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A Charge To The Congregation

Given to the Unitarian Universalist Church of Reading, MA

The Installation of Rev. Hank Istvan Peirce

March 8 2018

It is good to be back with this congregation. Twenty-one years ago, and freshly ordained, I was your summer minister. I had a wonderful experience. Thank you for launching me into parish ministry with so much joy and support.

It falls to me to Charge the Congregation this afternoon, as one of the last elements to the liturgy we call the Installation of the Minister. It seems worthwhile to point out that what is for us today a happy and unworried occasion was for those who founded the Congregational Way a more solemn and even somewhat anxious ceremony, as those Separatists whom we today know as our “Puritan forebears” were persecuted by the Church of England for their rejection of the bishop’s authority to assign clergy to their congregations. This is a sore point in our history but as you can see from the presence of Episcopal clergy here this afternoon, we have worked it all out.

Those who established congregational polity in the 17th century wanted to see to it that the local congregation, gathered by a covenant made between themselves and their God, had the right to call their own minister and to covenant with that person to walk “in God’s ways as known and to be made known,” as they often said in their covenants.” For this innovation they were persecuted, imprisoned and in some cases executed.

Remember that when you are having a brownie in the parish hall later.

You, the congregation, own the church. This is not just a polite compliment; you literally own the property and are the stewards of all your assets. The minister is not. You, the congregation, also run the church. I am fond of reminding my own congregation that church is one of the only institutions for which the members pay for everything and do all the work.

There is no punchline. That is the punchline.

I exaggerate a bit on this point but I do it in order to make a corrective to the tendency for people to speak about their church by referencing the Minister. Sometimes I will run into parishioners in the grocery store and they will say, “I haven’t come to one of your sermons in so long!” I respond, “You haven’t attended worship? The community misses you.” I notice that your church website lists this event as “Rev. Hank’s Installation.” This is not quite right: it is YOUR installation, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Reading. This guy is one of the thirty-two clergypersons whom you, the church of the past and the church today, have found worthy to serve as minister among you. It is not Hank’s Installation, it is yours. By the authority vested in you by the congregational tradition, you can uninstall him any time.  The power rests with you, the community.  (sung) “The people have the power!”

Therefore I charge you to be the church, and to support the minister in being the minister – no more, no less.

The Minister’s job is to support the congregation in living into the mission which it sets out for itself, in discernment among its members, its history, the demands of the current moment (which are profound and urgent), and its God. There will never be unanimous agreement about what this mission should exactly be; do not let that stop you. I charge you to expect your minister to hold before you the vision and mission which guides and commands you. Expect him to preach it well, with evidence of deep attention to ancient and historical sources of wisdom, contemporary scholarship and the Scripture of your shared lives. Expect him to support your vision and mission in programming, prayer and pastoral work, and to be your chief teaching elder in connecting that mission to our Unitarian Universalist theological tradition.

I charge you each to take your own ministry seriously and to work faithfully in partnership with your settled minister. How can you be a healer, a helper, a lay pastor, a peaceful presence within the church?

In this effort, be ye direct communicators with one another. Remember that in congregational life, a triangle is a problematic shape. Do not talk about your minister, talk to him. And do the same for each other. Relationship is perhaps our most significant spiritual practice in Unitarian Universalism. It is a hard, time-consuming and it not always successful one. Remember that much of the work your minister spends time doing is attending to relationships and to process, which is invisible to the eye and noticed mostly in its absence or neglect. Rev. Hank has not been called here to keep everyone happy, but to help the church to remain faithful.

I have a special charge for you because you have called a special minister to serve you. I charge you to be aware that Hank Peirce is a minister to ministers, and is dear to many of us who are, like you, finding our hearts sore and our spirits sometimes inconsolable over the ugliness of the present moment in America, and across the planet.  I selfishly ask you – on behalf of a strained, sarcastic, and at the moment highly dysfunctional and hurting clergy cohort to be a good ministry setting for Hank because we need his heart. Hank is the lead elephant to whom many of us in this circus attach our trunks as we try to stay together. We need his spirit to be strong.

In the end, we all need each other. May this installation be an outward sign of an inward commitment not just to your new minister (and his wise and wonderful wife and daughters), but to one another, to your covenant, to the greater good that calls all of us out from our aloneness and fear and into engagement in the world, in the name of Love.

 

 

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Dear “Welcoming” Churches

Dear So Many Churches,

Every Saturday this summer, I considered going to church services the next morning. I’m a preacher lady the rest of the year, so this is my time to worship without any leadership responsibilities.

I am a Christian. That is why I want to go to church. I want to hear the Word preached. I want to be part of the body of Christ. I want to sing the songs and be in the incarnate community of disciples of Jesus Christ even if I am not geographically or technically in your local community.

I am also a Unitarian Universalist. I presume that any time, anywhere, I will be welcome to worship with the UUs. I have been a Unitarian Universalist all of my life. I know that I can experience the beloved, incarnate community among our congregations whether or not they retain any outward signs of cultural or theological Christianity. I only want to share the love of God (by whatever name  the worship leaders call it – and that name doesn’t have to be traditional). I am also ministered to by worship services that are  generically reverent, for instance, worship that focuses on the immanent divine or creative force in nature and human nature.

