The CLF, a congregation that serves the needs of many isolated UUs through the Internet and by mail, is conducting online worship at 7 p.m. on Sundays and 1:30 p.m. on Mondays. Both are Eastern Daylight Time. The Monday service is a repeat of Sunday’s. For information go to QuestForMeaning.org, click on “Reflecting” and then on “Worship.”

• United States Immigration: Theological Reflection and Discussion is a collection of twenty-two brief excerpts from sermons and writings about the topic of immigration offered for UU congregations. Each excerpt is followed by questions for discussion. Download a copy of the resource, and find out more about it by listening to reflection authors Susan Karlson, Michael Tino, and Colin Bossen on The Journey Toward Phoenix, an internet-based radio blog hosted by the Rev. Carlton Elliot Smith of the UU Church of Arlington, Va.

• The Doctrine of Discovery: The True Story of Colonizing the Americas, a video to accompany the Doctrine of Discovery discussion guide, is available on UUA.org, along with a script.

For more information, contact Gail Forsyth-Vail, Adult Programs director, Ministries and Faith Development, Unitarian Universalist Association.

Among his findings:

• The average size of a UU congregation’s adult membership is 148.

• Twenty-eight percent of congregations reported an increase of more than three percent in adult membership in the past year and almost thirty-three percent reported declines of more than three percent.

• Declines of more than three percent were significantly more common among congregations of up to 60 members and midsize congregations (161-300) than other size categories. Growth exceeding three percent was most common among large congregations (401-600) and midsize congregations (161-300).

Jonasson concluded that, “The presence of midsize churches as a leading category for both growth and decline suggests that this is a relatively volatile category for membership when compared to others. It suggests both opportunities and problems to solve.”

Read more about Jonasson’s findings, including how congregations fared during the past decade, at the blog of the Office of Growth Strategies, called Growing Unitarian Universalism.

For more information about how such a council operates, contact the Rev. Peggy Clarke at pclarke at uuma.org. Clarke is creating a list of other UUs doing similar work.

Bernstein quotes the Rev. Dan Dick, director of Connectional Ministries for the Wisconsin Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church:

Turnaround churches almost all agree: They knew what they needed to do before they did it. For every declining church you can name, there is a growing one just like it in most ways. The key difference? Declining churches expect their answer to come from the outside; growing churches take responsibility for their own solutions.

In her blog post, Ruchotzke, who is Regional Leadership Development Consultant for CERG, writes,

Our congregations can get stuck in . . . patterns with events or traditions but we don’t always notice when a committee or a program has outlasted its relevance . . .  In systems, any change within the system elicits one of two reactions.  The first and strongest reaction is push-back:  the system wants to return to its previous “comfortable” state.  The other reaction is for the system to change and establish a new equilibrium of the parts, and a new homeostasis. It’s the role of the leaders to help the system to respond to change based on the congregation’s core purpose rather than to react based on habit and individual desire for comfort.

Several Unitarian Universalists—the Rev. Alison Cornish, Shelley Dennis, Dr. Cheryl Larsen, and Susanne Novak—are current GreenFaith Fellows. Up to four more UUs will be selected in June. Applicants must pay $750 in tuition fees. The fee is normally $1,500, but that has been halved for UU participants for the first three years of the program. The second year of the program begins this summer. Coursework is accomplished through retreats, field trips, and monthly seminars.

Cornish, minister of the UU Congregation of the South Fork in Bridgehampton, N.Y., is halfway through her GreenFaith fellowship. She said, “The first gathering we had—an environmental justice tour of Newark, New Jersey—was sobering and deeply moving. Sometimes, as Unitarian Universalists, we are better versed in the injustices on other continents than in our own backyards. It was good to . . . witness to this and to imagine what we saw as religious issues.”

The guide is a complete introduction to Unitarian Universalism, covering ministry, worship, religious education, social justice, and history. It includes essays by the Rev. Rosemary Bray McNatt, UUA Executive Vice President Kathleen Montgomery, Rev. John T. Crestwell Jr., Rev. Gail R. Geisenhainer, Rev. Jane Ranney Rzepka, Rev. Mark Belletini, Judith A. Frediani, Rev. Rebecca Ann Parker, and Dan McKanan.

The previous edition of the Pocket Guide was published in 2004. The guide is $7 from the Bookstore. Orders of ten or more are 20 percent off. The guide is also available as an e-book.

• Church Leaders Need to Be the Grown-ups, says church consultant Margaret Marcuson. She recommends not taking other people’s anxiety personally and paying more attention to your goals for yourself rather than your goals for the congregation.

• Shane Raynor, on the Ministry Matters blog, gives reasons for Losing the Offering Plate. They include: many people don’t use cash and checks anymore, it reinforces negative stereotypes about churches and money, and it gives the impression a dollar or two is enough. He suggests other ways of giving—a credit card kiosk in the foyer and an online giving option. He adds, “Even if you choose to retain the collection plate, pushing alternative ways of donating gives people who don’t use the plate permission to be more comfortable in your church.”