In the middle of the presidential election for the Unitarian Universalist Association, Anna Belle Leiserson wrote a fascinating blog post reviewing the websites for UUA presidential candidates. Because Welcoming Websites did not want to appear partial to either candidate, I did not respond at the time. But Anna Belle's post was very interesting, and now that the campaign is over, I thought I would go back to it and see if I could offer some additional thoughts.

The end of the post lists a wish list of new media tools that would be helpful in UU ministry:

A UU podcast that speaks to me. I don’t mean yet another sermon-cast. Ho hum. That’s trying to mold the ‘net to old faith models rather than molding faith to the new models. All I’m asking for is a five minute podcast, perhaps every-other-day, with a meditation or thought for the day. We have roughly a bazillion brilliant orators in UUism. Can’t one of them do this?

Twitter feeds from UU leadership.

Targeted, informative, ministerial email newsletters that are easy to subscribe to.

Websites that collect feedback in meaningful ways and build new, virtual UU communities.

And of course, the Obama signature technology — highly selective blast texting — at just the right moment.

There are a lot of interesting ideas here, but I think the first point is particularly valuable. The sermon-cast is indeed just another way to "mold the net to old faith models" rather than adapting to new realities and new ways of communication. To be sure, a sermon-cast can be very useful to members who can't make it to service every week but want to stay up-to-date. But outreach requires much more than that.

What will it take to bring UU worship up to speed with new realities, and new methods of communication? That's a big question, but I think these ideas are a good start.

In particular, I think the answer lies in making the sacred elements of UU life more easily accessible. It's not just about finding one more distribution channel, but rather about changing worship so that it fits into a broader range of contexts. A five-minute meditation-of-the-day is a perfect example of this idea. If you have a thirty-minute commute to work in the morning, a one-hour sermon-cast isn't particularly useful. But a five-minute thought might be just the thing to get you started on your day.

Making these sacred elements more accessible also means challenging our assumptions about who is listening in. A sermon delivered at a worship service in a congregation can make a big assumption about the audience. Everyone listening to the sermon (except for those wacky few downloading the podcast) got up in the morning, put on some clothes, and physically made the trek to hear the sermon. There's some dedication there. But online, the audience is a constantly changing, considerably more casual group. Consequently, the messages directed to online visitors can't just be sermons.

Online ministry is a challenging endeavor, because it might not yield any tangible results. Add a Google map to your website, and you might well see additional visitors on Sunday morning. Tweeting about the importance of the right of conscience or the interdependence of all beings might help you reach a lot of people and might open up some minds, but might not get any new visitors walking through the door.

That's a tough reality to swallow, but I believe that online ministry is still vital, for a few reasons. First, it helps spread the principles of UUism, and ultimately it redounds to the benefit of the movement as a whole in the long term. Second, it helps sharpen our thoughts and helps us communicate our ideas more clearly. And finally, it allows for a form of feedback - on Twitter via retweets, on Facebook via comments, and so on - that is just not comparable to real-life feedback.

There is more to say about all of this, in a lot of different directions. For one thing, I'm not well-qualified to really make suggestions about what kind of content, exactly, UUs should be putting online in addition to their sermons. Secondly, there is a lot more to UU life than worship service; religious education, small group ministry, social action and casual fellowship are all aspects of UU life which could be adapted to online audiences in interesting ways. There's certainly plenty of work to be done!