Summer Break

I’m signing off my blog for the summer!  (I probably don’t write frequently enough to even call it a blog….)  Nevertheless, see you in September! 

The Tree of Life

Some people who come to worship this Sunday may find a colorful surprise!  Even though we wrote about it in the May newsletter, I’m quite convinced that most people will be stunned that the Assembly Hall walls have been painted.  Frankly, things don’t usually happen very fast in church life.  “Slow as church,” I like to say, when I’m talking about change that takes generations to occur.  There are two reasons I can articulate why church goes so slow.  One is because we have congregational polity and engage a democratic process.  The other is because we are theologically liberal, which makes us, believe it or not, a little more resistant to change in forms.

Sometimes it takes awhile to go through all the proper channels and to consult with all the right people.  With this paint, it just happened the all the committee representatives that sit on the Program Council loved the proposal (by the artist, Jane) and asked that the Aesthetics Committee and the Building and Grounds Committee get a look at the plans and approve it before going forward.  That happened rather quickly and voila!  New walls.  I was just as stunned as members of the board, I think, that the process happened so quickly.  It was very “unchurchlike.”  I hope most people will find it a refreshing change….

However, I am prepared for some upset.  Because the other reason things happen slowly in church has to do with our theological leanings.  Research actually shows that theologically conservative churches can make more innovative changes because the theology remains the same.  Theologically liberal churches sometimes hang onto tradition in form because the theology is everchanging and harder to grasp.  We are theologically liberal and behaviorally conservative….   Just this week, I got grief (in a very appropriate and loving way) for having changed the words to our closing affirmation. (May faith in human love to May faith in love, etc.)  Hmm.  How many years ago did those words change? 

 [Your last settled minister, Barbara Edgecombe, by the way, advised me to not to take away anything in worship.  She said you can add things to worship, but don't take anything away.  I've tried to follow her advice mostly, and perhaps its because I removed the word human that it is still talked about...] 

So, I’m proud of this theologically liberal congregation for actually moving a decision such as paint color through the democratic channels as quickly as it did - and I suspect that most people will love what they see on the Assembly Hall walls this weekend.  The green behind the pulpit completes the Tree of Life symbolism built into the pulpit itself, and the sky blue walls invite the natural world into the space.  I think it’s stunning.  Thank-you, Jane, for the design and all the hard work, and bringing color into the Assembly Hall and our lives.

[And if, by chance, you don't like it:  Remember, it's only paint.]

 

Summer growth

Have you noticed the new plant beds outside in the playground?  They were put up the other Saturday during the spring clean-up - the same day as the service auction (what a success!).  I am so excited about the plant beds.  They are there for our summer religious education program.  The kids will learn to plant and grow, and eat their own food (we’re raising localvores!), as well as commune and study nature.  It’s a regular Thoreau-like curriculum, that I’m just thrilled about.

Our Director of Lifespan Faith Development and I set a goal this last year of being able to serve “all ages every Sunday of the year.”  Before, a 10 year old coming to church on a Sunday in the summer, didn’t have anywhere to go except to worship.  (Don’t get me wrong;  I think worship is good for kids and that they can participate in it more than we generally ask of them.)  However, our worship services weren’t designed with kids in mind, and so, except for the “activity boxes” provided by the ushers, there really wasn’t a lot going on for kids those summer Sundays.  That all changes this summer!  Most Sundays we’ll have a Story for All Ages  and those who choose to, can go to a single multi-age religious education class and tend the crops, and experience nature.  The other Sundays (like Flower Communion, Interdependence Day (7/4), and Labor Day) will be multi-generational services for all ages.

Memorial Day weekend, when lots of church folks are communing with nature at Yankee Springs, we begin our one-service schedule.  We worship at 10:15 only, through Labor Day weekend.  We begin two services again the Sunday after Labor Day.   Though I still hear occasionally that “nobody comes to church in the summer” - it’s simply not true.  Instead of nearly 300 people participating each Sunday, we’ve had a steady increase (over the last five years) of 80 up to 150 people on a Sunday in the summer.  It’s small for us, but large for most Unitarian Universalist churches!  I like to say, we go from the size of two congregations down to one in the summer. 

I don’t remember the building at the Unitarian Universalist church my parents attended when I was five years old.  But I do remember walking outside for religious education, picking up acorns and studying them.  This early memory prepared me to love the writings of Henry David Thoreau when I was old enough to read, and to love nature for the rest of my life.  I am so glad that this church will give children such experiences this summer - experiences I hope will inform the rest of their lives.

