“Beyond Congregations” is the title of the provocative essay from UUA President Peter Morales.  In it, he encourages us to look at organizational structures other than congregations to carry forward the work of our faith.  He cites facts such as this: 
    “We have known for many years that the number of people who identify as UUs is about four times the membership of our congregations (about 160,000 adult  members and about 650,000 people who identify as UUs). In other words, for every adult member, there are three non-members who say they are Unitarian  Universalist.”
    A lot of us have been discussing this statistic and it holds surprisingly true among the children of the members of the Meeting House.   Most of these children in their 30s through 50s were raised UU, but only about one in 4 is a member of a UU congregation today. 
    Peter Bowden, the Ballou Channing District’s growth consultant, asked the readers of his UU Growth lab on Facebook to list reasons why people who might think of themselves as UU would NOT want to join a congregation or worship there regularly.    One minister listed all the reasons people give him: “ it would cause my Jewish mother to roll over in her grave, I am not interested in serving on committees, Sunday is not a day I have available, it is soooooo 20th century, people in churches abuse congregational democracy to get their own ways, I hate all the PC stuff, I don't want to feel obligated to someone else's social action vision, are only dead white European men available to write hymns, all the services I have been to have been too surface and not enough depth, I hate being the token (black, teen, Christian, Republican, omnivore, . . )”.  Now there are only so many of these that a congregation can do something about, so we have to ask the question, what form other than a congregation can we conceive to allow these “free range” UUs to practice a religion, to minister and be ministered unto?
    Now one of the ways that we move beyond congregational walls is in engagement to make the world a better place.  We have a wonderful opportunity coming up to learn a lot about social justice issues and to practice some justice-making at this year’s Justice GA in Phoenix June 21-24.   I plan to attend and invite anyone who thinks they might be interested to let me know.  There are plans afoot to help people on the Cape with transportation to Phoenix. 

Blessings,

Edmund