Growing a Beloved Community, Part I 

At our congregational meeting this year, we approved what I call a growth-oriented budget. We used some of our reserves to fund people and projects we anticipate will fuel our growth and become sustaining. I recently ran across a book by Tom Owen-Towle, a UU minister, titled Growing a Beloved Community: twelve hallmarks of a healthy congregation and decided it had enough potential to justify purchasing it. 

It is a short book of fewer than 100 pages and yet it is sufficiently rich in ideas that I have decided to devote two services to its exploration. Developing and maintaining a healthy congregation is a requisite to long-term growth. Of the twelve hallmarks, we will address five today and seven on July 15^th. 

I have heard and been struck by the term “Beloved Community” for some time without quite knowing what it meant. Perhaps it was similar to the definition of pornography that you know it when you see it. Turns out the phrase was first used by Josiah Royce in his 1913 book The Problem of Christianity when he wrote: “Since the office of religion is to aim towards the creation on earth of the Beloved Community, the future task of religion is the task of inventing and applying arts which shall win all over to unity, and which shall overcome their original hatefulness by the gracious love, not of mere individuality but of communities.” 

So it is not about individuals or even individual communities, but about communities of communities. Summing up in his introduction Owen-Towle says “Wherever healthy, vital churches thrive, our chosen religion is contributing its fair share toward the Beloved Community.” Much of what I say today are Owen-Towle’s words, which I have stolen without formal quotes. If it sounds good the words are likely his; the clunky statements are probably written by me. 

The First Hallmark: Occupy Holy Ground. 

Healthy UU congregations are primarily about seeking and spreading the holy. That we condone and encourage multiple belief systems within our religion at best puzzles much of the secular and other religious world and at worst leaves us relegated by them as just a group of social justice do-gooders. We must first among ourselves shake off this musty sense that we are other than a maverick, unusual, occasionally revolutionary but always vibrant non-creedal religion. Then when we deal with others we must be clear that ours is a religion with a critical message for today’s world. 

We must destroy the pernicious image of UUs as individuals who can believe anything or nothing at all. If that is the case why are we drawn together? We are drawn together to support each other on our search for the holy and to charge one another to fully integrate our beliefs and our behaviors in all phases of our lives seven days a week, not just on Sunday. 

Together in this community, in this sacred ground, we tend the seeds of our belief, till the soil, pluck the weeds, water new growth and prune old growth. Throughout our UU history there has always been a tension between autonomy and community. We must recognize the organization of our religious community allows us to pursue individual AND community growth. Without both we are unbalanced and spend precious resources on wasted effort. We are part of the Web of life and cannot exist alone. While a hermetic life might find the holy for some, we are blessed with this religious community to help us. Let us celebrate it for what it is: a great, free religious congregation. 

The second great hallmark: Welcome All Souls. 

We UUs pat ourselves on our collective backs about our inclusiveness. MUUC is designated a Welcoming Congregation by the UUA. We pride ourselves on our acceptance of others. Our Universalist forbearers posited that none were saved until all were saved and that an Infinite Spirit holds every creature in loving embrace. Our Unitarian predecessors gave us the principle of the inherent worth and dignity of every person. It is one of our distinctive trademarks as a religion. And yet… 

Newcomers are concerned with three psycho-social dynamics as they enter our congregation: Inclusion, control and affection. 

Inclusion concerns the issues: will I, with my beliefs and doubts, my strengths, weaknesses and baggage, my similarities and differences be accepted in this community? We UUs are primarily white, college-educated, firmly in the middle to upper-middle economic class. Who is here and who is missing and why? What will be required of me if I join this congregation? 

Control asks, who runs this thing? I mean what really happens, not what shows on some organization chart. Who has influence and who is powerless? How is power wielded and distributed? 

Affection wonders if this is really a warm place, or cold place. Would anyone miss me if I didn’t show up for several weeks? And if so, what would they do about it? 

We probably think that now that we have moved into our new building we are good to go – well almost, we still have a few kinks to work out in our sound system for those who need a little assistance to hear. The move made a vast improvement, but, about those Braille hymnals? Are we up to snuff on greeting newcomers on their first time here – how about the second or third? What kind of a job do we do in answering the three areas of concern Owen-Towles postulates. 

