Rev. Phil Lund  0:04  
Welcome everyone to our GA workshop Faithfully Finding Balance. I'd like to begin with chalice lighting. This comes from Eric Walker Wickstrom. It's one of my favorite readings, I've adapted it a little for our purposes. He writes, As we approach our workshop, let us remember that we are doing the work of our congregations, our churches, our fellowships. When we do this work, we touch lives. When we touch lives, we change the world. May this chalice flame, we now kindle, remind us throughout our workshop, of our ministry, and our mission.

So I'm Phil Lund, I'm part of the congregational life staff in the MidAmerica region. And I am on a group of with my colleagues here who all happen to have an interest in working with small congregations. But this workshop is for congregations of all sizes, big and small. So as I said, I'm Phil Lund. I'm from the MidAmerica region, and I live in St. Paul, and I'd like to introduce you to my colleague, Sarah Schurr.

Rev. Sarah Schurr  1:26  
Thanks, Phil. I'm the Reverend Sarah Schurr. I work in the congregational life department in the Pacific Western Region. I'm based in Portland, Oregon. And I also love to work with smaller congregations but I work with larger ones as well. And I will pass this to our colleague Tyler.

Byron Tyler Coles  1:45  
Hello, everyone. I'm the Reverend Byron Tyler Coles. I'm a member of congregational life in the Southern Region, and I'm located in Alexandria, Virginia. Megan, I pass it to you.

Rev. Megan Foley  1:56  
Hey, y'all, I am Reverend Dr. Megan Foley, I live in Silver Spring, Maryland, just outside of Washington, DC. And I am the regional lead for the Central East Region and work on the smallers team as well. So you're here in our workshop, and we really appreciate it. Why does this topic matter? Why have we brought this to you today? Well, you may have noticed in your congregation, the same thing we've noticed all around the, all around the country. And that is that as we've regathered post locked down in different ways, there's been a lot of stress in our congregations. We're learning how to be together physically, again, in ways that we have forgotten some of the detail of. I have a congregation that is trying to train people how to do coffee hour again, because they were finding that post lockdown, people are just standing next to each other with their masks, kind of side eyeing the next person wondering how this all was supposed to go. So there's a lot of different ways in which we're trying to remember how this all gets done. We're trying to figure out different and safer ways to gather. So there's a mix all the time these days of online and in person, masks, no masks, community levels going up, community levels going down. And we're constantly on the front edge of a wave, trying to figure out the ways that we can gather together in ways that we know we need but to do so as safely as possible. We don't always acknowledge the grief that we are feeling about all the time that we've lost together, the people we've lost and the events that we've lost. The frustrations of being inside, the fear that we felt, we don't acknowledge the grief and pain enough to have what we've been through. But that grief and pain does color, the ways in which we operate as we're coming back together. If we're lucky, mostly what we're feeling is out of control. If we've been less lucky, we're feeling a lot of deep grief of real losses, people and communities in our lives. But even if we're just feeling out of control that can bring us together in ways that feel really tight and restricted and not open and ready for it more innovation and more, more feeling that maybe control isn't in our power. All of this. So this all means that internally facing into our congregations, taking care of our members now really matters. Learning how to be together, how to have fun together, how to connect with each other really matters. we're recreating our community together. And that's really important. So we have to look inside and take care of our own. At the same time though, we want to be looking outside into the world because that's what makes us relevant and we need to relearn why we exist in the world. But once we start thinking about it, I think the answers come pretty obviously. You might like many of our congregations may experience that new people are coming to your church to they are still looking for all the same things people have been looking for when they come to community religious communities since the beginning of humanity. But you know what times are extra tough right now. And so people are coming into religious community, because they feel disconnected, they feel under threat out in the regular world. They are looking to reconnect and find meaning with their world. They're looking for experiences of the sacred and learning how to experience the holy in their everyday lives. They're looking to have more of a community, and they're looking for ways to serve the greater good. So meaning, community, service. You're going to find that people are coming in looking for those things, as they always have been, but even more so in these times. Sarah, can you take us to the next one?

