Building a Spiritual Community That Changes Lives

From the Rev. Peter Morales, President of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA): "I'm pleased to announce the public release of the new five-page UUA Strategic Plan for Professional Ministries. The plan, developed by our Professional Ministries Task Force, outlines eight key recommendations gleaned from our 64-page Strategic Review of Professional Ministries Report. I cannot emphasize enough how valuable input from individuals and organizations has been in developing these recommendations, all of which can effectively be advanced through the efforts of UUA staff working closely with our partners and constituents. We already are acting on several initiatives in the report, and look forward to sharing our progress with you as these efforts come to fruition."

The Rev. Eric Cherry, Director of International Resources at the UUA, has just returned from meetings with our partners in Japan. While there, he learned of the latest recovery efforts in the wake of the recent earthquake and tsunami and delivered the Unitarian Universalist Association’s (UUA) message of condolence, spiritual support, and solidarity. To support the ongoing work of our interfaith partners, the UUA and the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC) have created the UUA/UUSC Japan Relief Fund.

Bruce Knotts, executive director of the Unitarian Universalist United Nations Office, speaks out on the Standing on the Side of Love blog: "It’s time to end institutionalized discrimination based on sexual orientation in this country. Tell Congress it is time to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and restore the rights of lawfully married same-sex couples to receive the protections of marriage under federal law."

<p>The UUA's Ministries and Faith Development Staff Group has announced publication of a new curriculum titled "With Justice and Compassion: Immigration Sessions for Children&#8217;s Religious Education," by Mandy Neff. This curriculum invites children in grades 1-3 and children in grades 4-6 to explore their own family stories while learning about immigration in the United States. It lifts up justice and compassion as guiding values as we consider immigration justice issues in our own time.</p>

<p>After much discernment with congregational leaders and considering the financial challenges still facing many of our congregations, the Rev. Peter Morales, our Unitarian Universalist Association President, decided that the requested Annual Program Fund contribution will remain at the current $58 per member for the new Fiscal Year 2013 (begins July 1, 2012). Our greatest strength comes from our interconnectedness as partners in this religious community. Thank you for your continued support.</p>

The UUA Board of Trustees was charged with nominating one or more persons for the Moderator position effective with the election that will occur at GA in 2013. The Board has interviewed the recommended candidates and has selected two very fine UU leaders as our nominees for the position of Moderator of the UUA: Jim Key from Beaufort, SC and Tamara Payne-Alex from San Jose, CA. &#160;

<p>In Congregations and Beyond, the Rev. Peter Morales, President of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), offers a vision of the opportunities and challenges that face Unitarian Universalism as an international movement. He presents a strategic direction for Unitarian Universalism consistent with our core values and historic willingness to push beyond pre-determined boundaries. All Unitarian Universalists are encouraged to read, discuss, and share Congregations and Beyond.</p>

In Congregations and Beyond, the Rev. Peter Morales, President of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), offers a vision of the opportunities and challenges that face Unitarian Universalism as an international movement. He presents a strategic direction for Unitarian Universalism consistent with our core values and historic willingness to push beyond pre-determined boundaries. All Unitarian Universalists are encouraged to read, discuss, and share Congregations and Beyond.

Yesterday I wrote about a new insight I am exploring in which the anti-Christian sentiments found throughout Unitarian Universalism can be seen and understood as aversion addiction.  This post has received a lot of traffic. In 24 hours it is already one of the most visited posts in the history of this blog.  It has received as many comments as I usually get on a post, many post comments coming on the Facebook cross-posting and not here.

David Pyle’s (Celestial Lands) comment notes that he has looked at the phenomenon of anti-Christian attitudes in our communities before through the lens of post-traumatic stress, but he says the analogy didn’t quite exactly fit.  He writes that the aversion addiction angle seems to be a better match for the behavior that he too has experienced in our congregations, especially in light of family systems theory and we all know how big the UUA – and many church consultant types are on family systems theory.   And he asks the big question – so how do we respond?

