Filed under: Becoming and Being Part of a UU Congregation, Church Finances and Stewardship, Family Ministry | Tags: church community, congregational health, Family Ministry, financial support, pledge drive, spiritual home, stewardship
Sustaining Our Vision: From Year to Year and From Generation to Generation.
Good Morning, my name is Chris, this is my wife, Tamara, and our son Nicholas. We’ve been members here for a little over a year now. Shortly before joining UUSS, we moved to Sacramento from Massachusetts, the birthplace of Unitarian Universalism in this country. It was in Massachusetts that we first learned about this unique spiritual community. From what we read on the web, the values and principles of UU’ism aligned closely with our own, so we promptly joined a local congregation.
Each town around where we lived had its own small congregation so there couldn’t have been more than 50 of us on a busy day. Services were held in an old historic church with a tall white steeple typical of every New England town. The building belonged to the congregation but had deteriorated over the years from lack of maintenance. The paint was pealing off the walls and the steeple leaked in several places. The cost just to maintain the building was beyond the resources of our small congregation, so repairing it was not an option. Instead, we had the steeple removed and a cap placed over hole left in the roof. As a result, the building stood out like a sore thumb next to Baptist and Episcopalian churches across the way.
You can imagine our surprise visiting this place for the first time. We couldn’t believe how many members there were and how peaceful the campus was with its large oak trees. Attending Sunday services in this place helps us connect with a spiritual community and re-energizes our souls. After our experience in Massachusetts, we appreciate what it takes to create and maintain this special, nurturing environment, both today and for tomorrow. As our covenant emphasizes, it requires a commitment of time, talent, and support.
We support UUSS in this pledge drive because we understand the importance of investing in the things we value most. UUSS, through its activities both here on campus as well as in the broader community, represents our values. As busy working parents, financial support of UUSS is an important piece of our family’s time, talents, and support. We view our pledge as an investment in the future, for ourselves and Nicholas, to help realize the world we envision and strive for. Thank you.
Filed under: Church Finances and Stewardship, Family Ministry, Inspiration, Special Events, Stewardship & Finances, UU Denomination and Pacific Central District News and Views | Tags: capital campaign, Family Ministry, financial generosity, giving campaign testimonial, stewardship, supporting church families
October 14, 2012.
My Testimonial
Delivered by Maxine Cornwell at the Unitarian Universalist Society of Sacramento
Imagine 1959:
There are no freeways in Sacramento. Highway 50 is Folsom Boulevard; I-80 is Highway 40, which makes its way slowly through Roseville, Citrus Heights, Town and Country, North Sacramento, Del Paso Heights and eventually into Sacramento; Highway 99 follows Stockton Boulevard; and I-5 isn’t yet even a dream.
Bob and I are living in Fair Oaks with our 4 ½-year-old son Bobby, and 2-year-old daughter Nancy. We wanted religious education for our son; after all he would start kindergarten in the fall. So we began going to the Fair Oaks Presbyterian Church.
But soon Bobby’s reports from Sunday School alarmed us: threats of hell, being damned from birth; descriptions of sin, even original sin—teachings we considered totally inappropriate for a 4-year-old, or perhaps even for a 14-year old.
We started putting the children to bed really early, and staying up late into the night sharing our thoughts about what we wanted from church for them and also for ourselves.
One Wednesday when I was participating at Bobby’s preschool, I mentioned our dilemma to another mother. She said, “Come with me to my church.”
So the following Sunday, we loaded our children into our 1954 Oldsmobile and followed her family down Fair Oaks Boulevard all the way to the First Unitarian Church on 27th Street.
Bobby came out of RE that morning with a story about Martin and Judy and their wondrous discoveries in their own back yard.
In the coming weeks and months, Bob and I would learn that Martin and Judy was the first in a curriculum series developed by Sofia Lyon Fahs for Unitarian religious education beginning in preschool and ending in the last year of high school.
Here was what we had described to each other: a program based on the stage of the child’s development that taught wonder, courage, open-mindedness, inclusiveness, and a basic understanding of the Judeo-Christian culture in which he/she would live rather than fear, guilt, and dogma.
