Aside From the Pride
Rev. Christina
M. Neilson
October 14th,
2007
At
our annual meeting last year when we were making the difficult decision between
paying our full share of the UUA dues or of funding our own programs, a voice
chimed up, “Aside from the pride, what do we get from the UUA?”
I
responded with some immediate thoughts, but I knew that I would want to write a
sermon about our connection to the UUA.
For twenty years now we have taken great pride in the fact that we have
always been among the churches that have paid their full fair share of UUA and
OMD dues. Last year we were challenged
on this. We were not able to budget the
full amount for dues. We were, however,
able to pay them off by year’s end.
And I’m
happy to report that the board has once again amended the budget to pay our
full share of the dues to the UUA and District this year. We had additional donations and a carryover
of funds from last year that will allow us to do that.
Meditation
So I wanted
to put your concerns behind us now and rest assured that we have met our
financial obligation. I invite you to
close your eyes. As we sit here quietly,
we are aware of our connections with each other in this room, we are aware of
our connections with other people of faith all around the world. We are aware of our interconnection with
nature, in fact the universe itself.
Imagine
that over 500 of our churches are joining together today in spirit of
celebration for the UUA. The church in
Rocky River, Cleveland Heights, Shaker, the fellowship in Arizona, Arkansas and
Minnesota. The cathedral churches in San
Francisco, Columbus, Tulsa and New York.
Churches both large and small, calling attention to our principles and
vision. What does it feel like to be
joined as one with a large church and an ocean view? Or a small fellowship meeting in a community
center, each celebrating their shared commitment to Unitarian
Universalism? Can you imagine 250,000
UU’s across the country, with their eyes closed, coming together in spirit?
May we
truly experience and appreciate our interdependence with all of life.
Come back
with me as we consider our church. Most
days our church is very inward focused.
We attend worship services, meet for classes, activities, and committee
meetings. Not much of our time is spent
in shared community with social justice outreach, evangelism, or sharing our
public face.
We are so
much more than that as an association with the other churches. We are over 1,000 churches across the
country. We are 250,000 members, but we
have over 500,000 who identify as UU who are not official members of the
church. We are growing at the pace of
about one member per church per year.
Fifteen churches account for 1/4th of growth in previous decade. 6% of congregations accounted for 2/3rd’s
of our growth. Most churches are not
growing and this should bother you because people are out there looking for a
liberal religious community, and don’t know how to find it. We need to stop being the hidden religion,
and share our good news. The UUA
connects our congregations through annual General Assemblies, our district
events and things like email chat lines that are available.
We need the
UUA to help us to witness our faith in the world. The Washington Office for Advocacy keeps our
liberal voice present among our elected officials, so that the conservative
religious voice is not the only one being heard. Statements on everything from Healthcare
reform, gender discrimination, voting rights for communities of color, United
states occupation in Iraq, Comprehensive Sexuality Education, support for
immigrant families and repealing, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, are just some of the
issues we keep alive in the public arena.
We need the
UUA to lead our efforts at social justice.
We have groups like the UUSC, which works nationally and internationally
to fund projects that focus on root causes of the problem. We have the UU ministry for the Earth, which
offer resources, speakers and consultants for earth friendly “Green Sanctuary”
problems.
The vote
for the statements of conscience come from delegates of member congregations to
our general assembly where the pros and cons are debated. Written statements are also available on line
for congregations to use as a basis for drafting their own public witness
statements. Since I’ve been here, our
congregation has voted on only one. It
was a statement supporting marriage equality.
And that was great. But our work
is not done. We still have major strides
to make for racial equality. One fourth
of all money collected will go toward finding settlements for people of color
in our ministry. Congregations still
feel a barrier in calling our people of color, especially to senior ministry
positions.
We need the
UUA to help us become more visible to the world. The magazine “UU World” is available to all
members. I leave mine at the gym when
I’m finished to help spread the word.
Part of the “Now is the Time” fundraiser for Association Sunday is to
raise funds for high visibility Advertising.
Fifty percent of the funds raised will go toward National
advertising. There will be a big spread
in Time magazine this month. Billboards
will be set in strategic locations, and banners and postcards will be available
to congregations.
Our church
can’t afford to do advertising on our own.
In Kansas City where a big advertising campaign was initiated, the cost
was $2,000 per each member that it brought in.
We can’t afford that. But
together we can get our face seen. And
maybe if people have heard of us they will come. I was invited to talk to Berea High school
students last month. In a group of fifty
students, none of them had ever heard of Unitarian Universalism. I find that really sad. It makes me feel somewhat invisible, especially
as we mark our 20th year. You
would think that at least some had heard of us.
We need the
UUA to be stewards of our national assets and offer financial services to
congregations. Various grant programs
are available. “New Home” loans are
guaranteed for first time church builders.
Consultants are available to help us with asset building, capital
campaigns, and pledge drive renewals.
Guidelines are created for fair compensation to all staff.
The UUA
offers resources for lay leadership.
Newsletters like “Interconnections” are available. Workshops for large and midsize churches are
held. Seminaries are offering online lay
certification programs and classes. Many
of these resources are available at district level, such as the growth workshop
that four of us attended last weekend. A
portion of our UUA dues go back to district projects. One fourth of the money
collected today will go to districts to fund their own growth projects.