Hurray, hurray, for the 8th of May!  (if you’re wondering, that’s another memory from my youth, growing up near the campus of Washington State University- all about nature.  I won’t write about it here; but you can ask me in person.)

Mission

I’ve been thinking about our mission statement.  You know, the one you hear every Sunday:  “we care for one another and the world.  We seek justice, celebrate diversity, and search for truth and meaning.”  Though I think it is important to do all those things we say in our mission statement, there’s something yet missing.  It seems a little too passive.  It strikes me as “seek and find” language, rather than the transformative language of  ”work and we change the world.”  I think it’s not just a matter of finding something, church is about changing the world:  changing ourselves and changing the world.   When I preached recently on the Hebrew Prophets and talked about their anger at our having broken the law - I was thinking about global warming.   We have broken some natural laws and interfered with the natural order of things, and the consequences are disastrous.  The strong language of the Hebrew prophets work in describing the kind of destruction we are creating if we don’t change.  We need to change our understanding of things.  We need to change our habits.  We need to change our ways.  And only after we do all that, do we have a hope at changing the world.

 I have been thinking about our mission lately because I have concluded that our discussion of growth and building and space issues need to grow directly out of that mission.  What are we about in the world?  What do we want to accomplish?  I don’t think it’s just to seek and find and celebrate.  I think we want to change the world.  If so, how does that effect the discussion?

I’ve heard many of you talk about making a smaller footprint.  Does that mean we work with the building we have and rennovate instead of building new?   Does that mean we put a garden on our roof?  Or use solar panels?  Do we become a UUA designated “green sanctuary?”  Does that mean our work is in the world, not in the building, and so we use our home as the base out of which several outposts are created for completing mission?  Do we go into neighborhoods where we are needed, rather than expecting the people to come to us?  Do we do all of that?

Missions, like people and congregations, are always changing.  We start out doing one thing, learn along the way, and wind up doing something related, but different.  As I complete the sixth year as your minister, I am so aware of the things I do differently and understand differently than when I first started with you.   I have changed.  You have changed.  We have changed.  I think that’s a good thing.  And part of what church calls us to do - we grow and change.  Perhaps that’s our real misison statement - the words you say each Sunday as we close worship:  May faith in love and hope for community, keep us every growing and changing together.  Peace.

choices

The ad hoc committee working on building issues gave a report last night to the Program Council.  They’re trying to figure out a way to let the congregation know what our options for the future are, with regard to building.  Knowing that it’s important to give details to the abstract options - building new, buying and rennovating old building here or in Lansing, rennovating current sit in East Lansing, multiple sites using today’s technology, etc. - knowing that these options are hard to consider in the abstract, they are making very concrete, specific plans for different options.  Right now, the committee members are working out the details of what it would take to rennovate our current site.  However, in the presentation of this one option, members of the program council were hearing (wrongly) that a decision had been made to rennovate the building.  No such decision has been made.  The committee is just working out the details of various options.  Rennovating our current site is one of those options.  The information they’re uncovering is exciting.  It makes it sound like a plausible choice.  I suspect when they get around to working out the details of other options, it will be just as exciting.  I know I got excited by the option of multiple sites when I started doing similar research.

Or, it may turn out, that one option becomes the clear choice for the congregation.  In many ways, that would be easiest.  Because it will be hard, whatever choice is made, for the congregation to change.   Church represents tradition - and there will be losses no matter which path we pursue.  If we rennovate this building, rooms we love will look different.  If we move, we lose a favorite location for many (even as others may delight that we’re closer to them!)  If we seed a second church, we lose the myth of our togetherness.  (I say myth, because with 2 services, we already don’t know everyone else, but, for some, it still feels like we do.)  Whatever path we chose, there will be losses and some will be unhappy, even as we hope there is overall gain and majority satisfaction.

I think we ease the transition best by doing good preparatory work first, and making a good decision when the time comes.  So, when the ad hoc building committee presents some different options at the end of April, I hope you will participate.  You can participate now by replying to this blog.  I hope with this blog to start a congregational conversation about our space needs and opportunities.

Betsy

It is such a loss that Betsy died a week ago last Wedensday.  I want to honor her in my blog because she was the person who helped me start this blog and, as such, the  first person to comment on it.  You can actually still get to her blog (about the online game Second Life and Libraries, Education, and Training) by clicking on her name in the comment section to my very first entry.  Before I work on the Power Point presentation for church tomorrow, I wanted to honor Betsy who became in the very short time I knew her a trusted friend.  She became my guide to the mysterious world of blogging, podcasting, and PowerPoint, and as such was one of the people who most opened my mind to the practical uses of technology in my work.  She is responsible for the fact that after I write this entry, I will go on to prepare a Power Point for worship in the morning (and I won’t have to go ask the 14 year old in my house how to do it.)

