No great revelation

No great revelation, but worth remembering…

Big meeting at church this morning. Angela Merkert, district executive of Central Midwest District, came in and led a workshop on systems theory for churches. Gave us lots of good ideas on how the Geneva church could really become a program-size church.

Afterwards, I ran into A— as he was leaving the meeting. “All this church growth is fine,” he said, “but people don’t realize how much fun we had in the old days.” He’s got a point. Fun isn’t the only reason for church, but if church isn’t fun, what’s the point?

It’s no great revelation, I know, but church can (and should) be fun.

In the church, overnight

We’re here at the church for an OWL retreat, 17 youth in 7th and 8th grades, and four of us adults spending the night (another two adults will come in tomorrow). Worship went a little late tonight. We met in the sanctuary, lit all the candles in the wall sconces, and a candelabra up front — our little church is beautiful in candlelight. We did a lot of singing in the worship service tonight, and it sounded wonderful in that space. It was a good worship service mostly because this is such a good group of youth, particularly kind and supportive of each other.

You always wind up feeling sleep deprived after one of these overnight church retreats. But this is also the kind of thing that really builds church community — and I’m not just talking about building community in youth groups. We Unitarian Universalists should have more overnight retreats for adults. You don’t really know someone until you’ve talked to them about spirituality at 2 in the morning.

Knowing a city by its bookstores

One of the great things about being an interim minister is that you get to move around the country. In the past three years, we have had the luck to live near three of the great cities of the United States. Last year we were near Berkeley, California; the year before that, we lived outside Boston; and this year we’re living near Chicago. I define a great city as one that has lots of independent bookstores.

I just spent the afternoon and evening in Chicago, where of course I spent hours in a bookstore. I was up in the Lincoln Square neighborhood, and stopped in one of those used bookstores with books piled everywhere. “Should I check my backpack?” I asked the owner. “No,” he said, “but be careful going around corners. You don’t want to start an avalanche.” He wasn’t kidding.

You learn a lot about a city by its bookstores. I always zero in on the religion section. In Chicago bookstores, you always seem to find lots of historical criticism of the Bible and general hardcore theology books, which I attribute to the influence of the University of Chicago, and there always seems to be a smattering of “Christian inspirational” books. In Berkeley bookstores, you’ll find tons of books about eastern religions and east-west studies, partly due to the influence of the university, but also because Berkeley is a Pacific Rim city that looks west more than east. In the religion sections of Boston (and Cambridge) bookstores, you find lots of scholarly books about Western religious traditions, but also a surprising number of books on Confucianism because Harvard has become a center for neo-Confucian studies.

Each of the great bookstores of each city tell you a little more about the character of the city. Berkeley has Eastwind Books, specializing in East Asian writers, and where I first got books by Lu Xun, an amazing Chinese writer of the early 20th C. The Seminary Coop Bookstore in Hyde Park in Chicago is quite simply the best academic bookstore I’ve ever seen. And the Mass Bible Society in downtown Boston carries an excellent selection of books on liberation theology and liberatory theologies, as well as good story books for children. (On their Web site, click on the “Bookstores” link, and then on the link “The Bible and Homosexuality” — yup, they’re liberal Christians.)

Trivialobservations, I suppose. But I do find it interesting that different places address different religious questions. And what I’ve seen in the bookstores plays out in the UU congregations I’ve served in each of these three places. Trivial, perhaps, but fascinating.

More on ministry with youth

What shape should our ministry with youth take? That’s a question I’ve been asking myself a lot recently.

When I was in seminary at Andover Newton Theological School, I took a course on philosophy of religious education with Bob Pazmino. Bob contended then that if you really want to radicalize a church, you should work to get youth on every committee. I understood what he meant in two senses. First, by including youth on all committees, you’re brining new perspectives and you’re spreading power within the congregation in some radical ways (there are implications here for anti-racism work, by the way). Second, striving to become so inclusive that you manage to do away with the age segregation characteristic of contemporary society is in itself a radical act. On this second point, Bob, an evangelical Christian, would talk about recognizing that all persons are part of the body of Christ. I’m not an evanglical Christian, but I sure find resonance with my own theological notion that all persons, regardless of age, are worthy of dignity and respect.

