I was at a party recently talking to someone I didn’t know.  Eventually she asked me what I do for a living and I told her I was a Unitarian Universalist minister.  She asked, of course, “What’s that?”

I explained our Unitarian Universalist faith, that we are open to all beliefs, that we believe in human power and responsibility to make better lives for ourselves and each other, and that ultimately all humanity is united in a common destiny.  My husband chimed in about the many admirable Unitarians in our history.  He mentioned the Transcendentalists.  I told her it was a Unitarian minister, Theodore Parker, who first said the line that Martin Luther King often quoted, “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”

She said, “I want to go to that church!”

Our religious way and our faith principles are attractive.  I usually get a positive response when I describe Unitarian Universalism to a stranger.  But I realized that if this woman did come to a UU church on a Sunday and had a good experience, the most important aspect of her morning wouldn’t be our history or theology, it would be our community.  It would be the welcome she received.  It would be the tone of worship and the style of music and preaching, rather than the content, that would make her want to come back, or not.

Visitors visit our churches because they like our ideas about religion.  They become members because they want to join our communities.