I grew up UU, and have been a ministry for twenty plus years, so over the decades, I’ve been to a lot of installations and General Assemblies, and every kind of UU gatherings. And one thing you can count on when you go to big gatherings of Unitarian Universalists, there is always buzz about the future of our movement. Together we try to cast a vision of who we are becoming, of who we are called to be. One of my favorite presenters at such events is Galen Guengerich who serves the Unitarian Church of All Souls in New York City. They have over 1000 members and a whole team of ministers and staff. Whenever Galen gives a workshop at GA it is going to be cutting edge. There might be a full jazz ensemble providing meditative interludes. There is certainly a high tech AV system, so that when he wants to references something from popular culture, he pushes some magic button and there is perfect cinema quality music and sound, seamlessly integrated into his presentation.
Sometimes at these national events where large abundantly-staffed congregations take the lead, it’s easy to feel left behind. We are told that if we are not skillful about our online presence, we won’t appeal to a younger populous, that if we don’t use sophisticated technology, and current popular music in our worship, the millennial generation won’t feel at home. We begin to wonder if our low-tech churches are relics of a time past.
When I was a very little girl participating in the town Easter egg hunt for the first time I found the whole experience kind of overwhelming and confusing. After what seemed endless waiting in my little Easter dress, basket in hand, the hunt suddenly began. After 5 minutes of chaos all the eggs were gone and I returned to my mom, probably crying, holding my basket with only one egg, Mom told me this story, which has been almost archetypal for me ever since. She said “When that crowd of children headed left, you headed right. There you were alone with dozens of eggs, but when you looked up and saw where the other kids were, you left the eggs and followed the crowd. Of course by the time you got there, all the eggs were gone, and when you came back to where you started, all those eggs were gone too. If you had just stayed where you were, you would have a basket full of eggs right now.”
I have been mulling over that story ever since. When I realize that I have been separated from the crowd, I try to ask not “how can I get back into the crowd?” but “where are the eggs around me, right now, that only I can reach?” This morning’s sermon is not a challenge to keep up with the crowd, to have high resolution visuals in your sanctuary or to design an App for the congregation. You already receive plenty of encouragement from our culture to move in that direction.
The congregations I serve have a lot in common with the UU Church of Utica; congregations born out of the Universalist movement in the 1800s -- small congregations with part-time ministers. For the past 11 years I’ve been the half-time settled minister for the UU Church of Athens and Sheshequin, and just last year I started at the UU church in Cortland as a 1/8 time minister. But you, your minister is ¾ time! And I’m told also have a church secretary and a music director! It’s easy to worry that our churches don’t have enough members, enough staff, enough money to make a difference, but small churches have some important gifts that our world needs right now.
The most special gift of the small church is relational-ity. Anyone who has ever gone to a large church knows that sometimes you can get lost in the crowd. But there is no chance of getting lost in the crowd in a small church, we know each other and we know each other’s lives. No newcomer or visitor ever goes unnoticed. When I begin to get discouraged that our website is out of date, and we don’t even have a church Instagram account, I am reminded that people of every age will always want a place in the physical world where they can be with people they know and trust, and where they can meet new people in a web of community. Social Scientists tell us that we Americans are the loneliest we have ever been. Small churches are a healing balm for that loneliness.
When my son was a preacher’s kid out in California, there were Sunday school classes with an age appropriate curriculum for every age, and a flock of other preschoolers for him to play with on Sunday mornings. But for much of the time my son was growing up in the Athens church he was the only youth his cohort in our one room school house. I had a lot of sadness that he didn’t have church friends his own age, but the gift of a family size church is that, like with a large extended family, everyone knew Nick. I would see the much younger kids following him around like ducklings some Sundays, or talking to his friend the retired physicist about life the universe and everything. More than once, over these past 12 years, he stood up during Joys and concerns and talked about how grateful he was for that loving community.