I have noticed several areas we need to work on. We do not have a consistent procedure for greeting and making visitors welcome as they enter our space for their first service. Why is that? We refuse to follow our Board’s desire to have announcements pre-written so they can be read. It inhibits our spontaneity, we think. The announcer won’t show our enthusiasm. Perhaps true, but what do visitors think when they come to a religious service and are met with ten minutes of rambling announcements many of which have only tangential meaning to the congregation and much of which can not be heard clearly because people are speaking from their seats, not using the sound system? Two or three well-written sentences and a person to contact should be sufficient to spark anyone’s interest. If it is that important to you, why not take the time to say it right? 

How are visitors to know who we are? We are generally good at wearing name tags, but at the Joys and Concerns we assume everyone knows our name. Is this welcoming? We have the “Who We Are” picture gallery and I often notice visitors are drawn to it. I watch as they point to various pictures, making connections in their minds. 

We also have a People Book with short member bios. Visitors often pick up this book and read it – but there are only a few members who have taken the time to give others the opportunity to know something of them. 

The extroverts among our guests will relish the social hour after the service as a way to get to know us better. The introverts need ways they can self-serve to collect the information they desire. 

Are we clear on what is required to become and retain official membership? Are we honest in our acceptance of others? How about conservative republicans? Do we air our disagreements openly and honestly, embracing our democratic process or if we lose an argument do we sulk, threaten to pull out, become disengaged? 

Healthy congregations will always have differences of opinion and we will continually fall short of our ideals. Although we are UUs, we are also human! While we accept other’s beliefs we reject their prejudices and need to confront them as we deal with community. 

Assume for the moment we have reached the point where we reasonably meet all of our objectives for Welcoming All Souls, what next? The third hallmark: Caring for our Own. 

Caring for our own is perhaps more natural for us than welcoming strangers, but that doesn’t make it easier to do well. Our objective should be to provide a continuum of care from the day a visitor walks in our door to their last exit. As I wrote this, I didn’t know if we would have any visitors today, but I knew we would be sharing as a community the departure of two of our long-term members, the Gorskis as they start a new life chapter. 

We UUs are often stronger in our outreach to society’s outcasts than in our personal inreach to those hurting within the community. It is more dramatic and ego satisfying to march for civil liberties or reproductive rights than to weekly pick up an out-of-the way parishioner who can no longer drive to services. 

And yet, since we are not united in a creedal belief, we have the higher calling and attendant pleasure in our covenantal faith to love alike even when we do not think alike. Healthy UU congregations have a caregiving network at the ready. As community members we must be equally willing to give AND to receive. A tough concept for us independent types. And as members of the community we cannot simply look to the caregiving network and say – “Oh they take care of that.” Each of us, every time we are together in community, has a responsibility to minister to each other in our religious cooperative. 

We UUs are known for supporting “recovery” groups others will not house. This congregation is filled with amiables, willing to help, if asked. Yet as a religious community we face an additional task as caregivers: encouraging each other to struggle past the comfort of self-recovery into the unknown of living fully. 

The fourth hallmark is to Give Everyone a Voice. 

We espouse use of the democratic process in our governance. Democracy isn’t about making sure all members have an equal vote. It has much more to do with all having equal voice. Democracy is messy and time consuming. If neatness and order are desired, go with a despotic ruler. To my mind if everyone is in agreement, I haven’t done my job and asked the right questions to stir up the debate. 

However, there is a major difference between empowering everyone to have a voice and ruling by a committee of the whole. Too few people in charge (either because they want to be or others don’t want to spend the necessary time) is one problem; no one in charge is another, equally serious problem. For our democracy to work we all need to pitch in to run our enterprise. 

It starts with the commitment to membership. Stating we agree to the UU principles, pledging for the operating budget and signing the membership book is insufficient for membership. If that is all we ask for membership we will have considerable numbers of people rotating through our membership book without adding much to our religious experience. While agreeing to our principles is useful and pledging ultimately necessary, neither are sufficient. Unless individuals agree to be active members in our democracy they will ultimately drop out because they were never fully engaged. 

