Connection • Community • Digital Leadership
There’s so much going on with the climate and some awesome UU events and opportunities coming up! That’s why I’m going LIVE with Aly Tharp of Unitarian Universalist Ministry for Earth to share a quick briefing to share highlights. Please watch and share!
Learn more at www.uumfe.org.
Videos of the Spring 2017 Minns Lectures on “Historical and Future Trajectories of Black Lives Matter and Unitarian Universalism” are now available.
Lecture 1: Friday, March 31
Presented by the Rev. Mark Morrison-Reed, Affiliated Member, Meadville-Lombard Theological School. The Rev. Mary Margaret Earl, Executive Director and Senior Minister at the Unitarian Universalist Urban Ministry (UUUM) acted as respondent. Lecture held at First Church in Boston, 66 Marlborough St., Boston, MA
Lecture 2: Saturday, April 1
Presented by the Rev. Rosemary Bray McNatt, President, Professor of Unitarian Universalist Ministry and Heritage, Starr King School for the Ministry. DiDi Delgado, writer, activist, organizer, and freelance journalist, acted as respondent. Lecture held First Parish in Cambridge, 3 Church St., Cambridge, MA
October 22-25, 2015 * Morristown, NJ
Behold the awesome! It is the LREDA Fall Conference with a focus that all Unitarian Universalist congregations and their religious leaders need to wrap their minds and ministry around:
Yes, we’re talking Religious Education Without Walls and our keynotes, workshops and other programming will be covering critical building blocks for ministry, religious education, and faith development in today’s digitally connected world.
This event not to be missed.
And I’m not just saying that because I’m leading part of the programming. It is because I care too much about you to let you be left behind, struggling with 19th and 20th century ministry models. The horror! We have to move forward.
You know we have to change the way we transmit our faith and values as the world changes. Yes? Good! So let’s all convene at the LREDA Fall Conference, and learn, experiment, and move forward together.
I will be offering the Friday keynote, two workshops and serving as the conference social media / digital ministry coach.
Trust me. This is one of the events where you’ll hear about it after the fact and wish you had been there.
If you want to go, you need to reserve your hotel room now as space for this event will go fast. Why? Because it is covering so much critical information our religious leaders know they need. The reserved LREDA rooms are going to go fast. Oh, and Emma’s Revolution will be there too.
Here are critical links via LREDA.org:
If you don’t have the professional development budget for this, tell your leadership that this is critical education and ask them to help you find the funding. You’ll be glad you did, and so will they… I don’t know what scholarships are available via LREDA or your region, but make sure to check. You might be able to get some support.
I hope to see you there!
In cooperation,
Peter
Friends, this Fall I’m leading two separate day-long trainings on UU social media and membership growth. I hope you’ll join us!
Here’s the deal. Today we need to be intentionally integrating our social media, visitor greeting and other membership development efforts. If we don’t, we’re in trouble.
Thanks to technology the path to membership is moving increasingly online. How many people visit your website before visiting? Around 100%. And now people are wanting to explore your social media and check you out digitally for a while to judge you before they visit. That’s right, they’re judging you based on what you’re online presence and identity.
Potential members are increasingly making a decision about your congregation based on their digital experience, and then and only then, if that’s good, they’ll visit in person to confirm you are what you’ve said you are online. Increasingly you need to be helping people pre-qualify themselves for membership online if you want them to visit and join in person. And your existing members? They are bombarded with information via multiple communication channels. How do you get them to hear you and to not drift away? We’ll discuss all of this in more in one very full, exciting and useful day…
Think of this training as a 2014-2015 upgrade for your communications and membership growth strategy.
Again, here the dates and registration links. If you have questions, Email me.
What’s that you say? Are these events being lives streamed? No, but I will be turning the content into text and video resources. Make sure you are subscribed to my Leading Congregations E-Newsletter to be updated as they become available.
In cooperation,
Peter
COLORADO
Growing UU Membership Using Social Media and Visitor Integration Strategies
Day-long training with Peter Bowden
Saturday, October 4th, 2014
High Plains Church, UU (HPCUU)
1825 Dominion Way
Colorado Springs, CO 80918
Event Registration
RHODE ISLAND
UU Social Media & Membership Growth Intensive
Day-long training with Peter Bowden
First Unitarian Church of Providence, RI
November 8, 2014
Event Registration
The following program is close to final for these two events. There may be some small changes in timing and titles, but the content is set.
