communities and consumers

[cellio]

This is going to be kind of rambly. I'm trying to record a thought stream, not make an explicit point.

Launch point: B'rachot 8a, where the Amoraim are discussing places for torah study versus places for prayer and (later commenters) whether it is appropriate to suspend study in order to pray with a minyan. That is, if you're already in the study hall and there's no minyan and it's time to pray, do you pray there or go join the minyan? Some argue that study is more important than supporting the community in the minyan. This led us to a more general discussion: the tension between supporting community values and partaking of community offerings.

For the side that supports staying in the study hall, torah study is the ultimate mitzvah -- what we're made for (or rather, what elite scholars are made for). The sage best serves the community by limiting time away from the study hall, even if it means not making a minyan in the synagogue. The conclusive argument against, ironically, is that it will appear that he is shirking his obligation to the community (the minyan) even while he believes he is fulfilling that obligation (study).

This led us to talk about supporting the community in general. Why do congregations have trouble getting people to show up for weekday services? It's a source of frustration to some of us that our congregation of over 800 families can't reliably get a minyan for one weekday service a week. We thought that by narrowing the focus we'd avoid splitting the resources; there are probably people out there who will show up once a week but not daily, so we decided to limit the days. But it didn't work. (We used to do two days a week; that didn't work either.) Even the people who I think of as the dedicated core do not reliably show up. Yet people say they want it to exist.

People who want to -- a couple times a year -- show up to say mourners' kaddish want it to be there for them, but don't necessarily want to support others in similar quests. It's a "consumer" attitude -- what does the shul do for me? -- rather than a "community" attitude -- what do my fellow community members need? I think it's inherent in large shuls; in small shuls you know everyone and that makes it more personal.

Now it's not just us, not by a long shot, and it's not us in all things. People do show up for Shabbat and holiday services; people attend mitzvah day and participate in other acts of community service; people volunteer their time in the school and on committees and the board; people cough up a fair bit of money to keep the place running. All of this is important and I'm not trying to dismiss that. The people in charge of all of these activities will tell you that there are not enough people doing these things, but there are some. But we were talking primarily about worship.

I pointed out that if you're inclusive then you have to expect a wide range in commitment levels, from twice-a-year Jews who write a dues check and have no other contact on up to the folks who organize the community-service teams and show up every Shabbat and do a zillion other things. Our congregation has a long-standing policy of being a "big tent", of welcoming everyone who wants to be part of our family. But that doesn't mean you have a lot in common with the fourth cousins three times removed, y'know?

So why be a big tent? Why are there huge congregations? (That's not a universal truth; Pittsburgh has very large and very small congregations, and near as I can tell not much in between. But the small ones exist in all movements.) It all comes down to money. Synagogues require infrastructure, and infrastructure costs money, and a lot of that cost is fixed costs that are the same whether you have 100 members or 500. So if you can spread those costs out over more people, you make the per-person load more bearable. We run congregations the way we run businesses, because we do, after all, have to pay the mortgage and the gas bill and the salaries.

But if your 500-member congregation loses 200 members, you're going to have to either raise dues a lot or cut services. Maybe you can't afford a cantor any more, or you cut back the Sunday school, or whatever. And that may cause even more people to leave, because they aren't getting the services they're used to for the dues they pay. Because consumers expect value in proportion to cost, and the community might not have been strong in such a large congregation.

And it's always easier on the way up than on the way down. The 300-member congregation hasn't yet had a cantor, say, so they don't know what they're missing. The 500-member congregation that loses 200 members and its cantor feels a tangible loss. Eventually, if that keeps up, you merge, find a source of fresh people, or implode. Too often, implode.

I'm not worried about my congregation; while I might not know three-quarters of the members to see them on the street, I believe the core is healthy and we could survive a minor setback in membership. (Not the 40% I was talking about earlier, but that sort of thing either happens over a long time or is caused by some major event. We're studying demographics and the like now to address the former, and we're pretty good about not having major negative events.) Our congregation isn't going to disappear or make drastic changes.