As you might have gathered, I like Bob’s radical approach to our ministry with youth. I think youth should be fully integrated into our religious communities. I do have my doubts as to whether it’s possible. Sociologist Murray Milner, in his recent book Freaks, Geeks, and Cool Kids, points out that it is very convenient for adults to segregate teenagers out of adult life. As Milner points out, there’s no great incentive for adults voluntarily to deal with the sturm und drang of adolescence. Much easier to restrict them to youth groups or other age-segregated programs so we adults don’t have to deal with that sturm und drang. And much easier for youth to go with the flow of wider society, and not have to come face-to-face with adults.

But I’ve come to believe that kind of segregation is Not A Good Idea. It seems to me that one of the real strengths of Unitarian Universalist congregations is that they can be places where you can come into meaningful contact with persons of all ages.

I have seen two widespread models of youth programs. The personal growth model creates youth groups that look like support groups or group therapy sessions. The class model creates youth programs that look like a sixth day of classroom schooling. Each of these models serves a few youth very well. What I prefer is a model that recognizes that youth are individuals, that different youth will be best served by different ministries of the church — and most of all, a model that does not see youth as consumers of church, but rather that sees youth as co-creators of church.

Imagine that. Youth as co-creators of church. Wouldn’t it be fun to be a part of that church? I think so.

It’s official: changes in UU ministry

We all knew it was coming, but it’s official now. At their December, 2004, meeting, the Ministerial Fellowship Committee (MFC) voted that beginning in September, 2005, they would no longer require candidates for the ministry to concentrate in one of three “tracks” or categories of ministry. In the recent past, new Unitarian Universalist ministers declared a specialty in parish ministry, ministry of religious education, or community ministry. The MFC is the body that credentials new ministers by requiring minimum standards for study and knowledge (including a master of divinity degree), minimum standards of psychological health and flexibility, practical experience including a ministry internship and a chaplaincy internship, and face-to-face interviews.

In the real world, the tracks have been blurred for some time. Parish ministers have been taking positions as ministers of religious education, and ministers of religious education have been taking positions as parish ministers, and similarly with community ministers. My feeling has been that the tracks just meant more paperwork for us ministers — and there really hasn’t been all that much difference between the tracks.

There’s a downside to this decision. Both community ministers and ministers of religious education have worked to expand our understanding of Unitarian Universalist ministry — especially our community ministers, who have taken UU ministry far beyond the bounds of local congregations, out into the wider community through social justice work, community organizing, chaplaincy, etc. I hope that continues.

But on the plus side, I think search committees will feel less restricted. This gets us away from that stark choice — parish minister, or minister of religious education. Now search committees should be open to looking for someone with a mixed set of skills — a preaching minister with lots of experience with children, or an associate minister who would oversee religious education, and have expertise in pastoral counseling for all ages, and so on.

As our church here in Geneva begins to look for a permanent second minister, the MFC’s decision comes as good news. My sense is that the congregation would prefer a second minister who has primary responsiblity for religious education, and who spends a lot of time on worship and administration, and helps Lindsay with pastoral care — in other words, would prefer a sort of mixed minister, with expertise in both parish ministry and the ministry of religious education.

Voice from the past

I’ve been looking through old copies of our church’s newsletter, The Pioneer, dating back into the 1950’s. In June, 1962, Rev. Charles Lyttle, then minister here in Geneva, printed part of an old letter from Rev. R. L. Herbert, who had been minister in Geneva from 1874 to 1880. Rev. Herbert went off to serve in the Denver, Colorado Unitarian church, and in 1881 he wrote this to his former church in Geneva:

“And to all of you in that dear congregation I write again to say: Do your best to banish superstition. Be brave for truth at any cost. Do not bow to any fashionable lie; and chiefly, in thought and life, teach the nobility and excellency of good character. Prove by these fruits that you believe in the best doctrines. Then, every day, winter and summer, you will make to be Flower Sunday and this earthly life heavenly!”

