THE STATE OF THE CONGREGATION

© Rev. Joy Atkinson 2009
Mission Peak Unitarian Universalist Congregation
January 11, 2009

At this time of year, around the time when the President of the United States gives a State of the Union Address (although this time it is an inaugural address for a new president), many of us interim ministers are thinking about a State of the Congregation address, since sometime in January or February is roughly the mid-point in a congregation's interim year - a good time to publicly assess where the congregation is now and what its current strengths and challenges might be. (I want to apologize in advance to any newcomers here today, because today's sermon is a very practical, internally-focused, interim sermon that does not have the spiritual, theological, social, aesthetic or emotional themes that we usually strive for in a sermon.)

On my first Sunday in this pulpit last September, I unpacked a suitcase of items symbolic of the tasks of an interim minister. One of those items was a mirror. Today, I am metaphorically holding a mirror up to you. The special advantage that we interim ministers have is that we are already "pre-fired," you might say, before we start, so in some ways we are freer to call and name what we see, without the sugar-coating that a Presidential State of the Union address often contains. That, in fact, is part of our responsibility as interims - to speak the truth as we see it.

I want to start with some good news - some definite strengths: This is a very vibrant and active congregation, with a great many good things going on, especially given your relatively small size:

• You have worship services all year long and a large group of talented worship associates who assist in worship
• You have adult and children's classes (the Adult Education Committee is newly re-activated and is enthusiastic about its slate of offerings). The number of children in this congregation is impressive for your size. I served a congregation last year that is four times the size of this one, and they had only about as many children come up for the story each week as you have!
• You have taken on some significant social justice projects, such as the current Volunteer Challenge, advocating for Marriage Equality for same sex couples and various projects for the Tri-Cities Homeless Coalition, among many other efforts.
• You have engaged in very effective pastoral care to one another and in the community through a Pastoral Associates Committee, a Caring Circle and the Mental Health Ministry of the Rev. Barbara Meyers (many congregations have only one committee offering pastoral care).
• You also have a dedicated Board and an active Program Council consisting of chairs of the many committees and groups.

A prime strength here is the abundance of dedicated volunteers, many of whom often quietly carry out the day-to-day and week-to-week work that keeps this congregation going - unsung heroes and heroines who produce the order of service, retrieve mail and phone messages, maintain office equipment, edit the newsletter and the like. For these kinds of tasks, larger congregations often employ staff members. Here it is unpaid volunteers who do all of this.

Then there are the myriads of people who chair or serve on committees, the Board and the Program Council, those who teach the children or offer adult classes, those who come to the campus here and work cooperatively with the Methodist congregation to help maintain the grounds, those who recently painted the wall in this room - the list goes on and on. And yet, as I see it, this great strength in lay leaders and volunteers is also something of a challenge, in that getting enough members to take on tasks or serve and chair committees, so that the congregation can continue to function smoothly, can be difficult. People are very busy these days, and it isn't always easy to find volunteers for specific tasks or for slots on committees. So some volunteers may burn out when replacements can't be found. This is a problem in most congregations, but it is more of one here because of the lack of administrative staff to pick up the slack. Still, given this challenge, things here run rather well.

More good news, another strength I see here, is that although there have been some bumps in the road in your past - especially some difficulties during the end of the tenure of your first minister, I would say that the past is largely past here. This congregation has overcome various challenges, and seems generally to be in a forward-looking and hopeful phase, not obsessed with or debilitated by past issues. And from where I sit, I can say that this congregation does not appear to consist of factions of people pulling in different directions, wanting different things or having widely divergent ideas about what it should be doing and where it should be going. For over two decades I have been a Conflict consultant for the Pacific Central District's Healthy Congregations Team (formerly called the Conflict Management Team), and I can tell you that I have seem some congregation-wide conflicts, complete with warring factions, that would make your hair stand on end! Though there have been disagreements and differences of opinion here, both past and present, I don't see anything like that in this congregation.