Yes, I'm just gonna talk briefly about this whole idea of inreach and outreach, both of which are important to the congregation these days. And, like I say, we're here to talk a little bit about finding that balance. So inreach, this is sometimes thought of as community building, coming together to enhance our lives. It means things we do, where we can make friends and be with our friends. So many of us became socially isolated during the pandemic lockdowns and need to, need to friend again, need to build friends, need to reconnect with people. People are looking for a way to feel cared for, so our congregations can care for people, look out for their emotional needs and their physical needs. Healing after the COVID times, as Megan mentioned, there's so much grief, so much grief that people have to process about missed opportunities to, to be together, those missed graduations, things like that, that that, you know, are never going to come again. A chance to nurture each other to to support each other's growth in these new ways. And the classic of building community, even before the pandemic, we talked a lot in our Unitarian Universalist congregations about how we were there to build community. And that that's often where people say that they're there to do. But then there's also outreach. Outreach is, is when we come together to transform our lives, Transforming the world and transforming our lives. When we do something together that gives our lives greater meaning. Something where we feel like we've made a difference in the world,. We are there to serve a changed and changing world. Phil.

Rev. Phil Lund  7:51  
Thank you, Sarah. Yeah. So as Sarah was saying, we're at this point where we believe that that the the inreach and the outreach are kind of like, equally important for us. And we need to be intentional about both of them. So as Megan said earlier, I think we need some reminders about how we gathered in the past, because we've kind of lost that collective memory about how to do these things. So I'd like to share with you some of my favorite ways to gather be for religious communities to gather beyond Sunday morning services. And one of the one of the things to remember about this is, you know, we know how important self care is, well, this is community care. It's like self care for the whole community. So so I'd like to start out by a little quote from Priya Parker, if you haven't heard of her, she's written a wonderful book called The Art of Gathering. And she says that connection doesn't happen on its own. We have to design gatherings for the kinds of connections we want to create. And those are those, these are the Community Care Connections that we're talking about. So you may you may have noticed, I don't know. But suddenly, potlucks are popular again, right? We miss them. potlucks are one of my favorite parts of church. I remember when I was a kid growing up in a Methodist Church, it was one of the favorite, most favorite things that we could do, that I could do at church. And so I just like to give you a few tips about potluck, And they're very simple, but basically is you know, make sure there are a variety of dishes there. You're gonna have vegans, you're gonna have vegetarians, you may not be able to cover all the possible food allergies, but I bet you you're going to have some gluten free people there too. So, so make sure there are dishes of all kinds and I have a little story about that my, my family for awhile was going to a Quaker meeting and I noticed that almost all the food was vegetarian, and I thought these people need some meat actually. So I took it upon myself to be the the meatball bringer, right, every week. They were once a month potlucks, and every month I brought a crock pot full of, you know, turkey meatballs or beef meatballs or whatever with the different kinds of sauce on it. And wouldn't you know it, there were never any leftover at the end of the potluck. So I made sure that the meat eaters had what they needed of those potlucks. Now, there's a maybe a slight variation on potluck that I really love and that's having a soup supper. And this is a Lenten tradition in many Christian congregations. I do we do it personally, in my household, once a month, we have a soup night, on Wednesday night, we make a couple soups, we put on an invitation to I don't know, it's like 20 or 30 people and maybe 10 people or so show up. And we have a specific time between six and eight o'clock on Wednesday evening, last Wednesday of the month and we serve the soup and have some wonderful congregate conversations. So the kind of the keys around here is to have a couple of different soups, make sure that one again is vegan and gluten free. That's always helpful. You can have you know, maybe a creamed, creamy soup or a soup that's made out of a broth. Have your volunteers who are making soups, make them the day ahead because I think almost universally soup always tastes better the next day, so make them ahead of time. And and here's a tip I actually found on a Betty Crocker website. I just love it. It says consider having a stone soup where everybody contributes a little bit to the empty pot. Invite everyone to bring a basic pantry item or some good scraps from the fridge. Cans of chicken broth, leftover veggies, potatoes, chunks of chicken noodles, rice, herbs, parmesan cheese, mix it all together warm it up and you have a tasty soup right, a tasty soup right there. And I personally think you know doing things like this, you know, do them on a regular schedule at the very least make them seasonal, you know, have a soup, soup supper around the solstices and have a soup supper around the equinoxes. So sticking with the food thing, and you might you might see that's very important for me. But that's very important for church and religious community too. So another one church picnics, the weather. For me right now we're recording this in the springtime the weather is finally warming up a bit everybody's