There is a standard online form that congregations use to advertise for ministers, and on that form there is this question: Does the congregation have a mission -- not a mission statement, but a glowing coal at its center -- and if so, what is it? This 'glowing coal' question is probably the most important question ministers examine, when they consider a congregation.
How did UUYo answer? Your answer was two parts. The first part was "we are determined to maintain a liberal religious presence in the Mahoning Valley and will do all within our power to keep it here." That makes sense, check, and I know that many UU churches have the same aspiration.
The second part was what caught my eye. It read: "Second, we are committed to social justice and are working with other groups in our town to bring about change as quickly as possible."
As I looked over the materials, and began to understand the congregation, I came to see that this is true. Most significantly, you have chosen to remain in this location on the north side, in what many would call the 'inner city'. That has meant tradeoffs: worries about maintaining this building, concerns that some potential members may stay away out of fear of this part of town.
Also, I've come to see that the congregation is involved in many social justice activities currently, plus it has a long history of other causes. Let me list a few.
- The congregation was instrumental in forming the 'Alliance for Congregational Transformation Influencing Our Neighborhoods' better known as ACTION, which was involved in early anti-corruption work, and continues working on crime, health, and economic issues.
- The congregation was also instrumental in founding the local Montessori school, and before that, we housed a Head Start program here.
- Members of the congregation founded a food coop, the Good Karma Food Coop, which operated for many years. More recently, the congregation founded the Northside Farmers Market.
- We've been involved in supporting GLBTQ rights, and housed the PRIDE center here for many years. We continue to serve gay and lesbian youth and their allies with our Cocha Mocha group that meets here monthly.
- We have put our environmental consciousness into action through the Grey to Green Festival and Trees Pleeze and the Mahoning River Consortium.
- Universal Café and In Praise of the Arts are two other areas where we've explored art and education for the community.
It's amazing! For a small congregation, there is huge energy around social change. It is gratifying to be part of this, and to see lives changed by such efforts.
It's especially good to see so much energy going in so many different areas. I tell my minister friends that the opportunity for ministry in Youngstown is enormous. As social activist Dorothy Day said, "No one has the right to sit down and feel helpless, there's too much work to do."
But I want to point out a danger. All too often, the social justice work moves to the periphery of the congregation. It can become individual activities by individual people, and it can gradually become more and more disconnected from the church.
I remember attending the social action committee meetings of a large and successful church, and dreading these meetings. The meetings were essentially a 'go around' where everyone there talked about their own personal projects. Each one spoke more stridently than the next, trying to get others to admit that the speaker's project deserved more attention and time, and possibly more of the committee's miniscule budget. Nobody outside of the social justice crew wanted to be involved with this committee's activities! It was too painful to be loaded up with so much guilt.
Reverend Dick Gilbert is known in our movement for his work in social justice. His book, The Prophetic Imperative, is almost a Unitarian Universalist textbook on social justice; I know some in our social justice committee have studied it. Gilbert suggests that four pillars support the liberal church.
The first pillar is worship.[1] Gilbert reminds us that the word worship derives from the Anglo-Saxon word weorthscipe, which means "pointing to and celebrating that which is of worth."[2] He reminds us that worship is much more than simply what happens here in the sanctuary, it can also "include informal experiences by which transcendent values break through the ordinary and move us to reconstruct our experiences, raising up symbols of our loftiest goals."[3] Here at UUYo, we work, as part of our shared ministry, with Worship Associates and the Worship Team to craft and create good worship.
The second pillar is education. Here we include both education of our children and our adults, unifying these to create a lifelong learning experience. Religious education doesn't just happen in classrooms, but it happens throughout the entire church, all the time. I'm excited about our emerging Religious Education Team that will guide how we educate our children and youth.
The third pillar is a caring community. Gilbert sees this going beyond just pastoral care for the suffering, to the ordinary everyday relationship between us all. Gilbert tells us, "the caring community … is based on person-to-person, face-to-face, I-thou relationships."[4] Our one-on-one conversations that we started last week help us to develop this caring community. Are you still committed to practicing the one-on-ones?
Gilbert relates a story how creating such a caring community is important in social justice work. He describes a situation where his church voted 156 to 1 to support a particular social justice resolution. He wrote this in his newsletter column:
Note to a minority of one: congregational democracy can be a difficult process. … It takes courage to vote one's convictions when it is clear one is going to be a small minority. Yet it is crucial to the process that this voice be heard. The minority, even of one, reminds the majority that conscience counts for something in liberal religion…The voice keeps the majority from becoming arrogant and self-righteous. We needed that vote for the good of us all.[5]Gilbert cared for the one, even when he didn't agree with the position.
The fourth pillar is the community of moral discourse and action. This is the pillar of social action. While Gilbert reminds us that moral discourse happens everywhere in the church, he warns us: "Social action is not the central function of the church. It is a vital function, but it must emerge out of a religious community that serves well the functions of worship, caring and education. Social action is a necessary but not sufficient dimension for a Unitarian Universalist church."[6]
So, when a church has many members who are avidly focused on social justice concerns, how can it be that this pillar of social justice withers away and the work of social justice becomes so peripheral to the church? It's a paradox.
