Renewing a Plateauing Congregation

February 1, 2024

Graph showing growth then plateauing of membership numbers

Does your congregation want to grow but feels stuck? Please reach out to your UUA regional congregational life staff — we are happy to be your thought partners!

In the meantime, here are some resources to get you and your leadership team started.

Assess Your Ministry

A comprehensive congregational assessment (.docx) includes topics that typically impact congregational health and vitality. An assessment team (comprised of members of your congregation’s leadership) meet to discuss each topic, either in a retreat setting, or spread out over the course of one or two years. Learn more about assessments.

Strengthen Your Finances

Create a Living our Vision FundA Creative Approach for Financial Resilience

By Kay Crider, Mark V. Ewert

From LeaderLab

Need a fund for strategic initiatives and financial resilience that is different from reserves or a traditional endowment and funded separately from your annual programs?

Living Our Vision Fund

Develop Your Organizational “Systems Thinking”

There are no quick fixes when developing growth and vitality. Instead, developing your own “big picture” understanding about the relationships between the different parts of your congregation can help you to identify constraints and blockages, and design small-scale interventions. Here are a few resources to get you started:

The UUA chalice encircled by the words "vitality growth renewal" and ringed by a solar halo

Congregational Vitality, Growth, and Renewal

From LeaderLab

Your congregation is a complex, living system of relationships and structures that needs the tending by its leaders to thrive. This curated group of resources will help you understand, shape, and grow your faith community.

Congregational Vitality, Growth, and Renewal

UU Institute Trainings

Centered Leadership 1: Tending Beloved Community
Centered Leadership 2: Leading in Systems

LeaderLab Articles

Books

The Whole Church by Kenneth Reeves
Emergent Strategy : Shaping Change, Changing Worlds by adrienne maree brown
Growing a Beloved Community : Twelve Hallmarks of a Healthy Congregation byTom Owen-Towle

At the bottom of the page is a collection of articles and resources specific to revitalization to help you as you revitalize and grow your congregation to the next level.

Work Toward Covenantal Relationships

Growth and vitality are heavily dependent of the quality and trust of relationships in your congregation. For more on how to develop those areas of your congregation, check out LeaderLab’s “Membership and Belonging” section and our robust UU Institute training “Tending Congregational Life:”

Frame filled with smooth stones of many colors

Membership and BelongingA Guide to Membership in UU Congregations

From LeaderLab

Membership in UU Congregations is an intentional process of commitment and covenant. This guide provides practices and tools useful in training membership teams and/or professionals.

Membership

Community Garden with Black man teaching a group of black, brown and white children

Tending Congregational Life: Guiding the Membership Journey

By Congregational Life, Unitarian Universalist Association of Membership Professionals

From LeaderLab

Learn to work together to reinforce life-affirming and creative frameworks and use practical tools for welcoming and inclusion, connection and belonging, all as foundational to a membership journey in your congregation grounded in mutuality and consent.

Membership Journey

In This Section

Congregational Size Dynamics

Dan Hotchkiss

From LeaderLab

No one fact says more about a group of human beings than its size. Dan Hotchkiss shares some of the differences in dynamics.
Five Types of Congregational Growth
From LeaderLab

Congregational growth is about many things—not just numbers.
Growth Cycles of Congregations Explained

Renee Ruchotzke, Central East Region of the UUA

From LeaderLab

Video, based on the book Taking Your Church to the Next Level: What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Gary L. McIntosh
Sparking Creativity: Yes We Can If...

Megan Foley

From LeaderLab

When thinking about needed or wanted change, congregations can sometimes feel stymied. And, let’s face it, human systems like religious communities don’t tend to like to change. In a way, we need to trick the system in order to allow in energy and creativity.
The Participation Pyramid

Stefan Jonasson

From LeaderLab

As voluntary associations, dependent upon voluntary contributions of resources, churches need to weight the opinions of members in their decision-making, based upon members’ demonstrated commitment to the congregation in one or more of the resource areas.
The Price of Renewal

Mark Bernstein

From LeaderLab

Why Dying and Rebirth are Essential Components of Growth Congregations that aspire to be vital, strong and growing follow a constant cycle of birth, aging, death, renewal and rebirth. This session will look at several theories around the life cycles of congregations and will suggest the critical…
Best Ways for Congregations to Add Programs

Donald E. Skinner

From InterConnections

When a congregation wants to add a new program, what are some helpful strategies?
Listening to Experience: Growing Congregations

UUA Congregational Life: Growth Strategies For Congregations Office, Thom Belote

From LeaderLab

Excerpts from conversations between ministers of a dozen congregations that experienced significant growth in the early 2000s.
Walking Away from "No Energy" Programs

Renee Ruchotzke

From LeaderLab

How many of our congregations offer programming that isn’t working, or has only a very small group of the “usual suspects” participating?
Road Trip! We're better together!

Tandi Rogers

From LeaderLab

We’re better together. You’ve heard this before. And often it is in the context of pooling resources to create something larger than we could offer as a separate entity….