This curriculum became the basis for RE in our home and at church for Bobby and Nancy and for the other two children we would have, Launa and Carrie.
Today we want to be a part of ensuring that this kind of RE will be available here in this place for our grandson, Alec Redmond, and for all of the daughters, sons, granddaughters, and grandsons whose parents seek a developmentally appropriate liberal religious education program for their children during the next 50 or more years.
Filed under: Becoming and Being Part of a UU Congregation, Children and Youth, Family Ministry, Sermon Archives and Excerpts, UU Denomination and Pacific Central District News and Views | Tags: children's programs, community-building, faith development, Family Ministry, growing up UU, kids, non-parents as teachers, religious education, spirituality, volunteers
A Sermon Dedicated to Janet Lopes, Retiring Religious Education Assistant
Unitarian Universalist Society. Sacramento, CA, Sunday, March 14, 2010
Hymns: #324, Where My Free Spirit Onward Leads; #16, ‘Tis a Gift to Be Simple; #299, Make Channels for the Streams of Love.
Reading: “It Matters What We Believe” by Sophia Lyon Fahs (#657, Singing the Living Tradition)
Today’s responsive reading is based on the words of Sophie Fahs, the minister after whom our Fahs Classroom is named.
In 1937 the American Unitarian Association hired her to edit the children’s materials in a new series of religious education curricula. Her books include Tomorrow’s Children and Yesterday’s Heritage; Jesus, the Carpenter’s Son; Beginnings of Life and Death; The Old Story of Salvation, and The Church across the Street. She taught at Union Theological Seminary. She was ordained a UU minister in 1948, at age 83.
Sermon
If you haven’t visited our Community Garden (out at the end of the parking lot), I invite you to do so–today or any day. Last Sunday morning in Religious Education we had a Garden Day, thanks to the organizing efforts of several volunteers. Children and youth decorated bird houses made out of hollowed-out gourds, which were then mounted on the wooden fence. They made signs to stick in the raised garden plots or take home for their own use. Then they explored.
Children, youth and adults wandered around our enormous garden, investigating, collecting, chatting, wondering, delighting. A few kids wanted to show me the many ladybugs crawling on a pile of composting weeds–and crawling over their arms and hands. Others harvested shiny green snap-peas and greenish-yellow broccoli flowers. One showed me green onions and the skinniest little carrots, with fresh brown dirt clinging to them. The carrots were a far cry from those uniformly cut mini-carrots you find in a plastic bag in the supermarket, the ones that look like big orange capsules. On the last Sunday in April, we will invite youth and children again to the garden–to do a lot more hands-on work, and by then the harvest will have more variety.
Wandering in the garden gave me a chance to chat with adult volunteers as well as kids—much less rushed than I usually am on Sunday. It seemed that once you entered the garden, the boundaries between being a teacher and student, between leader and learner, became fuzzy. People of all ages were giving one another a helping hand. We showed one another new discoveries. We learned again about feeling excitement about ordinary things, like plants and bugs.
Some of you might think this sermon is a plea for volunteers in our religious education program for the summer or next fall. Not really. I do hope that you can appreciate the ministry that we do with youth and children, and the ministry they do with us. Even if you never spend more than a few minutes interacting with a child, your support of our religious education ministry makes possible so much inspiration and insight, so many transforming moments. Well, to be truthful, I hope you can’t resist stopping by the Religious Education table outside to ask how you can be part of the fun.
Often when we say the words “education,” what goes off in the mind is an image of teacher and pupil, of children in rows hearing facts and not saying much in return. Or maybe it’s an image of kids not staying in rows and not hearing a thing, all talking at the same time, a great chorus of chaos and noise. Maybe when you hear the words “Sunday school” you think about learning rules, doctrines, dates, famous names, and other forgettable facts. That’s not really the way it is, and not how it should be, if we are true to our liberal faith tradition.
The late Harold Howe was a professor of teacher education at Harvard and a Commissioner of Education in the federal government. He was also a UU. After a church service, he gave this note to his minister: “Here’s a definition of a Unitarian Universalist: a person who can ask children, ‘What is God?’ and listen seriously to their replies.
“P.S.: I once went to Sunday school for about 7 years, but no one asked me ‘What is God?’ Instead, they told me.”
