I was musing with friends about the size and fate of congregations and so looked up some data in an old UUA directory. The old print versions have been digitized and are online, if you ever need to look them up yourself.
https://listview.lib.harvard.edu/lists/drs-431987185
Paged through the 1963 to look at changes in my part of country. And what I notice most is all the locations where we no longer have any presence. Perhaps we no longer have anything relevant to say to the lives of people in those communities? Yes, some of those places were rather real, and rural de-population probably did its part there. But not all of the places we are now absent from were in isolated rural locations. For example, the South Side of Indianapolis.
One church I wondered about, which I had never heard about before, was the First Unitarian Church of Bay City, Michigan. A decent sized city. I wonder how it vanished?
And one more thought from the 1963 directory. I noticed the listing for my late friend, and sometimes mentor, the Rev. Wells Behee. Listed as part-time while serving at New Madison, Ohio. I know that during that time period he was also teaching high school English.
The part-time label was rare in those days for ordained ministers. But I also noticed a number of other ministers (non-ordained) who likely were part-time: lay ministers, and student ministers. Often at what I suspect were small Universalist congregations.
And I wonder what we might learn from that system of ordained, lay, and student ministers. Both hazards and opportunities?
Those are good questions. I wonder where they Bay City church (and the others) was, and was it due to demographic shifts, loss of industry or some internal crisis?
The Bay City Unitarian Church was new in 1961, having only been founded in 1958, and did not report statistics in 1961-62 or 1962-63. It met in a private house, and despite the church name was listed as a fellowship in the 1962-63 directory, and without a minister. I think we can image the end.