Category Archives: Liberal religion

Overview

Our congregation’s CUUPS (Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans) chapter asked me to meet with them this evening and talk with them about Unitarian Universalism. Which forced me to a quick overview of the current state of Unitarian Universalism. Here’s my short list of what we stand for these days:

  1. We’re non-creedal. We explicitly state that we don’t tell you what to believe.
  2. But we have boundaries, too. One of our boundaries: you shouldn’t come into a Unitarian Universalist congregation and tell other people what to believe.
  3. We’re pro-science. For example, we do not find evolutionary biology to be threatening to our religion.
  4. We’re disorganized. Like the rest of the religious liberals (or spiritual progressives, if you like that name better), we can’t seem to get our act together organizationally speaking.
  5. We’re “post-Christian.” To my friend the rabbi we look like Christians, but more conservative Christians are quite sure that we are not Christians. So I’d say we’re post-Christian and proud of it.
  6. We’re relatively open. No human community is perfect, and we have our moments of intolerance, but as religious organizations go we’re pretty open.

As one example of a definition of Unitarian Universalism, I passed out printed copies of Time Berners-Lee’s online essay WWW, UU, and I — which I still think is one of the best expositions of what it means to be a Unitarian Unviersalist in our time.

Then I talked a little bit about where Unitarian Universalism seems to be heading. Acknowledging that we’re too anarchic to really agree on a direction in which to head, here’s my short list of preferred destinations:

  1. We should be moving towards a new way of organizing. The organizational structure of most Unitarian Universalist congregations keeps us at 50 to 100 members. We should adopt a scalable organizational architecture. I like the idea of small groups linked in larger web formations (see Starhawk’s Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex, and Politics for a good discussion of this, or the Small Group Ministry Network for another approach).
  2. We should be interpreting the Western religious traditions (Western Christian, Jewish, and European pagan traditions) to support the healing of Nature and the earth.
  3. We should be working on building dialogue between secular non-religious folk and religious liberals, helping both groups to find common causes on which they can work together.

Towards the end, we also talked about how various religious liberal groups — pagans, Unitarian Universalists, liberal Christians, liberal Jews — could work together on the same sex marriage issue. We all pretty much agreed that this is the big issue facing religious liberals in Massachusetts today. (So I told the CUUPS group about the Religious Coalition for the Freedom to Marry and Mass Equality — send them money, and sign up to receive email updates from them!)

That’s my quick overview of Unitarian Universalism. Your results may vary. No guarantees that I will agree with myself tomorrow.

The high cost of low wages

In the December, 2006, issue of Harvard Business Review, Wayne Cascio has a short article titled “The High Cost of Low Wages,” taken from a longer article he did for Academy of Management Perspectives. In the article Cascio, a professor of management at University of Colorado, compares the salaries of two retail giants, WalMart and Costco.

WalMart’s subsidiary, Sam’s Club, competes directly with Costco. Yet while Sam’s Club pays an average of about $10 an hour, Costco pays an average of $17 an hour. In the cut-throat business of retailing low-price merchandise, where wages make up a substantial part of costs, how can Costco afford to pay wages that are more than 40% higher than Sam’s Club wages?

Cascio points out that the “fully loaded cost of replacing a worker who leaves (excluding lost productivity) is typically 1.5 to 2.5 times the worker’s annual salary” — but to be conservative, Cascio pegs it at 60% of a worker’s annual salary. In addition, Cascio points out that each year Sam’s Club loses “more than twice as many people as Costco does: 44% versus 17%.”

Bottom line: even though Sam’s Club pays far less, the annual cost of employee churn for Sam’s Club is $5,274 per worker, whereas it’s only $3,628 per worker for Costco. Cascio concludes: “In return for its generous wages and benefits, Costco gets one of the most loyal and productive workforces in all of retailing…. These figures challenge the common assumption that labor rates equal labor costs.” [Emphasis mine. Reprints of this article may be purchased online: Link.]