happy and waving to each other you know so. So get get your, get your congregation, your friends and your members outside and have a church picnic somewhere, reserve a spot at a local park. Here's the thing I really like about this too, when you get into late August, early September, consider having a homecoming picnic, and invite everybody that you have contact information for. People who haven't been coming back to the church since the since the pandemic started, maybe maybe those people who visited once once you have their email address, send them an invitation, invite everybody you can think to, to invite to something called a homecoming. And you know, get a little remote internet connection out there maybe and have a time where people who can't be there personally can come and visit virtually to. And I would say that applies to almost everything I'm talking about today too is you can you can have virtual elements for all these things to make sure everybody is staying connected. Here's a, here's a tip that I found that I really liked, is arrange visits to care homes. Have people who are who are volunteering to visit your friends and members who are living in assisted living facilities or a nursing home, gathered together divided up into teams of two or three and go out and visit folks in these facilities who may not have been able to connect with you all or because they can't make it to the church anymore. And again, this is something I said it again, I don't know if I mentioned it yet. This is something that can be intergenerational, all these things can be intergenerational, invite families to participate this in these sorts of things. Another popular thing that many churches do, do you may have never done this, or you may not have started the backup or the the talent shows and the coffee houses. You know we we have such a great array of people in our congregations we have music and poetry and stories and your occasional stand up comedian or whatever is you know, make make a special event for people to come and share their talents. And again, this is a perfect sort of thing to do is enter as intergenerational event. And it can be on an evening, Friday night, Saturday night could be after the church service, service. All these things can be done at different times. Just not on Sunday morning during church. Another thing, community gardens if you have space on your grounds, you can set aside some space for a community garden, people can gather together to tend to the garden. If you don't have space, you can check out shared gardens in your community and get a plot there. Like once again, it can be intergenerational. And many congregations when they do community gardens they, they donate the produce to maybe a local food pantry. Or these could be some of the elements you do for your soup supper to make your food so you can kind of have a circle this way of, you know, bringing what you're doing in one area into another. Here's something I'm seeing more congregations do too, is something like a craft workshop, after church on a Sunday afternoon, could be preceded by a soup supper, or a soup lunch. One of the most popular ones we see in our religious communities are making chalices for families or individuals, you can have a chalice making workshop, one of the things I really like is making UU prayer beads or worry beads, whatever you want to call it. Beading is such a great activity once again, intergenerational, you know, everybody gets into it. And I'm finding that a lot of congregations, a lot of smaller congregations, are trying to plan some sort of crafty event like this once a month, as kind of their number one way of gathering families together in the church. They have a hard time doing regular religious education families don't come. It's been ages since I think families came every Sunday. Right? So having a Sunday when you're doing event, you can say this is an intergenerational event for families and anybody else who wants to join us. Doing crafts, things like that is just a way to really bring people together. You can turn your church auctions, auctions or bazaars or bake sales into community events as well. You can have an online component on that. So people can buy baked goods and have them delivered. Or you can have the silent auctions, you know, using online programs, once again, intergenerational event.

And you can have entertainment there, you can max, mix, mix it up with a soup supper, there's just lots of things you can do. And that's the point for all these, is they are really a mix and match sort of thing. You know, you can take elements of all of them, put them with others, gathered peep, get people together, bring your community together. And one thing I think is important for all of these things, though, is to include worshipful elements, you know, light a chalice like we did at the beginning of this workshop, have a welcoming reading, a chalice lighting reading, sing or say grace. We always do that in our family before every meal, we pick a very kind of nondenominational, inclusive sort of grace to sing. And something I like too is you can send folks off with a blessing or a parting song when the event is over. But the key is to be intentional. And I mentioned Priya Parker, she has a few more suggestions I want to share with you. She says identify your purpose, explore your reason for bringing people together, identify a specific and unique why. So when you're thinking about events, what's your reason for bringing people together? Design your invitation to persuade people to participate. And the best way to do that is to use storytelling to draw your guests into your gathering. Tell a little story about why you're gathering together. And close with intention. What's one thing you can do to close this gathering that will make it memorable? So those are my suggestions for how we can be gathering together in our communities. And Sarah, I think we're going back to you to talk about forms of outreach.