Having said that I think you are largely over the special challenges of your past, I also want to say that in my conversations with the Transition Team (a group of five active members with whom I have been working on interim issues and the interim tasks I spoke about from this pulpit when I first arrived), there has been some discussion about a tendency in this congregation that Transition Team members perceive: glossing over conflict, brushing it aside rather than dealing squarely and positively with it. Mentioned as examples were issues regarding your first minister and conflict that was not dealt with over the move this congregation made some years ago to having two services, an experiment which fizzled after a few months. As this congregation grows, this issue may need to be revisited, so some unresolved feelings about two services may re-surface and may need to be addressed.

Needless to say, conflict avoidance is something of a challenge in any congregation, because open conflict is a bit scary, and people tend to veer away from it. But conflict - open disagreement - can be positive, if it is handled well. Although I wasn't here to witness this, I understand that there was some conflict over whether to go for a one or two-year interim period. Many have reported to me that this conflict was well handled, with people on both sides having the opportunity to speak while others listened, and with people allowing themselves to be changed by what they heard. In speaking of conflict, I am reminded of the words of the poet William Blake: "Without conflict there is no progression..." Sometimes, the tension provided by expressed differences of opinion can indeed provide the impetus to move forward, if the conflict is well managed. There are ways we may address this issue of conflict and positive communication in the face of differences of opinion during this interim time:

• We can hold workshops in communication skills (and the Adult Education Committee is in fact considering offering a series on communication skills.
• Perhaps there can be some training in conflict management for the congregation - something the District Healthy Congregations Team does for congregations.
• There is also the possibility of engaging in a process to develop a Congregational Covenant of Right Relations - becoming intentional about how you would ideally like to communicate with and treat one another. This, too, the PCD Healthy Congregations Team can help with.

I mentioned the Transition Team I have been working with. I want to introduce them now, because they have been working in the background with me so far, and haven't been very visible. They are: DeAnna Alm, Natalie Campbell, Cade Murray, Kathy Wallcave and Drew Wilson. This Team provides your interim minister with some well-connected people I can learn from, bounce ideas off of, and explore ways to address the various issues that typically come into play in an interim period in the life of a congregation with. If you have any issues, perceptions or concerns about any aspect of the congregation during this interim time, you can speak with me, or with any one of these Transition Team members. During an interim phase, there is not usually a Committee On Ministry, which generally has the task of taking an overview of the congregation and discussing with the minister any issues that need to be addressed. In the absence of such a Committee during this interim time, these Transition Team members will function in this way, as well as address specifically interim issues.

In the last interim congregation I served, the members of the congregation were in the habit of speaking about the many things they do as encompassed by Four Pillars of congregational life. I have already spoken today of all of them as they manifest themselves in this congregation, and I will now light these pillar candles to symbolize them. They are: Worship, Pastoral Care, Social Justice, and Religious Education. This list seems pretty complete. It would seem that everything a congregation does can generally be placed in one of these four broad categories.

But I kept having the sense that something was missing from this picture, and I finally thought of one more, which I see as distinct from the others, and central - necessary for all the rest to work. Can you guess what it is? The Fifth Pillar is Community. It's ultimately all about creating and sustaining a religious community - a group of people who like and care for each other, who celebrate life's passages and turning points together, who CHOOSE to affiliate with one another. While community both nourishes and is nourished by all of these other pillars, community is the central pillar, the starting point. And there should always be activities that are designed especially to strengthen a sense of community. Here, it happens in all the ways I mentioned, and it also happens in various small groups, classes and interest circles, all-congregation potlucks, groups of women and groups of men getting together, circle dinners and other purely social occasions.

There is great strength here. These are sturdy pillars, but of course they can always be strengthened. The Transition Team recently identified the Social Justice Pillar in particular as one it would like to see strengthened. You can be part of the strengthening of this Pillar by joining a re-activated Social Justice Committee. You may speak with Social Concerns Chair Natalie Campbell about this new effort.

