Phil's Little Blog on the Prairie

Julia and Henry and I are spending the long Memorial Day Weekend visiting Julia's Aunt Sarah in Winnipeg, and I thought I'd take advantage of our proximity to a couple of UU churches and check them out. On Friday, we spent the night in Fargo, North Dakota, so before dinner at Red Lobster we stopped by the Fargo-Moorhead Unitarian Universalist church. I took a few photos of what we found, which I'll post here. We were pleased to find some of the church's volunteer landscapers just finishing up a day's work. They gladly opened the church up for us and told us a little bit about the building's history. It was built as a Unitarian church in 1892, has gone through several changes in ownership (always somehow related to religion, like a synagogue or a Latter Day Saints congregation), and finally ended up back in the hands of the Unitarian Universalists. They recently added an, er, addition, and they've got plenty of well-lit accessible space. I hope they invite me back to preach there soon!

And this morning, after visiting Aunt Sarah's Mennonite congregation (it's Pentecost Sunday, by the way--we all got red carnations pinned on us!), we drove by First UU Church of Winnipeg. I stopped to take a couple of pictures (view here). It's a lovely building and there were a lot of kids playing out front in the sunshine. One of our Prairie Star ministers, Wendy Jerome, is going to be the interim minister there next year. I'm going to give Wendy a call when we get back to Minnesota and tell her that I'd love to come up and preach sometime next year. Looks like my preaching calendar for next year may already be filling up, so if you'd like me to come preach about Lifespan Faith Development at your congregation next year, please drop me a line, either e-mail or just leave a comment here! I try to preach at least once a month, so there's about 6 or 7 dates still available.
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Notice: "The Unitarian Congregation of Niagara has voted to ban bottled water in non-biodegradable plastic bottles from its premises. We ask that you respect this ban. Thank you for you [sic] help in saving the environment!"

Okay, this is what I love about Unitarian Universalists. We can be so concerned about a just cause (in this case "disrespect[ing] one aspect of [the 'whole web of life'], be it the earth, the ground, the trees, the water"), that we forget that as a religious organization, we're dealing primarily with human beings. And human beings can be a little sensitive, especially when they're just beginning to test the waters of a new congregation to see if they want to dive in.

I mean nothing says "You May Not Be Welcome Here" more clearly than the No Symbol plastered to the main entrance of your church. But that's exactly what the directors of the Unitarian Congregation of Niagara in St. Catherines have done. It's one thing "to ban all bottled water in plastic non-biodegradable, non-refillable bottles from use at all church functions." That's reasonable policy for members of the church to follow when they plan events. Don't offer bottled water. And it's fine to expect renters to respect the congregation's policy. But to greet visitors with a sign telling them that they're not welcome if they happen to have a plastic non-biodegradable, non-refillable bottle of water with them in a bit off-putting, don't you think?
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I'm trying to increase the number of Our Whole Lives (OWL) trainings we offer each year in Prairie Star, and I have to say that this year has been pretty much a success. We had two different trainings last fall, one in Topeka, KS and one in Annandale, MN. The Topeka training was Jr./Sr. High only, and the Annandale training was all levels: Combined Elementary, Jr./Sr. High, and Adult. This was the first time we managed to do that in our district, and I hope we'll be able to make that sort of large scale combined training a regular event.

We had one final training OWL training this past weekend in New Brighton, MN, and it was fantastic--as far as the enthusiasm of the participants and facilitators went. The food service left a little to be desired, but we're going to work on that (like having a place on the registration form for participants to check off their beverage of choice--we had a TON of requests for Diet Coke!). At any rate, the reason that most of these trainings came off so well is Kiely Todd Roska.

Kiely's the executive director of the Minnesota Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, and she's helped me plan two of the OWL trainings we offered this year, Annandale and New Brighton. The big plus, other than having an incredibly committed and competent colleague to work with, is that Kiely has been heavily promoting these trainings to United Church of Christ congregations in Minnesota. The result? The New Brighton training actually had more UCC participants than UUA folks--a first for these joint trainings. The benefit for UUs is enormous because the more trainings we can offer, the easier it is for religious educators to get folks trained.

So thanks to Kiely, and to our two great facilitators, T. Michael and Laura (you can see them in action here). If you would like to see a joint UUA/UCC OWL training in your part of the district, let me know and we'll start working on the logistics ASAP. It's win/win situation for everyone!
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For the last week or so, I've been thinking about what a post about the need to attract men to our congregations might say, and I'm almost ready to share my thoughts. In the meantime, I'd like to pass along this announcement from the UUA's Lifespan Faith Development Staff Group:

Attention ministers, religious educators, and adult program chairs--announcing:

Spirit of Life:
Spirituality workshops for UU adults
by Rev. Barbara Hamilton-Holway

Part of the Tapestry of Faith lifespan series.

The Lifespan Faith Development staff group of the Unitarian Universalist Association is seeking congregations, camps, and conference centers to field test nine workshops on UU spirituality between September 2007 and January 2008.