Rev. Sarah Schurr  19:06  
That's right. But I have to say, Phil, I love a good search stone soup supper. I just want to say I've had some really good times with those. I get a little commercial for those. So forms of outreach. Outreach is a way that we can reach out and help a hurting world, live into our deeper mission and our values as people. It also is a great way of letting other people know what we believe. When people say what are those Unitarians? I hear jokes about them, whatever. When they see us out doing things in the world that lets them know who we are and what we're about. So it's an outreach tool in terms of inviting new people in. So here's just some examples of ones I've seen with other folks. Taking part in a local beach or roadside cleanup, this can be a good intergenerational activity, doing a beach cleanup, picking up trash on the beach and then finishing up with a you know, a beach front supper or, or you know, hot dog roast or something. Great intergenerational outreach activity, especially if you wear your congregational T-shirts while you're out doing the work. So people know that you are all from this congregation and doing this work together. Offering programs about things like white supremacy, culture and other important topics of the day. You can offer them within your congregation to to help people learn new things also, that you can open them up to the rest of the community so that other people who are curious can come to your classes and learn things. Also opening up your OWL classes, your Our Whole Lives, sexuality education classes, to the community as a way to, to do outreach to let people know who we are, what we believe, and how we can cooperate and work together with other congregations. Oftentimes, certainly, the OWL curriculum was written with the United Church of Christ, and they often make good partners. Sometimes we partner with synagogues or small private schools, or sometimes just the community in general. It's also a matter of inviting guests, to our congregations. Some people don't like to invite guests to worship services, it feels somehow like proselytizing. But it's really fun to invite guests to like, say a family friendly holiday event. If you're having a holiday Bazaar, a special Christmas Eve light, you know, candlelight service. These are great places to invite lots of guests so they can get a chance to see who we are and, and experience that thing, which is our wonderful congregations. Again, I want to reinforce the whole idea of getting congregational T-shirts. So that when you're doing something together, out in the world, people people Oh, those are the people from East Cupcake UU. I've heard about them I've seen their T-shirts before,. Might be a great way to do outreach that that is subtle, but still works. And of course, is the classic of sponsoring the booth at the local pride events, or marching in the local Pride Parade together with your congregational banner. These are all again, easy, fun ways, often intergenerational, to, to let people let people see who you are. Let people know who we are and what we believe. And to get us, get us out of the house as it were. As the congregation you know, we can be in the house do as our potlucks. And that's great. But sometimes we need to get out of the house a little bit. And and be a part of the world. I've got a couple of great examples of outreach at a cup at some of our congregations. There is food banks. The big example, the going big food bank is the one at First Unitarian Church in Los Angeles. They have a partnership with Urban Partners LA. And they have a big old historic church in Koreatown, where they provide food for thousands of people each year. During the pandemic, they were a major source of food security, for a lot of people in the Los Angeles area. A small congregation with a big building. And they made partnerships to really do some pretty serious outreach. But you know, it doesn't always have to be done on a big scale. There's also Food Bank small but mighty. This is a picture of the food bank, from the unit from the Olympic Unitarian Universalist congregation in small Port Angeles, Washington. A small town where this little congregation lay congregation as their own dry goods pantry. And another bin with local produce is maintained by members all year round. And people all over the the the community in Port Angeles know that they can come to the Olympic UU and get food if they need it. And this is not only a way to make the world a better place, but it's a real source of pride for the members that they can serve their community in this in this in this way. Even though they are not a big group that they can serve the community by providing food for people who need it. And