So are you from A UU Church or a Fellowship? (beliefs, attend)

[lilithu]

Originally Posted by Pathos

Hi, I'm totally new here and what not, and haven't had time to read every post here yet, but I just wanted to throw my two cents in and say that I belong to a fairly huge UU Church (although my city also has a Fellowship waaaay on the other side of town) and I'm very, very happy there.

-Pathos

Namaste, Pathos.

Kewl username! And great to have another UU on board. Let me have the honor of being the first to frubal you!

So how big is your fairly huge church, and what's it like?

-lilith

[uu_sage]

Our group in Montclair is smoothie of the church and fellowship models. Church label describes us in that we do have a full time minister but fellowship can describe us in that we do have a fellowship hall but it is not our worship space-our meeting space is more like you see in a Quaker meetinghouse than a "typical" Protestant church. We have more than ample lay-ministers, often where you have members (as myself giving sermons/leading services)Our theological diversity and our music does not strike a problem for our members (often keeping original words in, sometimes not). Not a long history but we have been a presence of liberal religious voice since 1952. Leadership has a stripe of fierce indepence with plenty of opportunities to contribute and make things work.

[Green Gaia]

We are a church.

[uumckk16]

I also attend a church. It's good-sized but not enormous. I've never been to a fellowship meeting (this church is the only UU congregation I've ever attended) but it sounds interesting. I do think I would prefer the church setting though...I like the idea of going to "church" and I like that it is reminiscent of a Christian church.

Lilithu, you attend All Souls in D.C., correct? I live in the D.C. area, I'm hoping to come visit All Souls sometime...

[BrandonE]

I go to a UU church, but it is very small (less than 100 members). We have a part-time (at least in name, though she does so much) minister that was previously retired, but came out of retirement for us. She leads the service twice a month and we have lay led services twice or three times a month.

Our church was originally founded in about 1855 or so I think, but being in the south, it failed in the extremely conservative AnteBellum period. A group of about 15 or so revived it in the 50's, and it's been continuous since then. There was a large church building built back in the original incarnation, and though the building has changed hands several times and actually was moved across town at one point in the 1800's, we are back in the church, and just completed an extensive renovation.

My wife and I are new members that just finished our NewUU class a few weeks ago. Although our congregation is small, we just got 9 new members all at once, which is a pretty big deal for us. The church's vision statement aims to be a 200 member congregation in a few more years with a "full-service menu".

There is also a small Beloved Fellowship in our area that I think was a splinter group, and from what I understand, it is very intensely focused on improving race relations, which is a very big deal in our part of the south. We have a large social underclass in our city, which is divided sharply on racial lines. I'm not sure of what the history there is exactly though.