Are You Happy Yet?

It's Saint Lucia's day today, and yesterday was the day for the Virgin of Guadalupe.  Today is also the eighth day of Hanukkah.  It's all about celebration and a lot of it is about tradition and remembering the past of before we were born.  Now is the time for photo albums with pictures of ancestors half forgotten, or, indeed pictures of people whose connection to us is lost to memory.  Who are we?  Partly we are the product of all this past, remembered and forgotten, all this culture that has maybe evolved and maybe not so much.

And partly we are the product of our own personal past, of the blessings and challenges of the relationships and situations we grew up with.

These celebrations this season, this is all about the joy of knowing ourselves and our networks of kinship and culture.

But the times cast a pall on the very networks we celebrate, and the very identities we have drawn from them.  I celebrate a culture that is overwhelmingly white, once-upon-a-time Protestant, and full of traditional gender roles.  I have come to suspect that some of my male relatives were gay, though they never said so and can't agree or deny my suspicions now.  I am aware of the shadow of patriarchy within my family, and its dark influence on my own trying-to-be-liberated life,  Unlike the Black Lives Matter folks, I don't look at myself and say, "I love my blackness, and yours."  I love my cultural location, but not my whiteness as a thing in itself.  As the product of a liberal family living through first one, then later another conservative age, I have known the pressure of other people's ridicule of my beliefs.  I have at different times responded to that pressure in different ways.  Oh yes, and it's an old tradition in my family that there are alcoholics among us.

But we have always celebrated.  And sometimes I have been wretched through it.  Other times, I have allowed the celebration to carry me into it.  And at times I have just joined in with good cheer.

My favorite memory of childhood holidays was of a neighborhood caroling party.  We lived in a place where Christmastime was likely to be mildly chilly, not deeply cold, and usually not snowy at all.  Someone mimeographed copies of the words to carols, a date and time and route were announced, and someone signed up to host a pot luck party at the end.  We meandered through the dark, singing at people's houses, though not at places where everyone was outside among the singers. A great blob of us drifted through the dark, our way illuminated by a very few flashlights and lanterns.  I learned all the verses to a lot of traditional carols and sang them with gusto, only later coming to understand that the theologies they expressed were totally alien.

In those years, I felt the struggles the adults were having with the tradition.  We lived in a neighborhood that had Jewish families for whom Christmas was not a Thing.  We wanted to include them, but how?  The non-carol options were not very attractive -- Deck the Halls, Frosty the Snowman, Jingle Bells, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (talk about bad theology!)--and we loved to sing the bad old Christian carols way too much to give them up. So the Jewish families mostly did not come sing.  And when we came to their houses, we sang Jesus-free songs.  Making a new tradition, of making it flexible to include more people is not without cost.  They did it. And they showed me how.  Now I can do it, too.  Not just with the winter holidays, but with other well established habits of thought that hold back the communities where I belong.

And yes I am happy.  Happy to be in the midst of change, laughing all the way.

A Small Congregation's Public Presence

I had an excellent visit with the Board of the Missoula Unitarian Universalist Fellowship before Thanksgiving.  They were wondering how to have more of a public presence as a very small congregation in a town of about 67,000.  I wondered, too.

They are just in the midst of a project to move to a different building,  They were pleased that media seemed to be interested in that, and wondered how to make themselves better known in the process of making this change.

We explored the landscape of public presence, and found some places where the amount of effort and skill they could bring to bear looked likely to yield real results.  We also realized that much of what they want has to do with personal connections with leaders of religious and civic organizations.

Social media looked like the top pick.  They need to adjust some things on their website, they thought, but facebook looked like the target for more energy.  More frequent, shorter, postings, maybe the use of invitations to "events" for special occasions, links to the newsletter and introduction of blog posts for updates on goings-on in the fellowship all seemed like good ideas.  People made commitments to follow up on these.

Participation in special events in town also seemed managable to the group,  They could step out beyond the Pride parade to at least one other parade type event, and maybe set up a table at another occasional opportunity.

They were cautious about taking on too much. I thought that was a really good idea.

The main thing was not to shift so much attention from the core activities of the fellowship that their way of being themselves went out of focus.  They need to maintain the strong worship, strong religious education for children, and strong participation in community service that is making them feel good about themselves.  It's that feeling good about themselves that is making them feel like having a stronger public presence, after all!

I'm excited about the new building.  There are some hurdles as they move through local approvals, and it is still not a completely done deal.  They ave wisely positioned themselves as "maybe" being about to move, and want to be stronger as a congregation whether they do or not. They are advancing confidently in the direction of their dreams... putting foundations under them as Thoreau advised.

Lincoln School building -- Missoula UU's new home?

Small Congregations, Connected and Vital?

