Spiritual Vitality

A scene any UU would recognize: members and friends gathered for refreshments and conversation after the service concludes.

But look around. Do you see the parents of young children? Oh, they’re there. They just aren’t engaging in the way you are or in the way they’d like to be. (And the way that’s necessary for a church to grow.) Instead, they’re cleaning up the juice that their daughter spilled. Fetching a cookie for their son who is hungry and cranky. Trying to put the infant to sleep by swaying from side to side in a quieter part of the fellowship space.

Last year, my small church, Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Hendricks County (located outside of Indianapolis, IN) had a typical RE attendance. After services, parents often appeared flustered. If they were new to the church, the setting was even more overwhelming, and they often didn’t return. I understood. With two young kids of my own, I faced the same challenge every Sunday — it is nearly impossible to meet new people and make meaningful relationships while at the very same time parenting small children. Parents lacked the opportunity to make essential connections.

In January, I became the part-time Director of Religious Exploration. I wanted to address this struggle for meaningful interaction among the parents at our church.

So we formed a new group for mothers with young children, called Sunday Night Supper Club. SNSC is a potluck dinner held at the church on the third Sunday of each month. Moms share food and fellowship, telling stories about our children, ourselves, our journeys, serious things, and silly things, and loosely follow the church’s theme for the month. Things that are hard to talk about after church while chasing toddlers and some things that are hard to talk about, period. Because we meet on Sunday nights, we aren’t distracted by children. (Childcare is provided for those who need it.)

I quickly realized this group’s potential. The camaraderie and conversation elevated my mood and made me a better parent, wife, and UU. The trust among the group grew quickly in a way that was remarkable.  These moms were finding a place to laugh, cry, share and find support in ways that many may have been lacking (and didn’t even know we were missing something).  So I invited some other moms from outside the church. I reached out to the mothers in the cooperative preschool my children attended. And they reached out to their friends.

They came, either online in the Facebook group or in person to SNSC.

Slowly, several began coming to UUCC on Sunday mornings too.

Then they brought their spouses.

And then their children.

And then they began bringing their friends, both to SNSC and church.

And then they started signing the membership book and joining committees.

Since forming this group 11 months ago, UUCCHC has nearly doubled RE enrollment. We have 65 enrolled children and youth in RE in a church of only 86 members! Our average weekly RE attendance has gone from the teens to the thirties.  I believe in time, more of these women will also become members.

More interesting facts from SNSC:

• 47 members of the private Facebook group provide a place of ongoing dialogue and support

• 1 charity adopted
• 40 years: the age span among group members
• 3 group leaders to help maintain focus during meetings and put our ideas into action
• 4th Sunday of the month, when the newly inspired men’s group meets (intentionally not on the same Sunday as SNSC to allow for childcare where possible)
• 30 feet: the distance to the top of the high ropes course we conquered to celebrate our church’s theme of Beginnings
• Infinity. You can’t quantify the friendships formed and the positive changes women are making in their lives because of the support the group provides.

What hasn’t changed? I still don’t bother to get a cup of tea on Sunday mornings. My children still need me. But now I have Sunday nights.

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Renee Bowman, part-time Director of Religious Exploration at UUCCHC can be reached at dre@uucchc.org, but not between 5:30 and 8:30 p.m. on the third Sunday of each month.  (Tandi notes that her UUCCHC boards are a lot of fun to follow on Pinterest.)

At the Unitarian Universalist Church of Annapolis, we had a problem: Not enough time together. This isn’t unique to us, many congregations struggle with this… Here are a few symptoms of that problem:

• We have two Sunday services and Religious Exploration (R.E.) for 6th grade-12th grade only at the first service. Therefore, the majority of the R.E. families only attend at the first service, even for younger kids, and second service only has a few kids for an attempt at childcare.
• R.E. facilitators can’t go to church when they teach– or if they do, they have to stay at church for three hours. Not feasible.
• 6th thru 12th grade youth don’t attend worship, or if they do it’s only for the occasional “multi-generational” worship.
• Coffee hour is crowded and it’s hard to navigate and really connect with people.
• Adult R.E. happens on weeknights if it happens at all and very few people attend–making that time, finding a babysitter, driving in the dark, are all barriers to attending.

The solution we came up with was MIDDLE HOUR.

In between the two Sunday services we would offer an hour of R.E. and Connection opportunities for all ages: Children, Youth, and

Adults. This means that for many people, including many children and youth, church is now two hours long instead of one. This is important for many reasons, and we have noticed some significant changes even in the short time we’ve been trying this experiment…

• Families with children can attend either service, because R.E. (Middle Hour) is in between– We’re seeing more families starting to attend the second service.
• Children have childcare after the first 15 minutes of service so they havemore peer-time and know the kids in their group better (therefore it’s easier to make friends).

