For the past few days I’ve been in Vancouver, British Columbia with the family. We’re visiting my wife’s sister and her family, something we like to do around the holidays. I have to confess that we didn’t make it to church this morning (it snowed here last night, so Julia and her sister, Christine, decided to take the children, Henry and Lyra, out for some sledding while the sledding was good!). For my part, I stayed at home to work on a new presentation called “Congregational Designations: Options for the Future.” I’m still using the same free service called SlideShare, but this time I’ve added an audio track, creating something the SlideShare folks call a “slidecast.” I’ve embedded it below in case you want to check out the content (how we designate the small, unaffiliated groups meeting within Prairie Star), or the technology (it involves uploading a slide presentation to SlideShare, uploading an audio track elsewhere, then syncing the two). Just press the green button and enjoy. The audio is a little low, by the way, so you may need to use headphones. Let me know what you think!
For another take on these small, unaffiliated groups, check out this post from Scott Wells’ blog Boy in the Bands.
Phil's Little Blog on the Prairie 
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December 15, 2008 at 6:52 am
Christine Robinson
As someone who has worked with the multi-site (branch) option, I’m aware that one thing we lack as a UUA is a style of good worship for very small (30 or fewer) worship groups. Groups that size can not usually sing from the hymnal, don’t have much in the way of music resources, and have only lay leadership. Even if they have sermon resources the rest of the service is very hard to do well. We need more resources and networking for excellent worship for that size group.
December 15, 2008 at 7:37 am
psdlund
Great point, Christine. Offering congregations that go for the multi-site branch option some realistic worship resources is a definite must. Getting some training in that probably should be one of the prerequisites for both emerging and multi-site groups. Thanks for you comment!
December 16, 2008 at 12:32 am
Kathy Burek
Phil,
Thanks for the good thinking around this issue. We know some groups really don’t want to be congregations in the usual sense of the word. We won’t get very far trying to force them to be anything other than what they are. Other groups have every intention of offering broad programming and reaching out to the communities around them. They will appreciate and benefit from any help the district can provide. Calling them all “Emerging Congregations” blurs an important distinction.
Great work!
Kathy Burek, VP
Prairie Star District Board (for those who may not know me)
December 16, 2008 at 12:39 am
psdlund
Yes, I really think we need to start offering a variety of designations. Small groups that are essentially “friendship circles” shouldn’t be designated the same as small groups that are looking to grow and affiliate. And if we’re going to meet our goal of getting at least four of these existing groups affiliated (and get four new groups in the process of affiliating), we’re going to need to find was to evaluate a groups progress toward affiliation. Thanks for your comment!