November 18th, 2001 (Sunday)
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Presented by: Rev. Elizabeth McMaster Alice Blair Wesley has been a UU minister since her ordination in 1977. She was honored by the Association to present this year’s Minn’s Lectures, and she begins her series with “Love is the spirit.” I think she may have hit on the central focus of what membership means in our UU churches: the ability of those of you who have committed yourselves to this religion to “say clearly, individually and collectively, what are (your) own most important loyalties, as church members. Every year at our Association’s General Assembly, various committees of the organization give reports on the activities they’ve been engaged in during the previous year. For the most part, the reports are well done–sometimes with skits or dramatic presentations to keep the delegates awake and with them. One of the more important of UUA’s committees is the Commission on Appraisal, an elected committee charged to review any functions or activity of the Association which the committee believes will benefit from an independent review and study; from this review and study, they then suggest approaches to issues which may be of concern to the Association and report their findings every four years at General Assembly. Their last report was in 1997 on church polity. These past four years they have focused on the meaning of membership in our congregations. They ask the questions: What is the meaning or what are the meanings of membership? What is it that people seek when they affiliate with our congregations? What is it that congregations owe to their membership, and members owe to their congregation? And whom do we include as members of congregations? They found, during their study, that these questions about membership are much broader than the simple counting of members for congregational meetings or determining the number of delegates to District or Association meetings. They came to understand that membership goes way beyond numbers and technical requirements; that membership is a journey, both for the individual and the congregation. It is a process that engages human beings and takes us from a starting place to a new place. And they wrote about their findings in a book, Belonging: The Meaning of Membership, available through the UUA Bookstore for $12.00, and I believe there’s a copy floating around this church somewhere. And so today we take a look at what it means to be a member of this church. It is fitting to do so this Sunday as three people have joined this church and you have welcomed them warmly. In the past many UU churches have taken a decidedly wishy-washy look at membership. “C’mon in. Sign the book. Glad to have you with us,” was perhaps the most formal we got. Someone could saunter into the office during the week, say to the secretary or church administrator, “I’d like to join this church.” And the book would be searched for (“Now where did we put that membership book? I think I saw it around here someplace.”), dusted off, a pen would be cast about for, and the deed would be done. I remember, in the first church I served, a man did just that. Three weeks later he stormed out of the church, shouting, “Why didn’t you tell me this wasn’t a Christian church?” So, sometimes we get smart about stuff. Back in the “70′s four members of the UU Congregation of Atlanta wrote a curriculum titled “New UU”, a 6 session class that informed people interested in learning more about the church. The classes included a history of Unitarianism, Universalism and Unitarian Universalism; a history of the local church; an opportunity for those who attended to share their religious journeys; church leadership shared their experiences and information about their area of expertise (i.e., Religious Education, finances, worship, social action, public relations, etc.); and a couple of people talked about why they belonged to UUCA. It was a gift to all our churches, and many UU congregations took it upon themselves to get better organized around membership and belonging. The three people who joined the church today attended 3 Sunday morning get-togethers along with a couple of other people who have decided to wait to join the church. Typical of UUs, we do not set up the class to cajole people into membership. (After my experience with the 3-week member in North Carolina who didn’t know we weren’t Christian, I’m leery of going near that!) We offer the class to inform people who want to learn more about our religion; if they decide they want to join, that’s terrific, but it most certainly is and must be their own decision. I hope, by making membership both an educated decision and giving it some visible importance, to increasing the church’s membership of highly committed members. The primary question we must ask ourselves when thinking about membership is, Why do people join in religious communities? And why in particular, a Unitarian Universalist congregation? John Buehrens, President of our Association from 1992 until last summer, says, “to be human is to be religious. To be religious is to make connections. To lead a meaningful life among the many competing forces of the twenty-first century, each of us needs support in making meaningful re-connections to the best in our global heritage, the best in others, and the best in ourselves.”1 And Alice Blair Wesley, in her 2000-1 Minn’s lecture series, asks the question, “What ought all the lay members of a liberal free church understand their own local congregation to be about?” She goes on to state: “Often these days we hear people saying they are seeking a “spiritual community’ but want nothing to do with “organized religion.’ By the former they seem to mean a place that will meet their own religious needs; (by) the latter they seem to associate with a place that will make demands upon them to support the institution’s needs. The reality is that you cannot have one without the other and part of the church’s job is to lead people to the discovery of the spiritual truth that it is only by giving that we receive, giving not only our money but ourselves. In other words, only by making a commitment to a community can we hope to build a community. And this community consists not of lofty ideals but of practical realities.” In the book Belonging, the Commission on Appraisal talks about the theology of membership. It reflects on the early Christian church and how Paul of Tarsus saw the church as one body consisting of many parts; the members of the church were covenanted to each other as Abraham had been in covenant with God. We Unitarian Universalists have understood that covenanting to mean that we are covenanted to each other through our various churches. We are not individual flotsam and jetsam, but a body–one body–of many parts. This sense of interrelationship comes from “the Hellenistic ideal of a democracy in which every citizen participated.”2 It was echoed in the founding of our American republic–a country in which all citizens were to participate equally (even though they meant back then, landed white men–but that was soon changed). And we, both Unitarians and Universalists, organized our religious institutions along those democratic lines. Listen again to Paul. “(Paul) goes on to use a metaphor of the body to describe the church. All are brought together…and together make up one spiritual body. No one organ or part is more important than another; all are essential to the healthy functioning of the whole. In fact, the more frail parts are the most indispensable: “If one member suffers, they all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.” (I Cor. 12:26)…The emphasis of this text is on building a fellowship based on equality, unity, and mutuality…one in which individual persons become part of something greater. It is not a place one would join simply in order to “find one’s self.’…A church built on equality, unity, and mutuality will appeal to those who are looking for a repository for their particular gifts and talents, who are looking for a place to grow beyond their own particular perspectives…who are looking for a way to live out their faith in the larger community…It is a church where “I can take care of myself’ is replaced by “We can and will take care of each other.’”3 In recent years, we’ve seen a rise in “going it alone.’ A recent book spoke of the drop in the number of bowling leagues; the increase in the use of computers and the internet have drawn people away from each other. You can sit for days in front of your computer, never speaking to another person, and get as much information as you care to–actually, more than you can use. Robert Bellah calls this ontological individualism–a loss of a collective understanding of the common good at many levels, whether it be at the highest levels of our government or in our local churches. George Rupp, of Rice University and former Dean of the Harvard Divinity School, says: Over against this orientation, communities of faith must oppose any and every view that begins uncritically with separate selves and then almost unavoidably becomes preoccupied with achieving satisfaction for the self, including satisfying relationships as simply a means to this end. Over against this orientation, communities of faith must remind us all that we do not begin as separate entities, which then somehow must become connected.4 To complicate our work of creating communities of covenanted people, we face another recent phenomenon. In the past few years, we’ve seen a shift in who comes to our churches. Years ago, we called ourselves the “come-outer’ church–members were streaming out of other churches and synagogues. Could no longer say what they didn’t believe, nor listen to words that ran counter to their own beliefs. Ninety percent of our members were these “come-outers.’ But something started to change in the Seventies and Eighties. People are no longer coming into our churches as refugees from orthodoxy; they are coming into our churches from no church whatsoever. They have had no exposure to church of any kind–we call them “come-inners.’ Rather than running from they are running to–against the voided and alienating world they find themselves in. They look for a religion such as ours that gives them freedom to explore and to express themselves. They come bringing their children–to expose them to a religion that values all human life, that is upbeat, that is positive–so that the children will begin to formulate answers to questions like, “You don’t believe in Jesus?” and “Can you just believe any old thing?” And so we must look at what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist and to belong to a UU church. Alice Blair Wesley, in responding to why people wander in and wander out of our congregations asks probing questions: “To what and to whom is it very important for us liberals to be religiously faithful? Why? How, as church members, should we–or can we–help and encourage one another to live faithfully? What do we need to do, learn, remember, celebrate, lift up or practice together at church, that in all likelihood we couldn’t or wouldn’t do in other groups, to live as authentically faithful people?” So, let’s take her questions one at a time. To what and to whom should