I'm the Reverend Sarah Lambert I serve at the UUA as the co-director of Ministries and Faith development and I'm also the liaison to what is called the FACT survey. FACT stands for Faith communities today and it is an Interfaith effort that comes out of the Hartford University for religion and peace which used to be called Hartford Seminary. FACT has been doing surveys for decades on religious life in the United States and they got a special Grant this year from the Lilly Foundation to do a survey about how congregations across Faith Traditions are doing. We sent out this survey in March and April. Many of you responded and thank you so much for participating we actually got 537 complete responses which I think is a record for the UUA and I like to present the data that we had and thanks for your the card work in filling out that survey so here we go so as you'll see this survey Compares uh some data from 2018 to 2023 and in other cases just simply takes a snapshot for 2023 but what you can see in this slide is that in-person attendance and I don't think this is a surprise for you has declined in UU congregations actually by 25 from 2018 to 2023 and I think that's largely a result of the pandemic the mean went from 86 to 64. but the good news is that our UU congregations pivoted really well during the Pandemic those offering online options increase from only seven percent of our congregations in 2018 to 93 in 2023 and total combined attendance if you combine in-person and online visitors went up from 88 to 93. so I think this is a sign of Hope and to quote the Reverend Matthew Johnson this is remarkable our fast pivot from online options supported by the UUA and each other means that even though there are less people physically in the church building we are reaching more people than we did before here's a little snapshot of Parish Ministry numbers and again 537 congregations are represented in these numbers 65 percent have one clergy person and of those seventy percent are full time ten percent of our congregations employ more than one clergy person 16 are fully lay LED and the rest are in between they are in between ministers or they chose none of the above here's a quick snapshot of our UU Parish ministers by gender and this has remained relatively stable over the last 10 years and here's what you all reported on UU Parish ministers race and ethnicity 32 percent did not identify race or ethnicity on this question for some reason that I don't completely understand so this is uh incomplete data here's a few interesting facts on longevity in UU Parish ministers so the average minister in 2023 has been in their position for six years and this is a decline from seven years in the past 97 percent fully 97 of you report a good or very good match with your minister which is really wonderful since 2020 seven percent of UU Parish ministers though have seriously doubted their calling 18 often considered leaving the parish Ministry and I think this reflects the intense stress of serving during the pandemic that's something that I'm sure many of you who served as board presidents shared with your ministers and finally Parish ministers rate themselves as 7.6 out of 10 on their overall health and 6.9 out of 10 on their Financial Health and while this isn't terrible I think there's room for improvement there here's a quick snapshot of who is participating in our UU congregations by age we are an aging group and here's a snapshot of UU congregational participation by race and ethnicity and by way of comparison I think most Protestant denominations are currently reporting that they are 80 percent white and 20 percent diverse so we are lagging behind that just a bit over the mainline denominations I actually want to lift up that 10 children plus four percent youth actually 14 is pretty different maybe a little bit I think it goes a bit counter to some of the narrative that you know where are the children how we track participation has to be beyond Sunday morning who's visible either on Zoom screens or in person I know that a lot of religious Educators adapted during the pandemic to mailing materials to families or to using monthly newsletters to engage and that some families who don't come in person really count on having that connection to spiritual resources that they get every month whether it's a special discussion packet or activities to do at home or active in small group Ministry or see each other outside so I love that like thinking about who we notice in different parts of congregational life rather than only who's present on Sunday mornings I remembered at one point I thought we had a fairly robust uh youth group that the congregation has served but then if I also counted the youth that volunteering as teachers on Sundays or just came and sat with their parents or participated online with their parents but didn't like going to the youth group or those who showed up for social justice things only you know it was really almost twice the number as if you just counted the youth group alone and I think that's probably similar in most congregations I know that our congregations that have membership professionals they have a person who's paid to kind of round up those numbers and get those numbers so I think paying attention to those numbers is really helpful because they help you to tell a more accurate story or if it's just your perception of Sunday morning sometimes that doesn't really reflect the whole story of congregational life this survey unfortunately didn't ask a lot of questions about religious education or music professionals you know it's a survey instrument that's created by FACT and we have to be able to compare with all the other groups and so I think they have a different emphasis for different surveys but I did notice there weren't very many questions in that area the number of non-white members in our congregation from what I remember that has gone up in you know and I think a lot of that has to do with our work on the eighth principle and dismantling white supremacy in our congregations taking on some of the widening the circle of concern suggestions and things like that and also providing support like Taproot which is a program that Sana