While Cascio does his calculations for the world of retailing, I believe the same principles apply to congregations. Churches often pay low wages in the mistaken assumption that they are saving money. However, low wages can contribute to high turnover. And in the church world, it takes far longer to build full productivity in an employee than it does in the retail world, suggesting the full cost of replacing a church worker is substantially higher than it is for Costco or WalMart.

Given the phenomenon of Baumol’s cost disease [which I defined in a past post: Link], I believe that churches also have to find ways to boost productivity. Generous salary and benefits packages alone won’t boost productivity — good management and evaluation are obivously necessary as well. On the other hand, low salary and poor benefits are likely to contribute to lower productivity — if you pay WalMart-level wages, you’ll get WalMart-level work.

Paying low wages and providing skimpy benefits packages may seem to save money for churches in the short term. But the most cost effective solution is to cut back on staff turnover and to boost productivity, by providing excellent salary and benefit packages.

For reference: Tables of salary guidelines for Unitarian Universalist churches can be found online: Link. Salary guidelines for the American Guild of Organists can also be found online: Link.

Liberal religion on the Web: year-end reflections

Unitarian Universalist blogs remain a tiny presence on the Web. According to UUpdater, a news aggregator which casts a pretty wide net, there are around 205 Unitarian Universalist blogs — 205 out of some 55 million total blogs. According to Technorati, a Web site that tracks and ranks blogs, the most popular Unitarian Universalist blog currently is undoubtedly Philocrites, which Technorati ranks at 24,382nd out of all blogs. Forget the top hundred — Unitarian Universalist blogs don’t even make the top twenty thousand. (We used to have one blog in the top twenty thousand, before Shawn Anthony, of Lo Fi Tribe, stomped angrily and suddenly out of Unitarian Universalism into mainstream Christianity this past fall.)

Beyond the narrow confines of Unitarian Universalist blogs, I suspect that liberal religion doesn’t fare much better on the Web. My service provider tells me that he hosts “hundreds” of Bible-thumping Christian sites, conservative Islamic sites, and other religious conservative Web sites. Mine is one of the only liberal religious sites he hosts.

Brian Maclaren, an evangelical Christian best known for his work on what’s called “Emergent Church,” has said that that mainline Protestants and religious liberals are theologically liberal and methodologically rigid. I feel that captures us pretty well. I am continually surprised at how many Unitarian Universalists dismiss the Web as, well, frivolous. I led a workshop on creating great content for church Web sites at our annual denominational meeting back in June, and quite a few of the participants spoke to me later about their frustration as they tried to convince their congregations to spend any time or energy (let alone money) on the church Web site. Yet it is becoming clear that as many as half of all newcomers find out about our churches through the Web.

Beyond simple marketing, I get the strong feeling that Unitarian Universalists, and religious liberals more generally, simply do not understand how a strong presence on the Web can serve us well. We are such a tiny presence in the national dialogue (let alone the world) that we simply must use all the means at our disposal to make sure our message is heard — and that it is heard clearly, accurately, and without distortion. Everyone knows what the conservative Christians believe about the Bible, about evolution, about same-sex marriage — but how many people know that there are other (religiously liberal) ways of looking at those same issues?

Since we don’t get our message out, we have people like Richard Dawkins trash-talking religion. Sure, he’s an idiot for equating all religion with conservative doctrinaire Christianity. But it’s not like we give him the opportunity to learn about Unitarian Universalism, or any other liberal religion. How is Dawkins going to find out about us?

One thing we can and should do immediately: take it upon ourselves to make sure that our congregation’s Web sites, and our personal liberal religious Web sites, are useable and easy to find. Get Steve Krug’s book on Web usability, Don’t Make Me Think, read it, and apply what’s in that book to your church’s Web site (I spent half a day applying some of Krug’s principles to my congregation’s Web site, and traffic quadrupled in a year). Read Google’s advice to Webmasters on how to optimize your Web site’s ranking on Google (I’ve been paying attention to this on my own site, so that now if you enter “Dan Harper” in Google, my site comes up in the top ten listings rather than buried two pages back).

A second thing we can all work on together: find, encourage, and support liberal religious writers who could present our message to a national audience. For that matter, find, encourage, and support filmmakers, singer-songwriters, and other artists who could do the same thing.

