RevCyn

As ministers, we all know too easily the arguments to not "friend" members of our congregation on Facebook and other social networking sites.  It blurs the professional boundary we try so hard to establish.  It leaves you open to people seeing something you don't want them to see if a friend tags you with an embarrassing photo or video or comment.  And people will assume you know things they've posted there and forget to tell you.  It's definitely a valid decision to not friend, particularly if the privacy controls overwhelm you.  All of this is true. But if you're comfortable playing with the security parameters, most of these concerns can be mitigated.  So here's some of the other side from someone who does friend congregation members. Pastoral Care:   I don't see everything that members post, but occasionally I do see pastoral care needs on Facebook that I'm better equipped to respond to for having been a Facebook friend.   For example...

In thinking about the issues of attracting and then tracking Young Adult (YA) members from a church's perspective, I was thinking that maybe churches should have a membership program that works more like your local YMCA and less like, well, churches.  Here's what I've been thinking about this... First: Income/Pledges.  Now, every UU church I know of, even if they have a minimum expected pledge, will waive that pledge for financial hardship, but it's often awkward to ask for or to have to explain, and many people fell put-out by being asked for money in churches.  There's a big issue around pledging in churches, because people have negative experiences from other churches sometimes, as well.  At the Y, on the other hand, they have a very set guidelines of what membership costs, and you pay it, and if you don't you're not a member.  They also have a philosophy that everyone should be able to be a member, and therefore they will work on a sliding scale.  Th...

I have eight relatives who at one time or another attended a Unitarian Universalist church and who are on Facebook.  A quick polling of what their info pages say about their "religious views" gives the following answers: 2 list Unitarian Universalist (or some combination of those two words). 2 have the field blank or not viewable to me, which would be understandable given that I do things like this. 1 says "atheistic jew." 1 says "loving kindness." 1 says "Peace and Social Justice." 1 says "Aid to and support of the widows, the children, and the outcast." Of these eight, I think two are members of Unitarian Universalist churches--one who lists UU and one who doesn't.  Most of the others attend from time to time, but not regularly enough to consider themselves members, and mostly when visiting a relative who is church-going.  So this shows that not everyone who calls themselves a Unitarian Universalist is a member of a churc...

Well, it was an interesting discussion, dear readers. Apparently what happened in the mini-assemblies was a lot of amazing, thoughtful, and hard work.  And they crafted from those mini-assemblies a resolution that bore little in common with the original resolution to boycott Phoenix by moving our General Assembly in 2012.  The full text of it is below.  What it was, in sum, was a proposal that we go to Phoenix and have a different sort of GA with minimal business and focused on working with our allies to effect change. With the mini-assembly process completed, only two amendments were allowable in the plenary today.  One was to adopt an included by not incorporated amendment to strike the language about doing minimal business.  The other was to strike the whole resolution that came from the mini-assemblies and revert back to the original boycott resolution.  First, there were a lot of procedural questions.  Then there was a lot of pro and con de...

We have two Unitarian Universalist seminaries in this country, Meadville Lombard Theological School and Starr King School for the Ministry. Together they educate a sizable percentage, but not nearly all (or even half, I believe), of our ministers. I went to Meadville Lombard (although I attended Starr King for a semester, as well). One joy of GA is usually the Meadville Lombard Alumni Dinner, where we all get together and hear about how the school is doing, catch up with old friends, hear some wonderful speakers reminisce about the old days, and eat some good food. This year, as we were setting out for GA, Meadville Lombard released a big announcement --one we knew was coming, but I didn't know the extent of it.  Meadville Lombard has been trying to both sell its buildings and merge with another institution, and now it is announced that they will merge with Andover Newton Theological School in Boston.  And while there is a great deal of potential in this new model, it giv...

This minister skipped the morning plenary, but has learned that the following things happened: We passed the Statement of Conscience on Peacekeeping. We failed to choose a new Study/Action Issue. Apparently even though there was a clear favorite emerging with the understanding that immigration is the big issue right now, and the anti-slavery group throwing their support to it, no study/action issue got a clear majority, so there will be a run-off election at the next plenary session. The prediction is that immigration will sweep the run-off. The reason I did not make it to plenary today was because I was in a series of back-to-back meetings. One of those was for UU Ministers Association chapter leaders. The exciting thing I learned there was that the new UUMA webpage creates profiles for individuals and groups (chapters are the first groups set up, but later there can be groups for all sorts of things, like study groups). Since I’ve been the webpage administrator, I’ll be invol...

Minneapolis, where we're holding this General Assembly currently, is really the birthplace of Humanism, or at least this modern incarnation of Humanism as it relates to our movement.  There's a wonderful all-day series on Humanism on Saturday which I will not attend because it conflicts with important plenaries, but which is a wonderful opportunity to experience and learn about Humanism here in its heart.  But what I did get to do was go to a workshop with Greg Epstein , the Harvard Humanist chaplain, author of Good Without God .  Greg Epstein is a delight, and I say that not just because he's from Michigan and a University of Michigan grad, although that helps.  Greg Epstein is a pioneer of the " New Humanism ," which stands in contrast to the "New Atheism."  New Humanism is a positive articulation of what we believe, and Greg Epstein's interpretation of Humanism is very much in keeping with interfaith work, rather than being opposed to all religi...