All the information and stories I’ve shared in this column over the past twenty-two months have been drawn from the items I found in the little storage area off the Willow Room. These are the files that our graduate-student archivist organized for us.

Recently, some longtime members of the congregation have brought in materials they collected while they served the church in various roles, such as Treasurer or Board Chair. While looking through some recently arrived folders and binders, I found the October 17, 2016 UUCUC Ministerial Search Congregational Survey results. 

This six-part report details 59 questions answered by 173 individuals, 81% of whom were Members, 17% were Friends, and the remaining 2% were Staff. The parts addressed the individual’s relationship with UUCUC; their religious and spiritual life; what they valued and needed in worship services; the qualities, functions, and demographics of the minister they sought; the respondent’s personal demographics/background; and ten open-ended questions about the strengths, challenges, achievements, goals, and future of the congregation.

Because this year’s Board of Trustees will work with the results of the Listening Circles and our consultant’s recommendations to develop a path forward for us, I think it could be useful to look back one decade and see what we believed was important then.

As was appropriate to the purpose of the survey, many of the questions addressed the qualities and responsibilities of the future minister and the values and needs in worship services. Twenty of the remaining questions were demographic inquiries.

The two ranked survey sections that are most germane to us are Your Relationship to UUCUC and Your Religious and Spiritual Life. Within those 15 questions, four stood out to me as interesting for what our current responses might be.

1)        The most important reasons people originally came to UUCUC and the reasons they continue to come: UU beliefs; celebrating common values; fellowship; children’s RE; intellectual stimulation.

2)        They attended worship services because: celebration of common values; intellectual stimulation; sense of belonging. 

3)        Almost half of the respondents were neutral about the membership growing; an additional 40% felt growth was a good idea. 

4)        A little over 50% of the people were neutral about enlarging our building, with 30% favorable to an increase in size.

Most of the open-ended questions concerned the potential minister, but the 2016 responses to two questions could be informative for us. I’ll excerpt the replies.

WHAT ARE THE MAIN THINGS YOU WOULD LIKE THE CONGREGATION TO ACCOMPLISH OR GET INVOLVED IN WITHIN THE NEXT THREE TO FIVE YEARS?

I would like our church to be involved, in substantive ways, in creating a thrivingly interdependent C-U community.

More multi-generational. Be a leader in addressing [the] challenge of meeting “religious” needs of today’s/tomorrow’s society.

Help make our church more visible to the C-U community.

Visible and strong leadership within the community on social justice and racial justice issues.

Capital campaign with particular focus on making our building accessible to all.

Grow our membership with greater outreach to the campus community and the community at large.

Strengthen our bonds with Channing-Murray and other regional UU fellowships/organizations.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE THE CHURCH’S MEMBERSHIP GROW? WHAT WOULD BE THE ADVANTAGES AND DISASDVANTAGES OF GROWING?

The community is growing [and] the church should be responsive.

Not in favor of a change in location. The addition is in need of renovation or replacement.

I’m not as concerned with the size of the congregation as I am with its degree of strength.

Bigger can be better if it means that we are making room for more people at the table, and that because of this we’re able to serve a really excellent meal.

I used to think growth was important, but having gone through it, I realize it caused a lot of problems.

I’m glad to see we have more diversity now.

Yes! The more the merrier! But substantial growth might come with growing pains and a decision point about the limitations of our wonderful and historic buildings and grounds.