Our tradition affirms the value of hearing what stirs the spirit of every person, at every age and stage of life. When we ask another: “What do you think? What do you feel?” we open ourselves to be changed. This interchange is the heart of religious education.
I asked a few volunters in our own Religious Education program for their reflections. One writes: “Given my own Sunday School experiences of expecting to be proper and very quiet, I am constantly amazed that UU kids are … polite, not afraid of adults, confident that their opinions matter and won’t be laughed at, and [that they are ] able to ‘pass’and not say anything as an option. UU religious education is such a good foundation for children.”
The Reverend Til Evans is retired from a career as a director and minister of religious education and as a professor of seminarians at Starr King School for the Ministry. Now in her late 80s, Til says that whoever we are, when we give time and attention to children in our congregations, we are educating them religiously. It’s not about giving them facts and concepts, she says. By our actions and by our presence, we’re teaching about relationships, community and love. We’re teaching children and teenagers about their own dignity and worth, and about the value of their own ideas and sources of inspiration. She adds that when we religiously educate others, we are religiously educating ourselves. We are engaged in the work of transformation, not forthose we teach, but with them. We are all changed by what we do together.
Several years ago, in my former congregation I interviewed some Religious Education volunteers. I asked, “How has doing this work changed you? What have you gained?” One volunteer said: “Doing this teaches humility! The more you learn, the more you realize what you don’t know.” Another said that helping with kids, even on an occasional basis, teaches patience and self-confidence. One teacher said she became more flexible and observant: “I listen better now.” Another said he was learning to use his intuition, especially when a dry lesson called for some spicing up. A fairly new member of the church said working in religious education has “Made me more accountable to working thorough my own journey in becoming a Unitarian. These kids are so sharp. They want to know how this material relates to their lives. Teaching has made me do my own reading and walk my own path.”
A religious education volunteer here at this church says this: “I … know from watching my own kids that having adults other than your folks take an interest in you is so important. It gives the kids another perspective and an opportunity to see themselves in others’ eyes. (School) teachers are helpful, but at church we can serve in a personal way for the kids. I also believe it’s important to give parents a break and allow them to be in roles other than mom and dad all the time. I remember as a mother of small children, I really needed adult contact, interaction and accomplishments. I’m pleased that I can give back to my church community by being with the kids.”
Often when we talk about volunteer work, teaching, or other kinds of service, it can have a sense of duty about it. We want to think well of ourselves, so we might think we should be of service, should help out. How about if we approach our altruism… selfishly! How about asking: What’s in it for you? What are you getting out of this experience? How is it changing you?
You could ask these questions to anyone, about any of their chosen activities, in or out of the congregation. How has joining this venture changed you? What do you gain from giving?
Our growing group of Religious Education volunteers here ranges in age from 18 to 80, and older. They must be getting something out of it.
One of our newer volunteers writes this: “The RE kids always enrich me with their honesty, openness, confidence, and humor (even if they don’t mean to be funny). I go away feeling like the future will be okay.”
I myself never wanted to work in Religious Education. When I was asked to teach Sunday school for the first time, I was 26 years old. It was a year or two after I had joined my first UU congregation, in Springfield, Illinois. I didn’t want to work with kids; I had barely spoken to them. Why would I want to give up hearing the speaker every Sunday or give up mingling with adults? To be honest, I was afraid. But somehow, I said yes.
It was a small class of early elementary-school aged kids. My co-teacher was a guy named Steve, older than I was, and the father of two children, one of whom was in our class. I forget the topic of our curriculum, but one Sunday we learned about Harriet Tubman, the black slave in the American South who escaped from slavery and then risked her life by going back to help many other slaves to escape. For this we made a house out of a cardboard box and crawled in and out of it on the floor.