[If you’re a UU history nut like me, it’s clear that Rev. Herbert was moving into humanist beliefs even at this early date. Herbert was the one who got our congregation to substitute the phrase “practical goodness” in our covenant, in place of the original “practical Godliness.”]

Meditation for early March

A warm afternoon. The people out walking on Third Street wear shirt sleeves, no coats. The warm weather fooled some of the grass into greening up a little. We’re not fooled. More cold air masses pushing down out of Canada and everything will freeze again. At least one more snow storm sweeping in from the west dropping heavy wet snow. Deep snow in places, where you have to wade through drifts to uncover the car. Mercifully the car starts this time but there’s this new spot of rust just below the door looking ugly and lots more hidden under fading paint of that I have no doubt. No doubt spring will be fully here some day soon. In the meantime the car warms up enough to begin another winter journey home. This is what we know will come. More cold. More snow. Spring, eventually. But at the moment it’s a warm afternoon in early March with no reason to think any farther ahead than now.

Spring watch

Over the past two or three months, I’ve been hearing a Great Horned Owl calling when I’ve been in my office at night. Three weeks ago, I finally saw him, sitting up on the roof of the old Kane County court house building a block away from the church. No wonder he sounded so loud from my office.

I hadn’t heard him for a while, but I thought I heard him hooting last night, from somewhere further south in Geneva. He always gives four hoots at a time — hoo hoo-hoo hoo — which is how I know he’s male. I have not heard any females giving their call, of five to six hoots, at all this winter. It’s getting late for owls to try to find a mate, and I’m beginning to wonder if the male has given up on downtown Geneva and is moving further afield.

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Got a phone call from M., a UU friend whom I’ve known for some years now. M. is a few years older than I, and we both grew up as Unitarian Universalists. M. and I haven’t talked in some time, so we talked about mutual friends. We were youth advisors together for awhile, and we both were a part of Liberal Religious Youth, or LRY, the old Unitarian Universalist youth movement — so needless to say, the conversation turned to the state of the Unitarian Universalist youth movement, past and present.

M. had a great experience in the old LRY. She was active in her local youth group, in district youth activities, and at the continental level. I was in LRY only a few years later, in the mid-to-late 1970’s. While I had a great experience in my local youth group, by the time I came along, LRY had pretty much imploded in my district. I remember two girls from our youth group went off to a district event, and came back swearing they’d never go again — some kid had brought a handgun to that district event, and that was just a little too scary. So we stuck with our local group, and ignored the rest of LRY.

We weren’t the only ones to have that kind of experience, and in the early 1980’s, LRY was gracefully laid to rest, and a new organization, Young Religious Unitarian Universalists (YRUU), was born. And YRUU did pretty well for some twenty years.

But recently concerns about YRUU have been arising. In particular, Bill Sinkford, current president of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), and Megan Dowdell, youth trustee on the UUA Board, held a meeting in February about the future of YRUU at the continental level. In particular, they have concerns that YRUU at the denominational level isn’t serving local youth groups as well as it could. You can read about this issue in the February, 2005, issue of the UU World magazine.

I asked M. if she knew anything more than was in that article. She didn’t know any more than I did. But as we talked, we realized we both had had some concerns about Unitarian Universalism’s ministry with youth. Nothing serious, like handguns, mind you — but somehow we both admitted that we’re not entirely satisfied with what we have seen going on in local youth groups.

Funny thing is, I’ve been hearing similar things from some youth, too. And I’ve been hearing a little more dissatisfaction from parents/guardians of youth. I’m not hearingcries of outrage — it’s not like it was when I was in LRY and the whole organization was falling apart. Just a sense that somehow things could be better. So I’m very curious to learn what conclusions Megan Dowdell and Bill Sinkford come to. Are they going to try something as big as the process that made the change from LRY to YRUU? Inquiring minds want to know.

And I realize, too, that it really matters to me. I had a great experience in my local LRY youth group. As a minister, I have come to believe that in many ways our ministry with youth should be at the center of all congregations. No pressure, Bill Sinkford and Megan Dowdell — no pressure at all, it’s just that what you’re doing is incredibly important.