A New Fellowship Movement (by Cindy Landrum)
During my time in ministry, I've seen a few congregation-growing initiatives from our association. I was a minister in the Extension Ministry program, which partially-funded ministry in select small congregations in an attempt to get them to grow. There was the large-church start-up that the UUA attempted in the Dallas area. Now we have multi-site, which I am a big fan of, and hope it works. But arguably the greatest of such programs was the Fellowship Movement from 1948-1967, which started hundreds of congregations. About 30% (323 in 2008) of our current UU congregations started in the Fellowship Movement.
The problems with the Fellowship Movement, if you ask ministers, was that they produced congregations that were lay-led and often hostile to ministry, and as a corollary, insular and small and resistant to growth. They often resisted words like "worship" and "sermon" and held services that were more like lectures. The pluses are self-evident: it cre…
The problems with the Fellowship Movement, if you ask ministers, was that they produced congregations that were lay-led and often hostile to ministry, and as a corollary, insular and small and resistant to growth. They often resisted words like "worship" and "sermon" and held services that were more like lectures. The pluses are self-evident: it cre…