started to help Provide support we've got the black lives of UU group so there's  ways that we're supporting our members of color institutionally in in ways that hopefully is life's life-giving and sustainable and builds resilience and care and nurtures um nurtures folks as part of our congregations I've also been seeing a la leadership Trend in some congregations of just thinking about how do we become ready to welcome people who come through the doors or who are coming back after some absence from the pandemic and some teams who have been participating in trainings and welcoming or other teams who have been pulling together a wide diversity of their existing voices and thinking through how can we be a welcoming congregation for all to participate and especially folks who have found themselves more on the margins of UU congregational life in the past and Sarah when you were saying like taking a pause taking a breath or tired I was thinking about just how many times congregational life staff have said it's okay to do a little less Church and to focus a little more on how we're coming together and how we're doing these things so like thinking about all the all the people who've been tending to relationship and thinking about how they can be in relationship and how can they can widen that Circle even if they're not doing extra programming extra book groups extra study on that even though that programming can be important but if they're just coming together and thinking how can we shift make little shifts in how we're already doing what's great about our congregation um I think that's pretty powerful yeah I was reflecting on that too and thinking along the lines of some I mean sometimes the Sunday morning programming the  services are amazing but a lot of work goes into the production of it right and wondering how we can create spaces for Spiritual nourishment that doesn't require as much what if we were just getting together to talk about a little theme and it could be online on a Wednesday night right and breaking out of that Sunday model that we still sometimes find ourselves stuck in spiritual nourishment doesn't require doing so much it sometimes it's just a bit of time to be reflective together in community and allowing space to build relationship like Lenore said I'm also thinking about Paul Coach Jones in the communities of community and how we care for each other in the communities that we are in and I'm wondering about the Partnerships that are also reflected in this slide in this data folks are really seem to be excited still about you know Interfaith Partnerships on the ground and how can you get spiritual nourishment from different communities as well that you are in relationship with so that you're not focused on putting all your labor just in in one Sunday and doing burnout because of constantly serving how can you find yourself served by other communities nearby too what you struck in me is a thought that Hospitality really needs to be a central Ministry of every congregation and I remember visiting a congregation as a guest preacher one Sunday and the ushers gathered with me and they informed me this is something they did with their Minister every week and we said a prayer for this ministry of ushering and what it meant to someone who was coming here for the first time we prayed for someone who was coming because they had lost a loved one and it was just you know such a intention was going into just the ushering which we think of as a kind of a low you know it's like a one-off thing I can volunteer for here and there but if hospitality is really a Ministry of the congregation then there's a team that really is looking at where are the entry points and how do we welcome people and maybe people who are different than the folks we've had here before so that they don't come and visit one time and then never seen again that's just a shift in mentality isn't it doesn't take a lot to make that a Ministry of the congregation because people are already doing volunteering for those things this is an interesting slide to me so um these are the percentage of you who agreed to the following statements that you have a clear Mission 73 percent that you're striving to be diverse 80 percent that you're good at welcoming 83 percent but then when we get to is actively looking for new members we only have the 68 agreement rate how many of you agree that you're spiritually vital and Alive 72 percent many of you believe that you are up to making changes to meet new challenges and certainly you prove that during the pandemic that's 78 and finally is involved in the local community 66 percent so I note that um the two lowest numbers actively looking for new members and involved in the local community are action items that I think we could improve I'm not sure how we strive to be diverse without actively looking for new members for example I made a word cloud out of the responses on around congregational concerns and you'll see that burnout and finances are the largest concerns that were reported but there's also a lot of concern about aging volunteers about where youth are after the pandemic and whether we're serving them appropriately some of you reported membership declines and Clarity of mission and whether you're getting enough pledges to sustain the ministry that you dream of in your congregation but you also reported a lot of strengths vital worship was way up the list Innovation during the pandemic pastoral care mission and Outreach fun the ability to undertake transformation music is a high one as well as Justice Ministries these are all some vibrant aspects of our congregational life one of the things I noticed in congregations during the pandemic is that a lot of congregations could have guest musicians Leah Morris was a guest musician at our congregation several times so we had a nice diversity of music as well as other people Peter Mayer other like big names could easily zoom in for a service so I think that's something that might have been part of that music excitement well I think we owe a huge debt to our professional musicians and our congregations because I think a lot of them ended up becoming informally the tech support system for creating