there's one other idea we recently heard about something called the People's supper. It's a program created by Eboo Patel, where people from different identities and communities come together in structured dinners to build connections across different communities. And I can certainly see that would be a really interesting thing for our congregations to be involved with as well. There's a lot of good, that's done by this kind of outreach. Yes, it absolutely helps make the world a better place, when we can go out and, you know, feed hungry people and support people's rights. It also gets the word out about Unitarian Universalism and what we value. And yes, it helps our members feel like they're living lives of meaning. One of the things that, that I think a lot of people have felt, during the difficult times last few years is, is kind of what's the point. And when you have a life of meaning, it helps you feel like, like, you know, what you're doing, you know, while you're doing it, and it, it gives you some courage and empowerment in the world. And it teaches our children. Doing this kind of outreach together, especially in multi generational activities, like say, beach cleanups and things like that, it's a way to teach our children what our values are, and teach them how to grow up to be people who live lives of service, which is what a lot of people really value in our congregations. Now, one of the things I want to talk about is conflict, a lot of folks worry about conflict around outreach. Sometimes there's a fear that if they choose the wrong outreach work, that not everybody supports, that they will be upset, you know. Should we and it has something to do with taking a stand taking a stand on civic issues. I mean, if we all decide to say, work, you know, protest that one topic, does that mean, everyone in the congregation has to feel passionately about it? And how do we come to some kind of agreement on what kind of of justice work we are going to support. And sometimes people are worried about that, I would like to encourage you to move past the worry and, and say, sometimes you just, you know, you could do something and see how it fits. It doesn't have to everybody doesn't have to weigh in on every single protest you go to. And sometimes there's concern that taking sides will make us a target for folks who disagree with us. Well, you know, I've always thought that that we should be a we're a church worth belonging to. And so having people know, what we what we believe and how we feel that's, that's actually a good thing. There's also sometimes the the pet project individual situation, where like, you know, Betty Lou is always been a protect the guinea pig person. And so we have to make sure that the whole congregation, you know, does or does not support Betty Lou under save the guinea pigs. And not that I have anything against guinea pigs. I love them dearly. But but sometimes we have to be clear about the difference between individual people's pet projects, and a congregation wide project, where you come together as a community, to do this outreach, to speak to the world about who we are, and why we exist. And who we are, why we exist as exactly how we deal with this stuff. Think about why do we exist as a congregation? What are we here for? And yes, we're here to build community, to do that in reach stuff. But we're also here to do some outreach. And what kind of outreach represents what is most important to us? What do we want to be known for? Sometimes that's a good question I ask is, if somebody says, Oh, the Unitarian Universalist, they're the ones who? How do you want them to finish that sentence? So find a way to figure out what you want to be known for, and then go out and get known for that, you know, and what do you want to be proud of? What do you think you do that you can be really proud of in this world?

I can also tell you, that what I found in my experience with congregations, is that outreach actually reduces conflict, not increases. That people are often worried that if they have to make a decision between one one kind of justice work and another are one cause and another that will cause conflict, what I find is that focusing outward, looking at the needs of the community, can take the emphasis away from some of the you know, the old historic squabbles that happen in every congregation. When you're thinking about the outside world and people who need to be fed or people who need their rights protected. It it, it puts your emphasis on something a little, a little deeper than whatever little internal squabbles may have been distracting you over these years. So actually, outward facing congregations have less conflict and not more. Now here it's time to hear from Erica in some videos.