So I’m actually kind of easy!  The only churches I avoided visiting were ones where I knew I would be recognized as local clergy and need to be “on” for that reason. I did not have the energy for that. Sometimes I do. This summer I did not.

That said, here’s why I did not attend your church or why I would not return:

  1. Your website is completely unhelpful and confusing, eg, your main page announces worship services at 10:00 AM but your interior page about summer services says that they’re at 9:00 AM. No one is in the office when I call on Saturday, of course, and nor does your outgoing message on the voicemail clarify the issue.

And I really, really wanted to visit you. I have heard beautiful things about your congregation but you didn’t care enough about those outside your vibrant community to inform us how we could join with you. It made me very sad. You don’t have an updated Facebook page. In fact, what you have is a pinned post from February promoting your chili cook-off. All the photos are insidery images with no identifying information. There is nothing posted about current programming; ostensibly because you presume everyone should already know. They do not. There are no links to go to to find out where and when you’re doing what you’re doing.

2  You also don’t have a Twitter account. In other words, you’re directing your social media presence to people who are already integrated into the community. This is a grave and common error.

I live 45 minutes away and we are strangers, but everything on your website and social media accounts should keep me in mind.  Very few people will even make the multiple attempts I made to figure out how, when and where to find you.

3  Your services are bereft of spirituality.

UUs, this is especially for you.

I can attend  a lecture or forum at the Jewish Community Center, the Salem Athenaeum, the ACLU, the Ipswich Historical Society, and many social justice organizations with which I am connected. What I cannot get in those places is corporate prayer, theological reflection and a message grounded in the wisdom of hundreds or even thousands of years of tradition. What I can’t get there is silence held by a people who have faith that they are called to be a people of Love, shaped and oriented in this shared hour to the contours of grace, peace and justice. If you’re unwilling to provide that, I’ll look elsewhere — conversation with friends, private prayer, a walk by the ocean, journaling.  If your summer services are a series of people essentially lecturing on a topic, advertise as such.  Call them “Summer programs.” Don’t call them worship, and please don’t quibble with me about the old English root of the word in “worth-ship.” Worship has a religious connotation. If you’re avoiding religion during your summer Sundays, you’re engaging in false advertising by calling the gathering “worship services.” It makes you look confused or lacking in integrity.

3  You have an evident immature spirituality.

When I did attend your church, you did not greet me as a soul but as a customer.  You barraged me with greetings, chattered at me before, during and after the service. You asked me to join the choir but did not ask me how I am or what promptings of the soul brought me to your church that morning.

You stuck your hand in my face for a handshake, you hugged me, you touched me on the head — you treated me like public property, like a nursery school child, like a new granddaughter. It was alarming, and I felt violated or insulted more than once. Your welcome was not authentic. You did not really look me in the eye. You were performing welcome, and I knew it.

You made assumptions about me: that my husband is at home, that my children will love your Sunday school, or that I’m interested in the singles ministry. Stop pigeon-holing people or trying to match them with others in the congregation you think they’re similar to. It’s a form of objectification.

Your bragging about “how great” your church is makes me feel like we’re on a first date and you’re desperate. Quite frankly, if the church is great, I’ll find out in time. But during our first conversation I don’t need a sales pitch. I need a connection.

You said petty, catty things about your minister or other members in my hearing. I overheard one man grumble to a woman next to him, “Is the pastor absent again?” The pastor had been on vacation, he wasn’t “absent.” And the pastor, an ethusiastic young man, was indeed present that morning — having flown back to town at 3 AM.

There was a deafening chatter during the Prelude and you all got up during the Postlude and started loudly socializing with one another. This says a lot to me. A congregation that cannot allow not one second of quiet or peace to allow the spirit of worship to resonate is not a community makes a space for contemplative spirituality or contemplative individuals.

4. You don’t understand the times we are living in.

It is 2018.  Almost no one in New England is under any social pressure to affiliate with a house of worship.  Church attendance is not only not de rigeur, it is almost counter- cultural.  I love and commend all of you who have been church folk for a long time and who continue to be so. However, you have to know that new seekers (especially anyone under fifty) are probably not visiting in order to fit in with the neighbors, to network professionally, or even primarily to find a way to engage with social justice. They might be, but most likely — in fact, almost certainly, they are looking for a spiritual organization.  They want a place and a community with whom they can learn about God/God- concepts, responsibly question or jettison theological ideas they received as children or from the wider culture, and attend to their inner lives.

If they came in order to become part of the Resistance, they need more than information on how to contact legislators or attend the march or accompany immigrants to deportation hearings: they need soul strength and spiritual practices that help ground and protect them against depair. They  need the witness of the prophetic ancestors.

They want a place where they can find peace and be given tools for cultivating it within their own lives.

If they are atheists, they want to be an ethical community of encounter and practice, but still within the context of reverence and compassion.

No one is there for therapy, or to be told by an emotionally manipulative minister (however piously) what they feel about the world. They need to see religious people being religious, which is to say living with a sense of commitment to the most profound intimations of their moral sensibility. They need to see those people taking seriously the obligation to discern morality together, and to act on its promptings.