The reality is that many Unitarian Universalist congregations are small.  In particular, the ones that started as fellowships in small places remain small, often too small to have professional clergy.  When they don't have that live connection with the larger movement, it's easy to get isolated and stale, to have festering problems with relationships in the gathered community, and to lose a sense of mission in their towns and in the world.

Through experience with several of them, I have come to believe that for small congregations to remain vital, they need connection to the larger movement and to each other, the kind that clergy might provide.  And they sometimes need skilled help finding their way forward through the thickets of life together in a smallish group, another area where clergy assistance could make a difference.

My tentative prescription is a kind of low-density ministry combined with interconnection among themselves.  A minister could visit a few times a year for a workshop, a service, and maybe a social event, providing support in areas of concern.  A virtual cluster of leaders could gather to speak together of progress and challenges.  Maybe there could be adult religious exploration by webinar involving people from several congregations so UU's spread out across several towns could come to know each other well.

This could be financed by having congregations contribute a set amount to support the virtual part of the ministry and then pay separately for physical visits.

I remain unsure of how this could be started, and would welcome suggestions.  I also wonder what people think of the whole idea.  I eagerly await your responses!

unknown people looking happy in their congregational gathering

Can a Small Congregation Grow?

It's a dream of congregations in the smallest size category to be bigger, have more people to do things, stronger finances, a building of their own, more diverse programming, actual staff members... but can it be done?

My observation is that maybe it can and maybe it can't, for reasons both internal and external.

After I wrote about clergy and small congregations, my colleague Jane Dwinell reminded me that some places just won't be able to support a large enough congregation to call a minister.   There need to be enough people.  In some places, there need to be enough people right now, because that is all there will be.  In other places, it might be worth taking a chance on growth.  But take care!  Growth depends on both external and internal factors.

The external:  in an area where new people are moving in, where there are growing medical, educational, and tech-oriented employers, and already a good base of population, there's a good chance.  If you have 80-90 members and your community presence is bringing in visitors every week, it's worth taking a chance. If you have 50-60 members, it seems risky. I think a town or cluster of towns of 90,000 can support a UU congregation of 100-150.  Growing into that size is easier of there are new families arriving who need to make connections and want to  find a way to give their children some faith background.  Some younger people come with an interest in social action on issues we support, and that's a positive for making strong connections.

anonymous small congregation celebrating their new building

But it also depends on internal factors.  The congregation needs to be ready to make room for newcomers.  Leaders of one congregation I served admitted that an earlier attempt at growth had failed because they were not connecting personally with the new people so much as checking them off on a list and looking for the number of dollar signs printed on their foreheads. Families did not stay. New leaders did not develop.  New pledges were not large.

Are visitors coming?  If you have visitors every week, make sure you are treating them well!  Mainly, get to know them.  Invite them to social activities.  Help them become part of whatever is going on.
Get their kids involved in Religious Education and family fun activities.

Are they staying?  Keep reaching out and keep finding ways to connect them with the congregation.
Have an appealing program for converting visitors into members and gather them into it.

Are new leaders developing?  This is a very tricky issue for established small congregations.  New leaders are at the same time both intensely desired and viewed with suspicion. To have your heart's desire -- more people to help with the work -- you must work on your suspicion of anyone new.  New leaders to need training.  They need to learn the ways of your congregation.  What they don't need:  a vague assignment where they are left totally on their own to sink or swim; a specific assignment with so many instructions and so much supervision that they can't do it themselves.

Are new pledges generous and growing? People who are engaged with the congregation, who feel they have found a spiritual home, and who have been invited to generosity will give.  You know that, because that's how you came to be giving as much as you are.

Having clergy or a building may help with growth, but the internal dynamics and the external opportunity need to be there first.

A Small Congregation Wonders About Clergy

I had a great visit recently with the UU Fellowship in Billings, MT, to help them reflect on the benefits and challenges of having professional clergy serving with them.  We did that Saturday, then had  worship together on Sunday. (Not to mention the road trip and excellent dinner on Saturday evening) What a great group of people, and what an energetic fellowship!

It got me thinking in a more general way about the question of whether or not to have professional clergy in these small, relatively isolated communities of the West.

Some of the items are of the sort that can be listed and weighed against each other, but some are not. The folks in Billings -- not just this congregation, but others I know -- are typical of small congregations in that they think of the minister's job in terms of the Sunday service.  "Will we be bored with hearing the same point of view so often over such a long time?" "Will it assure us of high quality services?"  And indeed, the church growth books tell us the pastor of a small congregation can expect to be a chaplain, in charge of worship and pastoral care and not invited to get involved in leadership.

