Across the Great Divide (epilogue)

I will be honest: this is not the essay series I’d intended to write.  My original intent, which you can no doubt see evidenced in the first part, was to present an argument for the use of “the language of reverence,” as Rev. Bill Sinkford called it.  I was inspired in part by an incident that occurred at the church I serve as Lead Minister.  The setting was a Sunday worship service celebrating the decision that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional.

I’d placed on the altar two placards I’d had made previously to bring with me to the courthouse to join other clergy performing the first legally recognized same-sex marriages in our state.  (I was not, unfortunately, ultimately able to be there that day.)  One sign, referencing our Universalist ancestors, and countering the religious opponents of marriage equality, said, “God is love; God is here.”  The other, recognizing that theistic language is not the only language of religion, said, “All love is equal.”  Both had images of joined wedding rings as well as a rainbow flag.  These two placards were on the altar together, next to each other, reflecting the diversity of religious expression in our congregations.

After the service was over I was told by some that the sign with the word “God” on it was deeply offensive and that, in fact, at least one member walked out of the sanctuary before the service began because simply seeing the word “God” on our altar was so disturbing.  The fact that there was an equivalent statement in support of marriage equality that did not include “God-talk” was, apparently, of no comfort.

I do not, for a moment, doubt that the discomfort and distress these people felt was real.  I do wonder, however, what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist and not be able to at least tolerate the appearance of the word “God.”   Along with the statement of Principles that our Association affirms there is also a list of six “sources” which are said to nourish our “living tradition.” There is an affirmation of Humanism:  “Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit.”  Yet there are also these two: “Wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life; and, “Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves.”  It seems quite valid to ask how one can affirm these later two sources while refusing to allow even the word “God” into our sanctuaries.

This essay series, then, was originally intended to be a defense of the appropriateness of “God-talk” in our communities.  As I wrote, though, I began to see that such a defense – while arguably still worth raising – really fundamentally misses the point.  There is an even bigger demand – both a challenge and an opportunity – to which we are called by our Unitarian Universalist faith. 

In his book Many Mansions:  A Christian's Encounters With Other Faiths, the Protestant theologian Harvey Cox wrote about the conversion, in the late 1700s, of Boston’s King’s Chapel from Anglicanism to Unitarianism, saying, “They teach us something important about the future of religion not by what they did but by the courage and initiative they showed in daring to do it.  We now have the chance to do the same thing,” he wrote, “— not to wait and see what religious forms will emerge in the next century, but to use our imaginations to shape them.”  Universalist preacher and teacher Clinton Lee Scott said, “We may set our hands to the task of building a new kind of church adapted to the new age, thus creating a demonstration center that will prove what can be done by a radical reconstruction.” 

We are called, through this grand experiment of Unitarian Universalism, to demonstrate to the world a new way of being religious.  We are called on to use our imaginations to shape the religious forms needed in this new age.  If we are to fulfill this calling, we must actively and creatively find ways to avoid being too tied to either the acceptance or the rejection of any particular religious identity or expression.  We must find ways to transcend – as individuals, as congregations, and as a movement – the more parochial perspectives of the previous paradigm and both discover and develop new means of discourse. 

I have come to realize that it is not a question of whether or not to use the "language of reverence," whether or not "God-talk" is to be acceptable in our communal discourse.  The question that really needs to be explore is how to find and make real the both/and that is essential to any real diverse inclusion.  This a question to which I will freely admit having no answers.  Yet I know that it's a good question. It's one  we can chew on and in the exploration of which we will find much benefit.  Through the writing of this essay series, attempting to answer one of the most long-standing and irksome questions with which our movement has wrestled, I believe I have discovered what E. E. Cummings described as, "the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question."

Pax tecum,

RevWik 

Who Made MeThe Jell-O Sheriff?

On one of Bill Cosby's early records he said something that has become legendary among his fans, and thanks to his years as a Jell-O pitchman among others as well.  I first heard it, actually, from a dear friend during my summer camp days. 

It's a question, really.  The kind of question you ask when someone acts like they've got some kind of authority you don't agree they have (like, for instance, when your brother catches you stealing the last pudding in the 'fridge.) 

"Who made you the Jell-O Sheriff?"

