In March 2007, perhaps in conjunction with preparing the History of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, 1982-2007, which was published in 2009, someone tallied the memberships of the church as they existed in 1981 and 2007. The enumeration included twelve categories, including age and sex, marital status, education, employers, frequency of attendance, and distance from the church.

In both 1981 and 2007, women outnumbered men. Memberships skewed younger in 1981. Married & never-divorced members outnumbered the other categories of divorced, divorced & remarried, and single never-married. In 1981 and 2007, we had 10 widowed & not remarried members. We also had 10 members who acknowledged that they lived with a partner/significant-other in 2007 – no one claimed that in 1981.

The 1981 members didn’t bother to say they had graduated from high school: 208 of them had gone to college, and of those, 134 had an advanced degree. In 2007, we had three high school graduates, and 115 people who had attended college, with 85 advanced degrees among them.

Between them, the University of Illinois and Parkland College employed 93 members in 1981 and 25 members in 2007. In 1981, 26 congregants were retired, and in 2007 that increased to 42. In both years, private enterprise was the next highest employer after Higher Education. No one reported being unemployed in 1981; 8 people did in 2007.

I suspect that because we are always talking about the building and where and what it should be – trust me, I’ve read the records! – the scribe for this tally of membership demographics calculated the frequency of attendance in 1981 compared to how far they lived from the church. Here are those results. First, the conclusion: “Difference in location has little significance on how often one attends.” Here are the attendance numbers, which are all based on members who live within 5 miles of the church. Every week = 103; Twice a month = 45; Once a month = 29; Rarely = 39; Almost never = 30; Never = 15.