Let’s make a resolution for 2007: that we religious liberals will be, not just theologically liberal, but methodologically liberal too.

Semantic Church?

Over the past couple of days, I’ve been reading up on the Semantic Web. First, I sought out a concise definition — here’s the definition according to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C):

The Semantic Web provides a common framework that allows data to be shared and reused across application, enterprise, and community boundaries. [Link]

Next, I asked myself: should I care about the Semantic Web? –or is it just another technology buzzword that I can ignore? Pretty quickly, I came to the conclusion that maybe I should care about the Semantic Web, because it may solve a problem I have.

The problem is one you may share: the volume of information available via Web Classic has become so large that search engines like Google are getting to the point where they are no longer adequate for my purposes. A few years ago, I experienced search engines as opening a door for me; now I often experience them as frustrating bottlenecks. As time goes by, I find myself relying more and more on other methods for finding links to good information: blogs, Wikipedia, tags, etc.

It looks like the Semantic Web may help address this problem I’m currently facing. One of the more interesting developments is the link between the Semantic Web and knowledge management. Knowledge management can use hi-tech tools like content management systems, online learning, wikis and blogs — but knowledge management also includes face-to-face interactions like mentoring relationships, formal training, and informal learning from peers. Considered from the point of view of knowledge management, the Semantic Web is just another tool to help manage knowledge (albeit a tool that is potentially very powerful).

I’ve also started thinking about how the Semantic Web might be useful in a church setting — what problems could the Semantic Web solve for a local congregation? One of the biggest problems in most local congregations is knowledge management, because local congregations tend to be fairly isolated from one another, and from the denominational bureaucracy. If you face a problem in your local congregation, all too often you’ll probably wind up solving it on your own, even though there are lots of other congregations out there who have gone through exactly the same problem — the knowledge of how to solve your problem is out there, but it is difficult for you to access that knowledge.

As a minister, a significant proportion of my work life is spent seeking out sources of knowledge. I’m the only person in my profession working in my small congregation; I don’t have the option of asking the person in the next cubicle for advice. Instead, I read books and blogs and magazines on churches, I go to workshops and take classes, I attend professional meetings, I talk to a church consultant twice a month, I have informal mentors, and so on — I find other ways to increase my stock of knowledge.

However, lay leaders have a more difficult time increasing their stock of knowledge. Most lay leaders work on a part-time, volunteer basis; many have full-time jobs and/or families that require their time and attention. Most of the lay leaders I work with do not have the time to go to workshops and classes, attend professional meetings, have a mentor, etc. They might have time to read a few articles (in either print or online publications), but that’s about it. This is why the Interconnections newsletter for lay leaders has been so wildly successful in my denomination — it has become the primary source of church knowledge within Unitarian Universalism, because the editor, Don Skinner, presents best practices and other institutional knowledge in a concise and easily accessible format.

Marc Fawzi, writing in the blog “Evolving Trends,” has been speculating on what he calls “Web 3.0”. Fawzi speculates that Google’s dominance of the Web will be broken by the development of peer-to-peer Semantic Web engines. In another post, Fawzi speculates that Wikipedia is actually best positioned right now to break Google’s dominance because Wikipedia has already begun to map out knowledge domains that could help structure a truly useful Semantic Web.*

Applying this to the church world, imagine if the “Interconnections” newsletter utilized even more peer-to-peer interaction? What if there were a wiki component to the “Interconnections” Web site, such that the knowledge that is currently presented could be further refined over time by succeeding generations of lay leaders? Of course, realistically I don’t think that’s going to happen — at least, not within Unitarian Universalism, a denomination that has been more concerned about presenting a carefully controlled image to the outer world, than sponsoring and supporting the infrastructure for peer-to-peer interactions.

What I’m hoping is that local congregations, and individuals within those congregations, figure out how to do knowledge management with or without denominational support. Working outside denominational bureaucracy would also give us the benefit of being able to interact with peers in other, related, denominations. In fact, constructing a good set of Semantic Web ontologies will only facilitate knowledge sharing across denominational lines.

