RevCyn

The really neat thing about the new UUA Wordpress Theme is the UUA Services Plugin.  This solves the problem I didn't even really  know I had, and does it very elegantly. Sunday Services Plugin The problem: how to we advertise our Sunday service topics on the website?  And how do we do it such that we don't have to update weekly?  Previously, I had looked at three options.  One was what I ended up with: create posts monthly that list the month's services.  This only has to be updated once per month, and that's the advantage.  The disadvantage is that it doesn't list them individually.  There are other disadvantages, too.  Another option would be to put posts up weekly.  The big disadvantage there is the weekly nature of this for a church with no full-time staff except myself.  Another option would be to create them as "events" with the Events plugin.  This carries with it extraneous information like location as a mandatory ...

Continuing my thoughts about the new UUA Wordpress Theme... Header I've already talked about my preferences with the logo, but there's more to the header than that.  The theme lets you have the logo and title, social media icons, your Sunday service time (or other text), and a small header menu.  The organization of the header area is aesthetically pleasing, and it's well-sized so that it doesn't take up too much of the screen.  Overall: bravo! Footer The footer has four areas.  In one area, the UUA logo will appear, and if you set it to, you can also have the Welcoming Congregation logo and the Green Sanctuary logo.  These balance nicely to form a block if you have all three.  We're not a certified Green Sanctuary church, so my footer has a bit of a hole there.  It'd be nice to include things like the AIM logo, but you have three other areas that can go in. Some other choices that congregations might wish to include are a Standing on the ...

Well, it's been two days since the UUA's Wordpress Theme debuted, and in that time I've learned a LOT about it.  It took me one day of frustration, wherein I finally reached out to Christopher Wulff, who created the UUA Theme, about my problems downloading and installing, and he quickly figured out that my PHP version on my website was too old and that my upload size specified by my php.ini file was too small.  I was able to call my hosting provider who quickly fixed those things, and minutes later the UUA theme was installed and operational on my webpage. It took me about half a day yesterday to get the theme to the point where it all looks nice and proper on my site and many of the new items are functioning nicely.  You can take a look at http://www.liberyuu.org .  What I have NOT done yet is taken all the content they offer and add and change my existing pages.  I've done this on a small handful of key pages, particularly in the "About" section, but overa...

Today the UUA launches its new Wordpress theme .  The official title seems to be "UUA Wordpress Theme for Congregations," but I'm referring to it here as "UUA Theme."  This is something I've been waiting for, and vocally advocating for and blogging about , for some time, so I was anxiously awaiting the debut.  So here are some first impressions based on the demo site and what I've read in the materials, as I wait for the launch to happen.  Overall, I think it's really a fantastic job, and just exactly what I was hoping for.   Look and Aesthetics: When I was looking for a Wordpress theme for my site when I converted to Wordpress a year or two ago, I was looking for several things in my theme:  A theme that let me use my own custom logo along with a title to the site.  This is surprisingly rare -- lots of pages allow only for one or the other, or you have to hack the code, which I don't do.   The UUA theme clearly lets you use the UUA ...

I wrote the following piece right after General Assembly this year, but left it unpublished for a few months to reflect on it.  Reading the UU World piece on "Fired Up: General Assembly Energized Unitarian Universalists with New Models of Ministry and Outreach" fired me up to finally publish it.  At General Assembly this year, I was using a scooter. It’s not the first time I’ve been on wheels – I was using a wheel chair for a semester in college, due to broken bones. As for scooters, I’ve been using them there for the last several years, because it helps me with pain management. This year, newly diagnosed with various foot and ankle problems, it was more of a necessity than ever. As someone who is usually about on legs rather than wheels, every time I’ve been in this situation I’ve learned a lot. And I’m aware enough at this point to know there is still a lot more that I’m not aware of about how people on wheels experience the world. This General Assembly was the mo...

Tom Schade has dubbed the rebranding effort of the UUA a #thanklesstask . Yeah, he's right. And I don't want to heap on the criticism.  I believe the UUA is working hard to turn our ship in the right direction, and this is the work that they ought to be doing, and they're getting a lot of flack about it, much of which is unfair. But... You know how I've been saying that the UUA has been telling us "more is coming" and the logo was just the "tip of the iceberg" with regards to the branding?  And, at the same time, nobody has published the roadmap of where they're going, and even when you're asking, they won't tell you what it is? And how Dawn Cooley said, " surprised people react poorly "?  Well... As reported in Boston Magazine : Proverb also worked with the UUs to shorten their seven core principles, making them easier to remember, and has suggested putting them into “some sort of acronym form so that they’re eas...

