Online congregational communities are a permanent part of our congregational life now. We are developing new ways to engage and serve our online folks.
At a recent Wednesday Wisdom we asked the people assembled:
Who are the people in your Online Community?
How might you engage them?
How can you build capacity in your Stewardship Team?
We asked that final question because we know the work of engaging online community is in addition to all our Stewardship Teams are already doing.
People who are part of our online communities often are people who attend in the building and sometimes online. The folks who may attend in the building never or infrequently are also a part of our congregations and need to be nurtured.
Here are some ways you can engage your online people:
- Insert a link to learn more about your community in wherever you are streaming
- Hold some or all Membership classes online.
- Host Adult Ed classes on UUism and other topics online.
- Allow online participation in your Annual Meeting.
- Use online giving tools.
- Have some of your Cottage Meetings for annual stewardship online
- Host committee meeting online or allow for online participation
- Include your online community in the scope of your Sunday services through greetings, acknowledgement and participation
Building Capacity for Online Engagement in your Stewardship Team:
- Train people to use shared technology to build capacity for hosting online meetings
- Train people to use shared technology such as google docs, drive and calendar
- Train people to use online payments and make recurring payments easy
- Invite younger folk into the work and respect their knowledge and capacity to lead
- Invite members of your online community into the work of stewardship
Resources to Learn More:
- You can get information through the National Community for UU Multiplatform Ministry by requesting to join their Google Group here: https://groups.google.com/g/uu-zoom-inclusion
- You can access a video recording of their session at the 2023 GA on Zoom Transformation here: https://vimeo.com/826365311/f40518ed13.
- There is a Video Engagement Strategy Training available through the UU Institute.
Let us hold fast to what we know to be true – we are a community of care and strength, creativity and faith.
Rachel brings communities together to finance the things they value most. She is committed to stewarding our Unitarian Universalist communities toward healthy relationships with money and value. Her TEDx talk focuses on how we might create value together. She also co-founded and lead an innovative crowd-sourced lending platform, Community Sourced Capital. Reach Rachel at Team@Stewardshipforus.com