But congregations of consumers are at more risk than congregations of community members, so it's worth thinking about ways to turn the former into the latter. No answers; just something to throw on the back burner.

This could probably do with more of an edit, but I have to go to sleep so I can go to minyan in the morning. :-)

Comments

[siderea]

Wow, where to start....

People, I find, overwhelmingly have trouble believing that whether or not they show up matters to anyone else. Speaking as a successful musical director, I've learned that one of the single biggest parts to getting people to show up regularly, is to tell them -- and convince them -- that if they don't show up, they are missed, and that they are doing other people a service just by showing up.

The truth of the matter is that most people are convinced of their irrelevance. They are sure nobody notices them; they think they are invisible. They couldn't possibly be important. So much in their lives seems bent on making them feel small about themselves, it's hard for them to imagine that their mere presence could be a mitzvah.

People who don't think their being somewhere matters to anyone else blow it off with impunity.

I'll bet you dollars to donuts that if you're having attendance problems, it's because members are having trouble imagining that they'd be missed.

It's funny how low self-esteem and selfishness (uncharitability) can go hand-in-hand, but this is a perfect example of it. The idea "I should show up to help them get a minyan" cannot be held by someone who rejects awareness of their power for good or ill to effect other people's lives.

So, really, there's an opportunity here. Instead of looking at it as a question of what people aren't doing for their congregation, you could look at it as an issue of your people needing to be strengthened, and taught to find their moral power.

OK, thing the second: In any situation where you're having schedule coverage problems, instead of being casual about who shows up when, have you considered making an actual schedule and asking individual members to commit to being in a certain place at a certain time? Not the already mostly showing up people, but some of the every-once-in-a-while crowd?

Have you considered spelling it out, "Hey, if you want to show up twice a year for a mourners kaddush, please show up an additional two times to help someone ELSE sit kaddush."

Thing the third: You know, I held rehearsals on the same bloody night for 11 years -- my predecessor on the same night, as well -- and, nevertheless, if I failed to send the Friendly Rehearsal Reminder email out the day of rehearsal, I got fewer attendees.

No kidding.

May I recommend a reminder email list? There might be people who would be pleased to receive an email saying "Hey, it's Thursday, come on down to worship tonight."

The fact that it's the same night really doesn't seem to matter that much. People can be just amazingly flakey. And if you want your big tent to include the flakey, special accommodations may need to be made.

[estherchaya.livejournal.com]

The 300-member congregation hasn't yet had a cantor, say, so they don't know what they're missing.

I might argue the other direction on that. Congregations that have always had a cantor don't know what they're missing when congregants are forced to bear the responsibility for leading services. You'd be amazed how much greater the proportion of individuals qualified to lead services increases when there's an actual need.

[jducoeur]

Of course, most of these points are true of all kinds of community organizations. The same issues exist in Masonry, for example: we have plenty of 300-man Lodges that have trouble scaring up a dozen officers to have the monthly meeting.

I agree with all of siderea's suggestions, but I want to particularly emphasize the value of personal contact in getting people to these things. Asking someone personally, "will you be there on Tuesday?" is vastly more likely to be successful than asking the same question of the masses.

It's kind of analogous to one of the standard recommendations I make to autocrats these days: asking specific people to help with specific tasks is far more likely to produce results than putting out a general call for volunteers. If you impersonally ask a hundred people, often none will speak up; if you ask one specific person, I've found there's about a 50% chance they'll say yes.

These situations also feed on themselves -- people get into the habit of doing or not doing such stuff. If you can get someone there a few times, the chances of them saying yes in the future (or even just thinking of it themselves) goes steadily up.

So I'd recommend targeting some likely candidates, coupled with the more general email announcements. Talk to them one-to-one when you get a chance, and suggest to them that they come help out. Don't pester, but encourage, and keep an eye on who seems to be having fun. This way, you gradually build a fairly organic core of people who are getting into the habit, and grow that core slowly.

(Mind, these are relatively glib recommendations: I'm terrible at this sort of thing myself. But my consistent observation is that personal requests are always far more effective than any sort of blanket calls...)