At the same time, the small congregation could benefit from leadership that includes professional clergy, if they can manage to let it happen.  Clergy have training and experience in church meetings and church politics.  They can sometimes have insight into tangled situations and power struggles. They may have helpful ideas about how to deal with difficult people.  Governance can more easily develop the kind of tone and practice that reflects our Principles when there's a professional clergy person involved.  The minister can be the public face of the fellowship, speaking up on social issues, answering questions from public and press.

The big question is, can the congregation's leadership make room for a minister who is more than a chaplain?  Or is the chaplain role all they can imagine?  That making room takes a surprising amount of internal adjustment. People who have been doing it all, and successfully, are invited to share with this credentialed stranger. How does that work?  Not smoothly.  It needs both the sponsorship of the "pillars" of the congregation and their flexibility in making a place for ministerial leadership.

Surely the new minister can't be one of the authoritarian types.  But assertiveness is necessary. Changes need to begin at once, or they will settle in to being as they always have been, with the minister assigned to leading worship, caring for the sick and elderly, and conducting rites of passage. In our fellowships, it is likely that a minister so assigned will seem an expensive luxury.  "Why are we spending all this money?" people will say.

Existing leadership is key. They need to work hard on making space for professional leadership as they prepare to bring someone in.  And there is no one to tell them how to do that.  It is one of the small miracles of our movement that sometimes an established fellowship manages this shift.

from an anonymous website not in our tradition...these people
signed up to be ushers.. or is one of them the minister?

The Half That Was Never Told and Why it Matters Now

I just finished reading The Half Has Never Been Told, by Edward E. Baptist, a remarkable history of the Antebellum United States told from the point of view of slavery's role. I had known that slavery was economically important to the development of the US economy, and had understood the connection between the Northern textile industry and the enslavement of people in the South, but this reading took my understanding deeper in surprisingly unsettling ways.

First, the author nails us religious liberals in one of his carefully documented case studies of individuals.  The individual is the Rev.John Gorham Palfrey, Unitarian clergyman, graduate of Harvard, originally from Louisiana.  He found himself in a difficult situation after his father died back home in the Deep South, because much of his inheritance would be in the form of human beings owned as property. Could he sell them?  No. That would be a problem for his own moral scruples and his reputation in the North. Could he liberate them?  Not in Louisiana in those days. In the end he brought all but one of them to Massachusetts to set them free, finding placements for a few while the others took it on themselves, in the manner of free people, to find jobs and begin their new lives.

"If these newest Bostonians looked up in wonder at the King's Chapel's austerely magnificent vaults which soared like white wedding cake from pillars to roof, and if they felt intimidated by the rich variety of clothes on the congregants...the migrants had nevertheless spent their lives constructing this world."  (p.366)  Palfrey knew this, surely. Slavery was not an easy issue for the Unitarians, many of whom were the Boston elite, who also knew their own wealth rested on slavery.

Baptist shows, as our Unitarian forebears apparently knew, that opposing slavery in Boston and elsewhere in the Northeast was not different from undermining the foundations of American prosperity.  Only as the North became more populous and more economically diverse could it afford to question the wisdom of continuing to be a country where slavery was practiced. Only with greater economic diversity could testimony of enslaved people who had escaped become persuasive.

Slavery is deep in the foundations of who we are as America, and deep in the foundations of who we Unitarian Universalists are as a people. We are going to need to do some deep work to find ways to free ourselves from the morally difficult fact that we still stand on the shoulders of enslaved human beings.

An Opening of the Spirit

After nearly a year of feeling too constrained somehow to post anything, I sense an opening of the spirit, a return to the open road that inspired this blog in the first place.  Afoot and lighthearted, I travel in mind and on electronic wings rather than in body (except around in circles in the valley where I live).  My carved and decorated traveling staff, the one that went with me to interim ministries, rests in the corner of my front room.  It's all good, though I am missing interim ministry big time.

I am in touch with congregations in Montana to get to know them better and maybe knit us together in a network of some kind.  I am in touch with the small congregations office of Pacific Western Region of the Unitarian Universalist Association to see what I can offer in the way of webinars and conference call conversations.  I am still puzzling over what category of Unitarian Universalist Ministers' Association dues I fit into, not wishing to call myself "retired" but also not exactly "unemployed" either. "Retired" will do, I guess. 

Here is the opening stanza, the poem that calls to me, as copied from the American Poetry Foundation's website.

Song of the Open Road

BY WALT WHITMAN

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,

Healthy, free, the world before me,

The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,

Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,

Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,

Strong and content I travel the open road.

The earth, that is sufficient,

I do not want the constellations any nearer,

I know they are very well where they are,

I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,

I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,

I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,

I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return.)

The poet was entering middle age when he wrote of the open road, and I am settling in on being old.  Still the youth of spirit he was evoking in his mature years springs within me, too. I am grateful. Strong and content, I go traveling.