It’s that time of year again — the season where member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association will have certified with the UUA, ostensibly for voting rights in the General Assembly. (The proposal radically to change the nature of General Assembly is hot now; not sure I’ll make much comment. It seems like a misplaced overkill, but GA delegates aren’t bashful about killing overreaching measures and power grabs. So it might not be worth the effort to comment.)
In years past, I used to watch the certifications day by day and delight in the trends. Now, working for a data-driven government transparency organization, I would rather see the data in a format more useful for researchers. Online at all time for sure. An API perhaps. Certainly not my hackish manipulation of certification results to see which congregations are shrinking and which growing.
But take a look and see what we have now. Perhaps I will see what changes the year brings.
One story that continues is the re-emergence of All Souls in DC. All Souls was shrinking fast in the late 1990s, now they are one of our largest congregations.