Rev. Scott Wells

For most of my quarter-century sojourn with the Unitarian Universalists, I’ve been a Christian and have held some leadership positions. I think I’m in a good position to say that in those years we’ve had better and worse times. We don’t see the full-bore Christian-baiting as once was common, but neither do I hear much from the mellow yet constant “near Christians.” Perhaps both generations have moved on. And there seems to be much less institutional activity even though the Unitarian Universalist Christians are more geographically dispersed, if fewern I sense, than ever.

Thus a chicken-or-egg question. Is the institutional change the cause of the smaller numbers, or a symptom? There are roughly the same number of Christian churches in the UUA as before, with roughly the same number of members. Perhaps the Internet Age, with its focus on self-organization and self-publication, have a role; indeed, I suspect it does. Also, I’ve known more people than I care to count that have drifted to other denominations, or have detached their affiliations. (Far fewer become non-Christian Unitarian Universalists.)

Which makes me think: Unitarian Universalist Christian institutions, other than congregations (and perhaps even them, to a point) have depended on a ministry of identification. That is, the simple fact of their existance shows that Unitarian Universalist Christians exist, and that’s an important point if the majority opinion is that you shouldn’t exist. Other programs come and go, but this persists. Luther said “Here I stand; I can do no other.” I’m inclinded to think, “Here we stand, and it’s time to get to work.”

I took a piece of paper and jotted down what the Unitarian Universalist stakeholders do.

Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship

• Point of identification (“they exist”)
• Point of contact, especially for isolated Christians
• Mailing lists for community and resource-sharing
• Newsletter for inspiration, resources and information
• Website, ditto, with extra resources
• “Revival” series of conferences
• Participation in the ecumenical Consulation on Common Texts, the source of the Revised Common Lectionary
• Public worship at General Assembly
• Publication sales and sharing
• A scholarship journal, though inactive in recent years

Council of Christian Churches in the Unitarian Universalist Association

• Point of identification
• Annual meeting for (limited) business, networking and support
• A (limited) opportunity for study

Bloggers

• Source of opinion, and sometimes theology or other resources
• Sharing news

But these are some programs or functions that would be very helpful in a growing Christian movement among Unitarian Universalists:

• Advocacy among non-Christian Unitarian Universalist decision-makers and opinion-shapers
• Presence among non-Unitarian Universalist Christians, apart from the Consultation on Common Texts and in federated congregations
• Support for Unitarian Universalist Christian ministers seeking placements, including secular work
• Coordination of field trials and feedback for liturgical material
• Publication of religious education resources
• Developing a theological rationale (or rationales) for Christian presence among Unitarian Universalists
• Discerning the distinct, non-fungible Unitarian and Universalist strains of Christianity
• Coordination of ministerial internships
• Creation and idenification of hymn resources
• Recommendation of best licenses and distribution models of intellectual property
• An opt-in service — such a directory — for in-person organizing
• Recasting and publishing classic texts in a contemporary, digestible way
• Assistance in administrating small groups
• Importation, translation and republication of foreign Unitarian and Universalist Christian literature
• Developing ministry models among young adults

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I’m glad minister and blogger Christine Robinson (iMinister) has stirred the financing-ministerial-education pot here and here and here.

Her thoughts include a reform of the Unitarian Universalist ministerial internship system, in which it is not uncommon for a family to be divided for a year. I’d add the bottleneck — there’s more demand than supply, and there’s little incentive for congregations to add internships — which keeps promising candidates for ministry outside of fellowship. She proposed an extended, alternative internship.

But let me take this one step further. Is a seminary education an essential qualification for ordained ministry? Or rather, is it a one formation opportunity among others?

I have met — perhaps you have, too — skilled professionals, epecially in the literary, design and technology world who are either self-trained or who developed their skills while working. And I’ve known persons of spiritual depth and skill but lacking a seminary education (or ordination, or both) who I would gladly have as a pastor.

I’ve seen people of differing ages hobbled by the debt they took to afford a seminary education, and have met others who came to the end of their M. Div. to discover they had no continuing calling for the ministry. But do have the bills.

And — this is the rub — there are gaps in the seminary experience you could drive a semi through.

But back to the Unitarian Universalist experience for a moment. Apart from small district-led programs and local custom, there’s little opportunity to develop as a something-other-than-an-ordained-and-fellowshiped-minister, like, say the Universalist lay preachers or Congregational commissioned ministers. So let me start there. I would welcome as a minister someone who learned the ropes of ministry on-the-job for three or four years part-time, in a medium-sized or large church, under a minister’s supervision, with evening and weekend training to round out. Call this person a “parish assistant” or what have you. This experience might even run concurrently with a college education, should that opportunity present itself.

Throughout, and certainly at the end, let a committee of local ministers interview the parish assistant, and if he or she is found qualified, let them issue a letter of license for a year.  Perhaps now’s the time to take on a sole pastorate. Review and renew, if worthy, the next year. And then a then again. And if at the end of three years — seven in all — the licensed minister has grown into a peer, let her or him be ordained.  (It’s not hard to imagine a parallel process for institutional ministries.)

There are a couple of problems of course. I’ve known a training college in Another Denomination that prepared and supported ministers like this. It was well-loved by lay persons, too. But people with seminary ties saw it as a rival and it has been bled into a shadow of its former self. Such a plan, too, would attract enemies. It also assumes a geographic density that Unitarian Universalists have in only a few areas, but in which I suspect most of the membership lives.

And then there’s inertia. It’s plain there are enough people who are willing to suffer the current system. Suffer, perhaps, but can they thrive within it. And perhaps less than thrive — can we survive with a generation or two of endebted ministers, buffetted by a largely opaque and unaccountable system?

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My “scheduled outage” was a vacation Hubby and I took to Paris, Cologne and Bonn.

We’ve been back almost a week, but I’m not quite ready to blog again. I only have so many observations — church-wise — to make, and besides a project at Day Job is quite consuming right now, and plans there fill my thoughts even at home.

But the real “problem” is that I’m not sure what I have to say, and would rather be silent than try and fill the void. (Vaguer and more frivolous thoughts may go to Boy in the Bands.)

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Previously scheduled plans mean my blogging will be very light here and at Boy in the Bands for about two weeks. And approving comments and replying to email will be slow, too.

Yours patience is much appreciated.

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Well, I can sit up in a chair easier now — and it’s Sunday. This series comes to an end but there’s no way the church-in-a-jiffy is done. Or could be done. But I think we knew that. Churches, like all institutions evolve, even if they start well-formed. And I’ve said nothing about hiring staff, finding a minister (even as supply) or religious education. And I’ve said much too little about finding space to meet, even though that’s a terrible challenge for many young congregations. There’s time enough for that later.

Let me finish with a guiding principles: All the work done for the new church should be at the best quality possible, given the circumstances. Money may be tight and the meeting space uninspiring, but there’s no excuse for an unfriendly welcome, rambling announcements or a lack of signage to the bathroom, and I’m sure most of us have been in churches that did all three. Better to establish a management guidebook and train from it and stick to it.

I’ll be coming back to the Or-Else church later this year.

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So the back is a bit more tolerable today and the show must go on. Like the Christmas thirteen years ago when I preached and led worship with partial facial paralysis from Bell’s Palsy. No, I hope it’s better that that. But note any typos or eccentric grammar in the comments.

This is a make up from yesterday, and I was going to write about outreach and — lo, and behold — there’s a new UUA blog about social networking, New Media for Unitarian Universalists written by Shelby Meyerhoff. Check that first. (I intend to review it, when I’m feeling better.) You might also notice I’m using the same theme — SimpleX — on this blog as that blog, but I’ve not yet read the articles so I’m sure there’s going to be some duplication and probably some contradiction.

