And even without funding for a start-up pastor, where is the non-staff start-up funding going to come from. It takes money to rent a public space, pay for a pianist, do outreach/evangleism, etc.

-Derek

Reality #4 has been hitting me hard lately, since it has become increasingly clear that what I mean by Universalism, is not what most other folks in the UUA mean by Universalism. Let alone the problem of the ambiguous “Good News”. The adamant vagueness makes me worry about standing for nothing and falling for everything.

If I start a church, theology is one thing we will need to be more clear about. We can not be everything to everybody, and still be meaningful.

1. I’m trying to think back to the folk I know who’ve done church starts in Christian denominations…

In the Evangelical Brethren, new ministers are pretty much expected to start a church if they want a job. Almost the entire denomination is geared around it, and there are all sorts of tapered grants and salary supports. Needless to say, they’re growing like crazy.

The United Methodist vary from conference to conference, so your results may vary. But the conference I’m familiar with budgets out for x-many church starts a year (one to three, if I remember correctly). Ministers have to stand in line to get to do church starts, which means those who do them are not always the best qualified at church starts, but at playing church politics and kissing the bishop’s ass. Still, they manage to do a small but steady trickle of church starts every year. And the vast majority succeed.

Starting a new church isn’t any harder than starting a new nonprofit org. If it isn’t happening, it’s because people don’t want it to happen. The question then becomes, who doesn’t want it to happen and why not?

1. I’m only a three-year-old UU, so I’m not the best judge of this, but do UUs have some mystique of clergy leadership? Is there the assumption that UU laity can’t handle the traditional clergy responsibilities well enough on their own? If so, that’s disturbing. Most evangelical churches thrive precisely because of their active lay ministry programs.

I’ve encountered a subtle attitude since a UU, and I don’t know if I’m making it up or if it’s just my particular congregation or what. But there seems to be the belief that either (a) you have the “gifts and graces” and are in ordained local church ministry or (b) you can’t cut it. There’s no concept that you could have the “gifts and graces” (and maybe the degrees, too) but choose to remain a layperson who is also a minister.

So is this just me and my imagination (entirely possible, by the way), me and my particular congregation, or is this the way it is across the UUA?