What is the UU Version of "Doing God's Work"?

So there I was, reading, as I often do, Christian's blog about church life, translating as I went ... "church" into "fellowship," mostly, and finding, in this case, that mostly, it was about us as well as about the larger world of Christianity.  But there it was, listed as an important factor in congregational health: "Doing God's Work."  We do need to be doing something like that, but what does this mean for us at least partly atheistic Unitarian Universalists?

God's work is love, of course. I hope that's what the Christian writer meant, but it doesn't matter here.
How can we tell if we doing the work of love?

It may be easier to tell what the work of love is not:

Being judgmental.
Having sloppy boundaries.
Talking when we should be listening.
Not sharing our views and feelings.
Taking offense before finding out what's going on.
Talking behind someone's back.
Spreading rumors.
Expressing scorn, rolling the eyes.
Doing things for spite.
"Otherizing"

There's more, I'm sure. But haven't we all seen all this in our fellowships?
Of course, even Unitarian Universalists are human, after all.

But doesn't Love call us to do better?

And what would that look like?
And how do you get there from wherever you are?

You know what it looks like. You know what it feels like.
In many situations, making some rules and guidelines will help.
But it won't happen without something happening in the hearts of your people.  How that comes to pass is more of a mystery... I say we need to attend to the quality of our relationships, not just with one another, but with ourselves.  Is there respect and consideration everywhere?  And if not, how can it be brought into being?

Love will guide us, and we'll be doing "God's work" if we follow.

Small Congregation: "Bob always does that."

In small congregations I have known, there's a constant problem with understaffing.  Partly, it's because there are not very many people.  And partly it's because "Bob always does that."

For sure, there are lots of jobs and not many people.  But if you look around, some of the people are not finding ways to help, and others are doing more than is good for them.  There's Bob...  every time there's a blank space on the signup sheet, Bob feels impelled to put his name in.  Sometimes he can't get to all of it, but at least he tries.  Bob's friends need to help him hold back!

When Bob's name is on the list to do something, others believe there is no need for them to sign up. His helpful practice makes it harder for those who are less involved to find ways to help.  Rather than just put his name down, he could call some people and find out if they could do it.  Or better yet, someone else who is better connected with newer folks could do it.

There are jobs around the congregation that are always Bob's responsibility.  He puts up the Solsitice/Christmas tree (does he also complain when no one else takes it down?).  He makes sure there are paper towels in the bathrooms and toilet paper in all the bathroom stalls on Sunday morning. He is the one who makes the coffee.  On a Sunday when Bob is out of town, people wonder why there is no coffee and puzzle over the condition of the restrooms.  Bob is very helpful, and yet something is not quite right about it.  Again, Bob's friends need to help him make room for others.

Of course, there's also Jane, who always washes up after social hour and always manages the kitchen during potluck suppers/brunches/luncheons. She has certain ways of doing these things and those who have been around for awhile know how to help her.  Others?  It's not easy or fun.

When people in congregations do things alone, the congregation misses out on a chance to build community.  It's a basic idea in community organizing that you should never do anything alone.  Two things happen  that are not so helpful.  First, no one else knows how to do it, or even that it is being done.  When Bob or Jane is away or sick, it's an emergency.  Second, when it's time for someone else to take over, it's very hard. Even the Holiday Tree needs a succession plan, and having others involved is a good way to set one up informally. But mainly, when you're working alone, you are not engaging with others, getting to know them, feeling you are part of the same enterprise.  Being together is actually an important part of having a congregation in the first place, right?

There are other jobs that Bobs and Janes do... it varies from congregation to congregation. Established people in small congregations can help each other find ways to avoid getting locked into certain roles.  It's good to know the Holiday tree will go up, and it's good to know someone is making sure there are napkins for the potluck, so it's a balancing act.  Being dependable and helpful is good; getting locked in to a certain role that you do by yourself, not so much.

Let us find ways to share our roles in the congregation, even when the congregation is small.

Volunteer with an unknown congregation...working alone!

Eldership in a Small Congregation

In one of the small congregations I know, there is a legend that haunts the Board of Trustees.  Some years ago, it seems, there had been a meeting where an important decision was made after discussion and careful deliberation.  Soon after, as it is remembered, someone not on the Board persuaded one of the Board members that this had been a mistake.  The Board member emailed the rest of the members to change his/her vote, persuaded someone else to change theirs, and claimed that this invalidated the original vote.  At the next meeting, the whole discussion had to be redone, and the decision was reversed.  Now, the Board (several election cycles later) has trouble making any decisions at all.

Does this happen in other small congregations?  Of course.

My diagnosis of the congregation in question was that the official, elected, Board of Trustees was actually a kind of "student government," able to make some decisions, but not to go against the "administration" of the institution.  The "administration" was a group of long time members who had the power do decide in a way the official Board could not.  Their long dedication to the congregation and their substantial financial contributions as well as their unwillingness to "let go" brought this situation into being.

It's embarrassing and demoralizing for the Board when the kind of reversal recalled in this legend actually happens.  It reminds the Board that they need to talk things over with the unelected elders before they vote, basically not a bad idea. But it makes me want to say to those elders, "If you don't mean to let go of control, then you have to continue to serve on the Board!"  and  "Can't you let someone with new ideas do things in new ways?"

That small group of long time leaders has a really crucial role to play in the survival and health of a small congregation.  The congregation can move forward, maybe even grow, if the elders find a way to hand over authority to what I might call emerging long term leaders. Others need to come to have "standing" of the same kind as that of the small group that has held the congregation together for 20 years.  The  elders need to ask themselves how someone qualifies to be one of them.  Service in leadership, financial commitment, devotion to the faith, what else?

For real democracy to emerge, elders must come to hold their eldership lightly, to allow others to gain positions of respect.  Generation needs to follow generation not only in elected leadership, but also in eldership, or the congregation will wither.  In a small congregation, the role of that small group that plays the role of the "administration," is key.  How well do they connect with the newer families and leaders? How well do they connect with the larger religious movement? How open are they to new possibilities?

Small congregations need leadership development, for sure, a perennial focus of attention. But they also need eldership development.

Congregation elders have a lot to contribute, maybe not always in a good way...

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.