Address: “The Priesthood of All Believers”©

The Rev. Sarah Lammert, USR, April 15, 2007

On Thursday night I sat with your board of trustees – a good group of men and women who represent different ages and stages of life, but all busy, thoughtful people who have stepped up when asked to take on this extraordinary responsibility. And, on Thursday night, I sat and listened, as I have every year for five years now, to the progress report on our annual pledge campaign. I wish I could tell you that the results this year are stupendous – that people have so caught the spirit of generosity and ownership of this dynamic and caring congregation that we will be able to fund decent raises for our staff, and include not just adequate but truly inspired budgets for the major activities of our congregation, like our lifespan religious education programs, our community and social justice outreach programs, our music program, etcetera.

But in fact, the results thus far are rather hum drum. Not disastrous – we aren’t about to close up shop; but also not anything to celebrate. In fact, the board spent quite a lot of time talking about where we had gone wrong – had we not effectively communicated with the congregation? Are we not focused enough on our purpose for being? How much of a deficit could we tolerate? Will we have to go back to the congregation for a second round, just to achieve our budget?

Many of you are rather generous to this Society. There are people here with fixed incomes who give all they can. There are people who raised their pledges by as much as 50% this year. Most, however, have stayed the same, and some even dropped a little. I understand that the times are uncertain, and that the media has instilled a certain amount of fear about the future of our economy, whether true or not. And, I understand that some of you have kids starting college, or medical bills to deal with, or real financial challenges to deal with in the present moment.

And, I’ll acknowledge, that since my salary is one of the larger items in budget it may seem rather self serving to bring this up….and still, it needs to be said. We aren’t collectively stepping up the way we need to if we want to see the Unitarian Society of Ridgewood play a vital, transformative role in your lives, and in the life of our community and world. It isn’t even just the money – it is the willingness to give of your time and energy as well. Too few people here are carrying too great of the burden of carrying this place. The nominating committee is struggling to fill important leadership positions, and our board president, Jim had to personally chair the summer services committee this year because he couldn’t find anyone to take the lead. It sometimes feels as though many of our members and friends expect the board, the ministers and office staff to run this place, when in fact, we are only as strong as the vision and energy that we all invest here.

Unitarian Universalism is, in a sense, a strange faith tradition. We are dissenters, questioners, adherents of the free church tradition; which binds itself only in voluntary covenant, and not in the dictates of creed or dogma. We are a lived and living tradition, which challenges its members to express their values in deeds rather than in words alone. As a whole we an association of congregations, rather than a true denomination – our Society is not a franchise of the UUA, but rather an independent, self-governed fellowship, whose goals are in sympathy with those of the entire association.

We have no pope, no bishops, no priests who stand as intermediaries between our members and the ultimate truth. We stand in the tradition of the earliest pilgrims and puritans who came to this land seeking the freedom to congregate in communities by, for and of the people. And just as our forbears were inspired by a vision of living in loving and supporting relationships in service of establishing a shining “city set upon a hill” we too carry on in search of the light of truth, the warmth of love, and the possibility that our actions might create a more just and equitable world.

What we have perhaps missed, as Unitarian Universalists at the dawning of a new Millennium, is that a crucial element of the free church tradition is living in right relationship to one another. Unitarian Universalism, in the second half of the 20^th century, took a wrong turn, it seems to me, in emphasizing the primacy of individual conscience over the understanding that we are indeed an interrelated whole. As UU author Walter Herz asks:

Exactly why is right relationship so important? Because we are mortal: the time we have on earth is precious. As people of faith we can use our freedom wisely, in service to the interdependent web. When we live in covenanted communities of support and accountability, we live deeper more authentic, more creative lives. The “good works that we do are more than simply charity and fix-its: like the Pilgrims, we can create enduring institutions that implement our vision: congregations and an association of true redemptive power. Indeed, I believe, covenanting is the paradigm of redeeming our time.