In spite of the fact that some folks are calling the Semantic Web “Web 3.0,” I am reluctant to call this overall concept “Church 3.0” because a network of evangelical Christians is already using that term to refer to mission work in a postmodern, globalized world.

So maybe call it “Semantic Church” — a framework using Semantic Web standards to allow us to share data and knowledge across boundaries that currently keep us apart.

* Update (23:07 EST): Suddenly Wikipedia’s founder is talking about using a wiki platform as a kind of search engine [link to BoingBoing post], saying search engines are no longer working.

Christmas Eve in New Bedford

At about 7:30 p.m., I’ll be preaching this homily here at First Unitarian in New Bedford. I’ve set this blog entry to appear at the same time — it’s not quite live streamed audio, but if you’re stuck at home you’ll be able to start reading this just about when the congregation in New Bedford starts hearing it.

As usual, this is a reading text, and no doubt I will ad lib and otherwise diverge from what is printed below. Please excuse any typos, as I don’t proofread reading texts of my sermons particularly well.

And merry Christmas to you and yours!

Christmas Eve Homily

I don’t know if you ever noticed, but there are two quite different stories about the birth of Jesus. On the one hand, the story in the book of Luke [Luke 2.1-21] tells us about how there was no room at the inn, and the manger, the shepherds, and the angels. The story in the book of Matthew [Matthew 1.18-21, Matthew 2.1-12], on the other hand, says nothing about a manger or a stable, and in fact calls the place where Jesus was born a “house.” But it’s Matthew who tells us about the magi, whatever “magi” might be. There are at least three other complete books that purport to tell the story of Jesus — the books of Mark, John, and Thomas — but Mark and Thomas start with Jesus as an adult, and John gives us a short and mysterious paragraph about word and God and light.

The fact of the matter is that we know precious little about the birth and early life of Jesus. It would be slightly easier for us if we said that the Bible is the literal and incontrovertible word of God: then we’d know for certain that there were angels who spoke to shepherds, and a long journey to Bethlehem, and magi from the East (whatever “magi” might be). Of course, if the Bible were the literal and incontrovertible word of God, we could ignore the contradictions and inconsistencies that occur between the different stories about birth and life of Jesus.

Since we do not take the Bible literally and incontrovertibly, at Christmas time we find ourselves in the realm of myth and enchantment; I would say, we find ourselves in the realm of poetry. A poem can be just as true as a mathematical equation, or just as true as a scientifically proven natural law; but it is true in a different way; not literally true, but true in its allusions and connections and resonances.

This year, I have been thinking about the magi, those mysterious visitors from the East. (By the way, nowhere does it say that there were only three of them.) Magi comes from the ancient Greek word “magoi,” which means astrologer or wise men. I wonder if they were actually all men, or if we just assume that they were? I wonder, if they were astrologers, did they try to predict the future life of the new baby they came to visit? –and how accurate were their predictions? I wonder where they came from in the East? –from Persia, from Baghdad, from India? I wonder what religion they followed –Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, paganism? I wonder, but there is simply no way to know for sure.

But the poetic truth of that moment when the magi finally arrive:– the star that they have been following stand directly over the house where the newborn baby lies, watched over by his mother and father — the poetry, for me, lies in this passage:

The magi “were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure-chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.”

We should all kneel down to pay homage when we see a new-born baby. Any baby is a miracle: a new life that has come into being, a new bit of humanity to be loved and cherished, and to offer love in return. Every time a baby is born, the human stock of love is increased by the love contained in that tiny body. What could be more miraculous? We can offer no other response than to be overwhelmed with joy.

And then the magi open up their treasure chests, and offer gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Why did they give those three things? They gave gold because the crown of the king of Israel was fashioned from gold; and frankincense and myrrh were used in the oils for anointing kings. These astrologers seem to be predicting that Jesus would be a new king of Israel. So there is a very specific, technical meaning for the gifts the magi brought.