One day I led a discussion that included pussy willow branches. The thin branch of a pussy willow tree has buds covered in a furry skin—hence the name. The size of a vitamin capsule, the buds are fun to hold and feel. As I sat there talking to the kids, a girl named [Annie] said: “Roger?” “Yes?” I said. “[Jenny] has been playing with a pussy willow bud that she took off the branch. And she put it up her nose and now she can’t get it out.” Sure enough, tears were rolling down Jenny’s little face. She was poking in her nose, pushing the bud up farther as her panic increased. Those were the days before churches had two adults in the classroom all the time, so I was there alone. To the other girl, I said, “Would you please go upstairs to the service and get Kathleen?” She did. Kathleen was not the girl’s mother, but a woman I knew who had seemed to be a take-charge kind of person. Either I didn’t know who the girl’s mother was, or I was afraid of getting into trouble. Kathleen came downstairs and held the girl in her arms. She spoke easily to calm her down. She coaxed her to blow gently till the alien object came out. Crisis over. Jenny must be over 30 now. I don’t know if she has remembered that traumatic experience, but I know I’ll never forget it.
Last year I spoke to a group of seminarians at Starr King School. One of them was Annie, the helpful girl from that class. She’s going to become a minister!
That same year that I began teaching Sunday school, my aging mother’s health declined fast. One Thursday evening, a few days after Mom had been hospitalized, I received a call that I should come home right away. It was a four-hour drive to Indianapolis, and I wouldn’t get there till after midnight. I was scheduled to teach the coming Sunday. While packing to leave I called my co-teacher to tell him. I offered to drop off the lesson plan and supplies on my way out of town. Steve was more than willing to cover for me on Sunday, and happy to come to my apartment to pick up the materials.
We had a brief exchange at my door, and he wished me well. He didn’t say much, and all we did was to shake hands. But it made a difference to have some friendly human contact before setting out on that late-night journey to the hospital. Had I not been in a teaching relationship with Steve, I wouldn’t have had his kind words to take with me on that long and lonely drive.
I did receive more than I gave in that volunteer job. We cannot predict how we will be changed, enriched or blessed by the experience when we decide to participate.
How might being involved in this congregation change you? Or has it already? I believe that any kind of activity can be a source of insight and growth, if we only take the time to reflect on why we’re doing it, what we’re experiencing, what it makes us feel, how it stretches us, how it affects our outlook. What are we getting out of it?
What is your participation giving back to you? This is not a cost-benefit analayis. It’s a question for spiritual reflection. Giving and receiving, speaking and listening, lending a hand or reaching out for one, we are changed by what we do together. We are changed by making this congregation our home.
Another one of our religious education volunteers writes this: “Working with the kids feeds my soul. It’s so wonderful to see them learn and develop. I learn so much from them and gain insights about myself. I’ve also been blessed with great teaching colleagues and have learned from them as well…. I truly believe that helping children grow into fully functioning adults is the most important thing I can do. Thanks for letting me do that.”
As Professor Til Evans says, when we work with youth and children in our churches, we are educating religiously—educating ourselves no less than them.
In my early 30s I was a member of the Second Unitarian Church of Chicago. After many years doing other kinds of church work, I started helping out with our teenage youth group. It had meetings on Sunday mornings as well as service activities in the church and local community, field trips, and weekend parties. My role was to show up, be present, and sometimes be a chauffer.
I rarely got any evidence that my presence made a difference or that I might be a valued source of advice. Little did I know that many parents have the same experience with their own teenagers. That church’s Minister of Religious Education told me not to worry—many teenagers don’t like to show what they are thinking, especially if they appreciate something you’ve done for them. This advice has given me the courage to reach out and greet the youth of any congregation, including this one. Even if the expressions on their faces look as if they would prefer to do anything else in the world than talk to me, I force myself to ask them what’s going on.
One year I was a chaperone for some of our Chicago teens at the General Assembly
of the Unitarian Universalist Association. After our return, I helped them to put on
a service about their experiences. Both were funny and full of passion. Willy,
a classical pianist, played music in that service. In his remarks he said he had been inspired by the social action discussions at General Assembly, including a vote in favor of same-gender marriage equality. This was 1996, and he was only 14. Ten years later I was a minister in California. I flew back to Chicago for a national conference of religiously-based advocates for low-wage workers, especially for the right to organize a union. It was interfaith, with Jews, Catholics, Protestants, UUs and Muslims participating. And it was inter-generational. Many of those faith-based activists were in their 20s and 30s. They were sharp, optimistic, and passionate. They spoke well, sang well, and could articulate practical strategies and long-term goals.
