Every once in a while, a church needs to ask itself what it is about, and, since, in less than a week, we'll be re-evaluating the way we do things and will be looking for a mission, it seems like as good a time as any to ask what sort of institution we are.
So, here's an exercise for you. Think of someone that you know, or someone that you don't know, but someone in particular, someone who does not attend this church. Once you've picked this person, imagine what you would tell them about this church, in, say, three minutes. What would you tell them that might make them interested in attending. To make this exercise really interesting, make this particular person a Unitarian-Universalist, and better yet, a U-U who has, in the past attended community.
Don't like that exercise? Well, here's another. Last year we made a radical change in the way we run the church. Well, maybe this wasn't a change in the way we run the church but rather a change in way we think about how we run the church. To be specific, we moved away from a fixed, and rather conventional organizational structure, with committees and subcommittees for every possible church function, to a more fluid structure in which each member participated only in ways that he or she felt most comfortable. This meant, at the least, that we didn't feel so badly about things undone.
So, here's the exercise. Looking back on the ways that individual members have moved about and found things to do in the church over the past year, what can you tell about what the church is like and where it is going. So, you might say, "I couldn't help but notice that the membership committee has disappeared, the social justice committee is non-existent, but the Sunday-Evening, All-Male, Beer-and-Guy-Food Club is going strong. This tells me that the church is basically sexist, unconcerned, degenerate, and disorganized." Of course, you have up to three minutes to elucidate this or whatever conclusions you might reach. The idea is to say what you think the church is like based on how its members behave (or misbehave).
Now I realize that these exercises are kind of difficult. They require a kind of disciplined thought that most of us haven't had to exercise since our college days. So, I'm providing a little help. First, I will try my hand at one of these exercises (the first one). Second, I've asked each of the other board members to try their hands at one of these exercises, and some of them may actually have prepared something, if only to spare themselves the embarrassment of having to admit to serving as a church leader without having one intelligent thing to say about the spirit of the church. At the very least, our essays will give you a chance to think up answers of your own, which I urge you to do instead of listening to us, because we shall probably have nothing important to say. And, after all, unlike college, you won't be graded on your answers. The downside of this is that many of you, sigh, in the spirit of CUUC, will have something to say that has absolutely nothing to do with either assignment, but I suppose that happens often enough in college too.
One more thing: you newcomers are, of course, excused from the assignment. However, this is a great Sunday to be a newcomer since you might, today, find out as much about the church as you would in three or four normal Sundays. Actually, there are no normal Sundays around here. Because we're lay led, every service is different so it usually takes more than one to get to know. Today, however, you might get lucky and do in one shot.
Here, then, is my Exercise 1. I start by saying who I am talking to. I'm talking to my brother, Bro (it's a long and embarrassing story), who, like me, was raised Unitarian, but who, unlike me, has a strong affinity to Catholicism (another long story).
I go on then to say what I would say to him about CUUC. "Community is not like any church you've ever been to. For one thing, it is small, vanishingly small, to use a term from mathematics. We have about 35 members; that's really not enough for a stable church, but, in fact, this church is like a rock. I think that's for a couple of reasons. First, although you might think that we must be a rather stagnant, ingrown, and insular congregation, the fact is, we're the exact opposite. Anyone walking through these doors gets noticed. We have one of the largest welcoming committees in the denomination: 35 members. It is a lot easier to get acquainted with this church than it is with the typical larger U-U church where you can wander the coffee room for years without meeting anyone. Last December, we had a Turkish woman, and a Muslim, helping us with our Christmas decorations on her first visit."
"Which brings me to the second thing about this church that gives it life. Everyone in the church does something. We have no spectators. So, although a lot of things that get done in large churches don't get done at Community, we don't have the people that large churches do who do nothing but sit in the back pews every Sunday. We even built the sanctuary ourselves. (I can't say that I did any of the work; if I had we'd have had a disaster on our hands instead of a sanctuary.)
"We're also lay-led-no minister. Oh, occasionally we have a guest real minister in the pulpit, but most of our services, we've done ourselves. I think this, more than anything, reflects the spirit of Community: that the church really belongs to the people and that turning it over to professionals will, more often than not, narrow the range of religious experience that people need for a full spiritual life. It's not that we don't respect authority, it's just that we don't trust it.
"Also, and maybe most important, I think that people come to, or rather, become part of Community for very different reasons than people attend other churches. Whereas the search for truth and a personal theology is probably, to some extent, on our minds when we come to church, that's not what keeps us coming back to church Sunday after Sunday (and for some of us, many times during the week). I have the sense, rather, that what binds us to this church is simply that we've fallen in love with each other and it's this love for each other that keeps the church going. So, we live up to our name; the spirit of Community is, well, community."