the idea of the interaction.)

posted by Paul Wilczynski @ 9:24 AM 2 comments