Rev. Erica Baron  30:01  
When something fails completely, or doesn't go exactly the way we wanted, we can keep trying, we can try something new, we can keep experimenting, until we hit on something that really resonates with our mission, with our people, that really serves the members of our congregation and or our wider community very well. We find those things by continuing to try things. And by giving ourselves and each other grace, when things are not exactly as we anticipated. I also want to say a word about how many experiments and projects and new programs you can do at the same time. I have this fairly common experience, especially in small congregations, but this can happen in congregations of any size, where the leaders of the congregation asked me to come and think with them about their outreach, or their social justice, or their programs for their own congregation, some aspect of inreach or outreach. And when I get there, these leaders say some version of you know, we're just not doing enough. We don't really do something meaningful. We don't do something all together, everything we do is too small. There's all these issues that we want to be active on that we just don't, we're just not doing= Unitarian Universalism, right. I may be exaggerating slightly, but only slightly. So then I say, Okay, well tell me about it, what are you working on what is going on. And then they will say some version of well, we have this program for our people, and we do this annual event for the community. And then we do this other ongoing thing, where we work at the food banks, you know, once a month, and then we do this other thing where we raise money for such and such a project, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm often in the position of saying, you're doing it, that's it, that you're doing all the things, you don't need to do everything. You just need to do the things you're doing with energy and make sure they align with your mission, and then celebrate that you're actually doing great. You're doing fine. And leaders are often very relieved to hear this. So I think there's still this idea in our culture of Unitarian Universalism, that there's like this long list of things that the congregation has to be doing, and doing with excellence in order to count as a real congregation, or in order to be succeeding. And that's just not true. Every congregation is a different. Congregations that have 30 people can do different things than congregations that have 300 people, who can do different things than congregations who have 3000 people. Congregations that are well placed to provide some kind of social service to the community, maybe really badly positioned to do a different kind of social service. Congregations where all the people really like coming out on Friday nights to play games with each other might need different kinds of programming, then congregations where nobody would come on Friday, why would you do that that's the day to go out on the town. So reaching in to your congregation and reaching out to your community, you're looking for the thing that resonates with you, what is aligned with your particular mission? What is aligned with the passions and interests and excitements, and skills and gifts of your particular people? And how many of these things can you reasonably sustain without burning yourself out? That may be one way of reaching in and one way of reaching out. And if that is what you have the energy for? Great, do it, do it with gusto, and keep thinking about how to do it more effectively. Even big congregations can take on too much and burn out your volunteers or your staff, or just have a lot of things going on, not any one of which has particular energy to it because it's all spread too thin. And midsize congregations can be in this trap of being in between those two things. We know we can do more than the little congregation down the road, but we're sort of trying to be the big congregation the other direction. So it's important to discern what level of activity can you actually sustain joyfully? And not like be dragging yourself over the end of that project? Because you're so tired because you're trying to do too many things. One of the things that might mean is letting something go. We have this habit in UU congregations, as I've noticed, were 20 years ago, beloved member, Y, started this program that was so incredibly successful. I mean, this book club, or this holiday fair, or this fundraising effort, just struck a chord at the time and became the thing that got everybody all excited and was super successful and really did align with mission and accomplished its goals. And isn't that wonderful. And then 20 years later, it has become the effort of a few people who are resentful of the fact that no one else in the congregation helps, it doesn't strike a chord anymore, in the same way. It's dwindled down to something very much smaller than it used to be. And there's kind of grudging resentment all around. But everybody still loves member Y, maybe member Y is still around, and we can't not do the program, because that would break member Y's heart, or maybe member Y has passed away or moved out of the area. But in celebration of who that person was to us, we definitely don't want to let this program go, because, you know, that would be like saying that person was never here and didn't matter. There's a thing that I would like us to start practicing and get better at, which is to notice when something that used to be exactly the right thing, is no longer exactly the right thing. And either applying that reflection and adaptation to seriously think about what it would really take to make that particular program alive and lively in the same way. Or to say, You know what, this program has been hugely successful. And we are going to do it one more time to celebrate all of the gifts that has given to us over the years. And then we're going to stop, because we need space to do this new thing, because time has changed. And the context has changed. And the people who used to run this are no longer here. And the people who are here, don't have those skills, or gifts, whatever the shifting context is. As you're thinking about inreach and outreach right now, you may need to do some letting go in order to have the space for the one or two things that are really important and really relevant right now. That is not the same as saying that the people who started those programs don't matter to us, or that the programs failed. In fact, we often let things dwindle to the point that they feel like they're failing. When we don't have to, we can say that thing was usually successful. It got us here, it paid the bills, so we could restore the roof so that people want to come on Sunday morning. Or it paid for the first ever settled minister. And now we have enough money to sustain that professional ministry. Or that person brought in these 10 families who are now central members of the congregation and we love them all. We can celebrate the great gifts that any given program or activity gave us without continuing it past the point where it's not serving us anymore.

