The Membership Committee is charged with a performing a number of tasks aimed at increasing and maintaining the membership of the church. Presently, there is a small group of people working in various ways on this committee. This enthusiastic group meets on the first Tuesday of each month after church and has many good ideas for showing newcomers how warm and welcoming our church really is. There are many ways to help put these ideas into action, some of them requiring very little time, but a few more people. We hope to have some of you join us!

The Membership Committee welcomes new members as they sign the membership book, organizes and contributes to "UU and You" informational meetings and holds social events for newcomers, as well as participating in community events to share information about Murray with the public. One of the committee members writes brief biographies of new members for the Universalist to introduce them to the congregation, and the committee arranges to have new members’ photos taken and posted on the bulletin board. (Please refer to the printed version of the Universalist for this information.) There are three sub-committees that perform important tasks within the Membership Committee and report to the Gov. of Membership:

The Welcoming Committee is made up of folks who stand at the Visitors’ Table each week to greet newcomers, make pamphlets and newsletters available, answer questions and give tours of the church. At coffee hour they introduce newcomers to others and help them to feel welcome there. This committee would welcome anyone else who wants to take part in greeting and welcoming visitors.

The Coffee Committee is responsible for ensuring that we have people signed up as coffee hosts for week’s coffee hour. We really need an outgoing person who can head up this committee. It requires a very small time commitment (maybe a phone call a week!) but would make weekly coffee hour go smoothly. A committee member currently orders supplies for coffee. Coffee and conversation are a very important part of the Sunday morning experience for both long-time members and for newcomers.

The Publicity Committee does a terrific job of getting information about the church and church activities into the newspaper by way of ads and news releases and they developed and maintain an attractive and informative web site which is useful to members and seekers alike. This Publicity Committee would really benefit from having a chair who would be thinking ahead of creative and low cost ways to get information about our church to the public.