I think we need to seriously consider Unitarian Universalism, the Unitarian Universalist Association at large and certainly most of our individual congregations as Codependent family systems.  We have addicts – people with aversion addictions to Christianity, certainly, but also to spirituality, and spiritual and religious language.  The entire structure of Unitarian Universalism colludes to support this addiction.  Within the last decade a brief intervention was begun with then President Rev. William Sinkford’s call to reclaim a “language of reverence” in an effort to be a more relevant religion.  Although welcomed in some quarters of the UUA, it was met with the reaction that most addicts have when confronted with their addiction in other quarters: denial, rejection, ignoring, and other delaying tactics so as to not have to confront the reality of the addiction.

The ministry, the religious educators, the national staff and leadership have for too long been enablers of the aversion addiction.  We, the leaders of Unitarian Universalism have created a codependent and culture. We collude with the aversion addicts to keep religious language neutral, leave theology out of our church life, and not demand spiritual discipline or disciplines.  If we were to insist on such things, the church family system would blow up in anxiety.   Gerald G. May writes

“Codependency is not simply a matter of other people trying to cope with the addicted person’s behavior. They actually create their own interweaving webs of deception. They may even unconsciously develop new, more inventive mind tricks for the addicted person to use. Ironically, it is the most sympathetic, compassionate, loving persons in the addict’s social circle that are most likely to fall into such collusion.” (Addiction and Grace)

We really have no choice but to name the addiction and demand that it stop. Now. Why?

“When the community surrounding an addicted person tried to help in way that does not support ending the addiction, it will wind up supporting the addiction instead…Both the …addicted person person and his or her immediate community know that the ….addiction has to stop…but at another, more insidious level they find themselves colluding with the addiction.” – Gerald G. May, Addiction and Grace

We do verbal gymnastics in Unitarian Universalism to avoid words like God, spirit, covenant, and faith. Why? Because some people have an aversion addiction to them.  It is completely fine that some people in our religious communities are not Christians. It is completely fine that some people in our religious communities do not believe in God.  What is not acceptable is that some of these people hold our community hostage with their aversion to the language, ideas and expression of faith and spirituality.  At a theological level, that kind of insistence on never hearing certain words is a fundamentalism. It is just as much an expression of fundamentalism as insisting a person accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior or they are going to hell and that every single letter of the Bible is factually, historically and theologically true. At a behavioral level it is an aversion addiction.

We have lost much of our ability to deal with this addiction because we have become largely codependent.  We are not a place where people holding differing religious views are welcome. If that were true, I wouldn’t be writing this.  We are a generally a place where people holding some different religious beliefs except Christianity, which is ironically our roots and history, are welcome.

Let’s take a look at some of the Characteristics and Patterns of Co-Dependents from Co-Dependents Anonymous.  Read through the list and see if any of the patterns remind you of common patterns you recognize in congregational behavior.  It’s not very scientific, I admit, but my observations from being intimately connected to four UU congregations (one as a member and three as a minister) is that of these four congregations, the one that exhibited the fewest of these characteristics was the UU Christian congregation.

We do a lot of relational gymnastics because of this codependency.  When there is a major conflict in our congregations, we are extremely hesitant to name the aversion addiction.  We skirt around differences of religious language and perspective, especially if the addicts are major donors or hold positions of power or leadership in the congregation.  After all, consider a family system in which you need to confront a parent with their alcoholism.  We send leaders to workshops on family systems, we hire consultants from the Alban Institute and study congregational dynamics and all kinds of leadership theories.  None of it amounts to much in terms of Unitarian Universalism growing into a vital spiritual presence in America. Our congregations continue to shrink, people who grow up UU leave and join Christian churches or Buddhist sanghas, we continue to suffer from lack of financial support and lack of sustaining mission and vision.  Revival will depend on becoming missional, but we can’t be missional while being codependent.

I am not arguing for a return to a liberal Christian only Unitarian Universalism, but I do believe we need to insist on naming the aversion addiction.  If someone needs to be a community where there is never any mention of God, no one ever prays and religion itself is thought to be for lesser people, let’s be honest and tell them they don’t belong in our congregations.

