Autumn Unitarian Universalist Thread - All Welcome - Page 3

[artgoddess]

Originally Posted by ziggy

Last night was the first of the membership classes. It was fun, nice to hang out with people, nice to get to know the minister in a different way, but... I swear, it had nothing to do with religion.

: Now I'm curious how did the membership class have nothing to do with religion? Didn't anyone bring up the words Unitarian or Universalist?


My son and I were grocery shopping today and he asked if we could play homonyms (he loves trying to come up with as many as he can) and so he comes up with night/knight. then he asks me if knights are real or just pretend. I tell him they are real, and people are still knighted. Then he asks me if kings are real, yes honey there really are kings. Then he asks, "Is god real?" Tomorrow the intern minister is preaching and I'm toying with the idea of telling him he can ask her about it when she gives the children's message. But that's just because I'm on her internship committee and I'd love to see how she handles the answer in front of the whole congregation. Mean or no?

[ziggy]

OK, I suppose it didn't have *nothing* (hello double negatives) to do with religion but, well, here's what we did:

-Chalice

-Intros
--Name
--Childhood Religion
--Childhood spirituatlity

-What is UU?
--What do we think it is
--What have we heard about it

-Lifeboat exercise
--We were read this story about a ship that sank, and 30 people ended up on a lifeboat meant for 7 people. The captain decides to keep the able bodied people and, after multiple days of rowing, they are rescued. The captain is put on trial for murder but found not guilty.
--We were then asked to pretend we were the captain. How do you decide who, if any, gets thrown overboard.
--Then we were given 15 minutes as a group to discuss this, which was really more like 45 minutes.

-"Theology"
--The previous exercise brought up who is "allowed" in church. Is hate speech allowed? What if somebody is in the KKK, but doesn't say anything at church? What is OK and what is not, and why? Why did we feel the way we do about certain things.
--Some more stuff about community. Why do WE come to the UU church, etc.

And then we were given homework and we left.

[artgoddess]

That evening sound very religious to me Sounds like a lot of fun, except for the damned lifeboat thing, I hate that exercise. At least you had the "if any" option.

[ziggy]

Well, if we chose to throw nobody overboard then we all died.

After the class I updated my FB status to say something about the class, and my minister commented on it. I was like... oh. right. we are FB friends.

[artgoddess]

Originally Posted by ziggy

Well, if we chose to throw nobody overboard then we all died.

After the class I updated my FB status to say something about the class, and my minister commented on it. I was like... oh. right. we are FB friends.

I'm facebook friends with my minister too but I don't think he's ever made a comment on my page.

yeah I just hate the exercise. I've done it at work retreats, team building type exercises, and many a church thing. Beginning in 8th grade RE if I recall. It's been a life boat or a bomb shelter or other variations over the years but it all boils down to making people decide that one persons life has value over another's. I just hate it.

I'm glad you have a class you enjoy. We did a "Building your own theology" class at our congregation, it was amazing! If your church offers something like that I highly recommend taking the class.

[Adele_Mommy]

Originally Posted by ziggy

Well, if we chose to throw nobody overboard then we all died.

After the class I updated my FB status to say something about the class, and my minister commented on it. I was like... oh. right. we are FB friends.

I don't like that kind of exercise either. Artificially designed to annoy everyone as far as I can tell.

I am also FB friends with my minister and I do like that.

He frequently links to interesting things like this video.

I get regular doses of the healing spiritual practice of Scrabble too of course.

[Adele_Mommy]

Originally Posted by artgoddess

: Now I'm curious how did the membership class have nothing to do with religion? Didn't anyone bring up the words Unitarian or Universalist?


My son and I were grocery shopping today and he asked if we could play homonyms (he loves trying to come up with as many as he can) and so he comes up with night/knight. then he asks me if knights are real or just pretend. I tell him they are real, and people are still knighted. Then he asks me if kings are real, yes honey there really are kings. Then he asks, "Is god real?" Tomorrow the intern minister is preaching and I'm toying with the idea of telling him he can ask her about it when she gives the children's message. But that's just because I'm on her internship committee and I'd love to see how she handles the answer in front of the whole congregation. Mean or no?

Not mean at all IMO. She would probably enjoy the challenge!

[Adele_Mommy]

Originally Posted by bigteamug

Hiya!

On the church name change thing - I would definitely consider the fact that most UU churches end up using some kind of an acronym to keep things easy, so just like when you name your kid (who wants the initials M.U.D.?) keep the shortened version of the church name in mind...one we attended was QUUF, which was kinda catchy and worked pretty well - our current one is UUCS or UUSC, which should be something more catchy, since I can't ever seem to remember it...

I wish we had a minister - we're between right now, not a great place to be, weighs heavily on the remaining church staff and hard-working board members, I think.

Oh, and our coffee is not bad, but then I don't drink the stuff often, anyways....and they have tea, too, and a barista cart that the youth group does, stocked with great baked goodies.

How many of y'all have some sort of parent support group at your churches? We had a parent covenant group at our old church, and I really, really miss it. The church even provided the childcare for us. I want to start one up at the new place, but have limited time and energy for it....

bigteamug!

That is a good point about the name acronym. I noticed that one of our computer servers used to be named fuc and that seemed, well, not the best choice perhaps.

We were supposed to have further congregational discussion on the name change last Wednesday, but all church activities were cancelled due to a blizzard. I'm not sure when or if that particular talk will be rescheduled.

I don't drink coffee at all so I can't speak to the quality or lack thereof at my church.

I believe we have had various parent support group kind of things off and on. I know for awhile one of the Wed night activities for adults was a parenting discussion group. And sometimes they have parents nights out or nights in where they provide childcare. I don't participate in that much myself now that dd is 9. I talk with other UU parents of kids in her age range all the time, we just don't really have a group. Good luck if you do decide to start one at your church!

[ziggy]

We had our second class last night. One person didn't come back so it was just four of us and the minister. It was really nice. We had to "plan a worship service" which basically involved us sitting there going "crap, what do our worship services usually entail?" It was really fun. Our minister just sat there kind of laughing, throwing her ideas into the mix every so often, etc. I do wish we had more... structure, I guess. Like, this was fun, but it doesn't feel like a membership class. Like "these are our expectations of members of our congregation" or something.

[artgoddess]

Originally Posted by ziggy

We had our second class last night. One person didn't come back so it was just four of us and the minister. It was really nice. We had to "plan a worship service" which basically involved us sitting there going "crap, what do our worship services usually entail?" It was really fun. Our minister just sat there kind of laughing, throwing her ideas into the mix every so often, etc. I do wish we had more... structure, I guess. Like, this was fun, but it doesn't feel like a membership class. Like "these are our expectations of members of our congregation" or something.

This really stands out to me, as a part of a smaller congregation. We have 60 members but some of those are in name only, really we have less than 50 active members. Our congregations does put a lot of expectations on it's members. In some ways i feel like, Yeah, this is the only liberal religious organization in town, and we need everyone to be involved and step up. and in some ways I feel the amount of expectations really put a drain on the membership and this is why we have plateaued, and grew very quickly the first few years, but haven't seen much growth in the last 2.

[Adele_Mommy]

Happy Solstice Everyone!

Come join us on our new Winter UU Thread!