This morning, I received a call on my answering machine that one of our members, a man in his forties names Peter Snell, suffered a very serious stroke on Thursday and is at Valley Hospital. Some of you may know Peter, and his wife Lisa Iarkowski. I co-officiated at Lisa and Peter’s wedding in the Fellowship Room of this Society just a little over 4 years ago along with Bernard Spitz, who is ordained as a Zen priest. Peter and Lisa have had some challenges since they got married – Peter’s elderly mother requires a great deal of care, and at one point, both of their jobs in the high tech sector were outsourced to Bangalore within a week or two of each other, leaving them both temporarily unemployed.

Lisa called me to ask if some members of the Society might volunteer to visit Peter and read to him while he is recuperating. So far, he is paralyzed on his right side and is only partially responsive, but Lisa feels it is good for him to have the visits. I of course will turn to the Pastoral Associates for volunteers, but I could use more helping that department. If you think you might like to help, let me know.

It reminds me of the famous inaugural address of John F. Kennedy back in 1961, in which he sounded a trumpet call – not to bear arms or to head into battle, but to unite against the common enemies of humankind: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself. “And so my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country.” This call to the true spirit of democracy hearkens back to the pilgrim ideal of right relationship which is also the source of our religious governance. And so, my fellow members and friends, what can you do for your religious community? The extent to which we covenant with one another in the spirit of truth and love to offer what we have in the way of gifts, is the extent to which this Society will be powerful and effective as we celebrate together, stand up together for what is right, grieve together through the rivers of loss, dream together of what is possible, and share together in the journey of life.

We started our service today, by reading a traditional Unitarian covenant, originally adopted by the Church of All Souls, Unitarian, in Evanston IL in 1894:

Love is the spirit of this church, and service is its law.

This is our great covenant:

To dwell together in peace,

To seek the truth in love,

And to help one another.

In our constitution and by-laws we do not have an explicit covenant like this one, although we do have a statement of purpose, which differs from the one that we print in our order of service. In the by-laws it says that we exist to promote religion that is rational, progressive, and liberal; to help establish justice and love among all people; and to furnish a religious home for all who seek truth and cherish human values. Added in the newer version, adopted by the congregation in 1999, is the idea of caring, welcoming diversity, providing a safe environment for our children in which to grow, and working for peace as well as justice.

It seems to me, as well as to the board, that it is time to revisit the question of mission for our congregation. Although it may not feel like it, due to the fact that we split our Sunday attendance into two sessions, the congregation has grown since 1999, and it has reached a critical crossroads in terms of size. The people who study church growth and size dynamics note that once you hit about 175 people (including all of the children and teachers) in attendance on an average Sunday morning, the entire culture of the congregation shifts – what they call the “pastoral” to “program” size shift. It isn’t an easy transition to make, and congregations tend to get stuck in a holding pattern at this size – a few members join, a few members die or move on. Congregations often plateau at our size, because they fail to finalize the shift. And much of this depends upon a clearly articulated mission that is owned by the entire congregation in a shared ministry of the whole.

Since September, the board has been reading a book together entitled “Moving on from Church Folly Lane” by Robert Latham. The title of the book refers to the ruins of an imposing gothic revival church on the Island of Bermuda. Originally the structure intended to replace and older building that had been severely damaged in a fire, but financial problems slowed construction for two decades. Finally, on the verge of completing the new building, the congregation decided instead to refurbish the old one. The townspeople started to call the street abutting the abandoned building “Church Folly Lane.” The title was chosen by Latham as a metaphor for congregations that start out with vital programs and a visionary growth plan, but fail to reach their full potential, instead falling back on what he calls a “maintenance-oriented lifestyle.”

I believe our own congregation is caught in these currents. We stretch and reach, and we retreat. Leaders emerge who push us in new directions, and they eventually get tired of trying to pull the whole wagon train, and blend back into the margins of the community. We take on big issues like anti-racism and welcoming the GLBT community, but then we retreat and leave it up to a handful of people to live out this commitment. We start programs like Connections with 70 plus people involved, and it then it shrinks back down to 30. We start a major concert series, but then have to pare it back due to poor attendance. We start doing what it takes to grow, but then we realize that change brings loss as well as gain, and we resist that growth, consciously or unconsciously.

