Making Meaning…Making Coffee

Rev. Mark Stringer

First Unitarian Church of Des Moines

3/02/03

 

 

When people discover that I am a minister, they often want to tell me their views on religion.  If they don’t already attend a church, they usually say something along the lines of “I’m a very spiritual person…I’m just not into organized religion.”

 

I hear this comment so much, that I figured I’d better work up some responses.  I’d like to try a few out this morning. I’m going to need your help.  Whenever I hold up this cue card, please read it together [card reads:  “I’m a very spiritual person…I’m just not into organized religion.”] Then I will offer one of my responses.

 

I’m a very spiritual person…I’m just not into organized religion.

Oh…so you prefer disorganized religion.

 

I’m a very spiritual person…I’m just not into organized religion.

Me too.  You should see my office!

 

I’m a very spiritual person…I’m just not into organized religion.

Yeah…it’s hard to be spiritual and have to deal with other people.

 

I’m a very spiritual person…I’m just not into organized religion.

Great…you should visit the church I serve.  Some would say that we’re not into organized religion either. 

 

I’m a very spiritual person…I’m just not into organized religion.

Tell me more about your impression of “organized religion.” Chances are good I’m not into it either.

 

I’m a very spiritual person…I’m just not into organized religion.

What…did they ask you to make coffee or something?

 

That last response was inspired by something I heard my neighbor say.  No…not the neighbor who runs the leaf-blower before sunrise.  A neighbor further down the block…a friendly fellow I have briefly chatted with a few times since Susan and I moved to Des Moines a while back.   I’ll call him Scott.  At our neighborhood street picnic on a pleasant evening last June, I was standing in a circle with Scott and two other men…all of whom know I am a minister…all of whom confessed to me that night that they do not regularly attend any church.  I expected these confessions and did my best to be pastoral, nodding without emotion as they each shared their version of [hold up sign] “I’m spiritual…I’m just not into organized religion.”  Sure I could have offered them one of my tart responses, but contrary to what you might have been led to believe by some of my past sermons, I actually do want to get along with my neighbors.

 

Then Scott shared a story with us of his most recent experience in a church.  He said that, not too long ago, he had attended a Friends Meeting House for a couple of months.  He confessed that he had really enjoyed the quiet Quaker worship and the fellowship.  His voice trailed off…and he kind of chuckled.

 

“What happened?” I asked.

 

He held my gaze and said, “They asked me to make coffee.”

 

There was a brief period of silence as his words hung in the air.  “They asked you to make coffee, huh?” I said, wondering to myself what evil coffee dungeon they must have tried to send him to.

 

“Yeah,” he continued, “I just couldn’t see going any more once I knew they expected me to make coffee.”

 

Assuming that Scott had been pressured to head up the Sunday coffee committee or to serve on an inordinate number of Sundays, I gently prodded, “Well, how often did they want you to make coffee?”

 

“Oh…about once every 3 or 4 months,” he said shaking his head.

 

I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.  All I could think of to say was “…Wow.”

 

Chances were good that in the time Scott had been attending that Friends Meeting House, he had enjoyed coffee…coffee that someone else had made.  Chances were good that the time it would take for him to fulfill this request…this request to make coffee a couple of times a year…would have amounted to less time than it would take to watch a movie…or workout a few times at the Y…or even to attend a street picnic. After all, it’s not like he had been asked to travel to Central America and handpick the coffee beans.

 

But Scott’s reluctance to make coffee probably had little to do with the time it would take to do the job.  His reluctance was probably rooted in the fear…fear that if he accepted responsibility for this small part of the life of that church, he might cross a line into a place of no return.  Most of us have been there, right?  We want to be a part of a community…preferably a healthy community filled with interesting, friendly, generous people and lots of programs and opportunities for us to learn and grow and enjoy ourselves when we are there…but we are afraid because we don’t want to add to our burdens.  We don’t want to end up doing all the work.  We don’t want to give the impression that we have time to give…because, well, we don’t.  We just don’t.   

 

I’ll bet when Scott was asked to serve coffee he was feeling some of this tension and it was too much to bear. Maybe he already had too much to do in the rest of his life. Maybe he had been burned before in other churches…been asked to do too much, too soon, with little acknowledgment or gratitude shown.   The question had been, “Will you make coffee?” but maybe Scott heard in this simple request a bevy of other expectations: “Will you come early and stay late to every meeting the church will ever have?  Will you teach Sunday school and staff the nursery and serve on the board?  Will you mop the floors and wash the walls…and, while you’re at it, would you give us ten percent of your income, cash please?” Maybe he only wanted to attend church like one would attend a concert or stage play, and the request to make coffee was a little too much “audience participation” for his taste.  

