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3,672

In one of the early episodes of Batttlestar Galactica (2000s series) the President carefully writes down the number of surviving humans on the band of surviving spaceships on a whiteboard. She adjusts the number with each news report of loss of life.

That reminds me of the situation we're in now in British Unitarianism. We passed a resolution in 2006 calling for growth, and it's taken five years before we have publically published what our actual membership numbers are. So here it is: 3,672.

Even that number has not been officially published, but added up by someone in America. If any British Unitarians are not paying attention to what Scott Wells is writing, particularly here, then you should be. We all should be.

And we should realise that our situation is exactly that of Battlestar Galactica. We are a surviving band. There is much too much complacency still. The next ten years will be vital.

Comments

Anonymous said…
This is actually far worse than anyone will admit to. There is a demographic time bomb waiting to explode under these figures.

My guess is a critical factor is how many people are there in the smaller groups under 65-70.

If there are only one or two then start writing the group's obituary. There will be no-one left to do the basic grunt work to keep going, never mind grow.

There are one or two groups out there who will cease to be viable during the next few years. Once they've gone,that's a local presence wiped out.

However, as many of the 75-80s have done nothing to pass their legacy on and kept it as their own safe/comfort zone, what could be expected?

Their groups die out with them.
I am very tempted to say "Tough"!
1:59 pm
Scott Wells said…
Thanks for noting my blogging. I do want to help.

You should insist on having Jamie Bamber play out in the televised Unitarian series.
3:00 pm
Robertson said…
'Anonymous' is correct in much of his/her analysis ; had I been at Swansea as an 'outsider', I might have believed from all the talk of 'strategic priorities' that I was attending the annual meetings of a denomination ten times the size. The bright spot was the admission of Bangor Fellowship; I would suggest every church with more than 30 quota members ought to be 'planting' a new fellowship in its locality on the Bangor model-which if I remember correctly, began with 4 people!Even if it meant the parent group met less frequently ( they could repeat services in the new 'plant'!)Any church that didn't participate would effectively be saying they had nothing worth sharing beyond their own walls; as 'Anonymous' says,such groups will eventually die out.
9:32 pm
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