  

• Adult volunteer leaders of the childcare sessions are not the “usual RE volunteers” which expands our volunteer-base and encourages more adult participation with the children.
• Youth 6th-12th grade are attending worship with their families! They are also starting to volunteer as ushers, greeters, and sound booth techs.
• Adults have 4 options every Sunday for Adult RE including a “Going Deeper”session each week to dive deeper into the themes of the service, led by the Lay Minister, monthly 7-Principles discussions, twice-monthly Music as a Spiritual Practice with our music director, and a wide range of other options that change on a weekly basis. The enthusiasm around Middle Hour has led to an overabundance of wonderful offerings–whereas last year we struggled to get folks to sign up to lead Adult RE, this year we already have four offerings per Sunday scheduled through the entire year!
• Since we typically have about 50-60 adults attend Middle Hour Adult RE offerings, coffee hour has opened up, allowing

  

  thosefolks who just want to chat with each other more space to do so.

This didn’t happen overnight. It took a year of intentional meeting and communication with the Board, staff, and stakeholders including youth, parents, choir, and others. Lots of organized logistical planning took place.

We decided before undertaking this project to give it four months to let the “wrinkles” fall out before doing any formal evaluation. So

far, informally, the response has been very positive. R.E. attendance and worship attendance has remained steady, there are a lot more youth in services, childcare volunteers and children seem engaged and happy, and people have remarked about the great Adult offerings, especially parents who can now have some adult connection time at church without worrying about their kids!

There are many things vying for our time and attention–It’s nice to have a little time carved out of our week to connect to our values and the people who share them.

If you have any questions about Middle Hour, feel free to contact me at cleonetracy@uuannapolis.org .

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Rev. Christina Leone Tracy is a preschool teacher, writer, accountant, public speaker, theatre performer, and theologian… Or, you can call her Faith Development Minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Annapolis. In addition to her other roles, Rev. Christina is wife to Brian and dog-mommy to Jester and Zoe.

My dad is a veteran. He was part of the occupation of Germany in the early 1950s. I have been aware of my father’s military service since I was a small child. He shared funny stories of military life and talked about how much he learned about people from other cultures and places. He rarely talked about how he felt to be stationed in a place where war had destroyed so much and where the monstrous evil of the Holocaust had transpired, but, all of those experiences left their mark on him.

Our congregations are full of people touched by military service. They are veterans who count their service as a formative part of their lives and their identity. They are parents, cousins, siblings, spouses, and children who care about active duty personnel and worry about their well-being. All of these people have rich stories to share—and they might like to share them with us, if only they felt their stories would be welcome. Many of them have insightful perspectives on war and peace, on the role of the military in our nation, and on the thorny questions of power in our interconnected world. Some have spiritual wounds that need pastoral care and compassion. Unitarian Universalist military ministry is about offering safe space for all of these people.

Unitarian Universalist military ministry is also about reaching out into your community. There are people currently serving in the military who long for a free-thinking, justice-seeking, inclusive faith tradition like ours. They may be young adults facing spiritual crisis when their childhood faith no longer serves. They may be career military people who have not found a religious tradition that fits their understanding of what is sacred. They may be people seeking a faith community that embraces them and their same-sex partners. There are people who would welcome our help to find Unitarian Universalism.

If your congregation is exploring how you might begin or strengthen your outreach to military personnel and veterans, you may want to investigate excellent tools recently produced by the UUA. The Military Ministry Toolkit, available online at no charge,includes six 1-hour workshops and a 23-minute video to share with congregational leadership. We’re very excited about this resource! You can find out more about it and ask any questions you may have by attending a webinar:

November 2014: Military Ministry in UU Congregations
Tuesday, Nov. 18 at 1 pm Eastern
or, Wednesday, Nov. 19 at 9 pm Eastern
Presented by Gail Forsyth-Vail with Shawna Foster, a military veteran and the military ministry coordinator for the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Larger Fellowship.

To register, email faithdevwebinar@uua.org. Specify the date/time of the webinar you wish to attend.

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Gail Forsyth-Vail  is Adult Programs Director in the UUA Faith Development Office, a position she came to after many years serving congregations as a religious educator. She is passionate about creating ways for people to connect their own lived experience to the depth and richness of our Unitarian Universalist tradition. She loves learning things, meeting people, telling stories, and being part of a terrific extended family!

October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month.  Today, 70% of people with disabilities are not employed, even though polls show that most of them would prefer to work. Incredibly, this is about the same percentage of unemployed persons since the early 1980’s when I began my work in the field of disabilities.