During her time in hospice care and at her memorial service, I learned so much more about Betsy.  This is the case with every death I’ve encountered - there is so much to learn at the end.    When we first knew she was dying, I imagined myself performing her service online at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Second Life - because that was how I knew her best, as the teacher who loved gaming and technology.  But it turns out that the “technology Betsy” was only one of the many aspects of Betsy - she had such varied interests and skills and interesting life.  She was an artist, a musician, a gardener, a food-enthusiast and cook.  She was a neighbor, friend, sister, and daughter - having lovingly cared for her mother through death of the same disease years earlier.  She was so many more things that I have not mentioned.  There really is no way to sum up a life, is there?  I think I’ll leave this entry “uncategorized” in your memory.

It just seems right that I pay tribute to you, Betsy, in this strange (to me) form - sending this message out to any who might stumble across my blog.  I miss you.  I so wish to see you in church tomorrow, to show you what I’ve learned from you and to thank you properly for everything. 

Membership

We welcome new members into the church tomorrow.  We had a good discussion Wednesday night at Program Council about membership:  How to be more welcoming.  If a church is to be really open, everyone needs to consider themselves a part of the “welcoming committee.”  It can’t be left to the minister or the greeters to welcome new folks.  Everyone has to try.

 I know it is hard.  When I first decided I wanted to become a minister, I joined the membership committee at the Cascade Unitarian Fellowship in Wenatchee, WA, where I was a member.  I decided to join the membership committee because I knew that I came to church on Sunday to see my friends.   I knew that if I became a minister, I’d have to grow in ways I found difficult.   At that time, I came to church to talk to those I already knew.  I’d do church business with those I needed to talk to, and I’d visit with my friends.  I had little interest in stretching myself to meet newcomers or to welcome them to “my” church.  But I knew that if I were to become a minster, all that would have to change.  I’d have to be more outgoing, which is not my basic nature.

I’m better at it.  I’m not great at it.  It is still a struggle for me.  But I do try.

They were great at welcoming at Countryside Church in Palatine, IL, where I did my internship.  I remember because while I was considering doing my internship there, I tried to sneak into worship one Sunday to check them out.  It was impossible to sneak in.  I was greeted at the door in an inviting way - not intrusive at all.  But it was hard for me to explain my presence without telling them the truth.  They were so warm and sincere, I wanted to tell them exactly why I was there and who I was.   I suspect it was a particular person with that talent who greeted me, though I don’t know for sure.  I know that the physical layout of the building helped.  There was only one main entrance, and there was plenty of room.  It was light and felt welcoming.  I didn’t feel crowded, hurried, or harried.  Anxious as I was, the greeters helped me feel calm and light-hearted.  I decided in the vestibule 20 minutes before worship started that I would do my internship there.  That’s how welcoming they were.

It occurs to me that because our space is tight, our hallways are narrow, and carpets a little worn; because the building itself isn’t inviting, the people have to be even more inviting than those in other churches with more welcoming spaces. This could be seen as a problem, but perhaps it is an opportunity - an opportunity to stretch ourselves and reach out to someone who looks a little lost in the hallway or disoriented.  An opportunity to practice our social skills.  I’m reminded of the dialogue from Pride and Prejudice:

“‘I certainly have not the talent which some people possess,’ said Darcy, ‘of conversing easily with those I have never seen before.  I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their concerns, as I often see done.’

‘My fingers,’ said Elizabeth, ‘do not move over this intrument in the masterly manner which I see so many women’s do.’ 

[Did I mention she is seated at the piano forte when this dialogue takes place?]

 ’They have not the same force or rapidity, and do not produce the same expression.  But then I have always supposed it to be my own fault - because I would not take the trouble of practising.’…

Darcy smiled and said, ‘You are perfectly right.  You have employed your time much better.’”

Perhaps we should all take the advice of the wise Elizabeth Bennett, and take the trouble of practicing - learning to converse more easily and greet the stranger with warmth and sincerity.  I think that if we did so, the visitor to church would probably never notice the carpet below their feet.

Size Matters

I spent the last few days in Indiana at a Heartland UU Minister’s “retreat.”  (I learned that my colleagues call it a “conference” in their Board reports, which is more accurate.)  For the second year in a row, we asked Stefan Jonasson from the UUA to come talk to us about church size and structure.  Stefan serves the UUA as a consultant to large congregations, but he is ministers to a small congregation himself.  He says (and provides a lot of research) that the only size congregation for which a Program Council is appropriate is a church whose Average Sunday Attendance (ASA) is 150-350.  The UU Church of Greater Lansing has an ASA of 280.  That number includes the people who attend worship, the teachers who teach Religious Education to our youth, our youth and children, and any forum folks who come to church on Sunday just for the Forum.