Rev. Megan Foley  38:30  
I just want to remind you all again, that let's not reinvent any wheels, when you're thinking about all these things, thinking some of them are making you feel excited and perky and that might be the thing for your congregation. You don't need to start anything from scratch, I really hope you'll take a look at our UUA resources to see how we can support you in your in in reach and outreach efforts. One example is UU the Vote. UU the Vote is our democratic arm of the Side with Love campaign and it has a at least a dozen ways that your congregation can get involved in the issues of the day in your local place. A lot of our congregations are in populous areas where you can join with a lot of other people to do some good and a lot of our congregations are in places where you're the only voice of our values in the public square. And the UU the Vote has options for you, either way. They can be a really good resource from anything as simple as writing postcards to getting out in the public square to lobbying your representatives to everything in between becoming a sanctuary for teens who are LGBTQ or immigrant communities and things like that. So I really encourage you to look into UU the Vote and the many options they have. And that can be a way of joining together in your community to see what to do some good and and have something else set up for you so that you can just launch into a project. As Sarah mentioned Our Whole Lives our sexuality education curriculum. Again, this is a fantastic way to just get trained and use the curriculum and offer it to your kids, your kids' friends, kids in the community, you can also do it for adults, you can do it for little kids is can be a really unique offering for communities that really struggle with comprehensive sexuality education. So it's all done for you, all you got to do is get trained, and then you can start doing it in your hometown to. State Advocacy Networks, Your state may already have a UU State Advocacy network that works in the state government to bring our UU values to the public square to the laws of your state and town. If you're anywhere close to your state capitol, I highly recommend getting in touch with your state advocacy network, if possible, or even starting one if you start to get into it. But even if you're not that close, issues facing your state are often addressed at the state level by these organizations. So I encourage you to look into those too. Sarah talked a lot about different ways of doing outreach in your community. And I would like to just encourage you that when you're thinking about doing those things, call up your neighbor UU congregation or just your neighbor congregation, and see if they want to do it with you. So all the things she mentioned, highway cleanups, food distribution center, food pantries, OWL programs, coming of age programs for middle schoolers, join together with other churches, so you can get some critical mass to do things in ways that you might not be able to do otherwise. Think about who you could reach out to who you could get to now start with something fun, like a picnic and then see if there's a thing that people might want to do together for your community. Almost every church is interested in helping their community and I think you'll find a lot of common ground with your neighbors in that way. Even your fun things can be done together. And they can be done at some scale, too. So Sarah has told me in the past about an example in Montana, where all the Montana congregations the whole state, and one Wyoming one rented a camp together. And so they all had a summer camp, there were shared meals, they had a local musician lead songs, UUA staff came in ran a youth program, did a little other trainings, a little light programming. But mostly it was networking, community building, having some critical mass for the faith. And I imagine helping each other support each other in the good work that our faith often leads to. There's also these are also wonderful opportunities to create interfaith relationships. And again, Sarah shares a story from the Jews of Juneau, Alaska, the UUs in Juneau, Alaska are a small group, and they rent space from the local synagogue, which is also small, the synagogue is able to exist because of this rental from the UUs. And they don't have a regular rabbi, but they have rabbinical students who come through and they ended up preaching in the UU side of things as well and in the pulpit. So it's a symbiotic partnership that works well for everybody. We have a couple of examples in our area too, in the DC area in Columbia, Maryland. And interfaith center is a building that houses several congregations in the same place. And that's worked out well as a way of having like a religious hub in general that serves a lot of parts of the communities. When you're together in relationship in different ways, it's easy to then get together when there's a need in town or something you really want to do. So I recommend those making those friendships nearby. It makes a lot of sense to do that. There are as many ways to connect outside your doors as you can dream up. As you can imagine, the main first step is just to do one. Don't be scared. Just try it. Do one, reach out, see what's possible. Just experiment with a Saturday. Ask your community what they need. Try meeting it a little bit, do your little part. Do your bit as the English like to say, make it happen. You will be really glad you did. So take that extra step. Be brave. We're in an online world folks. And so my colleague Tyler Coles is now going to offer some tips for the virtual space having to do with this topic. So Tyler, take it away.

