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Remembership
Background
The large amount of email concerning the idea of a Remembership Committee is very heartening, whether it ends up being called the Caring Committee (again) -- or Rememberers, ReMemberers, REmemberShip Committee, People Keepers, Calling Ministry, ReCallers, Sushine Committee.
Speaking on behalf of your "leadership," we certainly want to encourage this idea and I think we can help. As noted by others, you folks who are interested can just start doing the work of this committee without any formal structure. On the other hand, I think it would help you and it would be more inclusive and widely known, if your group were an official committee. By the way, I don't think we should try to create both a Remembership Committee and a Caring Committee at once -- if the need remains apparent, we can divide the committee later.
Making this kind of group official is easy. The Board can officially create the committee at almost any Board meeting. To abide by our governance, I need a charge (mission statement) and a chairperson (or two co-chairpeople), and a name of the committee, of course. The chairpeople need to be members of the church, but non-members are welcome to serve on the committee.
Membership on committees suggests meetings, but I suspect that after an organizational meeting (or possible two), meetings would be rare so long as the committee is functioning well.
Based on the email, at least 16 people are supportive of the idea. Of these people, the following 7 people have more-or-less expressed willingness to help, which I interpret to mean willingness to serve on the committee or at least get the process started. These people are Mary Otten, Rosemary Leen, Jeanne-Marie Moore, Bob Taylor, Monica Frank, Pam Love, and Kathy Dillon. To help get the process going, I suggest that these seven people have an organizational meeting -- with the understanding that anyone else is welcome to be included. Both Mary and Bob have indicated that they'd host such a gathering, or it could be at the church (just call Kim to get a room assigned).
There are a huge number of messages on this. The key ones that can help jumpstart the group's thinking are Martha Osgood's (3/16 and 3/19), Arlen Craig (3/19), and Monica Frank (3/21).
Go for it!
Ken Ross
Original idea
- From: Interconnections (UU publication for Lay Leaders)
http://www.uua.org/interconnections/membership/allthedocs.html
REMEMBERSHIP COMMITTEE
"As I considered a project for a college course I was taking, I was mindful of an experience I had in my UU congregation two years earlier. It is a mid to large size congregation and one where I felt very much at home in the choir as my smaller more intimate group. In 1993 some family dynamics created an atmosphere that affected my ability to attend church. I was so stressed that I needed Sunday mornings to enjoy the little quiet time I had in my own home. I was on emotional overload and had the distinct notion that, if I went to church and someone asked me how I was, I would burst into tears. I did not feel safe with that possibility.
"What I didn't anticipate was that no one from the church, where I had been a member for ten years, would call to find out how I was and why I was not coming to church. The only ones I talked to were the three close women friends with whom I talked at least once a week.
"The minister didn't call, the Caring Committee didn't call. It seemed that no one missed me or cared that I was not there. I asked the minister about this at one point and was told that if I was having a crisis I needed to contact the church. I responded that, when someone is in a crisis situation, it is not always easy to make that call. I truly believed that, in a church community, there should be some system of caring for the "flock" whether the individual members were there consistently or whether some had dropped off the radar screen. I almost left the church at this time but the draw of the choir won out and the family situation eased. Because I loved this spiritual community, I decided to stick with it and, when the opportunity arose to do a project for a class, I came up with the idea for the Remembership Committee."
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- RE-MEMBERSHIP COMMITTEE
Developed by Carol Hosmer
Members of this committee are recruited from the congregation. The idea is to call every member of the congregation 3-4 times during the year. The calls will have NOTHING to do with a request for money or services.
The requirements:
* Make a one year commitment
* Call assigned list of names 3-4 times during the church year
* Optional - send cards at appropriate times: holidays, anniversaries, birthdays, just because...
* Be comfortable or at least not intimidated about making phone calls to members
* Report back to committee, church staff, etc. so that appropriate follow through will take place
* Meet prior to each round of calls to develop script and discuss any problems or make suggestions for fine tuning
Tools:
* List of names from the church directory ( I recruited a person for each page in the directory)
* Script for each of the calls
Items to be covered in each call:
* Checking in to see how the person is doing
* If they have been in church, acknowledge and thank them for their participation
* If they have not been in church, acknowledge that and let them know they are missed
* Ask if they have anything they want to communicate with one of the church staff, be it minister, treasurer, board chair, music director, etc.
* Let them know they are a valuable part of a caring community
* Acknowledge their volunteer efforts
Possible other reasons to call:
* Reminder about annual meeting (the time we did this, our attendance at the meeting increased 50%)
* Holiday call - acknowledging that the holidays can be emotional roller coasters for folks
* Special celebration or event happening in the congregation
Results:
* Folks were very surprised and pleased to receive this kind of call
* Members could feel that their presence and participation was truly appreciated and some were inspired to more fully engage in the life of the congregation
Goals:
* Build a true caring community in which members feel good about themselves and their participation no matter at what level.
* Assure members that even if they have to be away from the community for a period of time that they are still cared about.
* Help maintain and grow the membership rather than having new members coming in and others leaving by the back door because they don't feel connected.
If someone were to set this up, would it perhaps look something like dividing the whole membership (and maybe some of the friends) into a certain number of sets of <insert manageable number> of members/friends, then seeking that number of people to be callers. Some folks will not necessarily need calls, so the Directory (or whatever more complete list that Kim provides for us) could not really be just divided into 10s...
A gathering - with food* - could be proposed, at which folks attending consider what kinds of calls could go out and what kinds of responses might be discovered and how to deal with them (how to respond to an irate person, to a person fading out as a UU, to a person with issues that someone or some committee in the church would want to know about and solve, etc.). The group could determine how often they'd want to contact people (3xyr, 4xyr?), how many was good. A large enough group might be able to say "I've seen Martha at the XX committee meeting" (for the Thank You part) or get an answer to "Is this Friend still attending?" Other reasons to call in hte next three-four months than just those listed could be determined.
There would probably need to be nudges to call, someone to keep track of the kinds of responses we'd get, perhaps a followup meeting every three or four months for feedback to the group, to re-vise the process and to add new folks into the project. We'd want to keep track of who was calling whom and whether a followup call would be needed sooner than the next four months. And we'd need to call the callers.
And the group would be able to help identify and discuss the deeper underlying purposes of the project that the original outline just hinted at...
Goals:
* Build a true caring community in which members feel good about themselves and their participation no matter at what level.
* Assure members that even if they have to be away from the community for a period of time that they are still cared about.
* Help maintain and grow the membership rather than having new members coming in and others leaving by the back door because they don't feel connected.
I can even see a report going to the Membership Committee, the Board, the Newsletter, and a summary of interesting tidbits in the UUpDate every little bit.
What would the project or committee be called? Rememberers? ReMemberers? ReCallers? PeopleKeepers? Would it be a sub-committee under Membership or just a loose cannon committee? And would we do it all summer too...Anyone have other ideas to add to change here? Does this (bare) outline sing to anyone who can hardly wait to flesh it out and make it real? If you do, there are a number of us who would definitely participate as Callers.
* "If you feed them, they will come." (Where have I heard that one before?)
VALENTINE's DAY CARD-MAKING to send to folks you haven't seen in a while
Quarterly phone calls to same set, but different members of it.
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