This year, instead of closing with an intergenerational celebration of our year on June 10th, the Committee on Ministry and the Leadership Council are designing a process for the entire congregation to participate in during the Sunday morning time. Beginning at 9:15, and ending at 12 with our usual summer barbeque, music, and bouncy house fun for the kids, we invite everyone – kids and adults alike – to join us for a whole congregation evaluation called appreciative inquiry. Together, we will visit the best of our past and present, and begin to dream about the future we envision together. This will lead nicely into a process of rewriting our mission-covenant statement in the fall. Appropriately, we will also be celebrating the bridging of our high school seniors who are going off to college, and wishing our intern Scott farewell that day, as they take the best we have had to offer in their formation, and go off to new beginnings and new expressions in the world.

One thing that is lovely about the timing of all this, is that I believe it will leave the congregation in a very strong position for the sabbatical period which will be next January through June, 2008. Since I wrote about the sabbatical back in January, some of you have gotten the idea that I will be gone already in September, but I assure you that I will be here to torment (I mean inspire) you most Sundays through the end of December! It will not only be a time for me to rest, renew and grow as a minister, but for the congregation to regain a sense of ownership that may have been lost since the heyday of strong lay leadership that was necessitated by the ministerial style of the mythic Ken Patton.

Ken, who served here from 1964-1968 was famous for saying that the congregation had called a poet as its minister, and he was hands off in the extreme in terms of the day to day administration and pastoral ministry of the congregation. His successor, Terry Ellen, maintained much of that more distant style of leadership in terms of administration, although he was very warm and pastoral, as well as a strong worship leader. Then you went and allowed some women to take charge of the ministry (!), and Maj Britt and I both have a much more engaged style when it comes to the nuts and bolts of leadership – it would be fair to say that we both see administration as a part of the ministry we have been called to. And, the needs of the congregation have changed, as growth has brought with it more formal structures and a larger paid staff, which I supervise.

What hasn’t changed is the need for a clear sense of purpose to unite us in our diversity, as well a need for the clear understanding that the ministry of this congregation is a shared one. This is warm, caring, and even prophetic congregation.

There is love present here, there is a commitment to excellence, and a commitment to intergenerational community. We know how to work together, but also to have fun together. There is, dare I say, a spiritual sense here that what we dream of for humanity and for the health of our earth might actually be possible – with the light of truth as our beacon, and the open mind and heart as our guides. And with our care and our energy, and our pledges of sustaining financial support, this institution will only grow in strength and spirit, long into the future.

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This evening, I am going to be speaking at the 21^st Annual Interfaith Holocaust Remembrance Service here in Ridgewood at Temple Israel, at 7:30 p.m. I would love to see many of you there at this moving service, where I’ll be lifting up the story of Martha and Waitstill Sharp, two Unitarians who were recently named Most Righteous Among Nations by Yad Vashem, the organization charged with remembering the heroes and the victims of the Holocaust. Martha and Waitstill were ordinary people who rose to extraordinary levels of courage and giving, risking their lives to save Jewish orphans and intellectuals sought for execution by the Nazis. It was their example that inspired the founding of the UU Service Committee, as well as the adoption of the flaming chalice as the symbol of our free faith, a beacon of truth, justice and compassion.

Their story is amazing, and I again invite you to hear the full telling of it this evening, but I also want to note that they wouldn’t have been the people they were without the strength of their Unitarian community behind them. My fervent hope is that each one of us here is challenged to become our best selves – with the strength and care of this community holding us up.

Don’t forget that you are a part of that chalice – it is you that creates and sustains this free faith. May you be conscious of the gift of our puritan forbears -- who gave us the model for our congregational way -- that whatever dream of wholeness or holiness or hope you might hold in your heart, might live in this shared expression of religious community. May you be strong, and bold, and giving, and may what you offer out to the world and to this congregation come back to you many fold. Amen.