Writing about Universalist Christianity and improving how churches work
It’s not just Christmas that seems to come earlier every year! It’s August and I recently got a request for next year’s Sunday-only calendar.
Will I do it? Of course: after seventeen years, it’s the most popular thing I’ve ever published, a fact that puts my other writing into a humbling context.
Get your copy of next year’s — and this year’s if you have a need for next three months — at the original page from 2008.
This is a request of readers who are themselves ministers. Do you have, or have you had, a ring-bound binder where you keep the liturgical material you use?
Last week, I pulled out an old six-ring memo book to take notes and keep a calendar at work. These were more commonly used decades ago, but correspond to personal-sized Filofax or compact-sized Franklin-Covey planners. The pages are 3.75 by 6.75 inches, and the slimmer memo book slips perfectly into a inside suit jacket pocket. And are hard to find today.
That got me to thinking about the same memo book (and the larger “junior” or half-letter-size three-ring binders) that at least a couple of generations of ministers used to use for services. I still use the larger kind for sermons, weddings and funerals, while the memo size might be for a graveside committal. (I wrote about this in 2016 and this is the book I still use.) I had to put together my own “book” thirty years ago for my internship. Back then, they were as likely to be typed, but revised with ink, or made of clipping taped onto hole-punched pages. They would bear the marks of their maker.
By contrast, I’ve found ministers manuals with these same services, usually used by Baptists and Methodists. I have some in my personal collection: also marked up, and with bits pasted in, but coming from a denominational press. The ring-bound book you made up seems to be more of a Unitarian Universalist thing, but that just may be to whom I was exposed, and both a reflection of changing liturgical norms as well as the small numbers of UU ministers who could not support a common printed volume. When I asked minister-friends if they still have a “book” some say they’ve moved it over to a tablet, which makes since — if you trust batteries.
Maybe this is my own odd interest — I do like the material culture of Protestantism — but I was wondering if this rang a bell.
Twenty-five years ago today, I was ordained to the “ministry of the Gospel” by Canon Universalist Church, Canon, Georgia. I published the ordination service five years ago, and here’s a picture from the day when my beard was much darker.
I could not have imagined then what would later happen, but I have been grateful for the opportunities and consoled in my disappointments. But most unexpected is that a new stream of Universalists have come forth. A quarter-century ago I worried I was at the end of those who preached and believed in God’s complete salvation, but now I know I am not.
My thanks to those who taught me, supported me, ministered with me and walked along the way.
I got word today that the British Unitarians have published a toolkit to help with various needs like communications, safeguarding, finances, legal status and contracting. These resources are not universally useful, and some tools or information would only be useful for comparison or illustration in the United States context. But for those outside the British Unitarians “it’s the thought that counts” — the thought that useful resources (including those already existing) can be collated and attractively presented for easy access and with room to grow.
My recent post about using more appropriate methods and resources in small churches comes from my own adoption — re-adoption, really — of older, simpler methods in the rest of my life. I’ll write more about this later, but suffice it to say now that I use plain text files and paper files more often and more intentionally.
I was tickled to see that Anna Havron, the author of one of the paper-files blogs I read is also a member of the clergy. She recently wrote about her prayer schedule at AnalogOffice.net
She cites a 1950 card filing reference, and that reminded me of three pages from Robert Cummins’s 1946 Parish Practice in Universalist Churches: Manual of Organization and Administration. At the time, Cummins was the General Superintendent of the Universalist Church of America and faced his own crisis of resources and organization.
Surely, Parish Practice is an “orphan work” — one that probably fell into public domain because its copyright wasn’t renewed, but one so little loved that nobody’s likely to challenge a claim. Little loved, and scarce. It took years to find my own copy.
So I’ll take the modest risk of putting up those three pages from chapter 9 (“Church of Office and Records”) related to card files in the interest of modest church administration. In particular, think the idea of having church members indexed spatially — I’ve seen this in church manuals from the 1920s — deserves reconsideration.
Pages 122 to 124 from Parish Practice (PDF, 231 kb)
Parallels exist between a more sustainable church, and a more sustainable web: one that not only takes less electricity and fewer resources to run, but allow more privacy and portability of data. And are less addicting by their nature. Some solutions mean looking back — to blogs like this, and to “link love” that highlights good ideas in place of an algorithm — and other point (uncertainly) to options like federation.
Kris De Decker is my favorite writer about finding low-tech solutions for current problems, and I eagerly read new articles at his Low-Tech Magazine when they appear. He recently appeared in presentation “Back To The Future Of The Internet” where he and others deal with the sustainable (environmentally and personally) web. It’s linked from his more frequently updated side project, No Tech Magazine:
https://www.notechmagazine.com/2024/08/back-to-the-future-of-the-internet.html
And if you want to reach me (and get updates of this blog) through the federated web, follow me at @Wells.
The “low Protestant” end of churches offer a lot of freedom in the conduct of worship but frustratingly little published advice for ministers, at least apart from conducting weddings and funerals. So I was happy to find something to share.
Continue reading “What makes a pastoral prayer?”I wonder if even small churches rely too much on digital resources and not enough on paper.
How many of the smallest churches could manage with hand-written checks and bookkeeping systems? (Like these.) An evergreen and simple website, sure, but reinforced by a well-maintained voicemail message? A standard order of service pasted into the hymnal (or handed out and reused) with announcements and hymn boards to fill in the variable bits. A newsletter printed on paper and handed out or mailed monthly? Or if that’s too much, a quarterly or annual calendar? Birthday cards send out, rather than Facebook? And a leadership roster to be stuck on the fridge, or even a church directory? Maybe even the neglected corkboard called back into use, as much a focus for shy persons at church functions as an information source.
These old, stand-by solutions took workers and resources, but I suspect in the smallest churches there are more people who can help this way than if all the systems are pushed through the bottleneck of comfort with computers, smartphones and social media.
If the unspoken facts came out, I wonder how many churches have folded for want of a pianist or treasurer, and if that number is greater or fewer than the want of a minister: professionalized, seminary-trained, full-time, residential or otherwise.
Part of my thought about small churches come from that article — perhaps more properly the associated commentary — from minister and academic Ryan Burge. His pastorate, First Baptist Church, Mount Vernon, Illinois closed July 21. Lots of little churches are dying, and I know one or another of the news pieces are stirring feelings of fear and apprehension.
The broader coverage may be read without a paywall from Religion News:
https://religionnews.com/2024/07/22/in-small-town-illinois-a-little-church-says-goodbye
Deseret News seems to have the commentary without the paywall:
https://www.deseret.com/faith/2024/07/25/ryan-burge-church-closing-the-nones
I hear the story of a shrinking church within a shrinking town, and know that’s hard to overcome. (Mount Vernon has been declining in population since the 1990 census.) This is the formula the decimated the Universalists in the decade either side of 1920. That church made the decision it must, and many others will too. But I can’t help wonder what would have been different if that church had a smaller building, a history of acceptable dormancy (such as closing over the winter) or a practice of other than a professional or residential (or both) minister. Once lost, it’s hard to create something new, and now rather than a thinner church there is none at all.