We spoke, at the November meeting, of understanding where we are, and how we got here, through data, through reviewing reasons why people have left and why our numbers have fallen. Unfortunately, we do not have most of the concrete data that could provide quantitative analyses of the past few years’ departures, much less so the past several and beyond. We do, though, have some specific recent data, and some qualitative understandings of what led us to where we are. In very brief summary, most of the recent departures are because of personal reasons, ranging from moving, to wanting to join the same congregation as their (adult) children, to having felt snubbed or unappreciated.
Much of what precipitated the events that led to the decisions at the November meeting was a lack of new leadership—that is, a lack of new people willing to assume leadership roles (where “new” means “new to leadership at Keddem”). To a large degree, the lack of new leadership relates directly to the lack of new members: we have not, for many years, had an effective program for
- Attracting potential members to an event.
- Getting those potential members to return and to join.
- Getting new members involved in our community and helping with events.
- Inviting and training those who help with events to be able and willing to organize those events.
- Supporting those event organizers so they became willing to join the Board and then to serve as officers of the congregation.
This is not to say we have never done these things, nor to say that we have not had some great ideas for doing them. Keddem has had a plethora of great ideas during our near-score of years. We have, though, failed to implement many of those great ideas throughout the years.
These issues are not new: they date back, certainly, to fifteen years ago when I first served as Keddem’s president. During the rest of my time as interim president, I am working with other leaders at Keddem, both current Board members and those not on the Board, to begin to address some of these issues. We won’t change things overnight. In fact, most of the current focus is merely laying the groundwork for recruiting new members and growing new leaders. We need these if we want to succeed into the future: though many of our past leaders still have a great deal of love, enthusiasm, and energy for Keddem, new leaders with new ideas and new energy are essential to Keddem’s health.