Byron Tyler Coles  44:39  
Thanks, Megan. I appreciate that. It goes without saying that the church is shifting in this moment. And it is hard, it is scary. And to be frank, it is frustrating. But I think it is worth reminding ourselves time and time again, that this church universal, Big C in this case, has shifted 101 times before. One of the earliest examples is how religious community church work in particular, shifted with the invention of the printing press. How the church then shifted with new diseases and sicknesses, had to shift again in light of wars and famines. Our church had to shift again, in light of the Industrial Revolution. The church is continuously shifting because religious life, religious life and community with one another, calls us to respond to the world. And part of that requires that we now as faithful people in the 21st century, living in an endemic, think about and be considerate of how technology, electricity, electronics, impact, shape, and expand our mission in to the world. I would like to talk to you about a virtually savvy church, inside and out. I want to begin with our church websites. Yes, I know, they are not the sexiest thing about ministry today. But they are an essential part of our ministry today. before most people, visitors or otherwise ever learn or cross the threshold into our sanctuaries, into our congregations, they're checking out our website first. They're also checking out our social media first. Unfortunately, we cannot go any longer without considering and thinking about the presence of being on social media, it's part of our world. We also have to be mindful about what our websites look like, and what information can be found there. Brady Shearer, creator of Pro Church Tools, shares three things that all churches need to consider when it comes to their web sites. That is, to be inviting, to be informative, and to be in inspiring. This means that we need to be considerate and rooted in our missions as religious people. If creating love, doing justice, and growing spiritually is your mission, that should be reflected on your website. Now, I know that many of us love the written word. But we do have a tendency as Unitarian Universalists to over communicate, to put too many words on our website. And if you're anything like me, you know, a couple of words, a couple of paragraphs. And then I'm done, especially in this day and age where information overload is a real thing to be considered of. So be mindful to be inviting, informative, and inspiring. You don't have to communicate too much to do good work so people know where you're at. One great example of this is that I'm starting to see a lot of churches burying or hiding the About Us tab or information on their church staff website. Particularly who works for the church ministers, religious professionals, lay leaders. Congregate, congregations from other communities, even visitors in your local community are more than likely to look there first. Then they're going to look at your belief section, make that clear and concise, be unapologetic about who is serving your community, and be unapologetic about our liberal prophetic beliefs. The world is desperately in need of them. Second thing, we need to consider recorded and streamed worship services and honor of persons gathering online. Churches are not composed of just in person participants anymore. And this is a good thing. It's hard, but still a good thing. So for example, worship, a lot of us are considering how do we continue with a virtual arm of worship. In this time, after all, we went from zoom to YouTube, maybe a mixture of both, or something else, one way or two ways. The answers really live within your community. So you must ask yourself, what is the most pertinent for your community's worship experience? For some folk, one way worship experiences, engaging worship for virtual participants on YouTube is more than abundant, and you can craft your worship experience where it doesn't feel like someone's just worth watching a movie, whether in person, online. Other communities, it might need to be two ways, and that's okay. One of the unique things about small congregations is that you're actually more able to do two way worship better, you just have to be a little more creative about it. And that's a good thing. Lastly, consider religious education and community building offerings across the generations. As as religious communities, we must be a natively multi generational. And this might look like the young folk and the elders or elders from variety of generations, we must be considered that we are a mixture of generations and experiences. So keep in mind, we are multigenerational, and we have to be multi-platform. There are a variety of ways to connect in faith and to grow in community nowadays. This looks like bookclubs, online, religious education across the generations, online, community building opportunities, online. And nevermind the fact that we as a people of faith have said loud and clear that we care for the environment. Doing, doing and gathering online is an opportunity to do these things while being mindful of our resources and tending for the earth. No matter what you do as a virtually savvy church inside and out. Let us be creative, and be open to transformation in the process.

Rev. Phil Lund  51:05  
Well, thank you, Tyler. And thank you, Megan. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you, Erica. And thank you, Beth, who haven't seen Beth but Beth Casebolt is here to help us with our recording and our editing. Thank you all for being here part of this workshop. And remember, our congregations exist to help nurture and guide us into being better people. So we can help make a better world. And reaching in and reaching out is the way that we can do this. We're going to have a link available where you can find the resources that we talked about in today's webinar, today's GA workshop. Faithfully Finding Balance. And I'd like to close intentionally by extinguishing our chalice. And remember this when we do the work of our congregations, our churches, our fellowships, we touch lives. When we touch lives, we change the world. Thank you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai