Author: Scott Wells

Universalist minister in Washington, D.C.
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Pearlbear and many others

Michelle Murrain (Pearlbear) has received word from her United Church of Christ conference, meaning in so many words that “she’s leaving.” Not suggest even a hint of self-pity, accusation, or anger. It sounds like the right idea, and not too long ago, I thought about it, too. Goodness knows the slightly older UU Christian clergy know this story, and can recite a roll-call of those bright lights that sought better options with the UCC, Friends United Meeting, the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, the United Methodist Church, and — I’m thinking of a white woman here, incidentally — the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. This is just the first time the story’s come up in the blog era.

Her story: Leaving Unitarian Universalism

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Open Source Religious Resources is go!

I like the Tensegrities blog a lot. And then the news! Oh, happy day!

A brand new project, just the kind of thing I’ve been hoping for and preaching.

Open Source Religious Resources

This page is the first, very initial web home for a new project that seeks to create a webspace for sharing and developing religious resources — everything from curriculum materials, to worship elements, to music, and so on. On January 28, 2006 a meeting will be held at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota to begin to develop the site and build a community for its implementation.

The planning blog: Open Source Religious Resources Planning

I’m so with it.

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Bad, if candid, news from the Disciples

The last couple of weeks have been less than sunny for Unitarian Universalist bloggers, as a good number have responded to ChaliceChick’s appeal to fix Unitarian Universalism. I think it is a good corrective to the all-sunshine, all-the-time attitiude that makes hurt feelings, miscommunication, and unfulfilled hopes (I’m thinking of the bruhaha involving some of the youth at the last General Assembly) a full-bore occasion for soul searching and sickeningly sweet crepe-hanging reports. My take? Life is sometimes hard and people are sometimes bad, yet God loves us even when we’re not so sure we can stand the sight of one another. Unitarian Universalists make me the semi-Calvinist I am.

All of which is by way of preface to a report by Verity A. Jones, publisher and editor of DisciplesWorld,the Disciples of Christ’s defacto denominational magazine. It is an unhappy but candid, necessary, and sober recount of their situation, particularly in light of the bankruptcy of the Disciples service arm, the National Benevolent Association. We don’t have an analog; but the NBA had to sell almost all of its nursing homes, low-income housing, and residential program facilities. That’s shocking. And there’s other bad news, but some good news (more about that later) and a lack of clarity.

Oh, here’s one of many quotations I could pull to suggest that we’re not alone with our problems

It’s not so much the lack of a cohesive theological outlook that worries me—our churches can be, in fact, quite attractive to seekers and thinkers, because we don’t tell people what to believe.  And I say, Amen to that!.  My concern is that we can’t seem to move beyond tolerance to real dialogue and engagement with our diverse beliefs. We disbanded the one general body that was given the task of helping the church think together theologically years ago. Now we live in this place of just knowing that lots of Disciples disagree about who Jesus is and what Jesus did and how we should follow Jesus today, and so we seethe with frustration and sometimes anger about what others believe, and rant and rave to like-minded folks rather than actually engaging in substantive theological conversation about our different beliefs.  It’s as if we are afraid to talk about our theological differences because if we do we might split, but the reality is that because we don’t talk about our theological differences, those differences just become more entrenched.  Might real theological engagement actually bring us closer together?

I’m bringing this up because I wonder if we could take the same word if and when we need to hear it.

Verity Jones’ address: The state of the church

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Not even a whole room Sunday School

I know the term “Sunday School” is deprecated in some areas, but the image of the “one room Sunday School” is very evocative of the kind of childhood faith development program a lot of little churches — or demographically old churches — have, whatever their denomination. But what if you’re in a church — except for one place I’ve supplied, this is about all I’ve ever seen — where you have one or two pre-adolecent children regularly, and the traditional Sunday School model seems unmanagable and formal for the situation.

I know it is in the blood of institutional people to create institutions — it shows we care; it also shows we can’t see other options — but few things can create more frustration and feelings of church hopelessness than the seeming inability to raise up children religiously. And I suspect this is a major stumbling block for growth in the smallest churches. Or if not growth, it is a major void in the mission of any church.

So I’m asking for help, direction, and advise.

Do you know of any models, theories, or suggestions that could help the one-or-two child congregation? I’m guessing something that mobilizes parents (“as resident theologians” to recall one program) or incorporates the children organically into existing church functions like worship. Or perhaps a mentoring-based path. Whatever — and from wherever. Please leave your ideas and suggestions in the comments, or trackback to this post if you blog and would like to write (have written) on the matter.

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ChaliceChick's fixing UUA campaign and my thoughts

I’m sorry to say that — apart from an exercise in airing grievances — the fixing the UUA campaign didn’t say much. I think I’m with Steve Caldwell (or what he intimates at least) that first reforms should not depend on UUA Bylaws changes. I’m also not keen on proposing as a reform platform — streamlining the UUA or sharing best bractices — that reasonable people would already want, and which might be effectively attempted for want of spare effort and labor to accomplish them. None of the rest of the suggestions say anything to me, so I’ll not be voting.

Of course, this might be the longest sustained think-out-loud experience of people wanting to change UUA systems I’ve ever heard (boozy ministerial dinners don’t count) and that’s worth the effort in the first place. So thanks to ChaliceChick for kicking it off.
A thought: the suggestions seem to rest in the institutional and procedural “middle.” Not the small-scale incremental steps that you or I could take to begin a groundswell, and not the big meta-ideas that can help frame a general platform (and a real fight.) That’s a problem, because “middle” ideas are too big and too small to be the stuff of passion. I ain’t falling on the St. Louis headquarters or biennial GA sword, and I think few will.