My dear friend and colleague Dawn Cooley wrote a great article, " Surprised People React Poorly " back in February.  She's responding to the new UUA logo and the following critique of the logo that swept through social media.  In her post she says that people who are surprised react poorly, as the title states, and because of that she suggests a plan: Towards a 2-part solution: Trust is a 2-way street.   I encourage those of us on the sidelines to recognize our own reactivity, our own distrust of authority, and remember that  we are the UUA .  The people we tend to point fingers at care very, very deeply about our faith tradition and are hard at work trying to ensure our future.   We do a thorough job of holding them accountable, but can we practice occasionally cutting them some slack? Apparently, this new logo wasn’t a whim and wasn’t created out of thin air, but has been a year-long process of dialogue with 50 different UU stakeholders (accordin...

As the UUA has rolled out it's new logo, I've seen a number of places where folks have asked if we should consider changing our name.  Unitarian Universalism is a mouthful.  And it refers to old theological arguments that don't have a lot of relevance to some of our members.  For example, Tom Schade asks the question: "The biggest question of our public presence is should we try to build new congregations and liberal religious communities under the name 'Unitarian Universalism' or under more post-denominational language?" When I was in my first year of ministry, I arrived at a church that was in the midst of a discussion about name change.  It was a new church that had started with a name that many understood to be a temporary one, but others understood to be the permanent one.  The congregation met and discussed and polled and came up with some top choices that were names like "Harmony Church."  After much discussion, it was time for a vote....

I read the UU World article on the new logo, branding, and outreach effort with great interest.  The article tapped into some things I've been frustrated about and some things I've been excited about.  A couple of points in the article really resonated with me (the italics are mine): The Rev. Dr. Terasa Cooley, the UUA’s Program and Strategy Officer, said the new initiative developed out of a growing realization that the UUA and its congregations have been sending “inconsistent” messages about Unitarian Universalism into the larger world. and “We want congregations to think about the messages their congregations are sending out to the world that doesn’t know anything about them,” she added. “That includes thinking about how their building looks to guests, the structure of their services, their programs, whether they’re inward-oriented or serving the community, and what their online presence is like. ” and And the UUA is developing other resources for congre...

The new UUA Common Read book for the year is The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, and I, for one, could not be happier with the choice.  I read this book and preached on it last year after reading a Leonard Pitts article about the book.  The book was revelatory, even for someone who thought she was pretty liberal on this issue.  Two other people who I encouraged to read the book have had the same response.  I was so pleased to have the opportunity to hear her speak this year at General Assembly, and the experience in the room was electric.  She didn't have to say it out loud, even, but the thought that the New Jim Crow applies to the immigration system as well was surely at the front of everyone's mind. I'm looking forward to the Discussion Guide that the UUA will put online in October.  There is a discussion guide written by a UU, but it's the discussion guide to a discussion guide written for Christian churches--a guide of a guide , and, as such, I ...

The UUA President, the Rev. Peter Morales published a working paper titled "Congregations and Beyond" last week.  It's available in its entirety here .  In it he says, "I am realizing in a profound way that congregations cannot be the only way we
 connect with people." and "We have long defined ourselves as an association of congregations. We need to think
 of ourselves as a religious movement."  The Rev. Morales says, "
Congregations as local parishes arose in a different era. They arose in a time of limited
 mobility and communication. Most members lived within a couple of miles of their
 church."  This is something that I've been thinking about recently, as well.  The time that the church is where you go to in order to hear the latest ideas or even the latest gossip is a time that's behind us.  The church is no longer the central, or even a central, hub for how people get and exchange information and ideas.  There are still thi...

For the record, I'm not really opinionated about what is being called the "hot mess" -- the resignation of two members of the GA Planning Committee . I don't know enough about the internal politics of the GAPC or the UUA Board to really weigh in on the issue.  Kim Hampton's post about the roll of worship and the SLT in the Justice GA is informed and informative.  And I think Tom Schade is right on point to say, "It's always useful to remember that the future hasn't happened yet." I am opinionated about the "Justice GA," on the other hand.  And I know for every person who was sitting in the Plenary Hall when we voted for a "Justice GA" there was a separate opinion, and not all of our expectations can be met.  Half of us probably think that there should be a Service of the Living Tradition, and half of us don't.  Half of us think there should be an exhibit hall, and half of us don't.  And the half that do and the ha...

Just FYI, the UUA is in the process of designing a UU app.  A couple of weeks ago they put out a page where you can submit ideas.  As is often the case, however, I can't find it easily by searching for it through the UUA's page.  Problem number one is that "phone" and "app" are too common.  "Submit ideas for mobile phone app" doesn't turn it up, either.  Fortunately, I have found it for you.  It's at http://www.uua.org/about/184350.shtml .  But, if you can't wait to see what the UUA will turn out, the Church of the Larger Fellowship just put out a very nice app, "Quest for Meaning."  The Android version is available; the iPhone version may still be "coming soon."  It was free when I downloaded it during GA, and features four options -- reading joys and sorrows, posting a joy or sorrow, lighting a chalice (along with a reading), and podcasts.  It's a nifty little thing.  I found it hard to located.  In my apps ...

