Goals for a UU church

A friend wrote an email and asked my about goals for the church. Here is my response. Your comments are welcome.

You ask a good question about goals. There are two aspects to be considered.

1. Is the goal measurable? In other words, how would an observer know when the goal as been achieved, or to what extent it has been achieved? Using this criteria, the "goals" you describe above aren't goals because they are not stated in measurable terms.

2. There are outcome goals and process goals. Outcome goals are the results, the deliverables. Process goals are putting the mechanisms in place to bring about those results, to achieve those goals. I call this idea the WHAT and the HOW.

To use your words, you might say, "our goal is to have 25% of the 100,000 people living in the Brockport area report on survey that they use the UU 7 principles as the guiding criteria by which to make ethical decisions in the past year." That's a goal that can be measured to determine the degree of achievement.

A process goal to achieve that outcome goal would be - "we will provide educational and marketing services to educate the 100,000 people in the Brockport area over the next year so that at least 50% of them will say when surveyed that the know what the 7 principles of UU are". (Whether they will adopt these 7 principles to guide their ethical decision making remains to be seen, but they can't use them if they don't know what they even are)

For good organizational performance, all members of the organization should know explicitly what the organizational goals are. Implicit understanding is not helpful and often leads to demoralization, confusion, and conflict. Commitment to goal achievement is what keeps people engaged in a common effort. ASSUME makes and ass of u and me as you know.

To complicate things further, maybe more than is necessary for this discussion, but let me add anyway, that there are efficiency goals and satisfaction goals. Efficiency goals deal with engaging in the activities to achieve the goals cost competitively. In other words an organization might say, "We know that we can achieve these goals, and we know we can put the activities in place, but can we do it cheaply enough to be affordable or can some other organization do it more cheaply? An organization might set as a goal a more efficient way to achieve the goal and thereby surpass its competition.

Satisfaction goals address the fulfillment of the major stakeholders requirements and expectations. So a high performing organization must achieve its measurable goals in an efficient way that is customer satisfying.

Don't let this model overwhelm you. It makes good sense and works if you take it a step at the time.

I think the church could have many goals that would enhance it's viability. The first and most important is to provide inspirational, uplifting, empowering worship services. HOW could the church do this in a way that attracts, engages, and retains attenders? There are many factors but I think the most important are an uplifting message from the pulpit, good music that enhances the message, and creation and re-enactment of meaningful ritual that connects to peoples lives. There would be many ways to develop a metric to measure the production of these elements in worship, but the most significant measurement probably is attendance, and then you could ask, "attendance by whom"? Do you want older, mature adults, or young unmarried adults, or children, and families, etc. Many churches as you know have different kinds of services, the "traditional service", the "contemporary service" , the "children's service" etc. The churchof course, at this point doesn't have the resources to diversify its worship offerings, but it can make an intentional decision about what kind of worship service it wants to provide for what kind of audience/participants.

W. Edwards Deming, the great Total Quality Management guru said, "If you don't know where you're going any road will take you there." The destination needs to be explicit otherwise how would you know when you have arrived or how far off your target destination you are?

Sincerely,

David Markham

The empowering influence of participating in healthy church community

From All Soul's Unitarian Church in Tulsa, OK's church service on 02/01/15. Congregational member Nicole Ogundare shares what it was like to participate on the All Soul's float in Martin Luther King, Jr. parade in Tulsa.

There are many lessons we can take away from Nicole's talk but perhaps one of the biggest things is the meaning of church. Church gives courage to speak our truth and live it more authentically in our community within which the church is a part.

thye

Why UUs do social justice work

by Meghan McCarthy

Today, Thursday, 02/05/15, there was a discussion between two friends about what it means to be a Unitarian Univeralist in the world. Bob said that to do social justice for social justice's sake is not the work of Unitarian Universalism. There are many secular agencies better equipped to do the job. However to do social justice as an expression of Unitarian Universalist values is to do holy work.

Holy work is not defined solely by the activity being done, but by the motivating sentiment and intention of the actor. Some social justice work can be done for mercenary intentions, to make money. Some social justice work can be done for power to dominate a subordinate so that the superior can have control. Some social justice work can be done for self glory and status enhancement.

Holy work is done by Unitarian Universalists because we covenant together to promote and affirm seven principles. We do this social justice work because of our faith and not to obtain some sort of success or desired result. The results are in God's hands or the hands of the universe. Holy social justice work is done to be faithful not to be successful.

What are some UU thoughts about American Sniper, the film?

Dylan O'Connor's review and essay on the film American Sniper on The Brockporter is well worth the read. You can access it by clicking here.

American Sniper clashes with most of UUs principles. It certainly does not affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person, etc.

Does this film inject a poisonous meme into our American society? Will it lead to our children and young adults wanting to emulate this way of being in the world? How can Unitarian Universalists reach out to a frightened and sadistic population in America and help them find better ways of dealing with the temptations of American exceptionalism?

Rev. Greg Ward preaches at UU church of Berkeley on 01/25/15 on "How To Explain Unitarian Universalism Without A Pamphlet"

Editor's note:

I search out and review good sermons from a Unitarian Universalist perspective. I am looking especially for sermons that articulate the Unitarian Universalist faith and deepen our sense of spirituality.

In this sermon, Rev. Ward is basically making a sales pitch and training sales people, outreach workers, missionaries. Unfortunately he doesn't call his sermon a sales training speech for missionaries, but this seems to be essentially what he is doing. His sentences are inspiring and uplifting but not terribly memorable. If you are going to equip missionaries with tools to spread the faith you need some snappy slogans. Here are a few which I recommend:

1. "Our God is too big for anyone religion."
2. "We always stand on the side of love."
3. "We are all in this thing called Life together and we believe that we will enjoy it more working together for the benefit of all."
4. "Unitarian Universalism is a big tent which covers not just earth, the solar system, the milky way galaxy, but the whole universe."
5. "We believe in deeds not creeds and we have seven principles to guide our actions."
6. "We all are children of the Universe and as such we are here to love one another."

Do you have some sales tools which you use and recommend? First of all, what do you tell yourself are the key and fundamental aspects of your faith? How would you share these aspects with others?

Tuesday night class #7

Pleasure, Happiness, Joy, Bliss