Author Archives: Tandi Rogers

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Tandi Rogers

Ain’t Misbehaving. Saving My Love For You.

In honor of Valentine’s Day, I’m adapting one of my most requested articles just for you… It’s about love.

Some of you may know that I conducted a survey of Free Range UUs a couple months back, and I will be reporting on that in depth here later.  But one thing that stunned me was the number of Free Rangers who have been to our congregations and left, repelled by less than inspiring worship or an exhausting congregational conflict or our issues with power and authority. A significant portion of Free Rangers are former board members who left demoralized under the unrealistic pressures of their role.  A target for all sorts of ugliness.  This keeps me up at night. It makes my heart ache. (more…)

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Organizational Maturity, Spiritual Vitality

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Harvesting Ideas: just stop

Do! Do! Do! …Wait. What if you stopped some of the output? Stopped a pattern? Stopped a habit? Stopped an expectation…

What three things, if you stopped doing them, would actually contribute to the growth of your congregation?

Please share below!  We want to hear from you…

P.S. We give you permission to strategically disappoint people in order to more fully serve your purpose and mission.

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Organizational Maturity, Spiritual Vitality

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Harvesting Ideas: religious investing

Every week we will offer up a question to our reader.  We hope you will not receive these inquiries rhetorically, but rather jump into lively exchange.

If you were a Unitarian Universalist religious venture capitalist, how would you invest your resources for greatest return?

Let the sparky conversation begin… Please share your thoughts in the Leave a Reply below.

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Uncategorized

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Growing Beyond Numbers

I like frameworks to help me hang ideas on and organize my thinking. For years I’ve used the growth categories from Ted Buckle and popularized by Loren Mead in his book More Than Numbers: the Way Churches Grow (the words are changed a bit.)  At the suggestion of Jan Gartner (Professional Development Associate for Religious Education and Music Leaders), I’ve added Associational Growth. We will use these categories to organize this blog.  Each blog entry will speak to at least one kind of growth.  Rather than definitions, I’ll introduce the categories with some questions.  I invite you suggest some of your own questions for these categories in the comment section.  What else would you add?

Organizational Maturity

  • What is your congregation’s purpose for existence? How do you know? How is your purpose expressed?
  • How does your governance and organizational structures fit your size and serve your purpose? How do you understand governance and organization to be different?
  • How are your policies community-owned and responsive to your purpose and the people you want to be?
  • How does your building or meeting space serve your mission (rather than be your mission)?
  • What is your pathway to leadership and service? How is this communicated?

(more…)

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Associational, Faith in Action, Numerical Indicators, Organizational Maturity, Spiritual Vitality

3 comments