Survey Results are IN!!!!!
Who We are and What We are Looking for in a New Minister

We are looking for a permanent minister and need to know what it is that the congregation wants. That is the task that the Ministerial Search Committee completed over the past few months.

They began by distributing 200 surveys. These surveys had two parts: Part 1 asked about our ages, family status, religious orientations, and a variety of other demographic information. Part 2 queried about participation level, attitude and our expectations of a permanent minister.

Over 50% of our surveys were returned. Jan Gallagher (the search committee's chief statitician) collected, analyzed and interpreted the data in the following manner:

Who We Are:

• About a decade older than Iowans in general.
• Far better educated than Iowans in general.
• Mostly female.
• Mostly married.
• Nearly half joined in the last 10 years Only a third of the respondents have children living at home, but nearly ALL of the members in the 30-50 year old range do, and half of the newer members do.
• Most of us have no experience with other UU congregations, but we do have extensive experience with other religious groups, mostly mainline Protestant.
• We work in mostly white color jobs, with education related jobs being the most prevalent.

What We Do and Believe:

• About half of us attend every Sunday and have participated in some way in presenting the Sunday service.
• The majority of people have been, or currently are, on a committee or the governing board.
• The three most common reasons for coming to the UUSBHC are:
  • the people,
  • the sermons and
  • being able to believe your conscience without rejection.
• Generally, people don’t feel uncomfortable, but if they do, there are two common reasons:
  • A perceived “anti-Christian bias”, which does show up in several of the questions as born out even though half of respondents identify themselves as either ethical or traditional Christians.
  • The other is “social elitism”, which probably a reaction to the fact that half our members have graduate degrees.
• Our most common religious orientations are Ethical Christianity, Eclectic, Religious Humanism, Naturalism, and Mysticism. There is a lot of overlap between these groups.

What We Want in a Minister

Beliefs

• There is little support for either an overt Christian or a person who practices a different religion.
• There is strong support for either a Spiritualist or a Secular Humanist.
• However, people identifying themselves as either Secular or Religious Humanists strongly prefer a Humanist minister,
• While people identifying themselves as either Ethical or Traditional Christians are accepting of a Humanist but more enthusiastic about a Spiritualist.These responses are consistent with a perceived Humanist bias even though we are pretty evenly split between Humanist and Christian and the groups significantly overlap. The lack of a strong consensus in this area leaves the committee free to choose the best overall person on some other basis.

  Desired Qualities of a Minister: As for the qualities in a minister, we are united in our vision. Every way we slice the data, the same five qualities come to the top:

1. Good sermons
2. Ability to develop a sense of community that embraces all UUs
3. Ability to inspire us
4. Pastoral care and
5. Ability to work with committees and the board.

Least Important: Qualities like fundraising and social action are generally last on the list. Also leading religious education doesn’t make the cut of the top five. Now, this one is strange, because most of the new young members have children. However, across the board, it seems the congregation thinks that it has that under control. The “administrator” quality varies, in some data slices it makes the top 5. This type of quality is mostly a “disatisfier”. If a minister can’t handle details, this can be a problem, since we don’t have a secretary to bail him/her out.

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Last updated 9/19/03