When I think back on those large church Social Action Committee meetings, I wonder if an answer to that paradox was that the members were so committed to their causes that they were unable to engage in the other pillars of the church. They focused on their own projects and passions, pushing them onto the church, rather then inviting a project to emerge out of the church.
I will say that my story has a happy ending. That large church did some serious work around changing the nature of its social justice program. There were false starts and conflict. But the church has made social justice work much more central to its lived mission than it was before.
Way back in September, during our Startup Workshop, the idea of an All-Church Social Justice Project emerged. I do not recall who suggested that, but I do know that I was an enthusiastic supporter of the idea, and it became one of the five broad goals that we planned to work on this year. We've had numerous discussions over the course of months in our Social Action Committee (thanks Susie!) and in the Adult Forum about this idea. We're moving forward toward a plan to communally choose and launch such a project, probably in the fall.
It is time to begin to think about what specifically might make a good all church project. What communities might we serve? What needs might we meet? What injustice might we seek to change?
I want to note that I have great passion around the idea of the all church project, and it's promise to make the pillar of social justice more central to the life of the church. At the same time, I don't have strong preference for what we do. Whether we work with food security, or schools, or economic justice, or housing, concerns me less than whether we are able to bring social justice work more to the core of our life here.
How do we choose a good project then? How do we choose one that will strengthen our social justice action? Let me offer a few thoughts.
First, the project should be big enough: something that we do for several years and which anyone in our community may participate. Let me illustrate with a counterexample. A few years ago I participated in a church service trip to post-Katrina New Orleans. It was a wonderful trip, but it would not be a good all-church project. Cost and time commitment limited it a few people. In New Orleans, locals asked us, 'why aren't you devoting your energy to the homeless living close to our own church'? That was a good question that we did not adequately answer.
Ideally the project should allow lots of people to be involved, whatever their level of commitment, whatever their skill level, whatever their age.
Secondly, the project should balance aspects of service, education, and social change. Service can bring us in direct contact with those we are trying to help, and help us understand them in their humanity. I recall well a time when I made coffee and had conversations with people who were homeless in Denver. The experience opened my eyes to the complexity of their lives and to the uniqueness of each person's situation.
Education is essential if we are to make sense of the underlying causes of injustice and oppression so that we might correct them. An example is a Unitarian Universalist Service Committee trip to Guatemala where we learned about US-funded violence and genocide in the 1980's. We were surprised to meet many Christian missionaries traveling on service trips in Guatemala who had no clue that these atrocities had happened.
Third, social change includes bearing witness to injustice, advocating legislative changes, and organizing communities of the oppressed. Social change is essential if we are to actually correct the causes of injustice rather than simply address the symptoms. I'm told that when this church was involved in the early days of ACTION, that group was quite successful in using organizing techniques to address government corruption in the valley.
My sense is that a good project will balance all these aspects of social change. That way, it can energize the talents and passions of a wide variety of people in the congregation.
Finally, a good project should transform us spiritually. I recall the New Orleans trip that I mentioned earlier. We all confronted the reality that while our group was doing good work repairing just one family's house, we could see thousands of other houses abandoned or needing repair. We knew that each house represented a family uprooted and suffering. Our efforts were so miniscule and the magnitude of the need so enormous. We had to find ways to hold that tension, to not be overwhelmed, and to cherish the good we were doing.
So how do we proceed with creating, implementing, executing and evaluating an all-church social justice project? I know that Steve is hard at work on process details. When we start let's keep the poem by Margaret Wheatley[7] in mind:
There is no power greater than a community discovering what it cares about.And as we settle on a project and launch it, let's remember the second part of her poem,
Ask “What’s possible?” not “What’s wrong?” Keep asking.
Notice what you care about.
Assume that many others share your dreams.
Be brave enough to start a conversation that matters.
Talk to people you know.
Talk to people you don’t know.
Talk to people you never talk to.
Be intrigued by the differences you hear.
Expect to be surprised.
Treasure curiosity more than certainty.
Invite in everybody who cares to work on what’s possible.Social justice work is at its core, spiritual work. It is work best done in community. Let us remember, as Reverend Mark Morrison-Reed tells us, "It is the church that assures us that we are not struggling for justice on our own, but as members of a larger community. The religious community is essential, for alone our vision is too narrow to see all that must be seen, and our strength is too limited to do all that must be done. Together our vision widens and our strength is renewed.[8]"
Acknowledge that everyone is an expert about something.
Know that creative solutions come from new connections.
Remember, you don’t fear people whose story you know.
Real listening always brings people closer together.
Trust that meaningful conversations can change your world.
Rely on human goodness. Stay together.
Notes:
1. Richard Gilbert, The Prophetic Imperative, Social Gospel in Theory and Practice, 2000, p. 121.
2. ibid. p. 122.
3. ibid.
4. ibid. p. 123.
5. ibid. p. 124.
6. ibid. p. 126.
7. Margaret Wheatley, Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future, 2009, p. 166
8. Unitarian Universalist Association, Singing the Living Tradition, 1993, #580.