The UUA has
many resources for professional leadership, which helps congregations and
ministers. The Ministerial Fellowship
Committee serves as the credentialing body for the UUA. They nurture people from seminaries until
three years into their call, longer if part time. They give the red light, green light to
candidates who are preparing for the professional ministry. They screen applicants for suitability to a
ministerial role, and they remove ministers from fellowship when they have
violated the code of ethics.
They also
offer search and settlement services for congregations and ministers who are
looking for each other. Congregations
can still call who they want, but the minister won’t be credentialed without
going through the Ministerial Fellowship process. This is not a job the congregation should
take on. It would be a nightmare for
congregations to find the right settled minister without this help, and
liability issues would probably shut you down if something did happen. This is definitely done best on the national
level. If people want to be involved,
they can serve on the Fellowship committee.
The UUA has
in the past offered significant financial support to our UU seminaries and
Harvard, but they have pulled back most if not all of the support. Our seminaries are hurting financially, and
need their own fundraiser.
We need the
UUA to help us with Religious Education.
Imagine how difficult it would be to create our own curriculum for each
class? It would be even harder to
recruit teachers. The UUA is working on
a new program called “Tapestry of Faith”, a lifespan program. They also completed and updated “Our Whole
Lives’, the sexuality curriculum we share with the UCC church. They have also created a program for
credentialing RE Directors.
The UUA
puts all these systems in place to help us develop our programs: Professional leadership, RE leadership, lay
leaders, financial support and public witness.
While we can still do our own thing, we don’t have to start each step
from scratch. In addition to all this,
they have a fabulous web site full of our history, worship resources,
leadership resources and just about anything you may want. And of course having our own liberal press
like Beacon Books and Skinner books assures us that the liberal message is
printed. We printed many books that
received rejections elsewhere, including the pentagon papers and others. As well as practical materials like our
hymnals, meditation manuals, and curriculum.
The
visibility we get worldwide is something we simply can’t do at our church
level. President Bill Sinkford travels
to India, Japan, Canada and Transylvania among other countries where UU
connections are being made. Without the
UUA, Unitarian Universalism would be extinct.
We would be scattered tiny fellowships gathering for coffee and
discussion without any mark on the world.
I don’t
need to join a church to drink coffee, even though it’s our unofficial
“Sacrament”. I need a church with vision
and promise into our future. We must not
be afraid to be religious. Marilyn
Sewell, Senior Minister at First UU Portland, OR says, ”We must take a long,
hard look at what is holding us back from growth and holding us back from being
a potent voice in the public discourse.
So long as we have a culture that is ambivalent about religion, we will
never be a compelling religious movement.
So long as individual’s needs continue to take precedence over the well
being of the community, our churches will remain small and divisive. So long as we revere the mind but suspect the
heart, then we will continue to attract a very narrow segment of our society.
Churches
need to learn to become high commitment institutions where congregants
understand the connection between their passion for their principles and their
support, financial and otherwise, for the institution that embodies those
principles. The costs of being passive,
or spiritually arrogant, or divided or unfocused are just too great.’[1]
Why is it
imperative that we grow and nurture our liberal religious communities?
Isolation
in today’s society is staggering. I was
shocked to learn at the growth workshop last weekend just how isolated people
have become. Almost half of all
Americans have no one with whom they could confide, or only one person. That person is often their spouse. Relationships beyond the nuclear family are
systematically eliminated. One in four
Americans have no close relationships at
all. One fourth of all addresses have
one person living in them.
In a time
with instant messaging, emails, cell phones and call waiting, we have fewer
people to talk to than ever before. That
would be ironic if it weren’t so tragic.
Yet in our
pursuit of misguided independence and economic opportunity, we have created a
society that rips away at human relationships.
Our need for deep relationship never goes away. We need churches where these deep
relationships can be nurtured.
We need
churches where it is safe to question.
Perhaps the children have been asking about things, What is God? Where do you go when you die? What will you say? We need a place where it is okay to have some
mystery rather than pat answers. We need
a conversation, not a dogma.
We need
churches whose voice cries out for those whose rights are in jeopardy. While other churches seek to further alienate
these people, we need to strive to promote marriage equality, gender
non-discrimination, racial equality and stewardship of our earth’s natural
resources.
There is so
much hatred and violence, in the world, so much brutality and fear, too much
abuse and neglect, dogmatism and falsehood, tyranny and oppression, inequality
and strife, uncertainty and despair. We
need to live our UU principles in the world, replacing hate with love, fear
with compassion. We need to encourage
questioning rather than dogmatism, and service rather than despair. We need to let those who have given up hope,
know that there’s another way to be religious.
One that is life nurturing. That
holds the worth and dignity of us all as sacred.
It is good
to be proud of the work we’ve done. 20
years of paying our fair share is honorable.
It is right that we should celebrate our 20 years of commitment to the
UUA and district. Aside from the pride,
we should acknowledge the hard and necessary work our association does and its
importance to our church. We should
support the mission of this fundraiser for the UUA growth initiative. We should keep ourselves visible in community
affairs. We need to continue to keep
speaking for equal rights for all. I
challenge us to expand our focus beyond our own sanctuary. Let us rise to be
the people we are called to be. The
times demand it.