UCCan Talk Emerging Spirit initiative including Wondercafe

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JayneWonders

JayneWonders

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Reader beware: I wrote the following with ChatGPT to get it into the forum quickly.
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I’ve been doing a bit of digging into the United Church’s Emerging Spirit initiative and WonderCafe.

I remember both, and I remember attending some of the Emerging Spirit programs, but I had forgotten how all the pieces fit together.

Emerging Spirit was actually the larger initiative, with WonderCafe being one part of it.

It was launched nationally around 2006, with a particular focus on people in the 30–45 age group. Research had shown that many people in that age range were interested in spirituality, social justice and many of the things the United Church talked about, but they weren’t necessarily interested in organized religion.

There were really two sides to Emerging Spirit.

The part most people probably remember was the advertising campaign and WonderCafe.ca.

The ads were deliberately designed to get people talking and then direct them to WonderCafe, where people could have conversations about faith, spirituality, relationships, ethics, politics and all sorts of other things.

For 2006, an open online discussion forum sponsored by a church was actually pretty innovative.

But there was another side to Emerging Spirit that was directed inside the United Church.

There were programs such as Living the Welcome, Living the Hope and Living the Faith, as well as resources and training for congregations.

Basically, if we were going to invite people who weren’t attending church into a conversation, we also needed to look at what would happen if they actually came through our doors.

Were we welcoming? Were there things about our congregational culture that made it difficult for someone new to feel comfortable? Did our worship and the way we communicated make sense to someone who hadn't grown up in the church?

That was a significant part of Emerging Spirit.

The financial side is what got me curious.

The original Emerging Spirit initiative had a budget of approximately $10.5 million over three years.

What I found particularly interesting is that contemporary United Church material said almost half of that money was being spent on supporting local congregations and training volunteers to make churches more open and welcoming.

So, the $10.5 million was definitely not simply the cost of an advertising campaign or WonderCafe.

The other portion included the research that went into Emerging Spirit, the advertising and media campaign, agency work, WonderCafe itself and other costs.

What I haven’t been able to find is the actual breakdown.

How much went to the advertising?

How much did WonderCafe cost to develop and operate?

How much went into the Emerging Spirit programs and congregational training?

Interestingly, I found that the United Church Archives has two files from 2009 called:

“Emerging Spirit: records re evaluation of performance”

and

“Emerging Spirit: narrative and financial report.”

That last one sounds promising.

I have contacted the United Church Archives and asked if they can provide the financial breakdown, particularly the amounts spent on WonderCafe, advertising/media, research and consulting, and the congregational programs.

Hopefully there is a little more detail buried in those records.

It has been interesting looking back at this almost 20 years later.

I think we tend to remember the ads and WonderCafe because they were the visible pieces. I had forgotten how much of Emerging Spirit was also about asking the United Church itself to look at how we welcomed people and whethe
 
Who will even be willing to talk about it?

It is like a lot of things about church material ... usual response: "don't question God (everything)"!

Why?

There's just too much we don't know given the claims put forth about all that we know ... expertise on God?

What is delinquent is extensive ... if you speak of strange thing people will hope their head ... and it is not to concentrate of the wind blowing ...

For God is like the wind and not a loving motive in much of the grounded paradigm ...

Complex? 4 sure because of all that do not wish to get into such exchanges ... it is a character of authorities!

Best thing is to say something silly and mythical and let it go ... you'll be amazed where that'll enter ... the hardest spots, like Big Rock Candy Mountain ... grab the returns on it!
 
JayneWonders said:
almost half of that money was being spent on supporting local congregations and training volunteers to make churches more open and welcoming
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On the on hand, this is good to hear. OTOH, what was the training like. Was it actually delivering on its goals? Who designed it and implemented it? Was there evaluation afterwards so they could refine the training? Training volunteers is good in principle but the devil, as always, is in the details.
 
Especially: "the devil, as always, is in the details."

You know what the demon is that was excluded?

Those distraught by alternate records and logs! It is an experience to cut through all those views! Could make a person somewhat ... shall I say different?

Could we have it different? Unlikely ...
 
JayneWonders said:
I think we tend to remember the ads and WonderCafe because they were the visible pieces. I had forgotten how much of Emerging Spirit was also about asking the United Church itself to look at how we welcomed people and whethe
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I think the issue here is that most people are going to say they are welcoming without maybe recognizing that welcoming someone in a way that inclines them to stay and get involved requires more than a smile and a handshake. Accepting offers of assistance (as the Unitarians here did when I stepped forward and offered to fix up their website) graciously, helping people get oriented, being there for them when they need it, are all important, too. We have heard time and again from people like KaytheCurler how congregation's insularity kept them from joining churches (admittedly, my reading of those stories was the congregation had become more of a social club than a church and they just didn't want new members who might rock the boat). There's a difference between being superficially welcoming and being welcoming in a way that will lead to a new member. Hopefully, the church's focus was on helping congregations realize that.
 
