III. BARRIERS TO GROWTH IN OUR CHURCH

        In her book Raising the Roof, Mann lists six specific barriers to growth that may exist in a given church. With several invited guests, the Learning Team considered how these barriers were present in our own church. We found that in our cases, some of the barriers were inter-connected. For this report, we condensed these into three areas.

        We are uncertain if many in the church, outside of the leadership, are interested in growing. We question if the QC is really a "growing community".  More importantly, we wonder if there is a conflict between being a UU and trying to grow a church. We do not believe that we are the "right" answer or that we have to "save" others. A core of our faith is that everyone must follow his or her own path. UUs are not comfortable with evangelizing.
        
        Counterpoint: Even if QC is not growing, have we reached our potential with the current population? How do we compare with UU churches in other similar and similarly-sized communities?

        Do we know what full is in the context of our church and have we reached that point? Specifically, do we have space for new members in our sanctuary, in our parking lot, in our RE, and in other activities such as the Sunday Forum.  In answering the questions the committee seemed to intertwine these two barriers.
        There was a wide range of opinion here, especially on the second point. Some members of the committee felt there was no problem at all, some believed it to be a major problem, and some fell in between. On both his visits to our church, Dan Hotchkiss expressed strong concern on this issue.  Several members wrote that church members do not feel that we are full and/or will not think we are full until all seats are full. Some committee members felt that the option of using the bank lot had solved the parking problem. One member believed that the sanctuary is only overly-filled on special occasions. One thought that space at the Sunday Forum was an issue.

        Counterpoints: Only a small number of additional people are parking at the bank. If we don't increase the number parking in the bank lot, it wouldn't take many new members to eliminate that gain. Because of seating patterns, available seating during service tends to be on the side furthest from the door and least visible to new comers. Typically, a church is considered "full" when on most Sundays 80% of the seats are occupied. However, this figure is based on more typical churches with pews. With chairs, such as we have, available seating tends to be more scattered and we don't have the ability to squeeze together a little more. Furthermore, the rows are usually set too close together to allow more rows and often make it difficult to get to the middle seats when the ends are already occupied.

3. In our discussion, we ended up grouping the final three points together: We are not staffed for growth; our concept of an "adequate" budget does not permit growth; and our ministry infrastructure is inadequate for movement to the next size.

        We saw that, at least in our case, these three were closely related. Generally speaking, we felt we were not where we should be, but we were on the way there. In terms of staff, we had already expanded the D.R.E. position and were planning additional small increases in paid staff time. There was more concern about budget, and whether our budget encourages, or even allows, growth.
        The committee was more positive on the final point. Roger's arrival is seen as having energized the church. While there is concern on the ability to get volunteers, some things are moving. The Wonderful Wednesday program has continued to develop and there are new upcoming programs, such as the small group ministries.