From David and Claudia Gross

Do you remember from your school days the essay exam question that began with “Compare and contrast…”?

On Sunday, February 23, I attended the UU Fellowship of Salina, Kansas, and then on March 1 Claudia and I attended both services at Bloomington, Indiana.  Both are UU congregations, most welcoming to a visitor and both in relatively new, well designed and well maintained buildings.  Both had flexible seating and excellent video and sound systems (video much better than that at UUCUC).  Both the small Salina building and the large Bloomington building are fully accessible, more so than UUCUC.

Salina is a lay lead fellowship of 60 or 80 members.  Maybe 45 were present, many for three hours (discussion group, 30 minute coffee, service and second coffee), as they had driven in to their island of truth from various small towns in that very red state.  Their order of service made no mention of programming between Sundays. 

Bloomington, IN, is a large UU congregation of 550 members, a choir of 70 members with 35 performing in each of their two services.  They have three full-time ministers (temporaily down from four), plus two emeritus (including the Rev. Bill Breeden) and one other on the staff list for a total of six.  Their programing, small groups and social action events are many every day of the week.  Their building offers interesting architectural features, for example FOUR video projectors with two images on the front walls for the congregation to see the words of the hymns with two more on the back walls for the choir and speakers to view. 

I am thinking to organize a one-day field trip for a small caravan (or large caravan) of our members to visit the Bloomington coffee hour, building and second service.   The Chair of their board would organize a group to discuss with us how they have handled growth in numbers.  Their senior minister said, “we are still attempting to figure this out.”  They had maybe 125 folks at their first service and maybe 250 at their second service.  Bloomington is an easier drive than Salina.