People Need Respite From Committees

Certainly our committees need members.  But as membership chair of the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Berks County, Reading, PA, I feel our zeal to solicit support may be turning people away.

Most young families need two incomes in these supposedly affluent days. That means housework, child care, shopping, all the things that keep a family/household going, must be done after a long day's work. Single parents too are often carrying burdens of fatigue and little leisure time. These people come to church on Sunday for  respite for themselves and religious education for their children. What they don't need are more obligations.

Then too, in our church, there was the older couple who joined because it would be embarrassing to the family if no church affiliation was listed in their obituaries. They certainly were not interested in committees.

So what to do? I think we should present what we need to people joining or those not very active. But I think it should be done with discretion and empathy.  I want our churches to be places where one can still say, "Rest here. Relax here. Heal here. If you can help us with the work we do here, fine, but if you can't . . . you're welcome here."

Roma Greth
Membership Chair, First UU Church of Berks Co., Reading, PA (139 members)

Exit Interviews Helpful to RE

I am on the RE committee at the UU Church of Urbana-Champaign, IL,  and just love InterConnections. My husband (who is on the church's finance committee) and I typically make three or four copies of various pages in each newsletter for folks to be sure they benefit from the great ideas.

I wanted to respond to the question you posed in the August 1999 issue about exit interviews. The RE committee decided we needed to hear from our teachers about their experience in the classroom while the experience was fresh in their minds. We asked each of the RE teaching teams in June the following questions:

1. In general, how have you liked being a teacher?
2. What were the good aspects and the not-so-good aspects?
3. Do you feel supported by the DRE and the RE committee?
4. Do you feel supported by the larger church?
5. How did you feel about the curriculum you used?
6. Do you have any suggestions for improvements to our church's RE programs?

Peggy Patten
UU Church of Urbana, Champaign, IL (225)

Seeking Urban Outreach Stories

I'm a UU seminarian, doing research for my sponsoring congregation on strategies for urban outreach. We're particularly interested in ministering to neighborhood kids, and hopefully thereby inviting their families in. If your congregation has tried this kind of project, or any urban outreach project, I would love to talk with you about your experience: what worked, what didn't, what you learned. Please get in touch if you can help!

Rebecca Bryan
467 Lincoln Ave., Orange, NJ  07050