That doesn’t mean that signing the book requires you agree to immediately serve on the Board for the next two years. Owen-Towle suggests the Hokey-Pokey as a metaphor for the process of mature congregational commitment. You know… “You put your right foot in; you put your right foot out…” We test the waters with a toe and if we don’t freeze or burn we might risk more parts of our anatomy, but always reserving the right to withdraw. Only when we are fully committed to Unitarian Universalism do we put our whole selves in and shake it all about. 

At what point should we be members? Certainly not at the toe-dipping stage, nor do we need to wait for the whole self stage. At some point we realize we are committed to the community as well as to ourselves and that is the proper time for membership. That is when we are willing to be held accountable to others for our support of the community. Our commitment to the democratic process calls us to be active participants. Our religious faith recognizes Karl Marx also had it right when he said, “from each according to his ability; to each according to his needs.” 

We are not called to serve all in the same way. We need to find those areas that fit our time, our personalities, our interests and our own needs for growth. Even if we have reached the stage of whole-body commitment, we still need to stick our toes into new areas. Never had children or your children are now retired adults? Helping in RE might be just the thing for you. Uncomfortable with the mantle of responsibility. Why not join six others on the Board and learn it can be rewarding and fun? 

The fifth hallmark of healthy congregations is Encouraging Unity Amidst Diversity. 

We are a society of adjectives. We are European-Americans, Afro-Americans, Asian-Americans or English, Finnish, Swedish, Italian-Americans. Or we are Humanist-UUs, Christian-UUs, Pagan-UUs, Buddhist-UUs and so on. We use these adjectives for instant affinity. 

If someone lives out in the woods or significantly west of Marquette, Jan or I are often pointed to: we have one of those. And while that may help overcome the initial hurdle answering the question “am I welcome here?” what holds us together are our commonalities, not our one-on-one similarities. Healthy congregations celebrate and grow those commonalities. 

We must develop and continue to grow our common vision: why are we here together? What shall we accomplish, together? I am in the process of a long-term struggle with a beaver. The beaver has one objective: plug the culvert that transports Beaver Creek under Shank Lake Road. Historically the Beaver is in the right – even the creek is named after its ancestors. The beaver builds by night; I tear out by day. The level of water is the measure of our success. The beaver has a clear vision and to accomplish its goal uses a wide variety of resources: black cherry branches, popple branches, leaves, water plants and mud, even rocks, weaving them together to plug the culvert. With only one or two sources of material the dam would not be nearly as effective. 

So too with us. The wider diversity we bring to our congregation, the more possible tools we have to build a successful religious community. But the diversity only works when it is brought to force on a unifying goal. How can we do this? 

We must define ourselves in positive terms. We are (fill in the blank); rather than we are not (fill in the blank.) To do that we must be committed to religious literacy and deep theological thinking. We must become knowledgeable about religion in general and Unitarian Universalism in particular. We must transcend the humanist/theist debate. Let us focus on our collective noun (Unitarian Universalists) and how to promote it while minimizing the differences between our various adjectives (Humanist, Pagan, Christian, Agnostic, Buddhist, etc.) 

Are we using our diversity to its fullest extent to help illuminate our unity? How about our diverse ages? Are we learning all we can from the questions confronting our children? Are they learning all they should from us? I recently read information about the state of religious knowledge in the United States, which is pitiful. How would we do if we were tested? How about our children? Are we serving our young adults well? Middle-aged? Parents? Singles? Divorced? If not, what are we missing? The tapestry of our lives can be richest when we weave with many threads. 

Religious ceremony as I mentioned in my last homily can highlight and strengthen our unity by developing rites of passage and celebrations that bring all our adjectives together to celebrate our great noun Unitarian Universalism. Immediately after the service ends we are going to celebrate with Mike and Marilyn Gorski their lives in this community and wish them well in their next life-stage, which involves moving to Minnesota. I hope you will join me in this marker event in their lives and in the life of this community. 

James Montgomery Jackson
June 24, 2007