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Showing posts from April, 2016

"We're different" or "we make a difference"?

I was in a discussion today with some of my church folks. We were supposed to be talking about salvation, and I was trying to find a way into this by talking about what difference belonging to our community might make to us. I was trying to get us to think about what church does rather than what church is - asking the "process" question not the "essence" question. I asked why people came to our community, trying to work out what difference it makes to people's lives. I kept pushing but the answer I kept getting was how we were different to other churches - how other churches felt oppressive, restricting, confusing - but we felt liberating, simple, and lighter. We kept coming back to the conversation about how we're different to other churches. Which might seem like a great thing to hear - it was a positive statement about the quality of our religious life in community - but as I reflected on it it worried me. Why? Because it's not the l

Largest British Unitarian congregations by membership 2015

This is some more number crunching from the Unitarian Annual Report. I thought it would be interesting to see the largest Unitarian congregations by membership: 1. London New Unity: Membership: 83 2. London Hampstead: Membership: 79 3. Hollywood (Kingswood): Membership: 65 4. Edinburgh: Membership: 60 5. Bolton Bank Street: Membership: 58 6. Mansfield: Membership: 57 Joint 7. Kendal: Membership: 55 Joint 7: Norwich: Membership: 55 Joint 8: Bury: Membership: 54 Joint 8: Eccles: Membership: 54 Joint 8: London Golders Green: Membership: 54 9. Portsmouth: Membership: 53 10. Dean Row: Membership: 52