One of these activists was Willy, the kid from my former church. Now a college graduate, he recognized me before I figured out who he was. By this time he was no longer Willy, but Will. Tall, with a mop of reddish brown hair, he was cheerful and energetic, speaking to people of all ages with confidence and conviction. After graduating from an Ivy League university, Will had volunteered for an election campaign in Ohio—his side lost. Then he moved back in with his parents in Chicago. He told me that in college he had he let his piano practicing slide so he could do a little studying and a lot of activism. Now he was looking for a job as a labor organizer. His mind was set on being an overworked, underpaid activist on behalf of low-wage working families.
Now, I can’t be sure that Will would be any less visionary, self-confident, hopeful and
happy if he had not gone through years of Unitarian Universalist religious education activities
with not-so-confident volunteers like me. I cannot be sure of that. But I am sure that I wouldn’t have come to know him if I hadn’t been one of those volunteers. If I had not stretched myself to do what I felt awkward about–to do what I thought wasn’t sure was making a difference– I wouldn’t have been able to witness the development of inspiring young Unitarian Universalists.
In the words of another volunteer: working in religious education “makes me “optimistic about life in general. It gives me hope for humanity.”
Last Sunday in the garden, I chatted with a few kids who have recently begun visiting the church. One recent young visitor had been dragged here—I know that’s true because his grandfather told me he had dragged him here personally. This young man showed me a handful of green peas he had collected in a Ziplock bag. He said to me, “You know, this church is 100 times better than I thought it was going to be! You have a garden… and all these other things to do!”
“I’m glad to hear that!” I responded, and told him about the program that we would have waiting for him on the following Sunday.
My hope is that before long he won’t say “You have a garden and all these other things to do”—he will say, “We have a garden and all these other things to do.” If we convey only one thing to youth and children here, let it be that this community is theirs. In this congregation, we belong to one another. May we teach this lesson to them, learn it from them, learn it from one another.
Giving and receiving, speaking and listening, lending a hand or reaching out for one, we are changed by what we do together. We are changed by making this congregation our home.
So may it be. Amen.
Filed under: Children and Youth, Church Finances and Stewardship, Family Ministry, Stewardship & Finances | Tags: budget, cooperation, Family Ministry, fundraising, generosity, gratitude, joy, pledge drive, stewardship, support
David and I were invited to give a testimonial as a family belonging to UUSS. We’ve been a family here for 20 years. UUSS offers many things for families.
Not only are there Sunday services and classes for the children and youth to be together, but there are so many activities in which families can get involved. There are the dinners at a family style restaurant; holiday celebrations with the Holiday Tree-Trimming Party and the Easter Canned Food Hunt, and then every June we have an all-church camp. There are numerous activities that families are active in such as the American River Parkway Stewards, the Community Garden and Family Promise.
And then there’s the Children’s Religious Education or RE program. We can definitely verify the many merits of this program for families. Our16-year-old son has been a part of the RE program all of his life. The UUSS Children’s RE program welcomes children and youth of all ages, backgrounds and abilities. It is a safe place for young people to be who you are. Every Sunday, the RE program offers professional nursery care and classes and meetings for children and youth in four different age groups.
The classes, events and activities for children and youth here encourage spiritual growth, foster ethical values and develop moral behavior. And the kids have fun, too! RE offers excellent programs beyond Sunday such as the Our Whole Lives sexuality curriculum and the Coming of Age course for junior high youth.
RE helps our children and youth be a force for social justice by helping them reach out to others by organizing service projects here at the church and in the community. RE offers all of these things all the while treating children and youth like the intelligent beings that they are, guiding them to eventually make tough choices as they grow, and providing spiritual and emotional support.
This is all accomplished by the wonderful support of the entire congregation, the hard-working RE staff and volunteers and skillfully managed by our Family Minister, the ironic schmoozer himself, Rev. Roger.
We are fair share givers, we have increased our pledge this year and we plan on continuing as UUSS members as a family for a very long time.
