I was part of a huge UU church in Rochester NY.. it had a lot of members and multiple ministers. Now I’m part of a new UU church in the South and it seems like we have maybe… 25 families? I’ve only been going for 3 weeks now, maybe there are more..

But if these churches are financially independent and not tied to UU as a whole, how do they get enough money to pay the bills and to pay our minister??

I don’t know why but I have anxiety about this sometimes! His wife works as a hospital chaplain, I just worry that they don’t have enough members to keep this minister and his family here and I really like them.

UPDATE: They came out with the budget last weekend and said they were far behind what they needed, they fired two staff without getting congregation vote so there was a little stink about that at our parents meeting today. BUT in the past 24 hours they had a couple of generous gifts (100k! What the heck! When it looks like there are only like 30 people in services sometimes) and they are going to try and vote to rehire that staff. (I wonder what they will do with the severance packages they gave out to them???) anyway, so apparently they have many more members who don’t always come to services and I’m so happy to hear they can make their ends meet… I even found out they’re planning some big time renovations using capital campaign money.) thanks to y’all for calming my nerves. I’m happy there are people with more money than I who also find this UU mission a worthy cause.