This is good news, as far as I'm concerned. As I've said here before, I completely agree with Robert Wuthnow when he "suggests that congregations should define their primary mission as strengthening the spiritual discipline of their members." An adult curriculum specifically about UU spirituality could fill the bill. What's more, the call for field testers means that your congregation could try Spirit of Life absolutely free this coming fall. And the best news of all is that once the curriculum has been revised, it will be available free and online to all UU congregations!

I do have one concern, however. Since it seems that attracting men to our congregations may be what's needed for us to grow beyond our current national rate of 1% or so a year, I wonder consideration was given to the differences between men's and women's spirituality when this curriculum was written. I'll write more about those differences in a future post. For now, I wonder whether or not the Lifespan Faith Development Staff Group would be interested in how well this curriculum worked with a men's spirituality group? And if you are interested in field testing Spirit of Life, please write for more information and an application:

Rev. Sarah Gibb Millspaugh
UUA Adult Programs Director, Lifespan Faith Development Staff Group
25 Beacon Street; Boston, MA 02108
smillspaugh@uua.org

Just a quick post to let you know that photos from my trip to Bismarck, ND are up on my flickr account. I also wanted to point out a few things that I really liked about the congregation (there are many things, of course, but these are the highlights). I was really impressed by how public this congregation is about their UU values: their sign doubles as a Wayside Pulpit (and it announces the fact that the fellowship is a Welcoming Congregation); there's a huge chalice on the front of the building that's clearly visible from the street; there's a Civil Marriage is a Civil Right banner; and there's a Peace Pole right out front. Add to this the sign for the Quakers (who also meet at the fellowship) and there's no doubt where to find the liberal religious people in Bismarck Mandan.

The Sunday service went extremely well, in my opinion, and we had an excellent discussion following the sermon. I was asked what I thought might be the cause of the disconnection our children and youth (and ourselves?) feel in this society, and I mentioned the work of French literary theorist and analyst Julia Kristeva, who attributes contemporary malaise to our souls being flattened by spending too much time in front of two-dimensional screens. I think that it may also be the cause of the disconnection (read lack of connected community) that we are all prone to suffer from. And indeed, one of the top stories on Google News this morning is "Despite warnings, most U.S. babies watch TV, DVDs." Which is why I hope that the Bismarck Mandan UU Fellowship (as well as all of our congregations) will make nurturing connected community a top priority.
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I'm in Bismarck, ND right now, logged on to the free Wi-Fi at the Fairfield Inn. Getting ready to preach tomorrow morning--an encore of the Connected Community sermon I did in Fridley last Sunday. But since I had to drive six and a half hours to get here (rather than a half an hour to Fridley), I scheduled a couple of other things. At four this afternoon, I met with six members of the Bismarck Mandan UU Fellowhip to talk about lifespan faith development. Since this is a smallish congregation, I suggested they think seriously about using the RE Express resource from the Church of the Larger Fellowship, which they've already looked into and are pretty excited about. We also talked about safety issues, and I mentioned the Safety Award in Reducing the Risk of Child Sexual Abuse program that the district is going to promote--a program in which they seem very interested. We also spent some time talking about what it takes to get children coming to Sunday school on a regular basis. I suggested that it's really a matter of building a community for the entire family, which could mean having up to eight intergenerational events a year. We also talked about programs that attracted men so fathers would bring their children. All in all, it was a very enjoyable visit. A few of us when out for dinner afterwards at a place called DiDonna's Italian Restaurant ("Great food. Pub-like atmosphere. Hearty portions for the price"). I had the South American special (shrimp, chicken, and sausage on beans and rice). Yum! Took a few photos, too. I'll post those once I get back to St. Paul.
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I wrote about the lack of men in church a while back, and it provoked a bit of discussion here. The subject hasn't gone away, of course. In fact, there's even more evidence now that attracting men to our congregations needs to be more of a priority. Check out Chance Hunter's post on the subject at Open the Doors: "Seems safe to say...that faith communities choose to do church primarily for women. Which is a polite way of saying we choose to not do church for men." Chance directs his readers to David Murrow's Church for Men site, which may be a little over-the-top for Unitarian Universalists, but it does contain a few good ideas (which I'll blog about soon).

But what really caught my attention recently was this fact from the most recent FACT's (Faith Communities Today) survey: "As American congregations become increasingly populated by women, those congregations that are able to even out the proportions of males and females are those most likely to grow...." This adds weight to the claim that the number one obstacle to growth in congregations if fewer men than women (according to the U.S. Congregation's survey). Here's the thing: I just received a draft of the Plan for UU Congregational Growth from the UUA's Growth Team, and guess how many times the words "man, "men," "male," or "boy" show up? Zero, of course. There's mention of "culturally marginalized groups," and congregations are encouraged "to collect demographic information that help assess the effectiveness of outreach strategies to specific demographic groups such as youth and young adults, families with children, [and] racial/ethnic groups," but there's no mention of any effort whatsoever of attracting and retaining men. As Chance Hunter says, "we choose to not do church for men."
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