Filed under: Becoming and Being Part of a UU Congregation, Children and Youth, Family Ministry, Sermon Archives and Excerpts | Tags: children, church growth, families, Family Ministry, neglect
September 21, 2008
My inaugural sermon as Family Minister, UU Society of Sacramento, CA
Hymns: Singing the Living Tradition (SLT) #210, “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah”; “I Know that You Know that I Love You; What I Want You to Know Is that I Know that You Love Me Too”; SLT #51 “Lady of the Season’s Laughter.”
Reading: “Shoulders,” a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye
Sermon:
Survey question: How many people here have been life long Unitarian Universalists? [Show of hands.] Not very many of us, it appears. Well, this is not an adequate survey. That’s because most of our life-long UUs are now over there, in the Religious Education building. As a minister, and especially in this role as your family minister, I am guided by a vision of “doing church” in ways that will create and support new generations of life-long UUs, ever-larger generations of people who know in their bones that this religious movement is their lifelong home.
I am not a lifelong UU– but I’ve been a UU since about age 24, longer than I was a member of the church in which I grew up. That church was a midsize congregation, in the middle-American small town of Franklin, Indiana, and it’s part of the Disciples of Christ, a middle of the road Protestant denomination. My father had grown up in it and my mother had joined when they were married. My brother is 12 years older than I am, so he was out of the house by the time I started first grade. My mom and I attended worship every Sunday, usually without my dad. [There’s a picture of the sanctuary on your order of service. You can see the pew where we sat almost every Sunday—on the right side, three up from the front row.] Sunday school took place in the hour before church. I was self-conscious around my peers and rarely went to Sunday school. I recall going once, while mom went to adult Sunday school at the same time. After class I went into the hallway expecting her to be waiting for me. She wasn’t, and I walked the halls looking for her. I panicked, sure that I had lost her forever. Now, it wasn’t that big of a church or that confusing in layout, especially compared to this one. Now, in this place one could see why a child could get lost. But I know that many grownups here would reach out and help them find their way. Furthermore, I believe that this is a good place for children and adults to find out who they are and who they are becoming.
So I didn’t go to Sunday school in my church. Instead, I went straight to the top—to the home of the minister and his wife. Myron and Ethel Kauffman lived a few blocks from us when I was a child. My regular visits to their house were uninvited and unannounced, but they always welcomed in this earnest kid. They talked with me about many things, even politics. They didn’t like President Nixon—or Billy Graham, the Evangelist. She showed me her rock-polishing machine. I told them about my interest in wildlife conservation and my worries about ecological catastrophe. Once I telephoned the minister to say I had found a dead bird and asked him where in the Bible were the words I could use for a burial service—ashes to ashes, dust to dust. I didn’t tell him that the bird was only injured when I had found it and that I had killed it. Clearly I was a child who should have been dragged to Sunday school every week, and therapy too.
A month or two after my 13th birthday, my mother remembered that I was now at the typical age at which youth were baptized in our Disciples of Christ denomination. She learned that our Sunday School course for kids planning for baptism had begun a few weeks earlier. Mom didn’t want me to wait another year, and the church allowed me to join the class at the next to the last session. For a self-conscious kid, the only thing worse than being inserted in a group that already had been meeting for several weeks would be to show up late for the first class I could make, and that happened too. The teacher was kind and welcoming, and he wore a suit, as most men did at church back then. [Pause to scan the congregation, as they realize nobody else has a suit on but me.]
I don’t remember learning about the meaning of baptism or the expectations of membership. I do remember what happened after the class was over. During the next service my classmates and I stood at the front of the sanctuary. Dr. Kauffman came to each of us, took our hand, and asked us if we professed our faith in Jesus as Lord. I wasn’t sure if I did, and I wasn’t sure what that meant. By arriving late in the baptism course I probably had missed my opportunity to explore the concept.
