GA 2008 - Growth Day Summary

Brief Summary of outcomes:

• Over 300 people participated in the day
• 8 people spoke about their views on Growth & Renewal
• 11 groups broke off to focus on specific questions and themes
• 162 people voted with ‘sticky dots’ for their priorities
• Almost 200 people completed a personal priority/commitment sheet on the day.  Additional ones are still being received.

Themes from the morning sessions included:

• Numerical growth
• Spiritual growth
• Resources
• Hospitality
• Publicity
• Buildings
• Events
• Outreach
• Knowing who we are
• New starts

Actions from the afternoon session included:

• Appoint a ‘czar’ in a congregation to take responsibility for growth
• Set up websites for all our UK congregations
• Experimentation with worship space & styles
• Welcoming visitors without harassing
• Service to local community (faith in action)
• Covenant
• New starts

 The most popular themes were Numerical & Spiritual Growth.  The general focus on achieving these was through attending to the welcome given to both new visitors and existing members of our congregations, ensuring buildings, both interior & exterior, are warm, welcoming and identifiable as Unitarian, experimenting with worship times and styles, re-igniting the passion and soul of our movement and living our faith and values through outreach into the local communities.  Perhaps Stephen Lingwood’s report of the Anniversary service sums it all up.  On Art Lester’s moving service Stephen responds:

“I think this was the perfect message to top off our growth day. We need all of the practical stuff, but it’s all useless if we don’t have at our centre an authentic spirituality.  We need soul.  We need prayer.  We need communities that bring people to a deeper life of the spirit.”