The morning was spent with Terasa at the District Office going over plans for my field ed this year. The end goal is the creation of a marketing task force for the MBD after identifying stake holders and developing congregational buy-in over the course of the coming year. There is the potential that Boston would be the site for the 07-08 big blitz UUA marketting campaign much like what the Bay Area is experiencing this year but the groundwork needs to be established sooner rather than later.
Part of the groundwork is educating our congregations on radical hospitality. What does it mean to be genuinely welcoming? How do you great the new comer and how do you develop the spiritual gift of making space for the stranger? The number one demographic response to churches that do not grow is the feeling that the congregation is one big happy family. Mid size churches and large churches grow, in jargon program sized churches and corporate sized churches grow. Small churches-pastoral sized churches just don't have the capacity to grow.
I wonder how I'm going to couch this in theological language for my University? We are proclaiming a welcome which rings of evangelism but also nurturing faith communities toward healthy welcoming behavior which is almost discipleship. At times I feel a difficulty translating UU parlance to mainline protestent parlance, almost as if they are seperate languages.