And that’s the difference between a think-exercise (which UUs do well) and subtantive change, and perhaps we can keep this up and find our feet in subsequent rounds.

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Federated and community?

Later. Some revisions made.
There are two kinds of church with membership in the UUA that come across as odd to those unfamiliar with the concept: federated churches and multi-denominational community churches. Because they have multiple loyalties, they have a reputation to being aloof to denominations, making them that much less visible to those whose cares are more denominational.

Federated churches are communities of differentiated churches (they have their own membership rosters) that work together as a single congregation. Sometimes (but in practice, rarely) the constituent churches can be teased apart; sometimes they still have multiple buildings. (Which is why the United Church, Winchester, New Hampshire — of Winchester Profession fame — can sell its old Universalist building as the anchor for a new Universalist Heritage trail.) Because each constituent part has its own membership roster, there is almost always a majority and a minority party in federations. I’m sure this is stable in some places, but I can think of two federated churches that have dumped/lost/let-die-out its UCC and NACCC part respectively. But I’m guessing that Unitarians and Universalists are usually the one to loose because we don’t produce enough (Christian) clergy to be viably settled in them. A bunch of these are at the bottom of the UUA size list, though this might not be obvious. First Universalist Church, Hiram, Maine looks like a tiny (five-member, tied for smallest with the UCC-federated First Church in Deerfield, Mass.) unfederated church, but its minister is the same as the thirty-five member NACCC-affiliated Hiram Community Church. And this is the part I love: the Universalist Church keeps its own post office box. Adam, can you explain this phenomenon?

Multi-denominational community churches — as Adam also knows, as he pastors one — are essentially single churches; one roster, one budget — that’s a member of two or more denominations. Some were formerly federated churches, though there was a time after WWII when new ecumenical new starts were planned to be multi-denominational (none surviving that I know of that were Universalist or Unitarian, except with each other.) Usually, for UUA purposes, the reported number is the denomination fraction of the total membership.

As far as I know, the denominations and fellowships with which there are federations or community church arrangements are:

  • American Baptist Churches USA
  • Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
  • National Association of Congregational Christian Churches
  • United Church of Christ
  • United Methodist Church

Did y’all expect that?

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Gave nothing, why?

Twenty UUA member congregations gave (I refuse to say paid until covenant rhetoric is swapped for service provision rhetoric) nothing to the UUA Annual Fund last year. The list is here. This post probably plays up this fact more than anything said publically by the Administration, so I won’t say the congregations are being shamed. And since these churches won’t have delegates seated at General Assembly, it needs to be a matter of public record.

That said, why not give at least a token amount? I’d like to know if the churches have reasons, or if the money just ran out by the time that line item came up. A few things leap to the eye. The number of small town Universalist heritage churches. Is it a protest for being underserved? The three Canadian congregations; what’s the story there? Is it a protest for being eased out of the UUA against their will, or something along the lines of “no taxation without representation”? A few are federated; never a good omen for denominational loyalty, particularly if the other denomination (like the health-insurance-providing UCC) is offering better services. Some of the smallest UUA member congregations or “federated fragments” are on this list, but All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church (Colorado Springs) is “medium sized.” What’s the story there?

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Fix the UUA: Pay for what works

Money talks. You can complain and grouse, but money talks. It may not always be used well — and some volunteer or unfunded activities may produce profund results — but it shows what we value.

UUA leadership — staff, yes, but I’m thinking more of elected and volunter “true believers” — has been keen to talk about the “fair share” congregations ought to pay because the congregations are covenanted in community. That covenant cuts both ways with accountability to what congregations needs is less clear. Besides, congregations don’t have a covenant with the administration but with other congregations. (And I’ve heard grumbling from small churches that large churches have a fair-share formula option they don’t; it smacks of favoritism.)

But part of the problem is that, as a service provider, the UUA is almost a monopoly, and the overweening sectarianism that has grown up in the last couple of decades makes other options for service provenance less and less likely. Yet consider the Cathedral of Hope, Dallas, formerly the largest congregation of the Metropolitan Community Church, that went independent and has recently voted to join the United Church of Christ. Why? At heart, I believe because the UCC provides better services at less cost, and they’re more serious players. Money talks, and shapes how we fulfill mission. Even if the bulk of UUA member congregations won’t drift off for a better option — one may not exist — they (we) do deserve other options for service providing. That could be anything from consultants, companies, professional coops, website owners, multi-congregational agencies, ecumenical endeavors, independent affiliates, and the like. We could get radical and talk about alternate ministerial fellowship. (The MFC has the sole fellowship authority over the UUA, true, but since UUA members churches aren’t obliged to get MFC fellowshipped ministers, it follows there could be an indepentent fellowshipping process. Not likely, but it is possible, particularly in an underserved region, or small theological cohort.)

So here’s the point. Give, O Congregations, the Annual Program Fund what you think its services and value to the Association is worth. Fund what you use, even it isn’t something you have historically funded. Congregations, consider creating content (open licensed, of course). Oh, and Commission on Appraisal, you might want to look at this issue.

This is post #1200.

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Bootstrapping a church

I won’t mention a certain ill-fated church in Texas, but before someone else starts a church the same way, I’d recommend the organizer read this —

The Art of Bootstrapping (Let the Good Times Roll by Guy Kawasaki)

Not everything applies, but some good ideas.