Michael Durrall, in his article, “Reach out to become a ‘public’ church,” (Fall 2009 issue of UU World), draws a sharp contrast between a private and a public church. Unitarian Universalism, he believes, is in large part a private church because its congregations tend to focus on the private lives of their individual congregants, rather than on the communities in the public sphere that surround us. He defines a “public” church as one that reaches out to create a more just and humane world. His litmus test of private versus public is the “outreach” or “social action” line item in a church’s budget. If a church’s line item is appreciably less than the national average of 16 percent for denominations like our own, it is clearly a private church.
Durrall brings a sense of urgency to this issue of private versus public churches. He believes that if churches fail to reach out to their wider communities in a much more public, focused and decisive way, they will eventually wither away.
A public collective ministry, then, is characterized by a collective decision on the part of congregants to actively and support, through behaviors and money, a set of public outreach initiatives or projects that define and give vitality to their church. Such a commitment is more than the sum of what congregants, as individuals, do to support initiatives or projects. Our sister church, the 22nd Street Unitarian Universalist Church, for example, has adopted and actively supports “No More Deaths,” a project that is of vital importance to the thousands of people who yearly traverse the U.S.-Mexico border on their trek north to seek a better life.