How Congregations Can Nurture Courageous and Transformative Ministries

We know that nurturing courageous and transformative ministries is a shared endeavor – it takes ministers and religious professionals of all kinds, lay leaders and volunteers from congregations, communities and other institutions. We offer you these tips and places to go for help as you consider how your congregation can support the ministers and religious professionals in your employ.

Nurturing Ministers and Religious Professionals

• Provide Fair Compensation: The work that religious professionals do is vital and taxing. Ministers invest years in formation getting the required experience, education and credentials required by our association. They work long and sometimes unpredictable hours and much of their work is not visible to many members of the congregation. Provide generous compensation that values and supports the lives of your ministers and other religious professionals on your staff. Look at the UUA Guide to Salary Recommendations to help determine fair compensation.
• Provide Fair Benefits: Like everyone, religious professionals and their families need medical and retirement benefits to assist them today and in the future. Become familiar with the legal ins and outs of UUA Benefits.
• Honor Day(s) Off: A day spent writing a sermon, or planning curriculum, or attending an administrator’s conference may not happen in the church, but it isn’t a day off. Make sure your religious professionals have days off.
• Remember – Family Comes First: Help the religious professionals on your staff balance their work and family life by honoring parental leave, providing support for children or spouses, and understanding when family emergencies happen.
• Support their Health & Wellness: Make sure you are not asking the ministers and religious professionals on your staff to overwork. Provide flexible time for them to tend to exercise or medical and mental health appointments or whatever it is they have determined they need to be in a place to share their gifts.
• Encourage Professional Development: Continuing education is crucial to the success of ministry. Training programs help religious professionals hone their skills and ministries. Be generous in providing professional development funds and time away for study!
• Encourage Time with Colleagues: Research shows that religious professionals who regularly connect with colleagues have longer and more vibrant ministries than those who forego maintaining those relationships. Support and encourage those connections. This includes providing the professional expenses and time necessary for your ministers and religious professionals to remain active members of their professional associations.
• Show Appreciation: Remind your ministers and religious professionals how much you appreciate them, and point out specific ways they are making a positive difference. One easy way to show appreciation is to send a birthday or work-anniversary card. Receiving a thank you card can do wonders for the spirit!
• Don’t Fear the Sabbatical or Study Leave: Time off creates space for fresh ideas to emerge and renewed energy, and can be a time of growth for the congregation too.

Nurturing Unitarian Universalist Communities

• Covenant Together: Develop, live and regularly revisit a covenant of expectation and promises with the congregation, community and ministers and religious professionals.
• Assess Shared Ministry: Develop and implement an annual assessment of the congregation’s shared ministry including the ministers, religious professionals and lay leaders in the process. Use this link to find resources for conducting assessments well.
• Engage in Leadership Development: Professional development is not just for ministers and religious professionals. Provide feedback, and regular opportunities and plans to develop lay leadership. LeaderLab is a great place to start and your UUA Regional Congregational Life Staff and the UUA LeaderLab can offer a wealth of resources.
• Create and Fund Development Plans: It’s not enough to just have funds for your ministers, religious professionals and lay leaders to engage in professional development. Work with key leaders and teams to create a development plan for each person or team and fund those plans.
• Get Clarity Around Roles: Be clear about who does what, who is best at what and what is yours and what is somebody else’s – and expect the same of others in your community and on your staff.
• Be Clear about Boundaries: Having good boundaries is a really important way you can support vitality in your religious community. Ministers and religious professionals are required to learn about appropriate boundaries and how to keep them. Consider investing in boundaries training for your lay leadership too.
• Don’t be Afraid of Some Change: Small changes and challenges on a routine basis are signs of adaptability and growth and understanding. Don’t be afraid to engage new learning, take advantage of new opportunities or face new projects together.
• Attend to Conflict Early and Effectively: No one likes conflict, but communities that are healthy manage conflict early and effectively, before it has time to fester or escalate. Communities that try to avoid conflict often face larger and more emotionally charged conflicts down the road. Reach out and get some training if you need to develop your conflict transformation skills and learn more about how conflict can contribute to growth.
• Have The Money Talk: As much as it can be uncomfortable to acknowledge, every religious community needs money to support their ministry. Vital communities are able to have frank conversations about their financial and material needs, in a way that helps them live into their mission and covenant.

The Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association

Calling forth courageous and transformative ministries
empowered by love
committed to collective liberation
…because we need one another.