 

I understand.  I really do.  After all, when I first started attending a UU church, I didn’t feel the need to get involved right away.  In fact, I’m not sure I would be where I am today if I had not been given the space to enter that church at my own pace. For the first few months, I just went to Sunday services, sat by myself, and then went home.  And I was happy…for a while. 

 

Eventually, though, I came to see that being a part of a religious community was more than just showing up on Sunday and throwing an occasional buck or two in the collection plate. Sunday morning was simply an entry point into something more…something unwieldy and unpredictable and unbelievably rich…something that, if I let it, would challenge me and teach me and open me to people and ideas and realities and possibilities of this life that I had so often missed before.

 

I started teaching fifth and sixth graders in the church RE program and realized the lessons they had to offer me were no less important than anything that would be said in the Sunday service.  I started attending church programs, taking classes, and participating at social events, which enabled me to interact with people I otherwise would not have known, hearing their stories and sharing some of mine.  I helped with some of the social action projects of the church, like the homeless shelter, and found my heart opened by the realization of all I had to give.  And eventually I served on a committee or two, learning about the inner workings of a volunteer-run, not-for-profit organization with big dreams and what seemed like always-limited resources.

 

By giving myself to these various church programs and opportunities for service, I learned that the church was not just a Sunday morning event; it was a lifespan religious education experience custom-made to teach us how to say “yes” to our lives…not just our individual lives, but our collective lives.  A healthy church, then, teaches us how to make commitments to our community so that we can help build that same community.

 

And it is the building of this community that adds meaning to my life and to the lives of many of you who have gathered here today.  It is the building of this community that helps us define and live by our religious identities and values. It is the building of this community that enables it to be there for us when we need it, when we are hurting or joyful, looking for comfort or companionship. It is the building of this community that enables people to feel welcomed, to take the risk to walk with us and find a home with us…people like the 15 new members we have welcomed today. It is the building of this community that helps us learn how to be generous with our spirit and our time and our money.  It is the building of this community that helps us replace the mantra  “I can take care of myself” with the more active and meaning-filled mission “We can and will take care of each other.” 

 

How do we build this community?  We build this community each time we come to church. We build this community each time we learn another member’s name and warmly greet them when we see them. We build this community each time we take or teach a class, or join a small group ministry group, or sing in the choir, or attend a committee meeting, or tend to the care of the building or grounds.   We build this community each time we proudly tell our friends and families that we are Unitarian Universalists.  And we build this community each time we make and pay our pledges, contributing to the general operating fund of the church to insure that it continues to stay strong.

 

As Doug mentioned earlier, this morning we are kicking off the annual pledge drive, a time of year when members and friends are asked to consider the importance of this religious community to their lives and to offer a commitment of financial support for the coming year. Each of us is encouraged to make a pledge equal to 2-5 percent of our annual income, however we choose to define it.  It’s really up to each individual.  In the end, though, what any of us gives should be representative of the intersection of our commitment and our financial resources. 

 

The interesting thing about this approach to giving, though, is that one’s commitment can only grow by making a stronger commitment.  Think about your own participation in the church over the time you have been here.  When was your commitment the strongest?  Probably when you were the most involved, when you knew the most people, when you began to see the people in the church not as a “they” (as in “they” wanted me to make coffee, or “they” are always asking for money) but as a “we” (as in “we” want to make improvements to our building, or “we” want to be more active as a church).  Your commitment grew stronger when you began to see the goals of this church as part of your own goals. 

 

We all want to be a part of a strong, meaningful and meaning-filled community, don’t we? We all want to be a part of a community that shares its wealth with others, that is healthy and welcoming and well-staffed and exciting and fun, with clean, warm, well-lit spaces.  When we talk to others about our church we want to feel pride about who we are and what we offer.  We want to see to it that the people who will walk with us in the days to come, those people who will find here a common ground and a message of hope unlike what they may have found elsewhere, will know that we support this church…we support it with our time and our spirit…and our money.

 

Two years ago, when I was in the ministerial search process that eventually landed me in Des Moines, I had a series of interviews with several churches.  One search committee asked me during their interview, “Considering that most Unitarian Universalists don’t believe in hell, how would you encourage us to increase our pledges at canvass time?”

 

Again, I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. To assume that people will only give to a church when they are threatened with eternal damnation (or something similar) is horribly pessimistic.  Even worse, it implies that the motivation for giving is that we will get (or avoid) something in return.  What I’m trying to remind us all today is that giving is not the means to the reward, giving is the reward. For what kind of life is it, if we don’t give back to others?  What kind of community would we really want to be a part of that didn’t ask something of us now and then? What kind of treasure do we have if we don’t contribute anything to it or share it with others?  Or in other words, how can we enjoy the coffee if we aren’t willing to make it once in a while?

 

So, in the next few weeks, when you have your opportunity to offer a pledge of support to this church, I encourage you:  please don’t give until it hurts.  Give until it feels good.  Then not only will the church benefit from your generosity.  You will too.