They do not need idle chatter. They need to know that the people who are gathered as a congregation are real; that they tell the truth, that they suffer, that they do not have all of the answers, but that they are faithful to the quest to discover wisdom where it may be found.

Above all, I think, they need to believe that they can grow in some good way along with this community, even if just sharing one hour of worship. If the din of the socializing, requests to fill out forms (no, thank you) and the barrage of small talk and probing questions inform the visitor immediately that the people there do not not how to engage with them as a spiritual being but only as a potential customer, they will not return.

We must learn how to greet souls, not voraciously descend on potential members.

But first, we need to make it a non-mystery to find us and know what time and exactly where we are gathering.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Straight Dope: A Blunt Guide To Best Practices For Lay Worship Leaders

All worship services happen within a larger context. How does this service fit in with the other worship services in that season or series? How will it minister to the congregation and to newcomers? What story does it want to tell and what message does it convey? What is its emotional arc, and how will you use music to achieve that? These are the essential planning questions.

Internal preparation: worship preparation begins for me when I wake up on Sunday morning. I’m thinking through the entire service (including the transitions between elements), proofreading, thinking about the message, the community, and considering any last minute edits or adjustments. I always check my e-mail and the headlines to see if there is anything that may need to be addressed in a pastoral way during the service.

Whatever your role in the service, prepare internally for it. You are the medium through which an important message will be communicated and a ministry shared. Don’t walk in cold.

Do a sound check. Know what you sound like when the mic is on, and know how to turn the mic on and off. If the mic takes a few seconds to come on, accommodate that. Stand for that three seconds in silence. NEVER blow into the mic or tap on it.

Similarly, please never, ever say, “Is this thing on?” or “Can you hear me” during the worship service unless there is a true tech breakdown. Worship is an art form and Sunday mornings are the performance of that participatory art form. It is the leaders’ responsibility not to disrupt the worshipers’ experience. Handle insecure moments silently and swiftly, and if all else fails with a microphone, project your voice and carry on.

Do not allow interruptions of worship for any reason. Gesture to the ushers or a staff member if you need assistance dealing with an interruption. Do not engage with the interrupter, as this will prolong the distraction.

Sarcasm, jokey asides and insider language are the fastest way to communicate that we don’t like newcomers (because this sort of humor and commentary presumes an intimacy that isn’t actually shared among all present) and that we don’t take worship seriously. Jokes at your own expense are also distracting. Please avoid the temptation. Worship is a formal occasion even when it is warm and friendly.

Review your content to assure that no one would ever have cause to ask, “What is she talking about?” This includes acronyms, shorthand for church or denominational programs, and references to people you presume everyone knows.

People don’t know who you are! Wear your nametag and please introduce yourself if your name is not in the order of service.

Review your sermons or homilies for negative or insulting content, particularly prejudice or sarcasm against political figures or religious groups. This is very common among Unitarian Universalists. There is a different between an honest observation or righteous anger and snotty put-downs. It’s okay to be critical, but do it thoughtfully and within the context of our theological tradition. Every week, dozens of people walk out of our congregations and vow never to return due to our hypocrisy. We have to get better at this (Again, see note about sarcasm).

Representation matters: review your content for diversity of voices in readings, stories, quotes and songs. Review readings for gender-inclusive language.

Storytellers:  please see me or Julian about guidelines for Time For All Ages. They are, in brief: 1. Respect the children and never laugh at them or join in congregational laughter at any of them. 2. Choose age-appropriate material. 3. Try to be thematically connected to the rest of the service. 4. Do not give the children the mic but repeat their comments after them so the congregation can hear. 5. Tell stories by heart or use notes; do not read books. 6. Have a strong beginning and ending and make a smooth transition to the Recessional hymn.

All worship leaders and participants should be aware of issues of cultural appropriation. When in doubt, bring in another opinion. We’ll research, discuss and make decisions together.

PRACTICE. Whatever your part in the service, practice it. Think about what has gone before you in the service and what will come next, and how you fit in the flow of things. Be aware of transitions: is there a hymn after your part in the service? Who will introduce it? It might be you. Worship services have an emotional arc that is broken by awkward, insecure transitions between liturgical elements. Start strong, end strong. Know why you’re up there.

Volume and diction: Please project!!!! Do not rely on the microphone!!! This is imperative and is the single most avoidable problem in worship services. Being heard and understood is an accessibility issue. If you are someone who is afraid of having a big voice and tend to swallow your volume, try singing your part at home and learn how to take deep, full breaths to support your sound. So many wonderful sermons and readings have been inaudible due to insufficient breath support, dropped volume at the ends of phrases, and rushing.

Let’s say it again for the cheap seats: DO NOT RUSH. You don’t want to speak at a ridiculously slow pace but most speakers need to slow down and allow time for ideas to sink in with the congregation. Slowing down also allows more opportunity to connect with eye contact. I still have to remind myself to slow down while preaching.

If you’re preaching, see my hand-out “How To Preach a Sermon.”