Just the facts, ma'am...
Gaia Community is a spiritual home to many different kinds of people, and some of those folks have gone the extra mile in their commitment to Gaia to become "Full Active Members" of the community. You don't have to be a member to come to our rituals or classes, to join the yahoogroup, or to participate in many of our activities. In fact, many people decide to participate at Gaia Community without becoming members. This is fine - the more the merrier! But what is membership about? What do you have to do? How does it benefit you?

Why have membership at all?
Well, for one thing, we're a Unitarian Universalist congregation. In order to maintain this affiliation with the UUA, we need to keep track of how many people consider this "their church." There are some other legal reasons... like keeping our church status as recognized by the government and such. But it also helps us know who, of the people who come to Gaia, are the folks willing to dedicate time, effort, and support to our community. It helps us know who cares deeply about Gaia Community's continued existence and prosperity. There are other ways to help, of course, and many people do - but without financial support from our members, we cannot pay the rent, the bills, our Religious Education Director... all those horribly mundane details that we each deal with in our non-Gaian lives as well. Gaia Community is a living, growing, thriving congregation, and it needs all the support it can get!

• our monthly newsletter, the Earth Healer;
  
• full decision-making privileges at Rituals for Business;
• membership on a Ritual Team (if you've taken the Excellence in Ritual class);
• access to the Virtual Lending Library;
• a subscription to the UU World magazine

• to take the new member class to learn an overview of the history of the UUA and Gaia Community and how we function as a community (education is good, ignorance is bad);
• to sign the membership book indicating that you support you support our Mission-Covenant Statement and the Seven UUA Principles;
• to fill out a pledge card for each fiscal year, pledging at least the minimum amount required to cover the aforementioned benefits package;
• and to keep up-to date on that pledge, or at least cover our costs for the benefit package;