As with any good poetry, we can find layers of meaning. For someone living in the land of Judea in the first century Roman Empire, gold and frankincense and myrrh might have very specific meanings relating to the longing for a king, a leader, to deliver the land of Israel from Roman oppression. For us today, living in a post-Christian, globalized world, those old meanings have only a faint resonance; but we can resonate with the deeper levels of meaning in the giving of gifts.

We can understand that the magi gave gifts to that baby, because that baby represented new life and love. We can understand that we give gifts today for the same deep reason. When you or I give a gift to someone else, we are first of all acknowledging that person’s essential humanity; and although we might not express it that way, we are also extending a little bit of love to that person.

If you exchange gifts tomorrow, I hope you will think of this poetic meaning of Christmas gift-giving. To give a gift to another person is a metaphor for extending a little bit of love to that person; and so symbolically, poetically, to exchange gifts is to add to the store of the world’s love. And it isn’t necessary to give an actual physical object, you know; you can give the gift of a kind word, or a hug, or a smile, and it does the same thing.

Let me put this another way. When Jesus grew up, he taught that the most important thing in the world is to love your neighbor as yourself. This is a truth that Jesus got from his Jewish heritage, and passed on to the wider world. This is the poetic truth that is embodied in the simple act of giving gifts: to love and value other people as you would be loved and valued by them.

If you live in Massachusetts…

I received the announcement below from the Religious Coalition for the Freedom To Marry. I plan to be present at the Massachusetts State House on January 2, and if you live in Massachusetts maybe you can come, too.

Legislators will meet one more time on January 2nd to consider a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. This will be the final day of the current legislative session — and we’re working to make sure that legislators vote to stop this amendment from moving to the 2008 ballot.

This is our opponents’ last chance to pass the anti-gay amendment, and they are desperately trying to intimidate legislators. They have filed two last-ditch lawsuits against legislators and have vowed to bring in buses of people to the Constitutional Convention on the 2nd. Please help us to make sure the voices of marriage equality are heard at the State House on January 2nd.

Join us at the Constitutional Convention on January 2nd. Supporters will begin to organize on Beacon Street at 8 AM. The Constitutional Convention starts at 2 PM and at that time we will be able to view the proceedings from Gardner Auditorium in the State House. Even if you can only come for an hour or two, your presence is needed.

Constitutional Convention
Gathering begins at 8 AM
State House, Boston

For more information about how you can help in these final days, please contact Amy Mello at (617) 878-2307 or email AmyMello@MassEquality.org.

Red Light, Green Light

Since we had a lay-led service today, I got to teach Sunday school with Serena, our regular paid child care provider. There were three children present: S—-, age 7; E—-, age 7; and A—-, age 10. K—-, age 12, who was visiting with A—-, was also present.

Rather than plan out a complete lesson, I decided to go with the spontaneous programming approach to planning, where the program arises out of the interests of the children, and their interactions with their surrounding environment. I brought along a Christmas story (which I never used), some drawing paper and crayons, and a game.

The game was “Red Light, Green Light (with cheating),” which the children have been playing off and on all fall. In order to understand the session, I have to explain the rules of “Red Light, Green Light (with cheating)”:

One person is “It.” She stands some distance away from the starting line, where the rest of the players stand (thirty to a hundred feet is a good distance; use a greater distance with more players). She stands in front of the goal, which is some solid object — a chair, a tree, a couch.

To begin the game, “It” stands in front of the goal, says “Green light!” in a loud voice, and turns her entire body away from the rest of the players. As soon as “It” turns away from the rest of the players, they all advance as quickly as possible towards the goal. After a moment or two, “It” says “Red light!” in a loud voice while simultaneously turning around to face the players. If she catches any player still moving, she calls out that player’s name, says what body part she saw moving, and sends him back to the starting line.

In traditional “Red Light, Green Light,” players are supposed to stand absolutely still after “It” says “Red light!” But this version of the game allows cheating, where players can move at any time — although of course if “It” catches them moving, she can send them back to the starting line. In addition, “It” can cheat by walking away from the goal to get a better look at the players, to see if certain individuals are moving.

