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Listening to Experience

May 7, 2008 in Growth, Ministry | 2 comments

The UUA has been doing a remarkable job of getting exciting resources around growth and leadership into the hands of the people who need them the most–the leaders of our congregations. The just released Listening to Experience DVD is a great example. Here’s what Harlan Limpert, Director of the District Services Staff Group at the UUA (and my beloved supervisor) has to say about it:

5,000 copies [of the Listening to Experience DVD] have been produced, and are being distributed, along with a letter from Bill Sinkford, to UU Ministers, seminarians, theological school professors and instructors, and hundreds of key lay and professional leaders throughout the Association.
This just-completed DVD captures the wisdom and experience of twelve ministers from some of the fastest growing UU congregations in America who gathered for three days last November to talk about how to increase the number of Unitarian Universalists in the world.
During the conversation among these twelve ministers, they responded to questions posed by the Rev. Alice Mann of the Alban Institute. ” They included:

  1. “What is the saving message of your congregation?”
  2. “How does your congregation help people move inward and outward on their spiritual journey, and how does this relate to congregational growth?”
  3. “What institutional, organizational, and practical nuts and bolts need to exist in order for a congregation to grow and keep growing”?
  4. “What are the obstacles or roadblocks to growth?”

It is hoped that ministers and key lay leaders will watch this DVD together over several meetings and benefit from the wisdom they have to share. A list of questions to discuss–the same ones that served as the basis for conversation in Louisville–is included in the packaging, as are the names of the participating ministers.

Among the ministers represented were two from Prairie Star: Victoria Safford from the White Bear UU Church in Mahtomedi, Minnesota, and Thom Belote from Shawnee Mission UU Church in Overland Park, Kansas. I was also pleased to see Kendra Ford, one of my fellow seminarians at Meadville Lombard and current minister of First UU Society of Exeter, New Hampshire in video. To learn more about Victoria, Thom, Kendra, and the other ministers who were invited, take a look a the introduction:

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