Sir Philip Colfox reported
”’I was greatly surprised by the Annual Meeting of the General Assembly. I expected more of the same. I expected a repeat of the Unitarian version of the theological argument from the Middle Ages about how many angels could fit onto the head of a pin.
I wanted to hear about how we would make our values, practices and way of life the default for everyone in Britain in the 21st Century.
This time it was different.
We did have relics of the old way – inane political motions like one condemning how the NHS is funded, and other motions that I thought were posturing about our values – my belief was that most of this should be discussed at political party conferences, but there was one useful motion where I broke ranks and joined the rebels who criticised how the Executive Committee (EC) that I was part of, which had in 2021 rolled out a new brand identity without proper consultation. Back in March 2021, I had tendered my resignation to the Executive Committee 20 minutes before the end of my term over this issue along with Peter Hanley, the GA Treasurer. So I explained how things could have been done better and what a great programme to Build Your Own Brand we had bought from the Extinction Rebellion’s brand consultants that could be rolled out to congregations like the Build Your Own Theology course from decades ago. This process I thought could be used to help congregations develop their individuality and energise themselves.
But the excitement for me really came in a couple of workshops which has reinvigorated me so much that I now know exactly what sort of worship I would like to see in future. I suppose I have become very spoiled as I get older and unforgiving. The head of the Unitarian Universalist Association’s worship training school in just a few very simple affirmations that we sang as a round had me completely re-energised for perhaps the next ten years. I will try to follow this up and discover more how to do it. But I think Lizzie understands this completely and I will discuss with he if we have a moment.
The other workshop that got me very excited was about how to satisfy emotional needs. In my basic business and marketing training many years ago, I learned that marketing is all about designing your product so that it satisfies identified ‘needs’ and then directing your message so that you target people with those needs and tell them that you can help them satisfy them etc. In many case you can ‘educate’ your market to discover that they have needs that they never knew they had etc etc. I had been looking for someone to do this work for a very long time – what needs can religion satisfy and how does it do it ? The state of the art in Unitarianism now appears to be that our religion can be used to satisfy Emotional Needs – which the trainer from America mentioned above equated to Spiritual Needs. And a whole system for how we can help to satisfy those emotional needs through worship is being discussed and experimented with by the most advanced thinkers around in the UK at the moment. Our GA Chief Officer Liz Slade (who was educated at Beaminster and Colfox sixth form) is a leading light in this and knows all the players. She had managed to get some of them to come to the GA to give us a taster of what more can be on offer.
This all fitted together quite nicely for me because about four years ago the EC that I was part of had settled the ‘competencies’ – the blueprint of skills that Unitarian ministers should acquire and which should be taught by the two colleges training Unitarian Ministers including the new “Unitarian College” which was also set up at the same time. Now four years on students, including Lizzie, were graduating and the college is developing a really good reputation. I heard this from many people. A professor of gynaecology who was the leading light on the EC and had set up University courses for doctors before and had driven the ‘competencies’ through the Unitarian system, said to me that when they adopted this new system it was all theoretical. No one else had done it before. She had tried to do it before but the universities concerned had reverted to type. So it sounded incredibly exciting. The potential is large as the system adopted at Unitarian College is very flexible and user friendly and there is ambition to create a system for online, lifelong learning for all. Another point I was anxious to establish with the professor was what the system should be for updating the key tool – the competencies – which is the responsibility of the EC in conjunction with the ministry strategy group. She said that these competencies should be updated ‘all the time’. This has now produced a focus for me of how all the new technology that I mentioned earlier could be rolled out to all our new ministers – and hopefully our old ministers who I hope will be constantly updating their skills ?!
I drove away with a big smile on my face knowing what I wanted out of worship, perhaps for the rest of my life.”