When ministers confront the addicts and the addictions, they should be supported by their colleagues, district and national staff and policy.  Our polity get in the way of doing this and is another piece of our codependency.  Often, addicts are in positions of leadership and by standing up for Christian or things associated with Christianity or spiritual or religious expressions, the clergy become targets of addicts, made to be the scapegoats of systemic dysfunction which is in reality an addiction and not the addiction of the minister.  The ministers, however, often contribute to the codependency for many reasons, not the least of which is they need to keep their source of income.

This exploration has generated a lot of conversation so far and I look forward to more.

This week I am reading the book Addiction and Grace by Gerald G. May for my training course in spiritual direction.  A new concept for me in reading this book is aversion addiction.  I had never before considered something like anorexia nervosa an addiction.  It is an aversion addiction to food.  Like most people, as May points out, I am familiar with attraction addictions, where one is compulsively drawn to have or possess or do or engage in something.  Aversion addiction is when we are compulsive in our repulsion or rejection of things. May says “We often call these repulsions by other names: phobias, prejudices, bigotries, resistances, or allergies.”  He describes aversion addiction as a mirror image of addictions that most of us are familiar with:

“Instead of tolerance, where we can’t get enough of a thing, we experience intolerance, where no matter how little of a thing we have it is still too much.”

Reading May’s work on addiction forced me to grapple (again) with my (attraction) addictions: food, the internet and social networking, and the need to be accepted (among others).  It also  helped me to understand, as a UU Christian, why some Unitarian Universalists have such a hard time with Christianity.  It is an aversion addiction.  There are plenty of people in our congregations who, no matter how little Jesus is mentioned, the word God is used or the Bible referenced, it is too much.  There seems to be little or no understanding that all Christianity is not biblical fundamentalism and there are ways to freely follow Jesus down a largely non-dogmatic road and see what his spiritual teachings say about how we should live.  There is no good news at all here, no grace, only bad news.

I have heard this tendency referred to as anti-Christian bigotry and prejudice. I myself have referred to it as an allergy and resistance.  I have never thought of it as an addiction before. Until now.  As I initially began to make this connection, I thought it might be too severe, but I have encountered too many intelligent, well meaning, good hearted people in the congregations I have served who, no matter how many times or in what manner, sane, reasonable, and especially non supernatural Christianity was presented in the congregation, were repulsed.

It is absolutely fine to not be Christian, even a UU Christian.  I do not need everyone, or every UU to freely follow Jesus with me.  I certainly want to give others their spiritual space.   Religious and spiritual freedom is essential, but it is also essential to grant it to others, especially to others with whom we share community.

“The destructiveness of addiction lies in our slavery to these things, turning desire into compulsion, with ugly and loveless consequences.”

When the aversion addiction of rejecting any and all things Christian enters our communities, it takes the desire not to be dominated or hurt any more by Christianity and turns it into a compulsion to never hear, see, or speak of anything related to Christianity.  Like many addictions, I begin to wonder if the addicts even know they are addicted.

The aversion addiction related to being repulsed by Christianity inhibits grace, forgiveness and love from operating in our communities.  May says that “our addictions can lead us to a deep appreciation of grace. They can bring us to our knees.”   I think that this aversion to Christianity has brought the UU community to its knees.  It has inhibited us from joining the larger conversation in the American Protestant Church, a church writ-large began by our own ancestors in the faith. It has created a stumbling block for us in becoming a missional people because mission is not just engaging in social justice, but grounding the community in a  saving message built on a deep theological foundation, so as the Rev. Tom Schade noted in this blog post (and as the missional church community would agree) we become evangelical as well as missional.  Thus, this addiction stops us from spreading not only the good news, but our good news and the way we practice religion -if we can control our addictions – is truly a world transforming message.

“I live a life infused by the bondage of addiction and the hope of grace; I think we all live such lives.”

Technically speaking, Sunday is not the Sabbath.  The Sabbath is a Jewish observance marked by, among other things, resting from one’s labor on the last day of the week, from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday.