Our small size also makes us nimble. Because we are nimble we are able to respond as the moment unfolds to the needs and gifts of our community. In 2011 a flood immobilized the Penn York Valley, where the Athens congregation is located. The rains came down hard on Thursday, and by the time the streets were clear on Saturday we had to pass through a National Guard checkpoint on the way to the church to assess and repair the damage. Volunteers filled the parking lot sanitizing and drying the contents of our basement. Sunday we worshiped without power, without potable water. At coffee hour, two members wondered how we could be of more help to our neighbors. We held an emergency board meeting, and decided to open our building to folks who just needed to use a bathroom, or a clean place of refuge. The next day we began serving a hot lunch and invited the community to join us in the social hall. Other volunteers delivered sandwiches to people who didn’t want to leave their work salvaging homes or businesses. For weeks we fed and cared for our neighbors until the crowds died down, and our work helping repair the damage of the flood continued in other ways. And once the mud had cleared, we held a public forum on what it might mean to live between 2 rivers in a time of climate change.
If the ministry possible for you here in Utica was a field of eggs ready to gather, there are, in fact, more eggs than you could ever gather in –even with all 108 members of your congregation, your very talented new minister, your staff and all your friends working diligently together. So which eggs will we gather? The Anglo Saxon tradition says that each of us has a Wyrd, formed in our unique intersection of nature and nurture, of time and place. Our Wyrd, like that thread in the poem by William Stafford, is hard for others to see. Sometimes it’s hard even for us to see in the chaotic web of culture and life. It can be particularly elusive when we are looking for the thread binding together a community full of so many diverse needs and gifts. So how do we discern our Wyrd, our own unique path? Let’s start with our unique Universalist history and theology. That’s what makes us different from the Food bank of Central NY, or the United Way. The good news of Universalism is that there is a love big enough to hold us all. You find that in our first principle- the inherent worth and dignity of every person. This simple idea is actually quite radical at our moment in history. It is as radical now as it was at the founding of Universalism, as radical as it was when this church was founded in the 1800s. We live at a time when American society puts up walls to keep people out, and shows us 100 different ways that some lives have worth and others don’t. We live in a society where being on the right side is prized over compassion, over love. But Universalism sides with love, we have always sided with love. We believe in a love that embraces all life. That is the thread I hold tightly when I’m afraid of getting lost.
When I say love I think immediately of my son. He’s easy to love. I love him not only when he is smart and kind and funny. I loved him when he puked up on me, when he was angry, and frustrated, when he couldn’t tell me what he needed. I loved him when he was older and could tell me that what I wanted for him was not what he wanted for himself. I try to explain to him that while I am so proud of that honor he got in school, there is a love for him when he’s failing school, when he’s not kind, when he’s not funny. This is a Universalist love. A love big enough for each and every person with all their gifts and faults. Even when we screw up. It is a radical kind of love. I believe our Universalist theology suggests that such a love is possible, and challenges us to manifest it in the world day by day.
Easier said than done. It is hard to be loving in our hectic, divisive world. It’s hard to be loving when we ourselves are hurting. That’s why we come together in our UU congregations -- to remind each other of love, not only with our words and our worship, but by practicing and to demonstrating love. Over these next years of your shared ministry together, whenever you feel lost remember that the business of the church is not business, it’s love. Yes, the heat needs to come on in the winter, Yes we strive to have worship every Sunday, but no work of the church is more important than how we care for one another.
This is good news for small churches like us, because whether or not you have a jazz ensemble, or a high tech AV system, you already have everything you need. You have each other. We are following this thread each time we sit in a circle and speak our truth with love. Each time we stay at the table when it’s uncomfortable. Each time we say sorry when we make mistakes. Each time we call back hurtful words. There are a thousand ways, small and large, that we show our love to each other and to the larger world. Each time we manifest our love, we are preaching the good news of our Universalist faith, that there is a love large enough to hold us all.
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