I've been thinking about this lately in relationship to my role in the church I serve and, for that matter, when I think of the role people like me play in congregations all over the place.  Yes, I am an ordained minister who has attained final fellowship within my ministerial association.  I have fifteen years of experience in parish ministry.  And I was duly called (by a unanimous vote!) by the good people of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church - Unitarian Universalist. 

But who made me the Jell-O Sheriff?

During this past year a great deal of work by a really marvelous task force went into a series of recommendations for the staffing of our congregation. One piece of this rather exciting whole is a new position -- the Director of Administration and Finance.

It's been decided that the Director of Administration and Finance will not report to me, the Lead Minister.  Rather, she or he will report directly to the Board.  Some thought that the Lead Minister should be the supervisor of this new position, as the ordained clergy person in many, if not most, of our congregations functions something like a CEO.  What finally swayed the day was the argument that one reason for creating the Director of Administration and Finance was to take those sorts of things off the plate of the Lead Minister, and if I was the supervisor of this new staff person we would, essentially, be putting all of that stuff back on my plate again.

In terms of an organization chart, then, the Director of Administration and Finance and the Lead Minister are on the same level, each of us with our own particular area of focus -- one on the "administrative" side of the church and the other on the "program" or, as some people would like to put it, the "spiritual" side of things.  Co-equal.

It makes sense, does'nt it?  And yet when I talk about it with folks -- lay people, other clergy colleagues -- especially if I use that word "co-equal" a lot of people freak out a bit.  It seems that there is an underlying assumption that the ordained minister should be the person who is ultimately in charge.

But why?  Who made us the Jell-O sheriffs?  What part of my divinity school training prepared me to run a non-profit organization?  What part made me an expert in religious education, or finance, or even volunteer coordination?  Do you want to know something about Biblical exegesis or church history, then I'm your man.  (Although you'd better come quick because a lot of that stuff is fading fast!)  But if you want to know about these other things then I've got to admit that while I've picked up a lot over the years pretty much I'm winging it.

So why not have a Director of Administration and Finance at the same organizational level as a Lead Minister?  (We might even change the later title to Director of Ministries.)  After all, isn't the congregation the ultimate authority in a Unitarian Universalist congregation, with much of that authority delegated to the Board of Trustees?  And since we already have a Director of Lifespan Faith Development, why not bring that position in line with the other "directorships" while we're at it?  And then there's the Director of Music . . .

In the movie The Big Chill there's a scene in which William Hurt's character has just said something that really shocked and upset his friends.  He replies, in his defense, "I was just trying to keep the conversation lively."  Perhaps it was my recent experience at the Canadian Unitarian Council's Spiritual Leadership Symposium, at which I was engaged to be a provocateur, but that is really what this post is about, too . . . keeping the conversation lively.

And so . . . let the conversation commence!


In Gassho,

RevWik

An Articulation of the Vision That Guides My Ministry

I have been very lucky -- blessed, gifted, challenged, encouraged, stretched, supported -- this year.  I've been working with a professional Clergy Coach.  The work we do together is more multifaceted than that name might suggest -- we've talked about my personal life, my "spiritual life," my professional life . . .  It's been a really helpful addition to my self-care tool box.  

[If you're interested, I've been working with the extremely skilled and talented Rev. Mark Hoelter.  And he's but one of the UUMA's team of clergy coaches, although Mark was already doing this before that program got started.]

Recently Mark and I were talking about whether or not I have a vision that guides my ministry and for the first time, really, I found I was able to articulate a pro-active response.  What follows is that response:

Over the years I have often been asked to articulate my “vision for my ministry.”  This is a favorite question of search committees as they interview potential clergy partners.  And generally I’ve answered in essentially the same way – I downplay the idea that I have any kind of premeditated, predetermined vision.  I have said – and I believe deeply – that ministry is a collaborative interplay, a dance among all of the ministers of the church.  (And by this I mean the ordained clergy person(s) as well as all of the members of the faith community – including both the “official” members and the so-called “friends.”)  If I have a vision, I have said, it is that together we co-create the vision of our mutual ministry – for me to have my own map in my head would betray this essential process.

And yet . . .

In a little over a month I will turn fifty.  I will have been an ordained clergy person – a professional minister, if you will – for nearly twenty years.  I have served three different congregations, and even did a stint as part of the Association’s national staff.  And while this summarizes my professional ministry, I have actively and knowingly been a minister for more than thirty years – through my work in camp and conference ministry; my freelance parish-based clown ministry; and the ministry of my years as an itinerant juggler, magician, and clown.

