I'm a little reluctant to put this up--it really is just a copy of my notes--but I think it will be useful as a reference to those who were at the workshop.

I want to tell you a bit about my experience as a New Member Welcomer.  I started in this role shortly after I joined UCS seven years ago.  I began the experience by focussing on all aspects and stages of the welcoming process.  I found that I absolutely loved the work.  I feel that getting to know the newcomers to your congregation is like getting to open all the presents.  Being exposed on a constant basis to people who have just discovered UUism keeps me connected to that feeling of wonder and that sense of purpose to our faith.

At the same time, I found that the effort was nearly killing me.  We're a small congregation--about 80 or 90 members, and we alternate between ministry and lay-led.  When I tried to provide for the visitors, the friends, and the new members, I found that I was spreading myself over as many as forty people.  When I came back after my second "maternity leave" I realized that if I was going to do this as one person with two toddlers, I was going to have to cut back.  I knew I could only afford to spend a couple of hours a week--including greeting--on a newcomer's program.  This meant that the broad, comprehensive version of things that Lisa has described was out of the question for me.  I needed a narrower set of priorities.

I was also feeling disconnected from the very people I wanted to get to know.  My passion was for the creation of relationships, and I wasn't getting the opportunity to do that.  There was woman in the congregation that I really liked and wanted to get to know, and I realized that I'd been putting it off for months on the grounds that I had too much work to do with getting to know the new people.

I had a mental shift.  I realized that I had to pick a stage of the welcoming process and focus on that.  Art Brewer talks about five stages of membership and makes it very clear that one person (or one committee, in larger congregations) can only focus on one stage.  Lisa and I have both tested this, and Art is right.  I chose to focus on people who are at the exploring stage.

I want to take a minute to define what I mean by exploring.  Imagine you're talking to someone at a cocktail party.  You're exchanging pleasantries about the weather, maybe talking about what each of you does for a living, then somehow--whether it's by one neat comment, or a series of things you have in common--you think to yourself "hey, this is someone I'd really like to get to know".

When a person has that feeling, that's the moment I describe them as exploring.  Often, this feeling comes before people are ready to commit to membership--sometimes they feel this way on the first day, sometimes it takes a year of spotty attendance.  The technicalities of this phase are different--at UCS we call them exploring friends, at UCV they still call them visitors--but the task is always the same.  Taking the person who has said "I want to get to know you" and connecting them with what the congregation has in common with them.

When I realized that's where I wanted to focus my energies, I changed what I put first.  I had a short list of people who were at that exact stage of exploring and thought "what can I do to provide for these people who are already invested in us?".  And I invited this new woman to join the RE committee with me.  I found her to be a fountain of enthusiasm and new ideas.  Encouraged, I invited a couple of other new people over for dinner.  We got to talking and tossing around ideas and before I knew it I we were organizing a parent's group.  That same set of newcomers went on to set up a winter sleigh ride party which was one of our most successful celebrations in years.  Another new person I'd been meaning to get to know was interested in campus ministry.  After becoming connected with another established member with the same interest, they went on to conduct a couple of soulful sundowns, and that newcomer became an invaluable asset to the worship committee.  That spring, we had six new members.  Of those six, three became chairs of a committee, and one chaired a task force.  Another new person went on to lead a very successful fundraising campaign for her husband--who is Kenyan--to go back to Kenya and help his village and the surrounding ones dig wells to get access to fresh water.  Another group led a hugely successful valentine's day fundraiser.  The woman I'd originally wanted to get to know went on to apply for the DRE position, and has transformed our RE program.  In a lay led year, it's grown to the point where children and their teachers account for 42% of the attendance on the average Sunday.

I don't mean to suggest that my shift in focus was why we've had so many new people get involved in so many interesting projects.  These are enthusiastic, capable people, and I'm sure they would have found their places with or without my help.  But I've been finding over and over again that a little well placed encouragement and guidance speeds the process up a great deal.  And that, for me, this deeper connection feeds what I look for in UUism.

So, in the last year or two, I've refined my approach a fair bit, and I'll explain the technicalities of that shortly.  But I need to be clear that something that both Lisa and I have learned is that you can't focus on all aspects of the welcoming process at once.  Lisa's chosen to focus on visitors, and I've chosen to focus on exploring friends--this is well suited to the size of our congregations.  If I were to send out an e-weekly bulletin, it might say "this Thursday, weeding of flower beds.".   If she were to try to establish a personal relationship with each exploring newcomer in her congregation, she'd need to give up sleep.  What you focus on will depend on what your interest is, what the size of your congregation is, and what its needs are.  You also can't give up on the other stages--they still need to be done--but you leave this work to others, or just give yourself permission to just to do the best you can.  We still work to attract new visitors--we have a website and a sign and an ad in the paper--but we don't work that hard.  I still greet visitors, but the pamphlets I hand them are pretty much cut and paste versions of the stuff Lisa does, and I rely on other less connected  volunteers to visit with brand new people during coffee hour.  I concentrate personally on building relationships with my exploring friends.

