Mission, Mission, Membership, and Mission

My friends, Unitarian Universalists, reflect with me, if you will, on the mission of our Fellowship.

I'd like to suggest that you begin by taking a look at my thoughts on the subject from a sermon delivered on 2012 June 3 and subsequently posted on Lake Chalice. If you missed that sermon, this will give you a basic orientation; if you heard it, this will be a useful refresher. For the blog, I broke the sermon into six parts. Start here for the first part, and at the bottom of each post there's a link to click to take you to the next part.

I am particulary inspired by the example of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Rochester. I heard about them at a workshop I attended at General Assembly 2011 in Charlotte. Fortunately, the presentations were videotaped, and you can watch them too! Here they are.

The Powerpoint slides the presenter used can be viewed separately here.

Here's the video, part 1:
"It's not about what our church offers or what our church does. It's about what we are inviting people to become."

The UU Rochester mission:

"Healing spiritual disconnection by helping each other:
listen to our deepest selves
open to life's gifts and
serve needs greater than our own."

Part 2:
Mary Jones describes the membership process, illustrating how the congregation's mission is essential to the integration of new members.



Part 3:



Part 4:
UU Rochester's Rev. Kaaren Anderson describes the path from "new member" to "leader" and how the congregation's mission is crucial to that path. Recommended book: Simple Church by Thom S. Rainer and Eric Geiger



Part 5:
Shifting now to the UU Congregation of Columbus, OH, Debra Boyd explains how the membership process begins with covenant -- which led them to their covenant-enabled mission:

"We are here to:
Learn and practice true hospitality,
Revere the generous mind and the generous heart,
Claim diversity as a source of our strength, and
Relinquish the safety of our unexamined privilege for the freedom to engage in transforming justice."

Question: Is this mission as clear as the Rochester mission on what work is expected of each member?


Part 6:
UU Columbus' Rev. Eric Meter describes the Columbus membershipping process.



Part 7: The Q&A with the Audience.