The game works best if you play it together over a period of time, so you can figure out the nuances of the rules. Children will find that they can sneak up behind adults. As you play together, you will get increasingly strict about what constitutes movement (at advanced levels of play, even a smile will send you back to the starting line). You will discover the two basic strategies: slow and steady, and mad dashes towards the goal; both strategies can work (and they work well in combination). Those who become “It” discover that it requires coordination to whirl around quickly, and concentration to watch all the players.

The game ends when one player touches the goal without being called out by “It.” That player then becomes the next “It” for the next game.

“Red Light, Green Light (with cheating)” is a great game for small Sunday schools because it works well with mixed age groups (from six to adult). Younger children will need more than one session of the game to feel fully comfortable with it. When you’re first starting out, older children and adults will have to learn to modify their play to accommodate younger children who are learning (younger children who join an established game will find it easier to pick up the nuances of the game). We’ve been playing the game long enough that the younger children are nearly competitive with older children and adults.

The children are always excited when I go over the rules for the game. They find it hard to believe that the rules explicitly allow cheating. They also learn pretty quickly that the cheating is very limited, and actually makes the game harder to play, not easier to win.

A—- became “It” in the third game. She whirled around, saying “Green light!” Then she whirled back and looked at us. “I didn’t say ‘Red light!’ yet, you know,” she said. No one moved. “Red light!” she said. No one moved. She tried this several more times, but as long as she was looking at us, no one moved.

The children began to learn if they hid behind the two adults, Serena and me, “It” would be less likely to see them moving. K—- figured out that if she kept herself very low to the ground, “It” was less likely to call her out; she won the next game using this strategy.

When you are “It” in this version of the game, you have almost absolute power over the other players, within the constraints of the game. When S—- became “It” a second time today, she began abusing her power. She sent several of us back to the start even though we hadn’t moved at all. We complained, but she didn’t listen to us. So we had to resort to other strategies: we conspired to rush her all at once (A—- almost won when we did that); and we complained at her unfairness. After that game was over, K—- said she no longer wanted to play. You could almost see the wheels turning in S—-‘s head, as she realized that she had gone a little too far. At the end of this game, I said, “The next time is the last game, then we’ll do something else.” But S—- said, “No, we have to keep on playing!” — and then she realized that no one else was as eager to play the game as she was any more.

A—- was “It” for the last game. All the players had gotten quite good by this point. We all spread out over the room so that when we got close to her, A—- couldn’t keep an eye on all of us at once. K—- sat at the side of the room, pretending not to watch us. E—- won, sneaking quite close and then making a mad dash to tag the goal right after A—- said “Red light!”

I got out the paper and crayons and said, “Now let’s draw whatever you want most for Christmas.” All the children (and adults) settled down to draw, except S—-, who after five minutes said, “I’m bored with drawing.” S—- is a verbal and kinesthetic learner, so I explained to her that she is the kind of person who likes moving around a lot, but the rest of the children enjoy drawing. S—- looked around and saw that the other children did indeed love to draw, so she settled down — which represents a big step for S—-, who has loved being the center of attention and has always gotten the group to do what she wants. She asked me why I was drawing money, and I told her because that’s what I want for Christmas (Serena was drawing money too!). When I drew Cookie Monster where George Washington usually goes on a dollar bill, S—- said she wanted to know how to draw Cookie. I showed her one way draw Cookie, and she spent the rest of the time drawing.

If S—- had been a couple of years older, perhaps I would have sat down with the children after playing “Red Light, Green Light (with cheating)” and asked them about what had happened during the game, eventually leading up to pen-ended questions like, “How did you feel when someone sent you back even though you hadn’t moved?” and “How did it feel to be able to cheat during the game?” (although plenty of learning happened anyway without the necessity of being so explicit). One of the nice things about teaching Sunday school is that the same children often come back for years, so you can watch them grow up, and get to important discussions when they’re at last old enough for it.

Defining youth ministry

A post on the youth advisor list serve alerted me to the fact that the Youth Office at the denominational headquarters is surveying youth advisors.