Before I conclude, I would like to say a few words about the potential growth of this congregation. As I drive down here each day, I pass a sign for Hayward, which says that Hayward's population is around 140,000. And then I pass the sign for Fremont, which says that its population is over 211,000. Now, based on the national average number of members of Unitarian Universalist congregations in comparison to the general population, this congregation is lagging, with 112 members, while Hayward is "in the zone," with 146 members, and the congregation I served last year, Santa Barbara, with 450 members, is over 4 and a half times the national average of Unitarian Universalists to population at large. Card-carrying Unitarian Universalists comprise a bit less than one-tenth of one percent of the US population, although several hundred thousand more people claim to be UUs than are on the membership roles of our congregations (this odd phenomenon might be a subject for another sermon).

Comparing the membership number of this congregation to the national average of member Unitarian Universalists in a given community, it looks as though there should be close to 200 people who are members of this congregation. Now this of course is just playing with the raw statistics. There are other factors: this congregation is barely 15 years old, Starr King Unitarian Universalist Church in Hayward is 65 years old, and the Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara is 131 years old. Like Santa Barbara, Hayward has its own building and grounds, and this usually also makes a big difference in terms of membership. But other factors aside, what the bare statistics suggest to me is that this congregation could be significantly larger than it is. The question is: do the members here want this congregation to be larger? What is the number of members you would like to see? What is the long-range vision for the future of Mission Peak Unitarian Universalist Congregation? Does it involve more members, more resources for paid staff, more than one service if necessary, and eventually, a building of your own? These are some of the questions I have in mind as I work with you in a variety of ways, and I know that these questions will be on the minds of the potential candidates for the position of settled minister.

This two-year period of interim ministry will provide a bit of time for this congregation to consider such questions, and perhaps form a new vision to strive toward. There will be various opportunities to think about your future in this concrete way. After a search committee for a new settled minister gets underway, there will be some data gathering about this congregation's current profile, which often includes members' thoughts about the congregation's future. At some point I hope to conduct a visioning workshop for the congregation, as a way to begin to envision and prioritize some goals. There is also the possibility of resurrecting a Long Range Planning Committee, which in the past has been a vehicle for the congregation to create a vision of its future and plan ways to get there. This kind of committee is often reactivated in conjunction with the arrival of a new minister, which is on the no-so-far-distant horizon.

For now, there are some very good things happening here:

• The move to this facility a year and a half ago.
• Just last summer, acquiring a rented office in this building, which has been a focal point for much of the recent activity here - meetings, consultations and workshops, as well as a place for a minister to work from on a daily basis.
• A thriving Religious Education program for children.
• A new committee dedicated to an important aspect of social justice - the Cultural and Racial Inclusiveness Committee - which is especially important in a diverse community like Fremont.
• Another proposed new committee, which would oversee special Fund-Raising efforts.
• A renewed Adult Religious Education Committee has been planning adult education offerings for every fall winter and spring.
• The annual Canvass is being planned, which will have some new features.
• The Spring Retreat is in the works.
• The Small Group Ministry program, which helps to strengthen community and provides spiritual and interpersonal enrichment, will be re-launched next month.
• In just three weeks, on February 1st, a Sunday service presented by the Pacific Central District Ministerial Settlement Representative will inform the congregation about the search process for a new settled minister.
• And in May, there will be an opportunity to celebrate your 15th birthday as a Unitarian Universalist congregation - a congregation still in its teens, with a great deal of potential!

Benediction: We Need One Another, by George Odell

We need one another when we mourn and would be comforted.
We need one another when we are in trouble and afraid.
We need one another when we are in despair, in temptaton, and need to be recalled
      to our best selves again.
We need one another when we would accomplish some great purpose, and cannot
     do it alone.
We need one another in the hour of success, when we look for someone to share
     our triumphs.
We need one another in the hour of defeat, when with encouragement we might
     endure, and stand again.
We need one another when we come to die, and would have gentle hands prepare
     us for the journey.
All our lives we are in need, and others are in need of us.