I want to lay out the perspective on congregational membership that I’ve been using in my work as a membership director in a large UU congregation over the last year or so. Maybe this can add to the conversation about the meaning and scope of UU identity and the importance of initiation rituals in a congregational context.
All our prospective members are invited to take a half day workshop that gives them a chance to get to know some other new folks, learn about Unitarian Universalism, and understand the nuts and bolts of how the congregation works.1
As part of this workshop I explain what membership means. I present it as a public, symbolic, and financial commitment to UU values, the values of the congregation, and the individuals who are a part of the congregation. If they want to stand up for those values and do so with the people in our congregation who are also about that, then they should think about joining when the time is right. I present pledging as a monetary commitment to the congregation and its values with few details about the budget (though this often comes up as questions).2
Signing the membership book is a relativel unimportant part of the joining process compared to the main event, a ritual during worship. All the new members are invited to come down and join the ministers around the chalice. While they’re coming down, I briefly lay out this understanding of membership.
We then introduce each new member by reading a one sentence hope they have for the congregation or their place in it, and the congregation joins them in a responsive reading built to reinforce this understanding of membership. Then there are cheers and applause and handshakes and hugs.
Last year, by a large margin, we gained more members than we lost. I believe this high bar for membership is a large part of why.
- I’d say at least 80% of our new members take this class. Most who don’t have been members of UU congregations previously. [↩]
- 90% of our members pledge and most of the rest contribute financially in other ways. About two-thirds of the congregation are formal members who have signed the book. Of the financially contributing non-members–who we call “friends”—about half pledge. [↩]
a lot of the gain is because you started to point-blank start asking those “friends” to join. was there an appreciable increase in visitor retention to membership? the former is important. only UUs would be a part of a community for 30 years without formally affiliating themselves… but i don’t really see those folks as the future of the church, KMIM?
Somebody’s working on last year’s data now, but I expect the numbers will be good.