At United Hebrew Congregation on Sunday, there was a meeting that participants described as rare.

While Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, spoke in a synagogue sanctuary about the movement’s role in Israel, across the hall, leaders of St. Louis Reform congregations discussed the common challenges they face and ways in which they could collaborate.

Leslie Goldsmith, a past president of United Hebrew, said she had never participated in such a meeting with lay leaders from other synagogues.

Jacobs, who lives in New York and travels frequently to different Jewish communities, said there are places where there is “sometimes a sense of rivalry, of not just how do we strengthen Jewish life, but how do we strengthen my synagogue.”

But in other places, separate congregations have embraced the idea of working together. In St. Louis, Jacobs, who was visiting because of the URJ’s North American board of trustees gathering, said he sensed “a lot of good will” among the rabbis at the five St. Louis Reform synagogues.

That willingness to work together, rather than just compete for members, leaders said, is what will help sustain Reform Judaism at a time when there are concerns about the future of the movement.

While Jacobs and others point to the fact that Reform Judaism continues to make up the largest segment among American Jews at 35 percent (the number is 47 percent in St. Louis); the movement’s intermarriage rate is also the highest (50 percent) and 14 percent of Americans who identify as Reform say Judaism holds little or no importance at all, according to a 2013 Pew Research Center survey.

In addition to the program at United Hebrew, Jacobs also spoke at Congregation Shaare Emeth on Friday night and on Saturday met with African-American youth and congregational leaders at Central Reform Congregation and with Jewish Federation of St. Louis president and CEO Andrew Rehfeld.

St. Louis has a unique Reform Jewish community in part because of its history — west of the Mississippi, United Hebrew Congregation is the oldest synagogue and Shaare Emeth is the oldest Reform synagogue — and also because of its prominence today. For example, Rabbi Susan Talve of CRC participated in the protests that followed the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson and spoke at the White House Hanukkah Party last year.

The balancing act between the old and the new, a number of attendees said, could determine the future for the Reform movement.

A few dozen people attended the gathering Sunday. The majority of the meetings were open to the public, but URJ leaders requested that this reporter not attend the meeting among local leaders, the majority of them volunteers. Rabbi Jim Bennett of Congregation Shaare Emeth said that privacy allowed participants to be more candid.

“The leaders of the Reform community don’t have the opportunity to come together and think creatively very often,” said Bennett. “There was kind of this open sharing of, what’s on your mind? What are the real problems of Reform congregational life today?”

The lay leaders discussed restarting the St. Louis Federation of Reform Temples, a group that aims to facilitate cooperation and communication among the synagogues. It has not been active in the last five years, according to Dee Mogerman, president of Congregation Temple Israel.

“There was a shared belief among these leaders that the Reform congregations have a unique opportunity to grow membership by attracting currently unaffiliated Jewish households,” Scott Levine, president of Central Reform Congregation, wrote in an email.

People in the meeting agreed that one of the common problems is limited financial resources, Bennett said. And with the money that has been donated, there is an overreliance on supporting new initiatives, the rabbi believes.

“More and more resources are being dedicated towards new, innovative ways to engage Jewish life, which is a good thing, but sometimes at the expense of adequately funding the primary entry points to Jewish life, particularly the synagogues,” he said. “If there is a Federation project or a donor that has a limited pool and they say, ‘We want to get new educational opportunities started,’ it’s much easier to fund new things than it is for it to go to successful things like religious school and youth groups.”

Rather than funding new projects, Bennett suggested, funders could support scholarships for children who can’t afford religious school.

Meanwhile, Jacobs focused on the innovation occurring in Reform Judaism during his sermon on Friday at Shaare Emeth, according to a copy of his remarks. But he cautioned that it’s misguided to think that “when it comes to congregations and denominations: large means lethargic and old means obsolete, while new means noteworthy, and small means sustainable.”

“Some (startups) are serving a very small number of people for a short time with substantial investment from the Jewish philanthropic community but the jury is out as to which ones represent long-term innovation,” Jacobs said.

Still, there are new initiatives that have been successful in connecting with unaffiliated Jews, Jacobs said in an interview. He pointed to PJ Library, an organization that sends Jewish books for free to families each month to read with their children.

“It used to be that synagogues waited for people to come knock on the door. No more of that. We have to literally be building bridges to the world outside of our synagogues, whether it be millennials or families with young children, they are not going to come (to us),” Jacobs added.

After meeting with black Jewish leaders on Saturday, Jacobs said he came away thinking more about ways to engage Jews of color and understand the unique challenges they face. According to Be’chol Lashon, an organization that aims for a more expansive approach to Judaism, more than 20 percent of Jews in America are racially and ethically diverse.

“How do we make sure that Jews of colors feel more welcome in more of our congregations because it’s not a tiny slice,” Jacobs said.

He pointed to the movement’s history of fighting for Civil Rights and people like Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who taught at Reform Jewish seminaries and marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma, Ala.

“We have (had) an important role historically and in the present in making America a more just and compassionate society but we better update our understanding of the issues and make sure that we play the most constructive role possible,” Jacobs said.

After the private meeting among lay leaders ended, the presidents of the local congregations continued to huddle. Looking at the group, Neil Marglous, a vice president at Temple Israel, said he was encouraged by the meeting but that challenges lay ahead.

“There has to be more working together amongst the congregations for us to grow and continue to thrive,” Marglous said. That will be difficult, he said, “because everyone has their own self interests.”

Alongside the concerns, there are exciting events on the calendar. Jacobs plans to return to St. Louis in 2017 for the 170-year anniversary of the founding of Shaare Emeth.