A Gentle, Advertising People

Our Association, if you haven't heard yet, is advertising. The UUA has launched a print ad campaign, the first example of which you see at right. I personally have a couple misgivings, which I'll get to in a moment.

In addition to running a couple of print ads in Time Magazine, the Association is paying for what they call "advertorials." I can't tell exactly what all the advertorials include, but they definitely include sponsoring Time.com/ReligionPages, a collection of stories from the Magazine about matters of faith.

I tried in vain to find the religion section from the Time homepage, to no avail. To find the pages, it appears you have to know where to look. The page currently runs an online poll asking readers' beliefs. The choices are: that there is an all-powerful God, that a spirit pervades all experience or that science explains everything. Right n0w, with 233 responses "spirit pervades" has over half the votes. Clearly UUs are swamping the poll.

So I'm all for anything that raises the profile of Unitarian Universalism outside the church. I am concerned, however, that the campaign does little to address one tension within a church comprised of theists and non-theists. Sometimes it seems that the only UUs who don't think the church is too Christian are those who think it's not Christian enough. We lose members who are looking for a spiritual home and find the church insufficiently nourishing and we lose members looking a community of Humanists who find too much God talk.

This tension is the great challenge of the church, made more challenging because it is difficult for the church to be neutral about matters of faith. And pretty much impossible to be perceived as being neutral. Hence, my misgivings about the ad. Some, in and out of the church, surely perceive the ad as being anti-theist/pro-Humanist. As such, how welcome will UU Christians or other theistic UUs continue to feel in the church? How well with the ad attract people who believe in something divine, but are uncomfortable in mainline churches? Happily, the online part of the church doesn't show much of a backlash yet, but we need be sensitive how the ads are playing.

The tagline for the "advertorial" linked to on the UUA website is "Find us and ye shall seek." This better summarizes what we are about. The church's great strength is its ability to welcome diverse spiritual seekers. That's also it's greatest challenge. Our ad wizards should bear that in mind.

UPDATE/CORRECTION: I'm wrong about that last bit. The mock-up advertorial pdf on the UUA website shows that the tag is the old "Seek and you shall find." I saw "find and you shall seek" on a UU blog, but now can't find it again. Personally I like that version better -- witty and descriptive. It'd be great if that could wend its way to UUA and make it into the campaign at some point.

What UU's Believe About God

Our 7th and 8th grade RE class did a survey of members during coffee hour. We asked people to check the beliefs below that pertained to them. We allowed the respondents to check as many as they felt fit for them. We got the list of statements from Compass Points by Gaia Brown and Michelle Richards, the curriculum for our class. After people responded (48 people), we classified the statements in the categories shown on the pie graph and determined the percentage of responses in each area.

Almost everyone agreed with the statement that "There are as many ideas about God as there are people", so we used that for the title of our graph instead of including it in our pie graph.
Here are the statements and the way we classified them. We would be interested in finding out what others in our congregation and other UU's on the Internet think about the findings of our survey.

Statements and Classification
Theist-
God cares for us and listens to our prayers.-9
God is present in the relationships among people.-30

Pantheist-
There is a spark of divinity in each of us.-43
God and the Universe are the same- God is in everything and everyone-30
God is inside, around us and with us wherever we are-8

Pagan-
I find God in Nature-43
God is like a loving mother who sustains us and all life-11

Humanist-
God is my conscience calling me to make the world a better place-19
We can use science and reason to make the world a better place-46

Agnostic-
There is no way we can know whether or not there is a God-20

Atheist-
There is no such thing as God, and even the word is meaningless-5

Deist-
God created the universe and left it to run itself.-6

Some Questions We Have:

* Do you think this is a true representation of the diverse beliefs in our congregation?

* Is this representative of UU's in general?

* Would you classify the statements the same way we did or make changes?

* Are there other beliefs that are not represented here?

Please leave your comments.
Thanks,
7th and 8th Grade RE Class

Bones to Chew On

We recently had a meeting at our church about our midday service. There are some questions about how this service will develop, and even if it will continue at all. The committee that has worked tirelessly making this alternative worship service vibrant and unique is stressed by the demands of the job and the lack of response from the congregation as a whole. I understand exactly where they are coming from. I would like to see the service develop and get more support from other members of our church and bring in new folks from the community, but as so often happens in our congregation, programs that are initially met with enthusiasm are not supported in the long term. The midday service meeting and the meeting of committee chairs last night has caused me to do a lot of thinking. Our congregation is not unique in having difficulty getting members to do the many volunteer tasks it takes to run a church, but we do seem to have more leadership burnout than most churches or organizations to which I have belonged.

I think it was Eric Hoffer who said that the mind needs a bone to chew on, and my mind always has some puzzle to gnaw at as I go about my business. So this is the bone for today, why does our congregation have so much difficulty maintaining and developing programs and why are we burning out our leaders? It isn’t a new bone for me, but one I’ve been gnawing on for quite a while.

Another bone I have been gnawing on is what I want from a worship service. One thought is that when I come to a service, I am as much responsible for making something happen for me as those who have planned the service. I am even wondering if worship is the right word for what I want from the service. The dictionary defines worship as:
“reverent honor and homage paid to God or a sacred personage, or to any object regarded as sacred. A formal or ceremonious rendering of such honor and homage.” Most of the time, I do not go to a service to honor or pay homage to a superior entity. One thought is that I go to become connected to the spiritual side of myself and connect with others in a spiritual way. I’m not sure exactly what that means. Well, I am off to work, and to gnaw on my bones.