The Interfaith Disability Advocacy Coalition, of which the UUA is a member, in collaboration with the American Association of People with Disabilities, has published a document on ways that congregations can help to expand employment opportunities for people with disabilities.  Click on the picture in the upper left corner to be directed to that helpful article.

I hear these laments all the time.

“We can’t get young adults to join our congregation.”

“We have a congregational covenant, but there still seems to be a lot of conflict around here.”

“I can’t get anyone to serve on the Board of Trustees.”

“Our fund drive came up short again. No one wants to talk about money.”

These are some of the realities of congregational life. In their struggle to deal with them, leaders often ask the question, “How can I get people to change their behavior?” The answer, many of us think, comes down to more information and changing attitudes. We reason that if we can just give people the right information; if we can get them to think differently, then they’ll come and visit, they’ll readily volunteer, they’ll get along, they’ll contribute generously.

Well, social scientist Jeni Cross, sociology professor at Colorado State University, tells us that this reasoning is incorrect. She debunks two of the myths of behavior change, that education changes people’s behavior and that in order to change behavior, you have to change people’s attitudes. Instead, Cross contends, the most effective way to change behavior is to change behavioral expectations or to reinforce existing social norms. To put it simply, people are more likely to change their behavior if they see others doing it.

So, for example, if you want people to be more ecologically responsive, you won’t get them to do it by appealing to the need to save the planet. They’ll be more likely to respond if you display an ad showing George Clooney or Katy Perry tossing a plastic water bottle in a recycling can. If people are going to toss a dollar bill into the guitar case of a street musician, they are more likely to do so if they see other people doing it. We are more likely to change our behavior if we see that it is part of the social norms in the context of that situation.

In our efforts, then, as leaders in our congregations, it is not enough to just provide information. It is not enough to inspire and challenge and motivate potential and current members so as to change their attitudes towards the congregation and Unitarian Universalism in general. We need to do more. We need to change the expectations of their behavior. We need to create new social norms.We need to change the culture so that people respond because they see everyone else doing it.

So how do we do that? Hey, I’m not saying this is easy. But here are some things you can try in response to the lamentations I listed above. What they all have in common is that they are intended to demonstrate or reinforce expected behavior rather than relying on information or inspiration to get people motivated.

Can’t get young adults to join…or even to visit?

• Post pictures of young adults on the home page of your website engaging in various activities related to congregational life.
• Include one or two quotes from young adults on your website talking about life as a member of your congregation.
• Encourage young adults to serve as greeters. Nothing is more impressive to a young adult visitor than walking into the building and being greeted by a young adult.

Got conflict?

• Make it a practice to read your covenant at every Board and committee meeting and every other event at which members congregate (of course, make sure the covenant is short enough so that you’re not taking half the meeting reading it).
• Look for fellow members who are living out the covenant and publicly and privately thank them for doing so.
• Publish a story in each issue of your newsletter profiling a member who embodies the tenets of the congregational covenant.

No volunteers for the Board?

• Publish a list of all past Presidents in the history of the congregation. Let your congregation see what a distinguished list of leaders it represents.
• Ask current and past Board members to talk about their positive experiences in service. Either publish their comments in your newsletter or ask them to do a testimonial during a worship service.
• At least twice a year, during a worship service, ask all members of the congregation who are in volunteer positions (any position) to rise. Chances are it will be a very large majority of those in attendance. You and the members of the congregation will see that serving others is more of a social norm than you might think.

Need to fill up the coffers?

• Ask people to give live and written testimonials on why they give and how the congregation makes a difference in their lives.
• Publicly acknowledge people who do pledge during the fund drive, with a ribbon that they can attach to their nametag (I PLEDGED FOR (CONGREGATION)) or by putting their names on a display that is shown prominently in the lobby for all to see.
• Throughout the fund drive, continuously make the congregation aware of how many people and what percentage of the congregation has already pledged. You want members to see that pledging is the norm. Everybody’s doing it, so why not you?
• Consider a “Pledge Sunday” where all members of the congregation are asked to step forward and drop their pledge in a ceremonial basket as part of the worship service.

None of these strategies is a quick fix. Effecting behavior change means changing the culture, and changing the culture takes time. Our congregations are not speed boats. We are more like big ocean liners and it takes a lot more time and effort to turn an ocean liner than a speed boat. So, we need to continue informing and educating. We need to continue inspiring and challenging. But we also need to be demonstrating and encouraging and reinforcing positive behavior. And where do we begin? With you, leader. Behave…Yourself.

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Mark Bernstein is Congregational Life Staff with the Central East Regional Group. He always behaves himself and has never been on either a speed boat or a big ocean liner.