Many practices of the Jewish observance carry over to the celebration of the Lord’s Day, Sunday, the day of observing resurrection, including resting from one’s labor, community worship, time with family, sharing meals with family and friends, and taking time out to just be instead of continuing the constant pursuit of doing things.

As this new year begins on a Sunday, I’d like to share another idea from Judaism that I hope  to carry with me through this year and beyond.  It is called Neshemah Yeterah.  It means having an extra or second soul for the Sabbath.  What a great idea.

Jews believe that on the Sabbath we are given an extra soul-the Neshemah Yeterah, or Sabbath soul-which enables us to more fully appreciate and enjoy the blessings of our life and the fruits of our labors. With this extra soul, like God on the Sabbath we, too, are more  able to pause, and see how it is good.  – Wayne Muller, Sabbath: Restoring the Sacred Rhythm of Rest

I have never been in the habit of making New Year’s resolutions. However, as I enter this year I do want to be more conscious to take my Sabbath Soul with me into the week more often so that I am better able to savor things I have been given and the blessings that are before me. Especially when caught up in the darknesses of self-doubt, anxiety, and depression I hope to bring my second soul with me to remind me to rest and look for where it is good.

May your second soul walk more often with you this year, its presence constantly whispering in your ear, “It’s gonna be O.K., holy one.”

A New Year’s Wish for My Church

This year I want my denomination, Unitarian Universalism, to act more like Portlandia and less like some of the characters satirized on Portlandia.  I realized this while reading the recent issue of the New Yorker.  Margaret Talbot reviews the first season of the show and looks forward to the second by looking at some of her favorite and some of the show’s signature sketches.

I love Portlandia.  It’s got a sense of humor.  It’s intimately in touch with American culture and the American landscape post baby-boom, post-1960′s and post Viet-Nam.  It incorporates contemporary music.  And yet, you know it also values much of the things it ‘t  lampoons.  The show itself doesn’t think itself so important or its subject matter so sacrosanct that it ioses perspective.

This isn’t to say I want church to be a joke, a comedy.  Far from it.  Let’ at the sketch of the foodies in the restaurant.  The foodies not only want to eat local and organic, but they want to make sure the free range

I resigned from the church I had been serving for the last three years in early November.  There was no scandal, I didn’t molest anyone, I didn’t steal any money, and I wasn’t cheating on my wife with a member of the congregation.  I left a congregation because I have a deep sense of mission grounded in Universalist Christian theology and the congregation did not.   I am getting used to the idea of trying to find employment at Kroger or Tom Thumb and thinking of myself as a church planter and freelance theologian.

Recent events, however, left me unassigned at Christmas.  This has been the first Christmas season in a half-dozen years in which I have not had any responsibilities for making sure a congregation has its celebrations and pastoral care.  I didn’t have to schedule or organize a Christmas pageant. I didn’t have to plan a Christmas Eve service or figure out the scheduling with Christmas Day being on a Sunday.  I didn’t have to organize or attend multiple holiday parties in the congregation nor did I have to make sure volunteers or staff received holiday cards/gifts/bonuses.

I did give a homily at a Christmas service for the local Occupy site in Fort Worth, but for the first time since I have been holding regular worship opportunities there, another local pastor and church helped out with the service and basically organized the entire service, including music and I just had to give the homily.

As Christmas approached I felt out of place and Christmas proceeding without me doing what I do kind of reinforced a lot of the things I’ve been working through: betrayal, failure, isolation, and then…then…I began to check things off my to do list such as finishing up papers to write, publications to edit, classwork to turn in, graduate school and job applications to submit and I began to hibernate a little (you’ll note a span of a couple weeks between posts) and to celebrate Advent.

Then  my mom arrived to spend Christmas with our family.  I was treated to a grace too often left out of a pastor’s life: time to just be with one’s family with no agenda and nothing do but enjoy each other’s company.  And so we did.  We enjoyed the gift of each other.  I cooked some of the traditional Portuguese foods my mom likes and we took her out for regional treats such as bar-b-que and fried pies and a local restaurant that was featured on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.