The merger of the Unitarian and the Universalist denominations took place 50 years ago -- the official date was May 15, 1961.  So, of course, I started thinking about my experiences at the merger.  But, wait!  I wasn't born yet! That's right, one of the neat things that we can celebrate is that there are generations now of people who are Unitarian Universalists from childhood on, some even with ten years or more in the ministry, who were raised in, influenced by, and in turn influenced themselves this new association that was created 50 years ago. Many argued then that without this merger, Universalism would die.  I look around me here, and I really believe that.  At the time of merger, there were three little rural Universalist churches between ten and fifteen miles from Jackson.  My church, a small rural Universalist church, joined the new UUA, and it's still going strong.  The Universalist church in Horton, MI did not join the UUA, but even...

Joel Monka recently published a blog article on the union debate titled, " Umm, Hey, can we discuss this... " in which he cites several blog articles (mine among them) and an e-mail from the UUA Congregational Witness and Advocacy director asking people to join our UUA president in signing on to a group letter in support of the unions.  Joel concludes his post by stating in an update: "But my primary point, the raison d'etre for this post, is that there is plenty of room for disagreement and need for debate on this issue- I don't want it declared a basic tenent of our religion until such debate has taken place. I don't want Boston taking a position on my behalf without such a debate. I don't want clergy out there declaring that support for the unions in Wisconsin is an extension of our faith, an inseperable part of our principles, until we have had that debate." I think this is a good point, and worth examining.  My initial response was to ag...

I don't know about you, gentle readers, but I'm having trouble keeping track of what's happening with the debate about whether or not to move the UUA General Assembly out of Arizona in 2012.  So for my clarification, I'm going to try to search it all out and sum it up here. Calling for Boycott: The UUA Board of Trustees met on May 6 and issued a letter on May 10 stating that they were recommending that we pull GA2012 out of Arizona.  A Business Resolution is scheduled for a vote on this recommendation at this year's General Assembly in Minneapolis. The White Bear UU Church in Mahtomedi, MN, issued a letter stating that they applaud this. The National Council of La Raza (according to the UU World , the nation's largest Hispanic civil rights group) has called for a boycott of Arizona. At the time of a  UU World article, 18 U.S. cities were calling for boycott. Diverse and Revolutionary Unitarian Universalist Multicultural Ministries (DRUUMM) issued a...

The UU World reports that the latest UUA numbers show that our movement is in decline.  They say: A year ago UUA membership declined by 132 members for a total of 156,015 adult members. This year membership dropped 267, a decline of .16 percent. Total adult membership this year is 155,748.  And also: Religious education enrollment dropped 1,262, for a total of 55,846 children and youth this year. A year ago it dropped 809. In 2002 it was 60,895. Now people are quick to point out that we're in a recession.  And that churches report their numbers to the association, and then, for all small and mid-sized congregations, the UUA bases their fair-share dues on the number of members they have.  Our UUA and district dues last year were $76 per person.  So therefore, in a time when our congregations are having financial troubles, congregations will naturally want to trim every member off their rolls that they possibly can. This is true.  But I think that we al...

The Standing on the Side of Love campaign did a great job of getting a consistent message out through UU churches and ministers this week.  I saw numerous blog posts, newspaper editorials, and other writings on the subject this week.  Here's a sampling: The Rev. Cecilia Kingman said in the Wenatchee World : As for us, though, we proclaim God’s love for all people — that great, redeeming love which has no limit. And we invite everyone who places compassion, justice and love at the center of your faith to join us in standing on the side of love. In Potsdam, Austin Kenyon said on " News 10 ": This weekend is a symbol, it's done purposefully, to reimagine Valentine's Day as a holiday. To reimagine it not as just a holiday of candy and Hallmark cards. But as a day of love and acceptance for everyone. In Maryland, on the Beltway, the Rev. Diane Teichert told dcagenda.com that she would no longer sign marriage licenses, saying: Valentine’s Day is about more than r...

In Part One , I left off here: I think the only options that are really viable and just are to either fund our seminarians or ministers better or to decrease our expectations about the seminary process. Decrease Expectations ? Some people have proposed interesting models of becoming a minister that are not seminary-focused. These are certainly intriguing. As a seminary-trained minister, I see the value in seminary and I am perhaps too invested in this system to step outside of this box adequately. I see our "learned ministry" as an important and defining tradition that is part of our make-up as Unitarian Universalism. It is also in keeping with the denominations that we are closest to. I'm not quite willing to drop seminary altogether. However, there are some interesting proposals about modifying the process. Here's mine. Shortening seminary is entirely doable. A four-year process to become a minister does seem a bit outrageous. What about a one-year process ...