First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Like many native New Orleanians, I think of Spring as beginning in February, and deeply resent any winter intrusion into March. So you can imagine my feelings last week when it snowed 9 inches during my trip to Tulsa for the UU Christian Fellowship Revival. (I was not happy.) Despite my years away from the city, the phrase “Spring snow storm” still sounds like an oxymoron to me. I prefer the high temperatures. warm breezes, and gorgeous blooming flowers of a New Orleans spring.
Most of us love Spring: all the fresh green released from the dark earth, budding and blossoming trees, the beauty of the flowers. Yes, we love Spring, we love it even as we have to deal with the inevitable Spring allergy symptoms. And that’s the challenge of new growth: there’s always a flipside.
Spring’s dual nature was more honored by our religious ancestors than by our modern rational selves. For the pagan Celts, rituals at the Spring Equinox invoked the protection of the god and goddess on all living things, seeking permission to bloom, and asking for relief of the pangs of new birth. (As a woman who has given birth without anesthetic, I just want to testify that it does HURTS to give birth. Can I get a witness?)
Good parenting involves pain as well as joy. Being a good mother or a good father means helping our children to grow into the adults they were meant to be – even when this means becoming someone other than who we wanted them to be. Good parents trust in the process of development and nurture, but do not direct the path or try to dictate the future of their children, any more than gardeners can control the variables in their garden. Giving permission to our children to bloom is perhaps the most difficult part of parenting.
This is also true in the life of churches. However much we might like to, we cannot control how or in what direction our congregation will bloom in the future. It is impossible to predict what our church will look like, what worship services will feel like, or what important issues will arise in years to come.
A look at Unitarian Universalist history shows the futility of such speculation. Not a single one of our religious ancestors would have predicted that congregations that began as exclusively liberal Christian could evolved into the wave of religious humanism that swept our movement in the mid-20th century. Who would have thought in those highly humanist UU fellowships of the 1960s that a new diverse spirituality would arise in UU churches in the early 21st century? Who would have speculated in the 1960s that the next great human rights issue after civil rights for people of color would be civil rights for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender persons? Any UU of the 1970s asked about UU ministry would never have predicted that women ministers would be the majority by the late ‘90s. You just can never tell what will happen when you give a person or a church permission to bloom.
Year ago, during my internship at Cedar Lane UU Church in Bethesda, the lady with whom I lived bought a load of hay to cover and warm her garden during the winter. That spring, we were both amazed when unplanted and unplanned blood-bright poppies sprang up, their seeds hidden in the hay. Just as gardeners can be surprised and even dismayed by what springs up their carefully planted garden, just as loving parents can be surprised and even dismayed by what their independent offspring grow up to be, well-intentioned UUs can be surprised and even dismayed by what their beloved churches evolve into. Giving permission for a church to bloom can sometimes be difficult and even painful.
Within Unitarian Universalist churches, fears surrounding the pain of growth and change are often not communicated openly -- who wants to be the one to say, "I don't want the church to grow"? -- but usually lie beneath expressed concerns about other issues. For example, some say they think of the church as family, a notion that inherently limits the size of the congregation and opens the church to the same kind of dysfunction so prevalent in real families. Some complain that the minister or lay leaders are not responsive enough to their personal needs – although it would be impossible for any church to cater to the needs and desires of individual members. Some members try to hold the church hostage and threaten to leave if their agendas are not met. Others talk about how the church is too small to be financially resourceful or active in the larger community – a self-fulfilling pronouncement if there ever was one.
Well-known church consultant Lyle Schaller of the Alban Institute, declares in his book The Middle-Sized Church: “One of the tried and proven methods of turning a middle-sized congregation into a small church is to operate on the assumption it IS small.”
Schaller characterizes this assumption and its attendant behaviors as “counter-productive.” In addition to viewing the church as family, wanting more individual attention, and low congregational self-image as barriers to growth, he lists limited programs, underorganization, and high leadership turnover as markers of a church refusing to give itself permission to bloom. This deadly combination of factors, says Schaller
has turned out to be the most effective single approach to turning the middle-sized congregation into a small church.…The typical member of the typical middle-sized congregation believes it is really a small church.
…Those interested in major change have found that the greater the power of each person’s influence, the less likely that [the] decision-making process will produce significant change. When everyone has a veto, the most attractive point for agreement is simply the status quo. The only people who do not have a vote on today’s decisions are tomorrow’s new members -- the very people we are attempting to reach!
Since this congregation has returned to this building after Katrina, we have been blessed with the addition of many new members, some of whom are new to New Orleans and many of whom are new to Unitarian Universalism. These are good things, and the fact that so many people are attracted to this religious movement and are feeling at home here is a tribute to both our faith and our hospitality. But the next step in the process of integrating new members is to give them permission to bloom – allow our newer members to come up with new ideas and new programs and new directions, and welcome our newer members into positions of leadership.
We have also, since Katrina, avoided a common challenge for UU churches, and that is isolation. Our relationship with the other 2 UU churches in greater New Orleans is an asset to us and to them. We learn more, we gain from the ideas of the other UUs, we have more power and influence in our area by combining forces. This connection brings us increased inspiration and energy, and gives us all permission to bloom. I encourage all of you to join us for the shared Earth Day service at Audubon Park on Sunday, April 19th, at 11 am, under the Tree of Life near the stables. The service will be followed by a short First Church members’ vote on the UUA building loan, and then by a joint picnic with our friends from Community Church and North Shore.
As our congregation, our cluster, and our movement grow, things will surely get more complex and more complicated. This can be scary. But if you want to keep things simple and easy to manage, then take my advice: Don’t plant flowers; don’t have children; and certainly don’t belong to a growing, thriving church. All of these involve commitment, hard work, and constant care. But if we give our garden permission to bloom, if we give our children our blessing to become who they really are, if we give our church and our movement our help to grow and change, we might find ourselves experiencing the deep innate joy of bringing something new and creative to healthy life – our own hopeful contribution to a better future.
Like these precious flowers that symbolize all of us, let us be open to the mysterious forces that encourage us to keep reaching out, to keep growing, to keep bringing in the new, the creative, and the unexpected. Let us give ourselves, our church, and Unitarian Universalism permission to bloom, and may all those who come after us pick a beautiful bouquet of variegated flowers. So might this be! AMEN – ASHÉ – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTÉ – BLESSED BE!