A week later, during the Palm Sunday service, my classmates and I went off to separate changing rooms for the boys and girls. We stripped down to our underwear, put on a white robe, and stood in a line in the linoleum-floored hallway behind the baptismal pool. This was a small room or compartment in the corner of the chapel beside the sanctuary, with a door in the back and curtains in the front. By now the congregation was standing in the chapel outside those curtains. The ritual began; soon I was next in line. A kid came dripping down the steps, then I went up—three steps up and three more down into the water. The pool was the size of a hot tub, except the water was not hot. Dr. Kauffman was waiting for me in his black robe and black hip-wading boots. He pulled a chain, opened the curtain, and put his arm around my shoulders. To the crowd facing us, he said, “This is Roger. Roger, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.” I held a handkerchief, and he put my hand up to cover my face and pushed me backwards into the water. Instinctively I blew bubbles out my nose. As he brought me up, he closed the curtain and I walked up the stairs, dripping.
As I look back now, it seems that this moment–the moment at which I became a true member of that church, I began drifting away from it. In the past few decades this has been a common story in many denominations: confirmation classes and rituals are the equivalent of graduation ceremonies, the marker for when kids begin to leave rather than when they truly belong. This is true in particular in the moderate, Mainline denominations, which have lost millions from their membership rolls, as kids have grown up and left them, either for conservative mega-churches or for no church at all, and as elders have passed away.
Perhaps it is typical for teenagers to feel that family and religious ties become ties that constrict, and for a process of separation to begin. Perhaps it’s normal to assert one’s independence, even to bristle against the practices and expectations one has grown up with.
Yet there are millions of adults who grew up in Jewish, Muslim, Catholic and conservative Protestant denominations—and stayed in them. They never left the faith. There are notable exceptions, of course–people who left a more conservative or constricting faith when they grew up. Some of these notable exceptions are sitting here right now—they found UUism as grown ups, on their own terms. But many others did not grow up and drift away.
A decade ago our Unitarian Universalist Association had its General Assembly in Salt Lake City, the Mecca of Mormonism. Our UUA President and UUA Moderator met with the men who lead that church (the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) for some interfaith dialogue. As I recall, our President reported that the Mormon leader had said: “If you Unitarians learned how to hang on to your young people, you’d be the most dangerous religion in America!” I don’t think he meant it to be helpful.
How is it that the Mormons have grown from a small and persecuted sect in 19th century America to a large, powerful world-wide movement? While their vitality and growth are enviable, I do not see their social power as a positive development, given the values I hold as a religious liberal. Right now in California, for example, the Mormon Church is a leader of the assault on civil marriage rights for same-sex couples. At their services today, in fact, Mormon and other conservative churches will arm church members with one million yard signs in favor of Proposition 8, which would eliminate the freedom to marry for same-sex couples.
How did they get so strong? A full analysis of their growth and strength would take too much time. But part of their strength comes from their version of family ministry, and the strong Mormon identity they promote among their children and youth. They devote attention and resources to their children, youth and families. Their people know where their spiritual home is, all through their lives.
For the past several decades, ministering to families with children has not received much attention from liberal and moderate churches. The mainstream church culture has not promoted vitality and growth. If it had, the numbers would be higher. I describe this mainstream culture as one of neglect posing as non-instrusiveness. For decades, church was something you did. In my experience and from what I’ve heard from others, church did not exist to provoke self-reflection, challenge ways of thinking, stretch you or stir you to bold action. It wasn’t expected to change your life, only to be part of your lifestyle.
Too often in mainstream religious communities people were expected to act as if they were doing just fine, as if they had it all together. Well, my family didn’t have it all together. We weren’t fine. I don’t have time to elaborate on my family’s dysfunctions now. I should save it for entertaining sermon illustrations later on. But I do want to tell you that when I was 14 years old, my father had a massive heart attack and died. Relatives gathered from near and far for the funeral. Our minister gave a beautiful service, and the church women brought food to us in the days before and after the funeral–ham, meatloaf, salads, vegetables, desserts, and casseroles. This gesture of generosity and sympathy was nourishing both spiritually and physically. Yet after those early days there was no outreach to me by either peers or elders in the congregation. They were good people, but no one there invited me for a walk, to a movie or lunch or their family outing. Dr. and Mrs. Kauffman moved out of town for a new ministry; otherwise they might have been more helpful in my grieving process. For the rest of my high school years, nobody from church asked me what it was like to go through my journey of grieving. At least this is how I remember it. I did not talk to anyone in any depth about the loss of my father for seven years, when I had made some college friends–and made an appointment with a mental health professional.
