Another of my articles was published :-). The talk was called “Why Liberal Churches are Growing” but I like my title better. The characteristics apply to any congregation whether liberal or conservative. To me, this was one of the most important talks at GA.

We can learn a great deal from conservative churches. Please abandon your stereotype that they are mindless automatons who just attend and throw money at their congregation. It’s insulting and ignorant on our part.

Like any organization, they are doing something right when that many people feel that they are being ministered to effectively. Read the article.

As I am a newbie here covering GA, I get a little slack cuz I don’t quite know the process. So I kinda screwed up getting my articles submitted but, finally, my first UUA GA 2007 article has hit the UUA website! This was about the Unitarian church in Transylvania.  Okay, you can stop now, it’s not about vampires. Just read the article.

 Tonight I was at the Youth and Young Adult Coffee House. Wowser! That should have been covered by streaming video. As I write this, the ceiling over my head is a-shakin and a-rumblin’ with all the kids yelling and screaming! You’d think it was an earthquake! Man I have not heard or felt so much smokin’ hot passion, angst, emotion, energy since, well, since I was a teenager. I’d post some pictures but I figured I better not. I also can’t repeat some of the stuff. No matter how good or bad, the performances were all buoyed by a level of energy and hormones that was amazing.

What a buzz!

 Ciao!

Through the vagaries of chance, I got the opportunity to present at one of the workshops on organizing newsworthy justice events (Thank you, Janet!). One of the other speakers talked about social justice while I talked about PR. We each gave a short talk and then followed up with about 30 minutes of questions. The following is from my notes:

My name is Dean Goddette and I am chair of Outreach at Chalice Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Escondido, California. Just north of San Diego, Escondido is one of the most conservative cities in the state with a record of making it illegal for landlords to rent to illegal immigrants, to force the closure of emergency homeless shelters because they attact drug addicts, thieves and illegal immigrants. And besides, as one city councilor put it, “The bible says that the poor will always be with us. ”

In the midst of this, in fact, probably because of this, we have doubled in size from about 90 members to 193 members in about 5 years.  We are one of the fastest growing congregations in California.

And it’s not by advertising. If you leave here with one message it is that it is what you do as individuals that drives inreach and outreach and congregational growth.

For you outreach and PR people, a few questions:

• How many have a listing in your local paper’s church directory?
• How many of you know who the religion editor or writer at your local paper?
• How many have written up a news story with pictures and provided it to the religion writer?

Newspaper reporters are almost always starved for copy. They have careers and they want to move up the ladder. Several stories that we started with a local paper “graduated” to the larger regional paper. The local reporters become a resource for you as to what is newsworthy. As you develop a relationship, you don’t have to write everything up, you can pitch them a story on the phone and they will say yea or nay.

My Outreach co-chair has focussed on PR and has a list of all the papers and newspaper reporters. He contacts them on a regular basis. But be aware that reporters have a nose for BS. You need to actually be presenting them with news.

For those of you in social action or justice, you are the ones who can lead your congregation and provide newsworthy events for outreach. They can’t make stuff up. So the more authentic the event the better.

I’ve bumped into everyone except Al so I don’t know if I believe that he is actually here ;-).

There are two things that I’d like to see happen differently next year. First, I would bring my guitar and encourage other musicians to do the same. I am shocked, SHOCKED! at the lack of random music. Second, I would encourage people to watch the streaming video. Your first choice should be to attend but, if you can’t, watch the video.

The last two days have been a bit crazy. As I mentioned, I was recruited to be on a panel  and that went well as best I can tell.

There are a number of events that are streamed live from the General Assembly but unless people actually start watching, it will be going away. Not that I have any inside knowledge. But like anything else, if it costs money (and I am sure that it is not cheap) and people aren’t using it, it will go away.

I have to admit that this is my first GA and I have not watched any of the streaming coverage of the last five or six GAs that were covered. But since I am here in the communications room at GA, I have watched a great deal of the streaming coverage.

There are some basic questions. Do people know that the streaming coverage exists? If they do, is the material covered of interest to them?

From my own experience, I had absolutely no idea about what went on at GA. Shame on me, I missed out on a great deal over the years. But also, like a lot of UUs, I was anti-authoritarian and had some real misconceptions about the UUA. So, for better or worse, the more I could ignore them the better. UU was all about my local congregation, not the UUA.

But that’s changed now. I attended an excellent session by Terasa Cooley about the characteristics of growing congregations. One of the points was that growing congregations establish a good balance between “I”, “We” and a “Larger Vision”. I have been stuck in “I” and “We” for a long time now. But the times they are a changin’…

Goooooood morning. It’s 7:30AM on Thursday. It is the calm before the storm. As I was sitting in the war room / web center / communications center at GA, I felt the strong urge that I should be smoking a cigarette along with my coffee, diet Coke and cold pizza.

People have been drifting in and I am only starting to remember their names. The two Lances (Lance 1 and Lance 2, also known as Thing1 and Thing2 or T1 and T2) have been getting things ready for streaming video. they’ve been working on it all week so right now it seems to involve sitting at a computer and working very very intently.

We started the coffee going and soon after the hotel staff came by with buckets of coffee. We were chatting and Janet says, “Oh! You’re Dean Goddette!” Not quite sure how to take that but it turns out that Janet is Janet Hayes teh UUA Public Relations Director. She had seen one of my posts on PR-L. “I wanted to ask you to tell that story at my workshop but I thought it was rude to ask someone only a week before the session.” After more coffee, she reminded me of what I had posted (ok, it was early) and I said I would be glad to do it. When is the session? “Oh, it’s at 10:30, so now I feel really bad asking you to do it two hours before the workshop.”

I’m glad to do it. As a matter of fact, I have to head out now to get ready. I probably should have eaten something…