UU Evangelism

• How can we be a vibrant liberal religious voice in our society and grow our denomination?
• How can we serve our longtime members, as well as those who have come to us from other backgrounds in their spiritual search, and at the same time continue to attract new seekers?
• How can we best build the Beloved Community and transform the world?

Critical to answering these questions lies in how we are in community with each other, within our congregations, and in the wider world (including other UU congregations). Speaking at the recent Southern Cluster meeting, Jim Key, UUA Southeast District President, and Rev. John Beuhrens, former UUA President, noted that we had an obligation to work not only within our congregations but also to move beyond and covenant with other UU congregations in our district and around the world. Both speakers promoted becoming UU Evangelists.

As the Rev. Jane Page of Statesboro notes, Many of us do have good reason to steer clear of proselytizing...But there IS a difference in proselytizing and evangelizing. As the Rev. Tony Larsen wrote, "Sharing is different from shoving." To proselytize is "to induce someone to convert to one's faith." An evangelist, according to the Random House college dictionary is "a person marked by zealous enthusiasm for or support of a cause." And if that is the case - a UU evangelist I will be. Evangelism literally means to "spread the good news." I guess the question we have to ask ourselves is - do we have good news to share. I say we do.

Jim Key noted that he'd been searching for a religious home for over 30 years--often in cities and towns that had UU churches--but never found a UU congregation until a decade ago. We can't hide our churches back in the woods and expect people to find us. We have to share the good news of our church and our religion not not only with folks we hope that will come visit us, but even those polite souls who have already found a church that best fits them. In my experience, Unitarian Universalists are hesitant to discuss our faith outside the walls of our church. And that, my friends, needs to change if we are to grow and thrive as a faith. We don't have to duck our heads when asked "What church do you go to?" or "What do you believe?"

Rob Alexander shares in his sermon that he usually replies to queries about UU with this 15 second explanation. "We believe in the inherent worth and dignity of all living things, and the right and responsibility of each individual to seek truth and meaning along their own spiritual path. That means that we may take our lessons from the teachings of Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism Hinduism, Native American spirituality, or any other moral teachings that can help us in our daily lives."

Quoting from Socialnomics by Erik Qualman, Peter Bowden shares some startling statistics:

• Over 50% of the world’s population is under 30
• YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world
• Facebook has the third largest population in the world

In other words, the potential impact of using online resources to transmit our message is huge. There is a social media revolution happening, with huge consumption of information. In today's fast-paced world, you have to get the readers' attention in the first few seconds or they will click to another site.Bowden also mentioned the significance of peer group recommendation – people are far more likely to change their actions or attitudes because of this than for any other reason.

Bowden notes that the majority of UU congregations were hopelessly out-of-date technologically--even though research has shown that most people visit the church website prior to actually visiting the church. Most of our websites are text-based with little or no potential for interaction. Even e-mail is essentially dead for people under 40.

So, how do we compete with the rest of the world in terms of engaging our members and potential members? Stay tuned to this blog to find out.