Our Congregation

First Unitarian Universalist Church is a mid-sized congregation of over 400 members and 160 children and youth located in Rochester, Minnesota, a small (100,000) city 80 miles south of the Twin Cities. From Labor Day through Memorial Day, we hold Sunday services at 9:00 and 11:00 a.m., with classes for children and youth held concurrently. There's a coffee hour between the services, with tempting goodies and lots of room for conversation and connection. We have a nursery for infants and toddlers and active youth groups for junior and senior high school students. During the summer, we hold primarily lay-led Sunday services (at 10:00 a.m. only) with activities available for children of all ages.

Our congregation is funded almost entirely by the generous contributions of members and friends, who are invited annually to make a financial "pledge" for its support. Currently we employ a full-time Office Manager, an almost full-time Director of Religious Education, a part-time Records Administrator, part-time co-Directors of Music, a part-time Pastoral Care/Membership Coordinator and a part-time custodian, in addition to our full-time Minister. Our annual operating budget is approximately $390,000.

In August 2005, 380 members, friends, and youth filled out a church survey as part of the process for finding a new minister. Some of the highlights are listed below:

Our Demographics

Approximately 40% of respondents are male and 60% are female; 8% are ages 14-18; 1% are ages 19-25; 10% are ages 26-35; 32% are ages 36-50; 31% are ages 51-65; 17% are 66+. According to the survey results, 94% of us are heterosexual, 2% are gay/lesbian, and 4% are bisexual. About 12% of us reported having one or more disability.

The length of time we have been associated with this congregation is fairly equally distributed with 100 respondents indicating they had been in the congregation for 15+ years, 115 for 5-15 years, and 143 for less than 5 years. Eleven respondents have been associated with this church their whole lives. Approximately 46% of respondents have a master's degree or higher level of education; 33% of respondents have bachelor's degrees.

260 of the respondents are employed, 3 are unemployed, and 63 are retired. Of those who are employed, 64% work full time year round, and 36% are either part time or seasonal workers.

Some of the survey results apply to households, not individuals. 103 households indicated they have one or more children. The median household income among those who responded to the income question was roughly $80,300: 19% fell into the $75,000 to $100,000 range; 18% indicated their incomes were $150,000+, and 7% have incomes under $25,000.

Our Theology

Approximately 51% of us have Protestant backgrounds, 24% Roman Catholic, and 3% Jewish. Our congregation's most common theology is humanism: 189 respondent or 53%. Of the 169 who didn't choose humanism, theism (26%), naturalistic theism (20%), and mysticism (27%) were most popular.

Our Church Involvement

The most common reasons we attend church services are intellectual stimulation (50%), personal reflection and meditation (44%), and celebration of common values (43%). Sermon topics that are important to us are philosophical and theological ideas, spiritual growth, coping with life, and social concerns. Extremely important reasons that we first became involved with our congregation are Unitarian Universalist beliefs (64%), celebrating common values (57%), welcoming atmosphere (55%), intellectual stimulation (55%), fellowship/community (50%), minister and children's RE (each 49%). We continue to attend for basically those same reasons except children's RE which dropped to 32% (no doubt because some of the children have grown).