Sermon: Taking Root
December 6, 2009
Starr King UU Fellowship
The Rev. Sarah C. Stewart
1. Remembering your entire experience at [your congregation], when were you most alive, most motivated and excited about your involvement? What made it exciting? Who else was involved? What happened? What was your part? Describe how you felt. 2. What do you value most about the [congregation]? What activities or ingredients or ways of life are most important? What are the best features of this [congregation]? 3. Make three wishes for the future of this [congregation] (Branson 7).
The Mission Assessment Committee at First Presbyterian Church in Altadena (California) had not expected to consider these questions at their committee meeting. Their job, as part of their church’s search for a new minister, was to describe and evaluate the major programs and ministries of their congregation. They had looked at denominational guidelines. They expected simply to follow the path and give the presbytery the information it needed.
First Presbyterian Church had been in decline for years. The committee felt that the same small group of dedicated, older volunteers were doing most of the work. Younger families came–younger families who were not part of the dominant Japanese-American culture of the church, but came out of the more diverse neighborhood Altadena had become–but they were not moving into the heart of the congregation. At first, this exercise of defining First Presbyterian’s ministries and programs seemed like just another diagnosis for an ailing church.
Mark Lau Branson had been attending First Presbyterian with his family. He was invited to help with this assessment process, but he also stood outside the community in some important ways. First, his ethnic heritage is European American, unlike the Japanese American heritage of most of the members of First Presbyterian. Secondly, he is an Associate Professor of Ministry of the Laity at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena. He brought this expertise with him to the Missions Assessment Committee. He also brought with him a process called Appreciative Inquiry, which helps an organization focus on its strengths and discover its mission through the telling of stories.
He started with the questions I posed at the beginning of this sermon, asking the members of his committee to tell their stories to each other. Then the Session (parallel to our Governing Board) and finally members of the congregation had the opportunity to tell their stories and their hopes for the future. In the end, the congregation called a new minister. But they also learned to identify themselves as a multicultural congregation led by, but not defined by, their Japanese-American heritage. Different groups in the congregation drafted different “provacative proposals” for how they would be in the church and work in the world. One example is from a group of Nisei, or second-generation Japanese immigrants, in the church: “First Presbyterian Church, Altadena, is rooted in networks of holistic care, and the Nisei lead our intergenerational congregation in these joyful and innovative ways of meeting day-to-day needs such as health care, house maintenance, transportation, money management, shopping, and nutrition (124).” The Nisei had taken a dry denominational exercise and turned it into a joyful proclamation of the work of the spirit in their lives–in this case, social justice outreach to the aging Japanese-American community surrounding the church.
Let me share with you what I’ve seen and felt since returning to my active ministry with you this fall. Here at Starr King Fellowship, we are concluding a three-year long building process. When I spoke to some long-time members recently about our building process, they could not remember a time when this congregation has not been thinking about its space or planning for future growth and building needs. For the past three years, we have focused intensely on funding and constructing our new wing. It’s not completely finished–the Building Committee is still doing good and important work on our behalf–but we are winding down from a period of intense building activity. Between the strategic planning process, the capital campaign, and the construction itself, some of you have been here volunteering at times almost every day. It has been a heady and joyful process, a process which accomplished much and through which we learned how to be in fuller fellowship together. But it’s coming to an end. So now what?
There’s one way we could go. We could let this building process end and settle back into congregational life as we have known it in the past. We could not bother paying attention to how to get new people involved. We could keep program areas the same as they have always been. We could rely on the same people to volunteer who have always volunteered–not because new people aren’t willing, but because we don’t want to think of new ways to ask new people to get involved with new gifts to offer. Ultimately, we could become a congregation trying to fix the “problems” of low energy, low attendance, and low membership–problems we would have if we went down this road too far.
I’d like to propose another way. I’d like to take hold of the energy I feel in this congregation right now, the vibrant and joyful movement of the spirit in this place, and work together to define our work in the world. I’d like to return to our covenant and mission as a congregation. Who are we? What kind of place is this? What do we do best? What kind of place do we want to be in the future? What is most important about our place in the world? How do we want to change the world to be a better place?
With the Governing Board’s support, I plan to help us engage these questions over the coming year. This is a time to draft a new covenant and mission for our congregation. We have a mission statement now, one which we drafted in 1995 and which we affirmed in 2004. It reads,
As members and friends of Starr King Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, we covenant with one another
–to provide a liberal religious home for all persons who will share in creating a community that fosters spiritual growth
–to educate, encourage, and empower ourselves and our children to become committed to local, national and global issues as they relate to the principles of the Unitarian Universalist Association.
In consonance with our covenant we intend to pursue specific goals as mutually agreed upon from year to year.