Looking both backward and forward – as well as at where I am right now serving as Lead Minister for the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church – Unitarian Universalist in Charlottesville, Virginia – I’ve come to realize that my ministry has had some recurrent themes, and that I do have a vision I want to explore before I’m finished.

Three strands weave together to form this vision:

First, during the 1980s I worked with The Midway Caravan, an interactive family entertainment company.  We provided shows to venues such as county fairs and theme parks, yet did so in a way which subverted the traditional performance paradigm.  Traditional performances gather together a group of people for the purpose of watching trained and skilled individuals do something that the gathered crowd cannot.  “Look how good you are!” is the audience’s response to the performer’s demonstrations.  With a Midway Caravan program on the other hand –the quintessential example is their Backyard Circus – a group of people is brought together for the purpose of, themselves, putting on a show for one another.  Here the professional performer’s primary skill is the ability to facilitate the transformation of this group into a community.  “Look at what you can do!” says the performer to the audience; “We didn’t know we could do this!” is what the audience says to itself.

The second strand that weaves into the tapestry of my ministry is the faith formation that I experienced in my home church (the First Presbyterian Church of Baldwin, Long Island), in the camp and conference centers of the New York Conference of the United Methodist Church (camps Epworth and Quinipet), and in my work of “clown ministry.”  What I learned in these places was that religion isn’t about catechisms and creeds, it is about learning to live a life of love.  I learned that people can have all sorts of different ways of describing the divine, that the sacred can be given all sorts of names, but that the heart of the matter was just that – a matter of the heart.  Can I be alive to the absolute miracle that is life – my life, all life – in this universe?  The brief definition I have developed to describe Unitarian Universalist theology was born during this time:  we are one human family, on one fragile planet, in one miraculous Universe, bound by love.  And it was clear to me that the “priests” and the “professional clergy” did not have a monopoly on this truth – either living it or encouraging others in their attempts to do so.  All of us humans, and all of creation, are ministers of this gospel.

While there may well be a myriad of other strands, the last I will lift up is the influence of some of the Universalist ancestors who have inspired me.  One such is the Rev. Kenneth L. Patton who, in his 1964 magnum opus, A Religion for One World, wrote:  ““Engaged with the religious task before humanity, it is time for the liberal church to cease being a group of neighborhood dispensaries and filling stations, operated for the amusement and dilettante dabbling of discontented intellectuals, and to become creative workshops wherein the problems of humanity can be investigated and alleviated. [. . .].”  His idea that the local congregation is a workshop or, as he elsewhere calls it, a “laboratory” in which a congregation actively engages with experiments in living was thrilling to me when I first encountered it.  And this echoes nicely something written by the Rev. Clarence Skinner back in 1931:  “[We] may set [our] hand[s] to the task of building a new kind of church adapted to the new age, thus creating a demonstration center that will prove what can be done by a radical reconstruction.”  I began my career with the declaration that Unitarian Universalism is a “Grand Experiment” in religious community.  This constitutes the third thread.

Where does all this lead me?  I realize that I do have a vision, a passion that’s guiding the ministry with which I’m currently engaged and which I can imagine engaging me for some time to come:

1. I aim to inspire, cultivate, and nurture the congregation’s understanding of itself as a laboratory, a workshop, and a “demonstration center” that is engaged not only in the specific Grand Experiment that is Unitarian Universalism – the development of a creedless, multi-faith community and the “radical reconstruction” of the forms of religious community – but also the individual on-going experiments in the lives of its members to make sense of the twin realities of being alive and having to die (which is, arguably, the fundamental purpose of all religion).
2. I am continuing the subversive work of the Midway Caravan and expanding it beyond the realm of theater into the realm of religion.  This work dissolves the distinctions between “lay” and “ordained” ministry and, by extension, encourages the dissolution of the categories of “us” and “them.”
3. The Holy Fool & Trickster which has been my companion since the earliest days continues to lead me forward in not only proclaiming the truth that “we are one human family, on one fragile planet, in one miraculous universe, bound by love” but also exploring the practical ramifications of living this gospel.

This is my vision for my ministry.