I'd like to take a minute to describe this from the exploring friend's point of view, and then I'll tell you what I do to make that happen in an average of two hours per week.

After the newcomer has filled out their exploring friend pamphlet, they get a permanent name tag and start receiving the newsletter.  At this point they know me, and I make a point of visiting with them for a bit most Sundays to find out how they are doing.  I learn enough about them at this time that I start introducing them to other members of the congregation.  I send them little emails letting them know about things going on in the congregation that they might be interested in.  I let them know about the cross country email list for newcomers--which is a nice simple way for people to connect.

After a few weeks, I invite them to come greet with me for a Sunday or two.  Exploring newcomers are typically delighted to do this--they usually want to help, and it means that I get a chance to visit with them for fifteen minutes or so while we're standing there holding the order of service and waiting for the last five minutes when everybody arrives all at once.  There are other side benefit of having your newcomers help greet--it lessens the load on other volunteers, and it also means that established members start to recognize the newcomer's face as "one of us".  I always find people visit more with a newcomer once they've become a greeter.

At this point, the person is generally becoming fairly well established.  I have an idea of what they are interested in and what types of people they like.  I make a goal of inviting each exploring friend to dinner within a couple of months.  I usually have five or six exploring friends and a few established members at each dinner, and I make sure they I organize them into groups than naturally connect.  Around the same time I try to connect them with a larger opportunity for service--invite them to start attending a committee or to organize a project that they are interested in.  New people start a lot of sentences with "you know what you guys should really do?".  I try to have them realize that it's not "you guys", it's "us guys", and make sure that they have the tools they need to be successful.  This usually means an established member interested in the same project.  After they are well on their way to feeling a part of this community, I approach them to ask them about officially becoming a member.

From my perspective, the program looks a bit different.  Sunday, I spend twenty minutes before the service greeting, and twenty minutes afterwards visiting with exploring friends.  Monday, I sit down for about half an hour beside my email and really concentrate.  I start by dealing with anything arising from the previous Sunday--information I said I'd send people, or ideas that occurred to me from conversations.  Then I go through the list of exploring friends--there are about a dozen of them--and think about each one and what I can do to connect them.  Usually I pick out four or five to focus on.  I might invite them to a coming event, or send them a little "how are your home renovations going?" type email.  Then I spend a little time planning an upcoming event--I try to have a dinner once a month and go for lunch with a newcomer once every month or two as I can.  And that's it.

I want to talk a bit about results.  I've looked at the number of new members we recognize each year and compared it to previous years, and I can be pretty sure that it's stayed exactly the same.  This is a bit of an accomplishment since we were layled this year (which I'm told usually means a 10% drop), but I can safely say that there was no big gain in numbers.

There is another shift I've noticed, though.  We recognized six new people this June.  Of those new people, every single one had friends and a role in the congregation--many of them more than one.  Those six people together count for three RE teachers, one assistant teacher, the co-chair of our caring network, the running of a major social action project, several lay led services (and many more to come--one of them has specific skills as a presenter), a board member, co-coordination of a summer camping trip, coordination of set of all ages kids' soccer lessons, and the chair of our finance committee.

But more importantly, people keep commenting on the change in the "feel" of the congregation.  There's a sense of enthusiasm and vitality.  Every year we fight tooth and nail to fill our board seats and our committee chair positions--this year they practically filled themselves.  Our canvass was highly successful (for a variety of reasons including that it was exceptionally well run and we had a strong vision), coming in at a 44% increase.

There are a lot of reasons for this change in vitality, but I believe that the newcomers are a big part of it.  Just about every week I have a conversation where someone tells me, with tears in their eyes, that they had no idea there was a place like this.  Just about every week someone describes that feeling that we've all had in our congregations of knowing you can be here, be honest, and be home.  Just about every week someone tells me that they can't believe the quality of the people they find through UUism, and of the relationships they are finally getting the opportunity to build.  Just about every week I am reminded in a powerful, personal way, why I am a Unitarian Universalist.  This fuels my enthusiasm and my commitment in every area of what I do for my church.

It's true that your newcomers' program is one of the most critical needs of your congregation, but it is also true that it will meet some of the most critical needs in your congregation.  A congregation well connected to its newcomers is well connected to a powerful force of enthusiasm, and a powerful sense of the difference in can make in peoples' lives.  In the five years I've been working with new people, it's never been anything less than my favorite job.