8:30 Registration & Refreshments
9:00 Opening Worship & Welcome
9:15 Technology, Culture and the Challenge to Congregations
How is changing technology changing us? We’ll look at the new technology norms for how people are connecting, learning and making decisions. Understanding these changes is critical to effective outreach, social media use, and membership development.
9:25 Social Media and the New Path to Membership
The path to becoming a member in a congregation has changed significantly in recent years. Not in terms of what has to happen for people to connect with a congregation, but how, when and where these connections happen. Today much of what happens in the course of “church shopping” happens online via congregational social media channels.
10:45 Break
11:00 Increasing Engagement, Understanding Social Media Today
For congregations to maximize engagement with newcomers, members and friends, we need to understand what communication platforms people are using, what they are using them for, and the new norms for institutional communication. We’ll identify the top social media platforms today, look at their use by demographic, and identify key ways congregations need to shift their approach in order to communicate effectively today.
11:30 Break Out Session
What have you tried? What works? What doesn’t? We’ll take some time to learn from each other, share successes and challenges. This will also prime our lunch time conversation.
12:00 Lunch
We’ll take a nice full hour lunch to allow for conversations to continue, connections to be made, and to let our brains cool down as needed!
1:00 Report Back
When we gather after lunch, we will take some time to hear some of our success stories and insights from our lunch conversations.
1:20 Social Media Storytelling, Relationship and Membership Growth
We’ll go deeper into the strategy of communicating with newcomers, members and friends via social media with the goal of building relationships, increasing participation in congregational life, and growing your membership. To be successful at this, we need to master the art and science of telling the many stories of congregational life in ways that are interesting, meaningful, and invite participation.
2:00 Best Practices for Keeping Members Engaged and Coming Back
If we’re successful in brining newcomers into our communities, soon we will have new members. Which raises the question, how do we keep members coming back in today’s world with so many competing demands for people’s attention and time.
2:20 Developing Social Media Plans, a Small Group Exercise
We’ll break into small groups and go through the process of developing a social media plan for one primary event or happening within the life of your congregation using strategies detailed earlier in the day. This may be for a large fundraiser, your monthly newcomer class, or a special holiday event.
2:45 Discussion on Small Group Exercise
3:00 Q & A Time
3:30 Closing
“Peter provided our team with an opportunity to learn together about social media giving us a common understanding of the benefits and costs of utilizing it. His enthusiasm for social media is infectious, making us feel not only that implementing it is possible and perhaps inevitable as our world continues to evolve.” — Sara Deshler, Church Administrator, Cedar Lane U U Church.
“Peter’s passion for social media communications and Unitarian Universalism is contagious. His vision for our future is something we need to learn and embrace.” – Don Southworth, UUMA Executive Director
Peter’s training on Social Media was clear, instructive, and interactive. He is dynamic, engaging and brings an enthusiasm to his sessions that is contagious. I recommend him highly.” — Mark Bernstein, Regional Growth Development Consultant, Central East Region of the UUA
Those of you interested in UU ministry, theological education and finances — this post is for you.
What’s the future hold for our theological schools?
What does the past tell us?
Can we overcome crushing student debt?
What are the choices for our association?
If the questions above interest you, read Larry Ladd’s new paper shared at recent Panel on Theological Education conference.
The following guest post is by Barb Greve, Interim Director of Religious Education currently serving the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta, GA, and includes links to download files of the described religious education schedule poster. ~ Peter
I noticed that several of the Religious Education/Exploration classes in my programs were struggling with following a consistent schedule of components from week-to-week. I suspected that having such a framework might help the attendees and facilitators alike know what to expect each session. I also know that for some of us, knowing the meta-schedule helps to reduce our anxiety and thus allows us to more fully participate in the learning session.
To address both these needs I created a visual schedule to put in each of our Religious Education/Exploration program’s class spaces. My intent was to create something that helped to remind everyone in the class what the order of the day should be and to do it in such a way that allowed those who couldn’t read to be able to follow the schedule easily.
So far the posters have been warmly received. They are too new to know if this will help for the long haul, but I suspect they will. With an ever-changing volunteer corps and learners whose attendance rotates in unpredictable patterns, everything we can to help those in the classrooms know what to expect is bound to be helpful.
This poster I created is available to any and all who would like to use it. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. This means that you are welcome to use it as is, make changes to it and reproduce it but can not put the original or any derivation up for sale. This was created for the common good of all Unitarian Universalist Religious Education communities.
Peter Bowden 