Now, if you asked me to name the three most important things to this congregation, I would tell you, right off the bat: children, spiritual growth and social justice. And this mission statement captures those three things. There’s nothing wrong with it, as far as it goes. But there are many people here, myself included, who weren’t part of the fellowship when that mission statement was written. We need to come together again to recommit to our best, shared future. Part of the value of articulating our mission is the process of bringing people together to talk about where their passion for our congregation lies.
When we have a clear mission, it’s easy to talk to newcomers about why they might join this fellowship. Someone in the congregation says, “We do this. Do you want to do it with us?” There’s no hard sell, no convincing. The congregation is clear on who it is and where it is going, and a newcomer can make a clear decision about whether or not that community is right for her.
A friend of mine in Massachusetts, a lay leader who has been a Unitarian Universalist at least since she was a teenager, said, “People who commit to membership should be taking on their congregation’s mission.” Right now, our mission statement is written in lovely calligraphy, nicely framed, and gathering dust in the Office Assistant’s office. For the past three years, that hasn’t mattered, because we’ve been living the mission of welcoming new families and expanding our space. Now the space is nearly complete, and it is time to think about our mission once again. If a newcomer wants to join Starr King Fellowship in the future, he’ll know what the mission is that he might adopt as his own. Those of you who have been here for a while can share some of our foundational stories, knowing that some things about this community may change. Those of you who are new, I invite you to be part of the process of discerning our future.
Spirituality unfolds in the telling of our stories. When we tell our stories, we share who we are and what we hope to become. This coming Friday will be the first night of the Jewish festival of Chanukah, the Festival of Lights. The Jewish tradition is full of the telling of stories, often with stories embedded within stories. Isaac Bashevis Singer tells a story about a Chanukah night in his own house when he was a child. In this story, his father, a rabbi, relents his usual strictness to allow the children to play dreidl and enjoy the celebration of the lights. He tells his children another story about another Chanukah, a story his grandmother had told him. In this story, during Chanukah, a boy hears of a tailor in his village who is so sick and so poor that he cannot get any wood to heat his hut. The boy, Zaddock, immediately sets out to the woods around the village, where he knows he can pick up fallen branches and take them to the tailor. When Zaddock sets out, the day is already growing dark. Soon it is too dark to see and Zaddock loses his way in the forest. Suddenly, in the darkness, he saw three Chanukah lights glowing. They moved, and he followed them. The lights led him back to his village, to the tailor’s house, and to his parents’ waiting arms.
This is a story in a story in a story. As Singer and his brothers and sisters hear the story, they understand their father’s religious commitment to charity. When Singer tells the story, he places it in another story about Chanukah when he was a boy. By telling these stories, the tradition is kept alive. The Chanukahs we may celebrate now are richer because they have both these stories in them. Our traditions contain the stories of the past even as we create the stories of the future.
I’d like to invite you to take on the mission of sharing your story and listening to the stories of the people around you. I invite you to the holy work of discerning and learning what kind of force for good we can be. I invite you to the spiritual discipline of storytelling. Following the example of First Presbyterian Church in Altadena, we will tell the story of this congregation and the stories of our own spiritual awakenings. This congregation has quite a moving story, a story of starting in living rooms and moving into our lovely new fellowship hall, a story of lay and ordained ministry, a story of surviving fires and breaches of trust, a story of celebrations and good food, a story of thriving through challenge. It’s a story about showing up to services and hymn sings, to coffee houses and Nicaraguan service trips and after-school programs. It’s a story about making a home in other people’s spaces and creating a home to share with our community. It’s the story of us, here, with our own hopes and dreams for the future. I hope you’ll join me in continuing to write the story of this congregation.
Please join me in prayer.
Spirit of Life, we know you are with us this morning and every moment of our lives. Animate us, grow in us, help us feel your presence. Illuminate our eyes and warm our hearts. Help our hands and feet to dance in joy. Be in our arms when they comfort someone who is suffering. Be in our minds and bodies as they are moved to justice.
We ask for forgiveness for those things we have done which have hurt people, whether intentionally or unintentionally. We ask forgiveness for the important work we have left undone. We know we are not perfect. Help us to forgive one another our shortcomings. Help us to be faithful to the hope for a better world and our daily efforts to bring it about.
Give us the enjoyment of simple beauties. Help us to know the warmth of fellowship. Allow us to know community with one another, even with those people whose beliefs differ from ours. Help us greet each day with hope and each evening with peace. Amen.
Thanks to Meg Muckenhoupt for her advice and conversations on the meaning of membership.
Branson, Mark Lau. Memories, Hopes, and Conversations: Appreciative Inquiry and Congregational Change. Herndon: The Alban Institute, 2004.
Singer, Isaac Bashevis. The Power of Light: Eight Stories for Hannukah. New York: Farrar, 1980.