entirely new ways of presenting music online I really think they deserve the greatest appreciation for their work during the pandemic I just want to celebrate our intense adaptation and change over the past several years I think that really came through in the survey and I am also curious about that impact that's had on staff and leaders I noticed that some of the challenges that people were naming in that first word cloud there were also a lot of antidotes to those same challenges in the second one of what people wanted to celebrate so burnout and then spiritual nourishment difficulty adapting and then transformation so seems like we have a lot of the answers within us or available to us and yet it's sometimes hard to access those we're going to compare here congregational programs in person and then the percentage that are offering these now also online or in a hybrid fashion so 70 of our congregations that responded to the survey still have a Sunday School in person adult re only 25 and youth group just under 50 percent Justice advocacy and Community Services the majority of you are doing something in those one of those two areas in person and local faith-based organizing is also very high percentage here as well as Fellowship events online or hybrid only seven percent are doing a Sunday school for all ages online or hybrid but 44 of you are offering adult re programs online youth groups only six percent and same for young adult groups Justice advocacy was the same percentage as in person 41 percent Fellowship events only 32 percent are online or hybrid it sounded like Sarah it that we're reaching more people than we were before even though attendance in person has declined and so I'm curious like that brings up a question for me about how congregations should be even measuring engagement these days beyond what leaders can see on Sunday mornings good question I'm I would hope that people are when they're doing their counts they're counting because you can easily see how many households are tuned in and obviously they have been or they wouldn't have been able to answer those questions the numbers of people who are engaged or participating in congregations we had 10 percent of children and then we also had a large group of 65 plus and then I also noticed like on how people are engaging online there were a lot of adult Ari and like senior programming the online version is really strong so there's something about I know we have a lot of seniors who don't drive at night or if you live in a Northern climate you don't want to go out when it's icy and so or even if you're a family right you know like it's kind of nice to have the zoom option if you can't get the kids out the door on a Sunday morning people can still feel connected so I think there's kind of another layer of story that we see in the numbers when we compare the different charts of participation so I think and maybe the reason her children and you need a new programming online is that children and youth were burned out by the amount of time they were having to spend onto online during the pandemic because six percent I think said they were doing anything as as a hybrid for Sunday school and about the same for youth groups which kind of surprised me actually did that surprise you all or is that something you already understood from your view our congregations are making good use of Technology pulling 93 of you are using email most congregations are offering their newsletters as an e-newsletter online rather than mailing out paper copies these days texting only 28 of you are using that regularly for the ongoing life of the congregation since the younger Generations tend to use texting that may be a direction to move into ACH means that you have an electric way of transferring funds fully 63 percent of you are doing that now many of you are making use of social media 63 are doing video projection in their congregations which is wonderful on online audio website and Facebook and this is how you're spending your money that you have 53 on staff and 26 on your buildings with the remainder being for programs uh your UUA dues benevolence and any other miscellaneous expenses and this tracks with them spending at the UUA in terms of the percentage that on staff specifically now financial help 2018 versus 2023 I don't think this is a huge surprise but it is of concern that our congregations that are in serious financial difficulty went from 1.4 percent to 4.4 percent in 2023. and the number first in some difficulty grew even further from seven percent to over 17.5 type but we manage remained about even those reporting good finances well it's a significant Decline and those in excellent Financial save continue to be an excellent Financial shape I suspect that these are congregations with endowments that are fairly significant um I'm also curious what you all are seeing around the budget numbers and the stresses and strains there and what the impact of that anxiety is on the system overall now I can definitely speak to the financial pressures but our centralist region recently did a webinar called money connect where we talked about some of these Financial pressures and we're seeing like a generational shift there's a lot more wealth that's in the baby boomer and Silent generation we're seeing the effect of that so as people are moving away maybe being closer to Children going into assisted living or passing away those pledges which are the high pledges which are usually in the upper quartile the you know 25% of your budget how many people are providing that 25 percent if you have a dozen people and one you know disappears you can weather that but if you have four or five people and you lose you know that's like five eight percent of your budget so we're seeing the act of that and even if a congregation is growing young families you know just don't have the same time they never have in the past but it's worse now because a lot of young families you know they haven't been able to buy houses they have debt from student loans all sorts of pressures in that way so we're seeing a lot of that so the congregations that have endowments are able to use the endowment to even out the budget in anticipation of