Category: Integrating Mission and Image

By the time I walked into the Countryside Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Palatine, Illinois, the congregation had already communicated well with me from the street outside and from the parking lot. Their signage was visible from the road, and handsome. A large, elegant flaming chalice, symbol of Unitarian Universalism, was visible on their chimney. When I walked into the side entrance I saw bulletin boards with neatly arranged current fliers announcing interesting programs. One flier I happened to notice as I walked by featured an image of a Palestinian and Israeli youth with their arms around each other. Signs on the doors let me know exactly where I was (the religious education wing) and pointed me where I needed to go.  As I walked down the hallway I stopped to appreciate a beautiful glass display case full of worship objects from a variety of world traditions. The environment was peaceful, clean and accessible.

Bam. Without speaking to anyone (it was early on a Saturday morning), I had learned a ton about the congregation’s values and general health. The building itself communicated the congregation’s purpose in existing in November of 2012. Of course it helps that the building itself is contemporary and well-maintained, but those things can only take a congregation so far in communicating congregational vitality and purpose.

Here’s what I especially wanted to show you, because I think this is a great idea. When you walk out of the sanctuary on Sunday mornings, you are greeted by a fellowship hall that is organized around the pillars of this congregation’s life together. Check it out. Notice how the signage creates a consistent visual language that communicates congregational unity of mission across the five major areas of ministry. Subtle and smart. You know why? Because it says, “Worship and learning and service and stewardship are all integrated in this congregation.” How many times do you walk into a church fellowship hall for coffee hour and see all the sort of “special interest” tables? The impression you get is of being at a marketplace with all the various merchants competing for your attention and your dollar. Here, the visual consistency across the space announces that these areas of programmatic interest are all elements within one integrated system. That’s important and impressive.

(Click on the images to enlarge)

Worship

Study

Foundations (Stewardship and Legacy)

Kinship

Lovely word to use! Very interesting choice.

This is the place that helps folks connect. It contains this cute Visitor’s Corner image and yellow mugs on it for newcomers, and lots of information about how to connect with the congregation and Unitarian Universalism. Lots of denominational swag nicely displayed.

There was a Service table too, but I guess I didn’t get a photo of it.

Well-done, UUs of Palatine. You’re using your space to speak for you, and it’s saying good things.

I knew I wanted to attend church this morning somewhere fairly nearby, so I began looking at UU web sites to see what the offerings were.

First of all, I shouldn’t have to search and search through a church website to find the Sunday service information. Let’s make that easy, folks.

Second, please don’t provide directions to your church but fail to note its address or what STATE it’s in (some of us have GPS systems — we don’t need directions, we need an address).

Please include pertinent dates on your site. What year am I looking at? And why direct me to a February calendar full of your church’s activities and meetings but no worship information when I click the Worship link? I’m a seeker, not a member. I don’t care if AA meets on Monday nights and the Knitting Circle on Wednesdays. I want to know what’s happening on Sunday morning — when and where.

Preachers, we need to remember how uninteresting it is to someone who hasn’t been to church in a long time to see that the sermon of the day is about someone we’ve never heard of, or dedicated to a friend of the congregation’s we’ve never met. This kind of insider approach keeps me, the seeker, away from your church. Consider framing the sermon in a broader way and then using [insert admirable dead Unitarian here] as your chief illustration. Something like, “The Spiritual Strength and Suffering of Individualism” rather than “Emersonian Individualism: Two Views.” (At least most people have heard of Ralph Waldo Emerson!). I, the seeker, don’t care to hear a book report or a historical lecture. What application will your sermon have to my life, relationships, work, meaning-making? Don’t tell me what book you read to prep your manuscript — tell me what I can look forward to learning for the good of my soul!! *

Snark and negativity do not make for inviting sermon titles for this seeker. Am I going to a college debate or a worship service? Cognitive dissonance; please avoid it and I promise to do so as well in the future.

When I finally did find a service (not a UU church) this morning, I wound up walking out after half an hour. Why? First, one of the ministers was, in a word, simpering. While I certainly support all worship leaders using the quotidian grace of our lives to enrich our liturgical illustrations, I am deeply uncomfortable when parents use their children or family lives to provide cutesy — I’m sure they intend them to be accessible — analogies for God’s presence in the world. Cutesy theology is insipid theology. As an intentional non-parent, I am especially intolerant of this transparent ploy for my warm understanding. Any prayer that could be fairly described as “darling” by a kinder set of ears is no prayer for me. It isn’t that I don’t honor parenting, it’s that I know damned well that parenting and family life is not darling. It’s intense, it’s exhausting, it is blood and guts real life and radical love. I want to say to the minister I saw this morning, Don’t you dare get up there and nervously flip your bangs out of your face like a teenager and diminish your own and God’s grandeur like that.

A student minister gave the sermon. He badly needs a diction coach to correct his sloppy, muckle-mouthed enunciation (a slight lisp is not the problem: a lazy mouth is the problem). He even more urgently needs a lesson in how to structure and deliver a religious message, and a solid dressing down for insulting the congregation by ascending the pulpit unprepared and with a heavy reliance on flippancy. When a preacher invites the congregation before sermonizing to pray with him that the words of his mouth and the meditations of his heart be pleasing to the Lord, and that the Word may reach the people, you know you’re in trouble when he mumbles and fumbles his way even through that preface. There is no excuse for this, young preacher. If you intend to begin your sermons with this invocation, learn it. Own it. Deliver it as though you mean it or stay out of the pulpit until you do.

After the young preacher (dressed, according to my male friend, like a gangster) claimed for the third or fourth time what a hypocrite he was to dare to preach on this topic and then said he had no right to be up in the pulpit, I whispered to my friend, “Then don’t get up there!”
We left.

Preachers of every age and experience level: If you don’t think you have “the right” to be in the pulpit, stay out of it. If you think any of us is preaching from a place of total purity, get over it. We are all spiritual failures and we are all hypocrites. We do not preach from a place of perfection but of faith, hope and love. We preach because we have a deep desire to understand, to be seared by conscience, to experience God’s grace, to find a way to help build the Kingdom of God. No one wants or needs to hear how unworthy we are. How unsure, yes. How confused, fine. How afraid, certainly. How vulnerable, of course. Unworthy to address the congregation, no.

My God, what a thing to say. What a cop-out. What an offense to the worshiper, who has come trusting that the preacher is prepared internally and externally to impart some wisdom.

A Bronx cheer to “I’m not worthy.”

* I have TOTALLY done this myself in the past and am going to try to avoid it in the future now that I see how uninteresting it sounds to the seeker.