Three Unitarian Universalist Groups Start New Congregations in Iowa, California and Nebraska

Three groups of people set out to start new Unitarian Universalist congregations, and their accounts describe both the labor involved and the rewards they have seen. Otte, who has served as service leader and board president of the Northeast Iowa UU Fellowship, said the work “consumed us at times,” but added, “We went into this with our eyes open. And there have been so many rewards already.”

The Northeast Iowa UU Fellowship is sixty-five miles from the nearest other UU congregation and meets in a historic downtown church in Decorah, a community of 8,000 that is also home to Luther College, an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America school with 2,500 students. Otte said she had initially worried that residents, who already had many community projects and groups, would not have time for a new one. Started in 2003, the congregation now has fifty-three members. Seventeen to twenty-five people gathered on Sundays in its first year.

The fellowship said it saw religious education as the key to growth. Even before it affiliated with the UUA, it offered the Our Whole Lives (OWL) sexuality education program to the community and hosted an adult “interpretation of the Bible” class led by a Luther professor, which drew up to fifty attendees. When it started a religious education program the following fall, thirty-five children took part. The congregation also writes pieces for a rotating slot among local newspaper religion writers, and a member produced a DVD of personal spiritual histories that airs weekly on the local access TV channel.

In Petaluma, California, Diana Spaulding, her husband David Dodd, and their two children were driving about twenty miles to a congregation in San Rafael until 2002. “It was just taking too long,” Spaulding said. “We really did want a congregation in our own community so we could invite our friends.” The couple had prior experience with UU congregations. In January 2002, they called a meeting that drew eight adults and eight children. The group met in homes before moving into rental space, and it now holds services at the Woman’s Club in downtown Petaluma. Thirty to fifty people attend Sunday services, and ten to eighteen children attend religious education classes led by a quarter-time director of religious education.

In Scottsbluff, Nebraska, Dick Meyer led the effort to start the Prairie Vista UU Congregation. Meyer, who had grown up in the Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod) and moved away from it as a young adult, said a 1999 gathering of the UUA Mountain Desert District at Estes Park, Colorado, changed his outlook. “We came away with a much better understanding of Unitarian Universalism,” he said. He gathered others in Scottsbluff and revitalized a nearly defunct fellowship that had formed in the 1950s. After meeting for three years at a local arts center, the group bought a building listed for sale at $100,000. The congregation now has thirty members and room to seat 120, and Meyer said he expects it to reach fifty members in two years.

Spaulding said much of the effort is for her children, who are seven and ten. “We want them to have values they can hold on to,” she said. “Despite all the work, we have no regrets. I can’t imagine my life without this group of people.”

Nancy Bowen, district executive in the Mountain Desert District, advised people who want to start a congregation to first contact their UUA district executive. “We can tell them if others in their area have expressed an interest, and we can help guide them through the process of organizing a congregation,” she said. Information on reaching a district executive is available at uua.org/DIST. The Church of the Larger Fellowship also offers services and resources for small and emerging congregations, and more information is available at clfuu.org.

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