it eventually finding its new normal I think one thing I left reflecting on from that webinar um was also how we can think about giving in different ways when it comes to the younger generation young adults who may not have as much monetary like gifts to give but can give in other ways right so how are they giving in terms of the volunteerism they're doing or the ways that they're participating in different programming and how can that be reflected and reflected on but also ease anxiety in the ways that we think about giving and budgets I think there's a piece that comes up for me about how do we have a forward-thinking investment strategy in the growth of the congregation which includes an investment in Children and Youth yes so that religious education piece really comes up for me is a wondering about I know that there's been there's been a lot of um stress uh in congregations among religious Educators among you know lay religious Educators about how to keep investing in Children and Youth especially when they're not necessarily the most visible part of a congregation's life but is so important to a growth strategy for the future so I'm wondering if we've been noticing any creative forward-thinking investments in that new membership you know that actively looking for new members question um that's striving to be diverse question or that children and youth piece um are there stories that we want to lift up from congregations that have been able to make tight budgets work for continuing to invest in that Outreach and then welcoming new people this may be a startling slide to see we experience as a community a lot of conflict during the pandemic no was only 13 yes but not serious 33.5 percent but look at all the answers for yes and people left yes and people withheld pledges and yes and clergy leader left that's a significant percentage of our congregations that we're grappling with very serious conflict during the pandemic and just a reminder that you can reach out to your congregational life staff when there are conflicts because conflicts can be a source of creative change but they can also be a source of a lot of pain interestingly low destructive tensions surrounding social and political issues actually declined during the pandemic so you can see those numbers here very high 2.8 percent went down to 1.4 moderately High remained about even at around six percent average went down from 26.7 to 24.6 relatively low increased and non-existent stayed about the same I'll be very interested to see how this Compares with our Interfaith Partners when the full FACT survey comes out next August of 2023. yeah I was also struck by the amount of congregations that have dealt with conflicts during the pandemic and ongoing conflicts and really grateful for the hope for us program now that some of these congregations are able to access and find support from along with you know ourselves as well as congregational life staff I'm wondering if there's a correlation between that sense of conflict and what was mentioned in the congregational concerns is resistance um whether that's resistance that they're experiencing internally or externally with the things that are happening for some of our congregations feeling unsafe in the communities that they are in just reflecting on that and how we can support them more in that area of conflict and safety and wasn't that a stunning number 97 are either very happy or happy with their ministers currently and we don't have a comparison for 2018 and these numbers but I'm seeing a reduction in congregational conflicts right now you know I I only have my one perspective but we're seeing a lot less complaints coming in through the misconduct process right now I'm seeing less negotiated resignations uh this spring then I can remember any year I've served at the UUA which is 13 years now and I just wonder if we hit a peak during the pandemic when we were forced to be apart from one another and whether Things Are improving as we are able to emerge from that and I'm curious what you're seeing from congregational life if that sense is the same or if that is just my wanting to three see through Rose tinted glasses I hope it gives you a sense of you're not alone when it comes to conflict that a lot of folks have struggled with it and it seems like a lot of congregations have emerged with a more positive outlook in the future for the future and um where they're headed so if that sense of community Outlook is important for you for folks to ground themselves in for resilience so yeah here's uh where I see our persistent optimism about the future when asked about your current outlook on the future only 0.6 percent of you said you felt very negative ten percent somewhat negative 8.6 neither negative nor positive while 42.9 percent felt somewhat positive and 37.9 percent replied very positive about the future our congregation is emerging from the pandemic stronger than before only 2.9 percent strongly disagree 8.7 percent disagree and 13.9 somewhat disagree so the vast majority of you answered either neither a green or disagree some would agree  or strongly agree again a lot of optimism about the future as a result of the pandemic we are thinking in new ways about our mission again the bulk of you answered neither agree nor disagree some would agree  or strongly agree sometimes great challenge requires great creative breakthrough in thinking I think there might have been a Shake Out that's been happening the past few years where the situations where there was latent conflict it really bubbled up but when you look at the some of the data the outlook for the future is positive there seems to be more Focus you know we've spent the last 10 plus years in congregational life telling our congregations be sure you're clear on your mission work on your Covenant all those aspects that help make a congregation a congregation I think some of that was part of the resilience that our congregations had they might have had conflict but they had that core self-understanding about Mission and Covenant and vision of what they want to be in the future that they were able to move through a lot of that the mission thing is super important and I think we have some