In Gassho,

RevWik

PS -- I have, in past posts, raised some questions that might be part of this experimental program.  See, for instance:  It Is Us; The Member-less Church; The Member-less Church, part two; The Member-less Church, part three; Membership, Openness, and Thinking Outside of the ...; Open Source Church: a sermon; What's In A Name?;  and Open Source Church, continued . . .;

Smartphones Come To Church

Several weeks ago we began an experiment in worship at the congregation I am privileged to serve, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church– Unitarian Universalist in Charlottesville, Virginia.  It is an expansion of an idea I first saw discussed on the UU Worship Lab, a FaceBook group dedicated to exploring the art and science of worship.

At the beginning of the service we ask that people silence their cell phones but leave them on.  Near the end of the service, during the Offering/Offertory, we ask everyone to think of a person or people who had had an impact on their lives and who are not in the sanctuary this morning.  Congregants are invited hold these people in their hearts and minds, or to take out their mobile devices and text, tweet, FaceBook, or e-mail those people.  In this way, we've said, we can each make an offering not only of our financial support, but also of our reaching out to others.

After the first service in which we did this one person said to me, “I’ve never been told to text in church before!”  And it is clear that many people have eagerly taken up the invitation.  I’m sure that not everyone is happy about it, though.  I know that there are some people who think of the sanctuary on Sunday mornings as just that – a sanctuary.  And one of the things these people are wanting a peaceful haven from is the incessant bombardment of all things tech.  Why, then, in this of all places, should we be inviting people to engage in such behavior?

Why indeed?  I’ve been thinking about this a lot leading up to actually giving it a try.  Is it just a fad?  An attempt to reach out to younger people?  A novel way of saying, “We’re hip and cool; give us a try”?

Perhaps.  All of these are certainly possible and, I’d be the first to admit, probable at some level.  And yet I think that there’s more to it than this.  And as I looked for what it is, I’ve found myself thinking about Martin Luther.

That sixteenth century German priest sparked a revolution, in part, because of his belief that all baptized Christians constituted a holy priesthood – “the priesthood of all believers” – and his insistence on translating the Bible from Latin into the German vernacular so that it was accessible to more people.  Both of these ideas were scandalous at the time.  I also think that both of these ideas are present in the idea of including a time for tweeting in our service.

For a generation of people, the smart phone (and related devices) are not just tools or gadgets – they are truly an extension of self.  This may not be true for me, or even you, but it is undeniably true for many people in our world today.  They have grown up texting one another even while talking to someone else, and the ability to make immediate comments on and connections with what’s happening around them is taken for granted.

I don’t think that it’s too much of a stretch to say that texting, tweeting, instant messaging, and the like are a part of the vernacular of this generation.  And just as Luther came to realize that insisting on a Latin Mass was keeping his generation of Christians away from a deeper connection with their faith, I can’t help wondering if our “no cell phone” policies are doing the same thing for this generation. 

Think about it for a moment.  For those who do use such devices regularly, anything and everything that’s considered at all relevant is instantly shared with a circle of cyber “friends” who, then, comment in return.  And yet in church, which I believe should be the most relevant of experiences in the week, this behavior is actively discouraged.

As an aside, for those who think that encouraging the use of these handheld devices would be distracting – either to the people doing it or the people near to them – how many of our congregations forbid knitting during the service?  I known of parishioners who bring their mail into worship and pay their bills.  I’ve even heard of a parishioner who brought his copy of the New York Times and would unfold it and read it during the sermon.  Is quietly sending a text any more disturbing to the “sanctity of the hour” than that?

And from the point of view of those for whom this is all second nature, not doing these things is distracting!  Imagine, if you’re a note taker, that you were forbidden to bring a pencil into worship.  Or, if you like to close your eyes to focus on what you’re hearing, you found that the church had instituted an “eyes wide open” policy.  And yet this is exactly what we do when we tell everyone that they must turn off and put away these extensions of self.

At first, we're limiting the use of these electronics to this one place in the service and this one purpose, to reach out to people who aren't with us in the sanctuary.  (Although folks have confessed to me that they've taken advantage of the invitation to text the spouse who was sitting right next to them!)  But who knows?  I recently came across a video advertising the free services of YouVersion Live, a way to seamlessly interact with worship leaders and fellow congregants during worship on your mobile phone.  Some of the things they suggest seem odd to me; some seem amazingly useful.

I hope that there'll be conversation about this idea.  I hope, even more, that others will be encouraged to give it a try so that we can learn from one another's actual experiences (rather than simply sharing all of our own biased and preconceived assumptions).

 In Gassho,

Rev. Wik