And yes, we had the bread pudding…

We went for walks and for drives to see holiday light displays.  The best was at the Texas Motor Speedway and included this guy from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer:

We watched Christmas movies on TV, DVD and Netflix.  I took her to church (one I’ve been attending, not serving) and to the Dallas area New England Patriots Game Watching Group to watch the  Pats beat up on the Broncos with the regular group of ex-patriot New Englanders.   We shared a lot of hugs and a lot of smiles.

We took video of my mom telling her stories so she’ll be around to tell them in days of Christmas future even when she isn’t here to tell them.  This is what grace looks like.  This is what it feels like to be lucky enough to remember each day is a gift while your living it.

I spent a lot of prayer time in deep reminiscence about Christmas pasts when I was child.  I could reach out and touch the memories playing before my eyes.  Hanging Christmas ornaments on the tree, sitting on a ratty old couch and drinking hot chocolate while watching the Patriots play the Colts in the snow while Christmas carols played on the stereo.  So many Christmases spent driving down to the New Bedford area or to Wethersfield, CT reading a new book just unwrapped that morning.

Christmas Eve we went to Church together, to a liberal Christian church for services.  It was nice. There no arguing over language or hymns or why we were celebrating Christmas. We left the house an hour before the service – together.   We took our sweet time getting home and stayed up late watching movies.  I was the first in the house to awake Christmas morning at 8:30 a.m. – on a Sunday.  We took our sweet time exchanging a few gifts and then I made malasadas.

We ate dinner together at about 2 p.m.  No one left the house the entire day. We didn’t need to travel as family had come to us and we didn’t need to plan the day around church.

Christmas ministered to me this year, during a time I needed it.  It gave me all it had to give – a time with family, a time with love, a time with God.  Christmas is, after all, a celebration of incarnation – that God become human, that not only a baby in Bethlehem, but every baby born is a vehicle of grace, a way to make love known in the world.  Sometimes this love is as close as our moms and dads and spouses and partners and sons and daughters and friends.  Sometimes we just have to stop long enough to be able to see it and feel it and let it catch us – to revel in it, to celebrate it and let ourselves be loved.

Mom’s going home tomorrow and I have no idea what the coming year will bring, but I hope I remember the lessons of this Christmas for a long, long time.

 

There are hundreds of book out there on missional church and missional theology, but I recommend that Unitarian Universalists start here, with these three.  The first is a theology of risk, the second is philosophy for action, and third is, more than anything, a geography – a map in the lonely terrain of doing things differently.  After these, explore the catalog of books by Alan Hirsch, Brian McLaren, Reggie McNeal, Michael Slaughter, and others.

Unitarian Universalism was born of two theological movements that once pushed the boundaries of liberal Christian theology.  I’d argue now that it has become a mainstream, even conservative movement by many church standards. It is not Biblically fundamentalist, but as a religious movement it has opted for the comfort and security of the status quo and the beauraucracy of hierarchy rather than continue to live on the edge of American theological and religious life.   There is no liberal theology of risk, courage and adventure.    That’s why I would start with Frost and Hirsch.

1. The Faith of Leap: Embracing a Theology of Risk, Adventure and Courage by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch

Frost and Hirsch are recognized voices in the Evangelical Christian missional world.  Don’t stop reading here. Tuning out after reading that is part of our UU problem, equating anything or everything Christian and/or Evangelical with bad, wrong and useless.  Folks with a non-Christian spirituality will have to translate some of this, but that’s fine.  This is an important work.  In order for the church to be missional, the author’s argue, we need to develop or rather recapture (as this was the way of the earliest Christian communities) a theology of risk. We need to be willing to live in liminal places, having faith that the combined wisdom, gifts and problem solving skills of the community pursuing its mission will be enough to handle whatever adventures the community encounters.  Notice the lack of the use of words such as “problems” or “issues.” A community on mission together is an adventurous community, it sees failure as part of its life together and its way forward.

Unitarian Universalists have become part of the larger church culture that is extraordinarily risk averse.  I would venture to say that 99% of all church best practices, including all the study of family systems theory, adaptive leadership, stewardship and the like is all done to manage risk and minimize the stress, loss and change associated with risk taking.