congregations that haven't done that work and what they were kind of you're sort of seeing the difference of how they got through it and then there's like oh there's some work that everyone else has been doing and we never got around to maybe it's time to work on the mission maybe it's time to work on the Covenant and so congregational life is working on resources to help our congregations do that we're always able to approach but we want to be able to offer additional resources for congregations who really want to focus organizations only Thrive when they have a self-awareness and they have intentionality as a group and they're really starting to understand that and how important that is and so I think that we're seeing that Trend and I think we're seeing that in the optimism numbers that we're seeing I mean I I was also a little bit surprised about that uh that was really gave me a lot of Hope because our congregations are feeling hope and this is the final slide this congregation has identified and embraced new opportunities for Ministry since the pandemic 35.6 percent of you agreed 35.6 percent agreed 16.8 percent strongly agreed and very few disagreed with that statement

now amen to that I think um all the creativity we poured into shifting to online offerings during the pandemic and staying connected to each other and just surviving that's the kind of energy we need to know deploy at some point for new thinking around how we serve people of all ages and what it means to have shared Ministry I mean this is a real moment I think to go deeper on that because we saw that we needed all of our leaders during the pandemic maybe the PPP loans and things like that helped us to maintain a certain Staffing level and then Partnerships with lay leaders were also strong even though we saw all the conflict as well we also saw how much people accomplished during that time and I think people are just a little like in a moment of just like catching their breath maybe and a little bit tired especially as this is like May right now so we're recording this and for many that's like a time in the year when things kind of go a little bit less in you know at a Full Tilt in congregational life starting for the summer but hopefully when we have that chance to refresh ourselves and take a breath will really turn our minds to exactly what you're lifting up Lenore recently I was invited to preach for a celebration of a 20-year Ministry not many of our ministers stay for 20 years and when they do it's very exciting I think in that particular congregation which goes back to the 1600s the last time they had a minister reach that Milestone was in like 1786 so it had been a while since they've had that kind of steady leadership one of the things I asked the congregation was to focus on three questions as they look to the Future and I think there's simple questions that any congregation can benefit from revisiting from time to time in an intentional way and the three questions are who are we really who are we who is our neighbor and you know whether we can extend the circle of Who belongs to us by really including the neighbor and then finally what is love asking of us to do what is love calling our congregation to do and that's to lead back to the mission Focus that you were talking about earlier but those simple three questions can be very powerful so who are we who is our neighbor and what is love calling us to do um those are fun Reflections that brings up for me a way of using this this survey anybody who's watching this video will automatically I think be interested in reflection right and like taking a pause to notice what is and learning from that and growing from it and my hope is that we're going to be able to do that as congregations too so just as we're learning from our wider denomination that congregations might take some time to sit down or move together or whatever with um each other maybe with a wide variety of people of different angles of view on congregational life and just to kind of tell each other stories of what we've learned in adaptations over the past couple of years because some of what we were talking about especially what you're thinking about like spiritual nourishment in other ways other than Sunday morning I think people got really good at practicing that right like viewing each other's phone calls sending out at home materials for kids um just checking in with each other having informal check-ins like simplifying and just focusing on what is the Deep need and I hope that we won't lose those muscles of looking at what is the deeper need here and finding really like the simplest way to meet that I hope we can capture that in in stories of like what has been working so far so even when we're returning to some other way of doing things we can keep those threads yeah I really appreciate that Lenore I'm also thinking of like how can we stay connected to our BIPOC communities right like so if we have one or two folks that come in or our members how do we connect them to the larger BIPOC Community Access in Unitarian Universalist communities and  I was also reflecting on the data around you know what people are using to get information out like emails and texting and things like that and drum actually has been using texting quite a bit before they've had some online public worship and sometimes even give me a phone call and it's a reminder that this service is going to happen this week and that's really welcome to me because I do sometimes lose track of the things that nourish me and that kind of a text or phone call at the last minute can help me get back get focused and get online and participate I invite folks you know to think about Partners like drum blue but also our online communities in the UUA we have Tap Root but also the centuries region BIPOC group that meets once a month as a way to connect folks who might not be feeling as connected to BIPOC communities in their area there's a place on the UUA website that has links to a lot of these opportunities for connection we'll share in the text of this page yeah let's um put in a link for uplift as well such a vital time to have people understand that there's that Ministry for all ages available