I’ve been reading about church starts for years and talking to others about them even longer. There were some things you just did when you got started,  like getting a post office box and paying for a business phone line so you could pay for a tiny one-line listing in the Yellow Pages.  These were sunk costs and unavoidable.  Today, getting a Google account for the new church is the new unavoidable service — at least at first when money and expertise is thin — and between Gmail and Google Voice, you can do without the old post office and business line.  But at least they’re free of charge. (What about mail, if there’s no fixed meeting address? I’d say “email me and I’ll send you my home address.”)  By homesteading on Google, you can also create a web site, share documents, create online forms, follow your web traffic, create libraries from public domain books, receive donations and many other things besides. Again, free of charge and that’s not inconsiderable.

But I’ll confess some uneasiness. Google’s rising monopoly on information bothers me. But in practical terms it would be difficult to reproduce the services they provide even with paid vendors and impossible to do for free. But if you got that Internet domain like I suggested on day 1, you’ll start to have a way out.

I would also get an account with Delicious (to store and share favorite web links), Facebook (for its super-wide social networking base) and Twitter (for short-format notices). And I’d get at least two accounts: one for the church as an institution and at least one for the point person or leadership team. This allows the personal and congregational writing to be distinct because sooner or later some participant will want to hand over responsibilities or even leave the church.  And I’d get those accounts with names that match as much as possible because once they’re gone they’re gone.

I’d use Delicious to gather resources for a leadership team, to share with a study group or both. But the use is largely internal. I’d use Facebook to attract newcomers and to give them a sense of your ministry. I’d use Twitter — indeed, follow me as bitb — to give short notices to people already connected to the congregation for announcements.

And here’s the kicker. While these technologies make communication easier and the service may be free of charge, there are opportunity costs. Bloggers know this already. The time you use to send tweets or Facebook updates is time not used for other projects, so it may make sense for your new congregation to have one person who makes this his or her mission — and recognize it as a vital and central ministry.

All for now –

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Threw my back out today, and on muscle relaxers and prescription pain meds. Not a good formula for blogging, so I’ll make it up tomorrow.

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So how big? How big the geographic catchment for most members — don’t want to get caught in too parochial a concept — and how big the meeting space?

First. So how big should the geographic bounds of the new church be? Conventional wisdom — I forget the provenance — suggests people will go as far to church as they will go to work, so Census records of commuting patterns would be helpful.

Consider Washington, D.C. workers. In this 2008 report of commuting patterns, 35.7% used transit — indeed, 23.8% of workers own no car; I don’t — and 43.6% of commuters take 24 minutes or less to get to work. This suggests to me that some will drive but many will take transit or walk, and you can expect to get people to come in about a half-hour radius. Unfortunately, I don’t have a good tool to suggest — say — a half hour’s reach from point X. Perhaps there’s some folk mapping tool out there. (I attended this workshop.)

I say this more to suggest that existing churches very often overstate how large their influence is, and miss out on opportunities for growth because they have to concentrate all their efforts in one building, when renting multiple sites — even for single occasional uses — would be more effective. Or alternately, be a clue that it’s high time to start a new church.

Back to rules of thumb — now for rental and purchased space — and I’ll save some thoughts for later.

11 sq. feet per adult for the meeting hall. The only really helpful and practical guide I found for this come from — of all places — the United States Air Force and its Religious Facilities Design Guide (PDF).

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So it’s been two days since I began my think-piece of gathering an “instant” church. And now a dose of heresy. Why do churches need membership?

In our own history, the parish or society had members based on financial sponsorship, and for a good swath of the history that meant pew rental or ownership. (It’s very easy to have a creedless system on that basis, even though the putative creedlessness of Universalism is grossly overstated. More about that later.) Both the Universalists and Unitarians were slow and often neglectful to nurture the core of the professed believers — the church proper, as opposed to the parish or society — and thus it’s easy to characterize the apparently secular mode of church government we enjoy. (This is most evident where there is a church that goes with a parish or society, or where they were at one point fused. Look for deacons as an institution. And as far as I can tell, the presence of the church proper, with a liturgy, are the best indicators of whether an older congregation stayed Christian.)

That said, I’m inspired — at least provisionally — by the distinction in membership made my the Uniting Church in Australia, which in its new (October 2009, pending approval; PDF) regulations distinguish between adherents and members. (The UCA distinction between baptized, confirmed and members-in-associationmay be less helpful in this context.)