We have no theology of risk.  It’s also one of the reasons we have so much trouble becoming more racially diverse. Communities of color by necessity and history have a theology and an identity that knows and must incorporate risk.  We have constructed only theologies of safety and risk management.

“Let’s stop kidding ourselves – there are too many instances of [Unitarian Universalists] worshipping sublimely every Sunday, but never making an impact beyond the congregation, never experiencing the powerful beauty of communitas, and never going deeper in discipleship. We think this is precisely because the catalyzing experience of missional adventure and risk are removed from the equation.”

There are at least a couple of dozen folks gathering via the Internet, on Tweet Chats and through the Red Pill Bretheren that are being called Risk Faithers.  These Unitarian Universalists are lay and clergy and embrace theological movements coming out of the evangelical Christian world such as emergent church, new monanstic movement, missional church and what they have in common above all else is their willingness to put aside institutional maintenance in the service of mission, vision, and passion for the ministry that gives them life and brings life to the communities in which they live.

2. The Answer to How is Yes: Acting on What Matters by Peter Block

Giving up on the church life of institutional maintenance in an effort to pursue calling, vision and purpose beyond the church building’s walls is an approach to ministry (and to life) that will meet with more than its share of disapproval, discouragement, and downright blocks in the road.   The question “How?” and all of its related questions, according to Block, are questions that seek to avoid meaning, mission and purpose and to avoid taking action.

 

“There is depth in the question “How do I do this?” that is worth exploring. The question is a defense against action. It is a leap past the question of purpose, past the question of intentions, and past the drama of responsibility. The question, “How?” – more than any other question – looks for the answer outside of us. It is an indirect expression of our doubts.”

“Too often when a discussion is dominated by questions of “How?” we risk overvaluing what is practical and doable and postpone the questions of larger purpose and collective well being. With the question “How?” we risk aspiring to goals that are defined for us by the culture and by our institutions, at the expense of pursuing purposes and intentions that arise from within ourselves.”

You can’t substitute mission statements for mission or fall into the trap that thinking having values or principles is the same thing as having a mission or a theology.

“I have never heard a human value that I didn’t like. As with the models of organizational effectiveness, when people argue about ‘values’ it is a guise for seeking control, for imposing their beliefs upon others.”

Virtually all the work and ministry I have done in Unitarian Universalist congregations has been “How?” work and “How?” ministry.   Block’s work is a must for those wanting, even needing to get past the talk on why and how to be missional and get into doing it.  It’s not a church book, but it’s really all about a lot of what gets in the way of being missional. Including blog posts like this one.

3.  Walk Out Walk On: A Learning Journey into Communities Daring to Live the Future Now by Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze

Wheatley and Frieze give us an important work (see their website too) because UU Risk Faithers are “Walk Outs.” Walk Outs learn quickly, take greater risks, and support one another in pioneering work. New Systems are born from their efforts. They find each other and connect. Frequently they give hospice care to the old system while giving birth to the new system.

Those UU’s drawn to missional church and living soon learn that the Unitarian Universalist Association has nothing – no money, no support, and no knowledge base for things such as church planting, missional communities or new monastic communities.  Even finding mentors in these areas are scarce.  A new network is coming together, largely composed of people who have made a bold or tentative decision to step out on their own, unsure if there are others out there, daring to speak the truth that the church at both the congregational and denominational level is more interested in institutional maintenance than in transforming the lives of anyone, inside or outside of the church.

If you’re a UU and you feel a deep calling to serve the world around you because of your faith, then you are effectively, by making that decision, walking out on the traditional expression of Unitarian Universalism and walking on into a liminal future.

There good news is, just as Wheatley and Frieze find other translocal communities who have set up alternative governmental, agricultural and educational systems, there are those of us out here setting up alternative liberal faith communities.  A translocal liberal faith network is in its infancy, but it is an exciting venture.

Join us for the conversation on January 5 at 8 pm Central Time at #uuriskfaithers.