Mendalla said:
On the on hand, this is good to hear. OTOH, what was the training like. Was it actually delivering on its goals? Who designed it and implemented it? Was there evaluation afterwards so they could refine the training? Training volunteers is good in principle but the devil, as always, is in the details.
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I rememer attending one. I think that RichardBott was either a leader, or part of it.
My recollections are weak.
Hard to send 2 people to a training(or one), and then bring it back to the church. Challenging.
 
Unless you pose something challenging in one way or another! Then you're out ...

I've been challenged all my life ... and when I dug into learn ... often I found many delinquencies that none would admit to ... an example was when well trained psychologists were bought in for seminars ...panic was tangible over the soul, mined, psyche states!

This even from those declaring their absolute determinacy that they knew everything about God near everything ...

The more I learn about this the more I know I don't know about those folk! Alas ... you have to be careful how you say such things ... as determinacy is declared essential in esteem, pride, hubris and all that ...

Time to back out? Well perhaps 80 years is the marker ... skewer that one ... like on a column! Then there are those of us dippy ... down in the vale ... still listening ... OBI state?
 
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I think at that time our congregation was going through Affirming, or some other large initiative.
My recollection is that the program would take a team to actually implement (ie, was a good weighty, church changing/awareness raising program).

the research that I am doing outside, is showing up names that ring bells from back then. Also, the quality of the materials. Wondering if any of our wondercafe folks still have copies of the material?

@Carolla might have been acquainted with it, or @Redbaron
 
Mendalla said:
On the on hand, this is good to hear. OTOH, what was the training like. Was it actually delivering on its goals? Who designed it and implemented it? Was there evaluation afterwards so they could refine the training? Training volunteers is good in principle but the devil, as always, is in the details.
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As I recall the training events weren't fairly good, though I only went to the first two of three. I am not sure how much uptake there was on them/how well they were attended. And of course there may well have been lots of people/congregations who attended but then made no changes to how they actually operated.

The one really clear memory I have of the time was that a number of us had the opinion that the church got things backwards. The ad campaign went out first and the first round of workshops came out later...so we were inviting people to churches that had not been prepared to be welcoming (because few churches are actually as welcoming as they think they are). ALso because communication is not a strong point within the UCCan many people in the pews had no idea the thing was coming so were a bit blindsided when some of the more provocative ads appeared.
 
I know some of the leaders that shuffled for positions ... when certain matters were raised said they didn't wish to deal with much other than the simpler matters.

In reality they were blindsided by most of what was on the agenda of God ... little was known! Sorry truth is wicked ... I should have stayed in the cemetery!
 
GordW said:
The one really clear memory I have of the time was that a number of us had the opinion that the church got things backwards. The ad campaign went out first and the first round of workshops came out later...so we were inviting people to churches that had not been prepared to be welcoming (because few churches are actually as welcoming as they think they are). ALso because communication is not a strong point within the UCCan many people in the pews had no idea the thing was coming so were a bit blindsided when some of the more provocative ads appeared.
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So backasswards and poorly communicated. Sounds like the foundation of a successful campaign, eh. :rolleyes:
 
Luce NDs said:
Like Semitic tongues ... you have to read them both ways and then some
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Which is a problem in what is basically a marketing campaign. You need to be clear and use good, basic English. And you need to capture eyeballs and minds. Which is where being provocative, as @paradox3 and I were discussing the other thread, comes in.
 
GordW said:
As I recall the training events weren't fairly good, though I only went to the first two of three. I am not sure how much uptake there was on them/how well they were attended. And of course there may well have been lots of people/congregations who attended but then made no changes to how they actually operated.

The one really clear memory I have of the time was that a number of us had the opinion that the church got things backwards. The ad campaign went out first and the first round of workshops came out later...so we were inviting people to churches that had not been prepared to be welcoming (because few churches are actually as welcoming as they think they are). ALso because communication is not a strong point within the UCCan many people in the pews had no idea the thing was coming so were a bit blindsided when some of the more provocative ads appeared.
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which is totally logical that it happened that way.j
The training programs were using a lot of resources.
Ad campaign would have been straightforward deliverables...and having big p/o's wanting specific items for signoff / payout.
 
NOt a terrible summary, talks more about the later Embracing the SPirit, and makes significant error as there is no congregation named "Emerging SPirit United Church" in Calgary
 
Mendalla said:
So backasswards and poorly communicated. Sounds like the foundation of a successful campaign, eh. :rolleyes:
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I made a similar comment years ago and was probably rebuffed for my efforts.

If Emerging Spirit was only half about Wondercafe and the ad campaign, it was still half-baked. But even had they done things in the correct order, I doubt the outcome would be much different.

There was no obvious plan. They got some press, ruffled a few feathers perhaps, and unwittingly started a community they didn't really have a plan for, either. They had no off-ramp for us as a community other than "We have a Facebook group!" Which, of course, they promptly banned me from for being reasonable and gaining popular support.

It was incompetence all the way down. And I know some people don't like me saying it, but I'm not close to alone on this point.
 
GordW said:
NOt a terrible summary, talks more about the later Embracing the SPirit, and makes significant error as there is no congregation named "Emerging SPirit United Church" in Calgary
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It's AI slop. Look at the references below. A lot are completely unrelated.
 
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