This church year, a small group of leaders and religious professionals from New England congregations gathered together as the Contexts Learning Community. We had a shared interest in exploring more deeply what is happening to church attendance and participation, especially amongst younger people and families. Our focus was the current realities of religious education, stewardship, and volunteerism. Without a doubt, generational trends are shifting and the Contexts group explored ways to reimagine engagement and learn more about the people we wish would join us.

The Learning Community made even more clear that our grief is wide and deep. People miss full sanctuary spaces, with no one logging in online, and Sunday morning coffee hours that resemble a family reunion. Many of us are still not reconciled to the reality that church as we have known it will never be the same again. The idea that only some of the congregations we see today being around several years from now continues to shock.

Most of all, what the group gained was the clearest picture possible that none of us are alone. Time and again, the Contexts group was comforted in its shared experience of inconsistent attendance, strained numbers, and unclear futures. There is great company within Unitarian Universalism, and all of liberal religion right now! That solidarity and kinship can be a powerful encouragement and motivation for action.

And just as surely as the relief that comes from shared circumstances, a competitive spirit also kicks up as people start to wonder: could we crack the code? Could our congregation be the one to figure out how to bring people inside for the first time - or back again? Can we talk to those congregations who have stemmed the tide to find out how they did it?

Friends: there is no magic fix, silver bullet, secret sauce, one-size-fits-most solution. There are no easy ways out of the collective crisis confronting us. Instead, there is resilience, human spirit, creativity, hope, ingenuity, and more.

Centering in gifts, which allows us to bring our own unique genius - as individuals and congregations - to bear in our experiments, is what we have. We ask: what can we do, where we are, with what and who we’ve got?

Below are some of the takeaways shared by the participants of the Contexts Learning Community. I suspect they might be edifying for your own journeys:

• I have learned to be specific about asking for help. Not "who wants to join a committee?" but who can help us do this task in this time frame?
• We cannot compete on the fun stuff. What we need to lean into is providing a rewarding and meaningful experience in the context of tumultuous lives.
• It really is hard out there for people in their/our 30s and 40s. Let's try doing things that support parents, even if they are not how we would have done things in 2019.
• Taking care of our congregation's members and friends is part of our social justice mission — we can't build the beloved community outside, if we aren't doing it inside. That's a big part of why people will come and stay.
• The elders who dominate our demographics need to be convinced to think in terms of paying back to younger generations with time and support.
• We've learned that our challenges are not unique, and we also realize that we are a unique community with unique resources and unique possibilities. We've learned that we can make things happen through careful listening, and we can hope to find what is the next right thing for our congregation.

May it be so!

*with gratitude to Pat Humphries for the title, from her song, Swimming to the Other Side