Showing posts with label Death of a church. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Death of a church. Show all posts

Sunday, May 26, 2019

Brockport Unitarian Universalist Fellowship - BUUF - Birth and death of a UU congregation



The idea for the Brockport Unitarian Universalist Fellowship was born on Mother's Day in 2009. This interview with Don Zimmer was done in October of 2010 17 months later.

The church grew and was chartered in 2011 and then slowly atrophied and was dissolved in 2019.

The death of the church has been due to many factors. The primary factor being the lack of leadership which failed to attract, engage, and retain members.

Leading a church requires vision, and sense of mission, high levels of energy, persistence, patience, and above all else, an ability to resolve conflict.

The second factor beyond lack of competent leadership is the unwillingness of people to follow. As one person put it, "managing Unitarian Universalists is like herding cats." Being free thinkers and lacking any respect for centralized authority, Unitarian Universalists tend to be lone wolves and their willingness to pull together for a common goal especially when it is contrary to one's personal interests weakens the organizational coheasiveness.

The life of BUUF would be a good case study in the failure of Unitarian Universalism to provide centralized support for the incubation and development of fledgling congregations.

Saturday, March 14, 2015

How to build a church so they will come

From UU World, Fall, 2014, "Ready For Change" by Elaine McArdle

McArdle describes the Unitarian Universalist Church of Boulder, CO:

Founded by a young mother in 1947 as the American Unitarian Association’s first fellowship, the church had more recently developed a quitting culture, where disgruntled members would leave rather than staying and working through conflict. By the mid-2000s, with no money in the coffers and a couple of bad matches between ministers and congregation, the church was on life support. “Oh, we were in trouble,” says Skiendzielewski.

I was struck by this paragraph because they is exactly what happened in my church. As a former Roman Catholic I was surprised at the lack of commitment to the denomination of UU. Attachment to any identity as a UU seems superficial and ephemeral. I found more loyalty at Rotary than I have found in UU.

While our statement of seven principles begins with the preamble, "... covenant to affirm and promote..." I don't see the covenanting. It is just a slogan, there is no investment in living a life based on these principles and helping others. It is surprisingly easy for supposed UUs to just walk away.

The attempts at times to provide "conflict resolution services" by district staff is little more than psychobabble from what I've seen. In the two different congregations where I have been involved in these attempts to stem the defections, there was no mention of the importance and meaning of the covenanting which we supposedly committed ourselves to let alone the importance of holding ourselves accountable to the principles. The attention of the facilitator seemed to be on process and not on content and while process is important it is not enough to bind together a faith community which is, afterall, what religion is about. The word "religion" comes from the latin word religare which means to tie, to bind.

As you undoubtedly have noticed, the title of this blog is "UU A Way Of Life" which implies a deep commitment to UU values. While a member can believe what he/she wants, we have covenanted together to promote and affirm our 7 principles. The catechesis explaining this covenanting process is nonexistent or very weak.

McErdle's article goes on to describe how the congregation set some goals and then hired Rev. Howell Lind to come and provide the leadership to hold the congregation accountable. However, reading between the lines, it seems he did more than that. He provided religious leadership and they transformed from a social club to a religious community.

“My experience as a field staffer for the UUA helped, in that I’d seen a variety of congregations—those with bad practices and those with good—so I had learned what works,” said Lind, who is married to Bowen. “Ministry to spiritual needs is more than just pastoral; it also means knowing how to build a community. It’s having a sense of how to motivate a congregation to move the way it wants to. I think the Developmental Ministry program is an excellent way to do that.”

It’s important to note that the goals were set by the board, not by Lind, creating shared leadership. And because the minister contracts with the board for five years, it gives them incentive to make the relationship work. “That’s significant, because it means the board is in the game no matter what,” said Wheeless. “It allows some buy-in and commitment [from the board] even if the congregation starts being concerned about changes.”

As soon as Lind arrived, his every step was strategic, to help the congregation reach its goals, including the shedding of its image as a social club.

“The first Sunday Howell stepped into the pulpit, he wore his robe,” recalled Richards. “He wears it every Sunday he’s preaching. It sets the stage—it says that this is a place of worship and that we belong to a larger association than ourselves.”

Lind moved the minister’s office from a secluded area in the back of the building to the front, signaling access, visibility, and transparency. He then persuaded the congregation to fix its run-down building: first, a new front door, then carpet and paint.

This is an inspiring story and you can read it for yourself by clicking here.

Saturday, April 12, 2014

Terminally ill church will be in need of an autopsy shortly.

My 46 year old son is angry with me and when he has run out of negative things to say he comes up with, "And I'm not a Unitarian Universalist so don't invite me to any more god damn pancake breakfasts!"

Under my breath, it made me laugh. Those god damn UU pancake breakfasts are the scourge of the earth, and the things people can attack you with when they have nothing else can be infuriating to the angry person in and of itself.

So what about those god damn pancake breakfasts? Well, they didn't work. The small UU church we tried to start is almost dead. It too 3 years to build it up for admission to the UUA and then 2 - 3 years to let it slowly die on the vine. What happened? Would an autopsy help so we can determine the cause of death? I'm working on it. Stay tuned.
Print Friendly and PDF