ADHERENTS
1.1.22 In addition to a roll of members, a roll of persons who, though not members or members-in-
association, regularly attend the services of worship and share in the life of the Church shall
be kept. Such persons shall be known as adherents of the Church.
PRIVILEGES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
1.1.23 (a)    Adherents may attend and speak at meetings of the Congregation but shall not have
the right to vote.
(b)    Adherents may be appointed as members of committees of the Congregation.
TRANSFER OF ADHERENTS
1.1.24 In the event of an adherent moving beyond the bounds of a Congregation, the secretary of
the Church Council shall forward an appropriate letter informing the secretary of the Church
Council related to the new Congregation of the change.

Not a radical thought — many congregations have more or less formal “friends” — but the enrollment of adherents can be a useful social tool. First, “membership” has less of a hold on people than in generations past, and membership-oriented participation will surely discourage otherwise included people. Second, for membership-minded persons, it provides a manageable step towards membership without over-committing and without the risk of letting a person’s interest wither for trying to get the timing right.

Thinking both about historic Universalist polity of fellowship (though previously applied only to ministers and whole congregations) and Free and Open Source communities’ concepts of membership, I think this new church ought to have a fellowship committee, and that the membership it extends should

• be limited to a term, and then subject to renewal, thus addressing the phantom member problem.
• be based on a recognition of the support of the particular congregation — and thus a reason to extend policy-making power through a vote –  and not an endorsement of a particular spiritual state, which exists independently of church membership.
• be extended on a basis of a “portfolio” of commonly-known community standards, including expressions of spiritual maturity and theological self-understanding, commitment of an appropriate level of financial support, a track record of participation and statement — I’d say “study plan” but that seems too academic — of faith goals the membership candidate wants to achieve under care of the church.

This means membership will be less common, but — I hope — more valuable, and should spare the new church from dilettantes with voting rights.

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Yesterday’s installment in my think-piece was all about as much as a threatened church planter could do in a day, only concerned the institutional set-up and was theologically-neutral. But very quickly you have to think about what your church stands for and how it stands for it.

This is where I think Unitarian Universalist church planting runs into the rocks. With our history of the geographical parish, there’s a presumption that there’s one parish that accommodates all the would-be Unitarian Universalists in its area. (You see it in our church naming conventions.) Which is exactly backwards to preaching the Gospel within a particular tradition and with a particular charism (gift) and gathering people to that church. Little wonder then that Boston — which was outside the parochial system — had and has a wider diversity of Unitarian and Universalist churches than anywhere else. Let’s consider Boston as “the metropolitan model” in contrast to the parochial model and work thence.

I was brought up thinking theologically that Maria Harris, the religious educator, could do no wrong. Her curriculum for a church’s self-expression is certainly a great place to start. (The Unitarian Universalist Association has, in fact, published a guide by Gaia Brown about Harris’s Fashion Me a People which may be downloaded as a PDF here. I do fault it for replaying the we’re-not-Christian-we’re-different saw again. Is it so hard to accept a Christian’s scholarship without reacting defensively?) This means I’d want to get a standard of worship down.

Easy peasy. I’d choose the simplified Protestant liturgy seen across the mainstream. “Emergent” worship practices — while hip right now — are likely to age as badly as parachute pants. Since hymnals are heavy and expensive, I’d forgo them in favor a hymn printing license from one of the larger non-”praise” licensees, like OneLicense. Because so much of the liturgical reform since the 1980s has worked under the unspoken rule of “more words is better” I would seek out slightly older, leaner texts to shape worship. In a move away from liberal Christian practice, this would mean looking before the Vatican II-inspired changes and also ditching the Revised Common Lectionary (and its assumption of church member who never miss worship and who can follow a three-year arc.) Give me, instead, the briefer traditional one-year lectionary and an opportunity to learn from the Old Testament in a more interactive environment.  And before you ask: yes Unitarians and Universalists did once use this lectionary and the vast majority of the matching collects. The Anglican church in Melanesia has a version of the collects (with that lectionary) in simplified but dignified modern English. And they’re in the public domain.

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