As we’re working on a revision of our Constitution and Bylaws, my question to him was:  how do you write the flexibility necessary into your Constitution and Bylaws so that you don’t codify structures that only suit your size for a period of time, or do you revise your Constitution and Bylaws on a regular basis as you change size?  It does seem to me that we’ve been operating under some outdated structures in our Constitution and Bylaws. 

 His answer (and I’ve heard this before - actually from some of the folks on the committee working to revise them) is that the less your bylaws say the better.  We tend to over-Constitutionalize things and do it in ways that make it difficult to change.  He says that you want to put into your Constitution what the state requires and what you want to take an entire generation to change.  Everything else belongs in the policy structure.

 Makes sense to me.  We’ve learned a lot about the function and purpose of the Program Council in the few years we’ve had it at UUCGL.  It’s purpose, we now seem to understand, is:  Calendaring, Coordinating, and Communicating.  But we need to remember that the Program Council is not an appropriate structure for our governance should our Average Sunday Attendance drop below 150, or should it increase to more than 350.  Only a dead church doesn’t change over time.   And, as goes my favorite line (in the first person plural) from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, We’re not dead yet!

Satellite Churches

I’m preparing for this Sunday, our annual Martin Luther King Jr. service, and am thinking of last year’s speaker, the Rev. Gordon Gibson.  Gordon was very impressed with our congregation last year when he spoke.  He said our congregational singing rivalled the Mennonite congregation he used to attend in Indiana.  (He retired from serving the UU church in Elkhart and had to worship elsewhere while still living in town)   I take his remark as the highest form of compliment.  Mennonites are well-known for excellent hymn singing, with harmonies learned at a very young age! 

This year, for our MLK service, I’m using two stories written by Christopher Buice, who just happens to be Gordon’s minister now, as Gordon has retired from the ministry and attends the Tennesse Valley UU Church.  Gordon tried to introduce me to Rev. Christopher Buice this summer at the General Assembly, because he thought the Tennessee Valley UU Church and our own had a great deal in common.  We didn’t get to meet in person, but talked a bit this fall by phone.  I was particularly interested in hearing from Buice about the second church in the area the congregation helped start.  When I lived in Utah, several congregations were seeded by the First Unitarian Church of Salt Lake City - South Valley, and Ogden.

 Clearly, starting a second congregation (or a third) is one way to deal with space issues and growth.  It’s not necessarily a given that you always want to deal with growth by building a larger space.  Especially, given global warming, I’ve been asked about the wisdom of a bunch of people driving to a central church for worship over the possibility of several sites for worship, perhaps the staff doing some commuting to offer support to the lay leaders who live closer to the various sites. 

 All Souls was a second church started in the Lansing area, but it never had (nor sought)the full support of this congregation - it was rather started by individual members who had a vision.  How might it be if a second congregation were started intentionally and with the full support of the original church?  And why re-create an entire church structure, if you could lend the structure of the original church to support worship and activities at various sites in the Lansing area?

I think this notion is called a “satellite church” and I’d like to explore the idea a bit more.

Social Action Visibility

We did hold a dinner for former members of the All Souls church about a month ago.  Though the numbers were disappointing, the conversation, I thought, was very fruitful.   We were in agreement that getting out into the community is one of the ways we have of becoming a more multi-cultural and diverse congregaiton. 

 We talked about how to make our church more visible in the community when we are working on social justice projects, such as building a Habitat for Humanity house or building bookshelves in a women’s shelter.  Members of our church do these things on a regular basis, but it is not always obvious to the community at large who we are when we do it, or to the members of our own church that we have done it.  So, we talked about wearing some kind of clothing or button or hat that would identify such work parties as members of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Greater Lansing.     The members of a covenant group could wear this button or hat or scarf whenever they went out to do their social action project together.  Conversely, we imagined what it would be like on a Sunday if all the covenant group members one Sunday wore this identifiable marking and told the congregation about all the different projects they’d worked on. 

 I took the idea to the covenant group facilitators and though they liked the idea, the conversation got bogged down a bit with a discussion about whether it should be hats, t-shirts, or buttons - folks wanted something large, but classier than a t-shirt.  So, we’ll keep the idea rattling around.  Speak up, if you have a good idea.  In the meantime, I’m working on compiling a list of projects that covenant groups have done so we can advertise that aspect of the small groups a bit more.