These denominational surveys are usually pretty boring. I was plodding along, not paying much attention as I clicked on questions like my age, gender (six choices on that one), whether I’m a member of my congregation, and so on. But then I got to a section and a question that required some thought:

12. Definition of Youth Ministry

As part of the Consultation on Ministry to and with Youth, we are trying to define what Youth Ministry means in a Unitarian Universalist context. Below is our first draft of a definition.

YOUTH MINISTRY WORKING DEFINITION
Unitarian Universalist youth ministry is a collaboration between youth and adults to create authentic, anti-racist, anti-oppressive,* multicultural, and intergenerational communities which empower and support:

  • The spiritual and religious development of youth
  • Mutual love, respect, and trust between and among youth and adults
  • Relationship-based ministry and support among youth
  • A youth-driven ministry of justice that calls all of us to live out our values in the world.

Like all ministry, ministry with youth is the responsibility of the whole congregation and the whole community.

“The great end in religious instruction…is not to make them see with our eyes, but to look inquiringly and steadily with their own.” – William Ellery Channing

* Anti-racist and anti-oppressive communities are ones in which individuals actively work against individual and institutional racism and oppression while striving for safe, welcoming, and radically inclusive communities. The language of “anti-“ is used to emphasize the prevalence of oppression in the world. It is our calling as people of faith to actively dismantle oppression in Unitarian Universalist communities and the world at-large.

29. Looking at the definition above, what do you think Youth Ministry is?

I guess I was feeling crankier than usual. Here’s what I wrote in reply:

Well, your definition is very politically correct but it leaves me utterly cold. “Collaboration” — how cold. “Authentic communities” — any time you have to call them authentic, communities aren’t. “Religious development” — as if youth are like third world countries waiting to be developed. “Relationship-based” — I don’t even know what that means. Your definition simply doesn’t get at the emotional and spiritual depths of what religion and ministry have been in my experience.

First of all, ministry is all about love. You have to start there. And it doesn’t have to be “mutual love.” As a Universalist, I believe that love is the most powerful force in the universe, and that all human relationship tend towards love. Ministry is one process by which we can get to love.

Secondly, ministry always has a horizontal dimension (human community) and a vertical dimension (God, the divine, that which is larger than ourselves, the best that is in human nature). Ministry is a relationship that takes place, not just between you and me, but between you, me, and something larger than us.

Thirdly, in our tradition ministry implies a covenant, promises that you and I make to one another, and to something larger than ourselves. In our tradition, covenants are typically formed in congregations.

Fourthly, when you minister to me, one of the things you do is to help me find out what my ministry in the world is or will be. You do this through love — through holding me accountable to that which is greater than myself — and through the bonds of covenant.

But it’s all founded on love. For me, it’s the radical love taught by the rabbi known as Jesus — although I’m also deeply influenced by the practice of love taught by Siddhartha Gotama, called the Buddha. Whatever. It’s all about the love.

When you get to the end of this survey, you can see tabulated results [link], and you can even read what everyone else wrote in response to question 29 [link]. One respondent said that he/she wanted young people to grow up to become Unitarian Universalists, which I happen to agree with. One respondent said, “I’m pragmatically oriented, and those statements seems unnecessarily obtuse” (hear, hear). And one respondent quoted Kahlil Gibran: “You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that his arrows go swift and far. Let your bending of the archer’s hand be for gladness; For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable”; which I felt was a nice addition to any definition of young people’s ministry.

How would you define “youth ministry”?

Church 2.0 wiki

Peter Bowden and I have been talking about ways to nurture an ongoing conversation about what we’ve been calling Church 2.0. Given the philosophy of what we’re doing, it seemed like the best thing to do would be to create a Church 2.0 wiki, a Web site where anyone can contribute ideas or report on real-world projects. Of course I had to use open-source software to create the wiki (PMWiki).

Read or contribute to the Church 2.0 wiki

If you are asked for a username and password, use “edit” for username and “3d1t0rz” for a password (the fifth character in the password is a zero).

If you would like to contribute, click on “Edit” at the top of the screen. You will be asked for a password — just enter “3d1t0rz” (the fifth character in the password is a zero).