Yet Another Unitarian*Universalist "Memory Hole". . .
The following blog post was originally posted as a comment to this thread titled The right thing to do on Rev. Dan Harper's Yet Another Unitarian*Universalist blog. I archived it as a draft post here just in case Rev. Dan Harper decided in his wisdom to relegate my post to the burgeoning "memory hole" of the U*U World.
He did. . .
I have corrected a minor typo or two, and I have added some pertinent hyperlinks here and there that were not in the original text only comment -
"Of course you welcome any all visitors to your church, treating them like honored guests;"
If only that were true. I need not remind you how Montreal Unitarian U*Us "welcomed" and "honored" me but the fact of the matter is that a great many other people feel far from welcome and considerably less than honored in many U*U "Welcoming Congregations". This is precisely why I and other people are not impressed by the UUA's new national marketing campaign which puts the marketing cart before the welcoming horse. . .
My own experience of U*Uism, and that of many other people, is that much U*U "church marketing" is highly misleading publicity and even outright false advertising. AFAIAC the UUA may well be flushing a few million dollars worth of national "church marketing" down the proverbial toilet. Worse than that the UUA's national marketing campaign could very well have an overall negative effect if it does attract a large number of new people to visit and even join U*U "churches" only to find that they are less than welcome and far from honored as guests or "church" members. The resulting fallout in terms of negative word of mouth publicity could potentially outweigh any gains made by the UUA's multi-million dollar national advertising campaign.
IMNSHO The millions would have been much better spent in any number of other ways, not the least of them being an internal educational campaign encouraging U*Us to be genuinely welcoming towards visitors to your church, and treating them like honored guests. I have heard so many stories about people getting the cold shoulder when visiting U*U "Welcoming Congregations" and experienced it myself last summer when I visited the Unitarian Church in San Francisco. I actually said hello to U*Us who simply ignored me. . . No I have no reason whatsoever to believe that my reputation preceded me and they did not know who I was in any case. The "church" did have an official "greeter" whose main function seemed to be to "market" the "church" by encouraging people to join it, but pretty much everyone else pretended that I was not even there. It was like being the invisible man or something. . . Most ironically, the few people who did introduce themselves to me were all non-members, albeit apparently regular "visitors" of the Unitarian "Church" of San Francisco.
He did. . .
I have corrected a minor typo or two, and I have added some pertinent hyperlinks here and there that were not in the original text only comment -
"Of course you welcome any all visitors to your church, treating them like honored guests;"
If only that were true. I need not remind you how Montreal Unitarian U*Us "welcomed" and "honored" me but the fact of the matter is that a great many other people feel far from welcome and considerably less than honored in many U*U "Welcoming Congregations". This is precisely why I and other people are not impressed by the UUA's new national marketing campaign which puts the marketing cart before the welcoming horse. . .
My own experience of U*Uism, and that of many other people, is that much U*U "church marketing" is highly misleading publicity and even outright false advertising. AFAIAC the UUA may well be flushing a few million dollars worth of national "church marketing" down the proverbial toilet. Worse than that the UUA's national marketing campaign could very well have an overall negative effect if it does attract a large number of new people to visit and even join U*U "churches" only to find that they are less than welcome and far from honored as guests or "church" members. The resulting fallout in terms of negative word of mouth publicity could potentially outweigh any gains made by the UUA's multi-million dollar national advertising campaign.
IMNSHO The millions would have been much better spent in any number of other ways, not the least of them being an internal educational campaign encouraging U*Us to be genuinely welcoming towards visitors to your church, and treating them like honored guests. I have heard so many stories about people getting the cold shoulder when visiting U*U "Welcoming Congregations" and experienced it myself last summer when I visited the Unitarian Church in San Francisco. I actually said hello to U*Us who simply ignored me. . . No I have no reason whatsoever to believe that my reputation preceded me and they did not know who I was in any case. The "church" did have an official "greeter" whose main function seemed to be to "market" the "church" by encouraging people to join it, but pretty much everyone else pretended that I was not even there. It was like being the invisible man or something. . . Most ironically, the few people who did introduce themselves to me were all non-members, albeit apparently regular "visitors" of the Unitarian "Church" of San Francisco.
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