Why was this the case in my life in that church? Two reasons occur to me. One is that my family had not made ourselves part of the fabric of the community, even though we had been in it for three generations. As a family we didn’t pursue friendships there. It’s just what we did on Sundays. My parents had let me skip Sunday school, instead of trying to understand my shyness around my peers. We didn’t ask for much there, and little was asked or expected of us. We knew we could count on casseroles in times of a death in the family, but for me casseroles were not enough. So when I entered college I did not run away from church, I just drifted away. Later on I may tell you the rest of my journey—from self-conscious kid to young adult church goer to lay leader to ordained minister, but I’d like to talk about what we’re doing here.
Over the past few decades, I believe, the religious and political right wing has risen to power in part by the use of scare tactics—telling Americans that their worries and their wounds were the fault of liberal attitudes and the expansion of equal rights. While I denounce the fear-mongering, I see that the religious and political reactionaries got something right: they listened to families. They knew people were hurting and worried. Successful churches, most of them conservative ones, acknowledged that people didn’t have it all together. They addressed the feeling that many people had: that our lives were unraveling. Yes, to a great extent they have manipulated families, but to do this they had to listen first. They listened to families. In the mainstream churches, however, there was a culture that families should not our vulnerabilities and fears.
The good news now is that moderate and liberal churches have caught on– and we’re catching up! This is why I am excited to be serving as your family minister. I believe that our churches must promote relationships of authenticity, trust, and care –across the generations as well as within each generation. One way this church does that is through groups called Ministry Circles. These groups meet twice a month to build intimacy by hearing one another’s personal stories and perspectives. Some new groups are in the works, including one on the theme of spiritual parenting. They can make a big difference in a person’s experience of church—they’re like a community within the larger community of the church. If you’re interested, let us know.
In the last several years, groups like these Ministry Circles have emerged in UU churches all over the continent. Four years ago, when I was the minister at a Bay Area congregation, I made a pastoral visit to an elderly member after she’d had major orthopedic surgery. She was living alone, but she had been part of a ministry group [called a covenant group there, as in many UU churches.] She told me about all the support she was getting from her group members, among others at church. Visits in the hospital, visits in the convalescent center, and a ride home when she got strong enough to go home. She was inundated with food— several days’ worth of lunch and dinner. One member of her ministry group found out what she needed and coordinated the efforts of everybody who was willing to help out. The recipient of this help was impressed with the scale of the operation, and moved by the care. She told me how important the group had become for her, how much she loved them. She said, “I really feel a deep connection when we meet!”
“Why do you think that is?” I asked her. She said, “I think it’s because it’s not small talk.” They talk about important things, she said, matters of the heart. She told me that, years before coming to our church, she and her former spouse had been in a group at another UU church–for 17 years. They had joined a small group on arriving at the church, but had never gone back to the church itself in all those years. It was called an “extended family group,” yet all they did was have a potluck dinner once a month. That’s what they did, for 17 years. One time, a group member lost a loved one in a very tragic way, but the extended family group didn’t learn about it until it was long past. To me, that group does not sound like an extended family. It sounds as if it was a guarantee that you could count on having dinner companions once a month. I do not think those dinners were occasions of authenticity, trust, and care. Apparently they were not designed to provide that. But that is what many of our UU congregations are striving for now, and what we are building in our churches.
Many of you know what this congregation does well. Some can remember the shining moments in this congregation’s history. Now we are at a new moment. You may recall a golden era; now we are shaping a new era in the church’s life and ministry.
I am here to help you build on your strengths, especially in ministering to children and families. I seek to help you build nurturing relationships of authenticity, trust and care across the generations. If we do this, I think we will build new generations of life-long Unitarian Universalists. We will experience greater joy among ourselves, and we will take healing beyond these walls out into a hurting world.
Maybe we don’t have to become what the Christian right wing would consider the most dangerous religion in America. We don’t have to be the most powerful denomination of progressive religion, or the biggest or the flashiest. But we can share in a more authentic, abundant, joyful and hopeful sense of life with one another. And can make the world a better place. So may it be. Amen.
Ironicschmoozer's Weblog 