we be religiously faithful? I would hope that all members of any of our churches would be faithful to each other and to the institution. We all know that any institution is flawed–after all, it’s made up of human beings. Imperfect, flawed human beings. Rather than saying to ourselves, “I’ll stick around this place until I don’t like something, but then I’m out of here,” we need to adopt a greater loyalty–that is, if we truly believe that the religious liberal church is living up to its ideals–as best it can. The Commission on Appraisal says, “A commitment to building real religious community together is one of the significant meanings of church membership. How one reacts to one’s first disillusionment (and all the other disappointments that eventually follow) is an indicator and test of that commitment. Adversity is an aspect of every process of growth… (Disillusionment) is almost inevitable in the course of one’s relationship to a congregation. The congregation that is supposed to be a loving community is sometimes beset with conflicts. The congregation that is supposed to be affirming and gentle can become narrow and unfeeling. Decisions can be made with which we disagree. People can become disagreeable…When such difficulties arise some walk away, others step back. But fortunately there are also those who remain steadfast through these times of disillusionment, whose loyalty grows beyond it.”5 To whom should we be religiously faithful? I said last week, “I pledge allegiance…to myself.” I think we must all be loyal to our individual ethics, what we believe to be true. But we also owe a loyalty to those in our church community. To be faithful, even when they’re being cranky or disagreeable, knowing that there are times in our own lives when we too are cranky or disagreeable. Why should we be religiously faithful? Because of what it does for our own growth as human beings. If we cannot be loyal to anyone save ourselves and maybe certain family members, what does that say about the poverty of our own spiritual lives? We need something beyond our own selves to give allegiance to, something broader and bigger. Self absorption may be the purview of teenagers, but hopefully we outgrow that stage. Alice’s third question: “How, as church members, should we–or can we–help and encourage one another to live faithfully?” Probably the best way is to give each other a little slack and to listen beyond the words to what is actually being said. What would it look like if we decided to ask someone in this congregation with whom we have disagreed or whom we say we just don’t like, to go out for a cup of coffee. And listen. What makes that person tick? What would it look like if we asked someone in this congregation who is new or is someone we just don’t know to go out for a cup of coffee? Find out something about them. When the three new people were welcomed into membership this morning, we read a short bio of their interests. The hope in doing this is that you’d recognize a common interest with one or all of them–and act on that interest. If they play golf, ask them to join you in a game. If they knit or sew, invite them to the Wednesday night sewing circle. Latch on to a common interest and make them feel part of this community. And Alice’s final question: “What do we need to do, learn, remember, celebrate, lift up or practice together at church, that in all likelihood we couldn’t or wouldn’t do in other groups, to live as authentically faithful people?” This church is not the Lab and it’s not the school where you teach nor the social agency where you work. This is, in fact, a laboratory in human relationships. This is where you can learn to be more fully human, more alive to the world, more caring, more of anything you want to be. My first stab at leadership skills was in a Unitarian Universalist church. I got to try things out, make mistakes, learn over and over again–in a caring, respectful atmosphere. “Albert Einstein’s wife was once asked if she understood the theory of relativity. She replied, “No, but I know my husband, and I know he can be trusted.’”6 Church is the place where we need to feel we can be trusted. That no one is going to knowingly insult or dis us, even though it may happen unknowingly. And we have to be able to distinguish between the two. I’ll bet that most of the misunderstandings that arise between people are simply due to poor communications. More than anything else, however, we need to know why we’re here. Is it a place with a vision we help create and can commit to? This is not a place for free loaders–either activity wise or financially. We were served an incredible meal a couple of Sundays ago, made by Felicia Orth (she’s modest enough to say she had lots of help, but we know who did most of the work). She’s serving as this year’s Steward which means she’s responsible for bringing in enough money to sustain all the things we want to sustain. I’d like to ask her now to get up and give you a brief report on where we are now with the Fall 1/2 year canvass. (Felicia) This is not simply the Sierra Club or the downtown meet to eat group. This is a place where you can expand your own spiritual self, can become the person you want to become, with the help of others who respect and care for you. Love is the Spirit of this church. I leave you with those words. Remember them. Live them. AMEN. The Rev. Elizabeth McMaster Buehrens, John A., “Preface” in The Unitarian Universalist Pocket Guide, 3rd Ed., edited by John Buehrens (Boston: Skinner House Books, 1999), x. Commission on Appraisal, “Belonging: The Meaning of Membership” (Boston: Skinner House Books, 2001) p.16. |
