Can a Small Congregation Grow?

It's a dream of congregations in the smallest size category to be bigger, have more people to do things, stronger finances, a building of their own, more diverse programming, actual staff members... but can it be done?

My observation is that maybe it can and maybe it can't, for reasons both internal and external.

After I wrote about clergy and small congregations, my colleague Jane Dwinell reminded me that some places just won't be able to support a large enough congregation to call a minister.   There need to be enough people.  In some places, there need to be enough people right now, because that is all there will be.  In other places, it might be worth taking a chance on growth.  But take care!  Growth depends on both external and internal factors.

The external:  in an area where new people are moving in, where there are growing medical, educational, and tech-oriented employers, and already a good base of population, there's a good chance.  If you have 80-90 members and your community presence is bringing in visitors every week, it's worth taking a chance. If you have 50-60 members, it seems risky. I think a town or cluster of towns of 90,000 can support a UU congregation of 100-150.  Growing into that size is easier of there are new families arriving who need to make connections and want to  find a way to give their children some faith background.  Some younger people come with an interest in social action on issues we support, and that's a positive for making strong connections.

anonymous small congregation celebrating their new building

But it also depends on internal factors.  The congregation needs to be ready to make room for newcomers.  Leaders of one congregation I served admitted that an earlier attempt at growth had failed because they were not connecting personally with the new people so much as checking them off on a list and looking for the number of dollar signs printed on their foreheads. Families did not stay. New leaders did not develop.  New pledges were not large.

Are visitors coming?  If you have visitors every week, make sure you are treating them well!  Mainly, get to know them.  Invite them to social activities.  Help them become part of whatever is going on.
Get their kids involved in Religious Education and family fun activities.

Are they staying?  Keep reaching out and keep finding ways to connect them with the congregation.
Have an appealing program for converting visitors into members and gather them into it.

Are new leaders developing?  This is a very tricky issue for established small congregations.  New leaders are at the same time both intensely desired and viewed with suspicion. To have your heart's desire -- more people to help with the work -- you must work on your suspicion of anyone new.  New leaders to need training.  They need to learn the ways of your congregation.  What they don't need:  a vague assignment where they are left totally on their own to sink or swim; a specific assignment with so many instructions and so much supervision that they can't do it themselves.

Are new pledges generous and growing? People who are engaged with the congregation, who feel they have found a spiritual home, and who have been invited to generosity will give.  You know that, because that's how you came to be giving as much as you are.

Having clergy or a building may help with growth, but the internal dynamics and the external opportunity need to be there first.

A Small Congregation Wonders About Clergy

I had a great visit recently with the UU Fellowship in Billings, MT, to help them reflect on the benefits and challenges of having professional clergy serving with them.  We did that Saturday, then had  worship together on Sunday. (Not to mention the road trip and excellent dinner on Saturday evening) What a great group of people, and what an energetic fellowship!

It got me thinking in a more general way about the question of whether or not to have professional clergy in these small, relatively isolated communities of the West.

Some of the items are of the sort that can be listed and weighed against each other, but some are not. The folks in Billings -- not just this congregation, but others I know -- are typical of small congregations in that they think of the minister's job in terms of the Sunday service.  "Will we be bored with hearing the same point of view so often over such a long time?" "Will it assure us of high quality services?"  And indeed, the church growth books tell us the pastor of a small congregation can expect to be a chaplain, in charge of worship and pastoral care and not invited to get involved in leadership.

At the same time, the small congregation could benefit from leadership that includes professional clergy, if they can manage to let it happen.  Clergy have training and experience in church meetings and church politics.  They can sometimes have insight into tangled situations and power struggles. They may have helpful ideas about how to deal with difficult people.  Governance can more easily develop the kind of tone and practice that reflects our Principles when there's a professional clergy person involved.  The minister can be the public face of the fellowship, speaking up on social issues, answering questions from public and press.

The big question is, can the congregation's leadership make room for a minister who is more than a chaplain?  Or is the chaplain role all they can imagine?  That making room takes a surprising amount of internal adjustment. People who have been doing it all, and successfully, are invited to share with this credentialed stranger. How does that work?  Not smoothly.  It needs both the sponsorship of the "pillars" of the congregation and their flexibility in making a place for ministerial leadership.

Surely the new minister can't be one of the authoritarian types.  But assertiveness is necessary. Changes need to begin at once, or they will settle in to being as they always have been, with the minister assigned to leading worship, caring for the sick and elderly, and conducting rites of passage. In our fellowships, it is likely that a minister so assigned will seem an expensive luxury.  "Why are we spending all this money?" people will say.

Existing leadership is key. They need to work hard on making space for professional leadership as they prepare to bring someone in.  And there is no one to tell them how to do that.  It is one of the small miracles of our movement that sometimes an established fellowship manages this shift.

from an anonymous website not in our tradition...these people
signed up to be ushers.. or is one of them the minister?

The Half That Was Never Told and Why it Matters Now

I just finished reading The Half Has Never Been Told, by Edward E. Baptist, a remarkable history of the Antebellum United States told from the point of view of slavery's role. I had known that slavery was economically important to the development of the US economy, and had understood the connection between the Northern textile industry and the enslavement of people in the South, but this reading took my understanding deeper in surprisingly unsettling ways.

First, the author nails us religious liberals in one of his carefully documented case studies of individuals.  The individual is the Rev.John Gorham Palfrey, Unitarian clergyman, graduate of Harvard, originally from Louisiana.  He found himself in a difficult situation after his father died back home in the Deep South, because much of his inheritance would be in the form of human beings owned as property. Could he sell them?  No. That would be a problem for his own moral scruples and his reputation in the North. Could he liberate them?  Not in Louisiana in those days. In the end he brought all but one of them to Massachusetts to set them free, finding placements for a few while the others took it on themselves, in the manner of free people, to find jobs and begin their new lives.

"If these newest Bostonians looked up in wonder at the King's Chapel's austerely magnificent vaults which soared like white wedding cake from pillars to roof, and if they felt intimidated by the rich variety of clothes on the congregants...the migrants had nevertheless spent their lives constructing this world."  (p.366)  Palfrey knew this, surely. Slavery was not an easy issue for the Unitarians, many of whom were the Boston elite, who also knew their own wealth rested on slavery.

Baptist shows, as our Unitarian forebears apparently knew, that opposing slavery in Boston and elsewhere in the Northeast was not different from undermining the foundations of American prosperity.  Only as the North became more populous and more economically diverse could it afford to question the wisdom of continuing to be a country where slavery was practiced. Only with greater economic diversity could testimony of enslaved people who had escaped become persuasive.

Slavery is deep in the foundations of who we are as America, and deep in the foundations of who we Unitarian Universalists are as a people. We are going to need to do some deep work to find ways to free ourselves from the morally difficult fact that we still stand on the shoulders of enslaved human beings.