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Thriving
or Surviving? First Unitarian Church of Des Moines 6/5/05
Reading“Thriving
and Surviving Congregations”
Thriving congregations always have a parking problem. Surviving congregations don’t.
Thriving congregations are constantly changing their methods. Surviving congregations do what they’ve always done.
Thriving congregations have a lot of noisy kids. Surviving congregations are quiet.
Thriving congregations’ expenses always exceed their income. Surviving congregations take in more than they ever dream of spending.
Thriving congregations are constantly improving and planning for the future. Surviving congregations worship the past.
Thriving congregations grow so fast you forget people’s names. Surviving congregations, you’ve known everyone’s names for years.
Thriving congregations move forward and out, in faith. Surviving congregations operate totally by sight.
Thriving congregations support community work heavily. Surviving congregations keep it all at home.
Thriving congregations are filled with healthy pledgers. Surviving congregations are filled with tippers.
Thriving congregations dream great dreams of beloved community. Surviving congregations relive nightmares.
Thriving congregations celebrate differences. Surviving congregations are homogeneous.
Thriving congregations minister to each other. Surviving congregations expect the minister to do it all.
Thriving congregations know church is risky business. Surviving congregations want everything to be predictable.
Thriving congregations spread the word—they evangelize. Surviving congregations keep it all for themselves—they fossilize.
SermonWhat is the difference between thriving and surviving? We heard at least fourteen distinctions between thriving and surviving congregations in the reading this morning. I think the difference primarily boils down to fear. Fear of unpredictability, fear of change, fear of potential chaos, fear of trust in ourselves or each other, fear of making mistakes.
I was watching some highlights of an interview with the Dalia Lama the other night. He was asked about the sacrifices he had made in his life, sacrifices that had irreparably complicated his life, and whether or not he felt they had been worth it. He thought for a moment and then said (paraphrased) “Life is not easy you know, no matter what you do.”
We all end up making choices in our lives, he explained, choices where we cannot know the ultimate consequences for sure, and yet, we have to do the best we can anyway, and by best he meant the choices that are focused on more than just ourselves…the choices that help us to live our life as though it is the means to a greater good.
How do we know when we are living life this way, as though it is a means to a greater good, particularly as a religious community? Can we ever know for sure? I was in a workshop not too long ago, where the facilitator was trying to get us to stop asking so many “how” questions when the question we really needed to ask was “why?”
I think this church must have gone through some of this kind of thinking five or six years ago when the leadership decided to embrace the goal of growth. After realizing that the church had been at a membership plateau of around 250-300 members for at least 30 years, a few leaders began asking the question, “How can we change this pattern? How can we grow?”
In searching for the answer, these leaders had to ask themselves “Why should we grow?”
Some quick and easy answers might have been, --Because we need more money --Because the UUA says we should --Because we are going to be interviewing potential ministers soon and we need to impress them.
But I doubt that there would have been enough gumption to really make the growth a reality if the leaders had been satisfied with quick and easy answers to that question.
I sensed the sincerity of the leadership when I interviewed here in the spring of 2001. I knew that they had asked enough why questions so that they got to the vibrations.
The vibrations? What might I be talking about?
The church consultant who led the workshop I mentioned earlier said that when considering any bold moves as a church, the leaders should ask enough why questions to get to the vibrations.
For example, answering “why do we want to grow?” with “because we want to raise more money” is cold and calculating, and will probably be ineffective.
But if we go in a different direction we may have an entirely different feel to our response and therefore, to the outcome. “Why do we want to grow?” --because we want to have more people in our community” --why? --because more people means more opportunity for transformation. --why? --because the more people we welcome into our church, the greater that likelihood that lives might intersect in meaningful ways, and possibilities might come about that would never have been imagined otherwise, and who knows, the unpredictable combination of people joining us could open up exciting opportunities for our church that would enable us to not only be of service to the greater community but that could lead each of us to more extraordinary experiences of this life we share.
I feel the vibration in that response…and that kind of vibration is what led me to be a minister…that kind of vibration is why I only want to serve a church that is focused on growth…and that kind of vibration is why I chose to come to Des Moines. I believed that this church was serious about wanting to grow. And to me, growth is the point of why we even bother to have a church in the first place. If we aren’t ready and willing to welcome others into the community that we call home, we haven’t created much of a home for ourselves, have we?
Starhawk has a great quote about this need for community. She writes:
“We are all longing to go home to some place we have never been ˜ a place half-remembered and half-envisioned we can only catch glimpses of from time to time. Community. Somewhere, there are people to whom we can speak with passion without having the words catch in our throats. Somewhere a circle of hands will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power. Community means strength that joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done. Arms to hold us when we falter. A circle of healing. A circle of friends. Someplace where we can be free.”
Isn’t that the kind of community we are tying to build? Why wouldn’t we want others to join us in that community?
Of course, we’ve all heard that growth for growth’s sake doesn’t mean a whole lot and I think that is right.
But we know that our growth here at First Unitarian has not been simply for growth’s sake. We are growing because we are opening our hearts as well as our doors. We are growing because we are taking the risk to actually know one another. We are growing because we have been willing to assume that people who join us have something to offer us, something to teach us, something that will not only improve our church community but maybe even our lives…and, in turn, theirs, too.
During my search to find a church, I had the opportunity to meet with search committees from three other churches besides the one from this church. All of them said that their membership wanted to grow. While I believed them, I wasn’t sure they believed themselves. In fact, when one committee asked me during a lengthy interview, how much, on a scale of one to ten, I thought they really wanted to grow, I told them “maybe a five.” They were disappointed, and my honesty may have cost me a job had I needed one in the end. But you know, I visited that church on the web this week and they are the exact same size they were four years ago. I looked up the other two churches and they are within five members of where they were, too.
In case you hadn’t noticed, or haven’t been around enough to notice, First Unitarian Church of Des Moines, by the end of this service, will have added around 110 members in net growth since Jan. 2002. If we’re talking gross numbers, nearly 100 members have signed the book since November of 2003, less than two years ago.
How did this growth happen? Mostly as a product of taking risks, of looking fear in the face and moving forward anyway, of choosing to aim toward thriving rather than just surviving. For example, at a recent board meeting, there was some discussion about how risky it felt a few years back to create a full-time lifespan religious education director position, rather than the part-time position it had been for years. At the time, it seemed like we would never be able to sustain the pledge income that would enable us to pay a full-time salary. But here we are with a talented full-time director, Joan McDonald, who beginning in July will be fairly compensated according to UUA guidelines, as will all the staff at our church, a fact definitely worth celebrating.
I think it must have been quite a risk for this church to not only call a minister right out of seminary, but to put up with him as he suggested programs like “small group ministry” but you trusted me, you worked with me, and now ministry is a word attached to other successful programs in the church as well, and, come on, even those who weren’t fond of the word ministry at first might even be starting to like it.
I think the growth in membership we are enjoying today is also a result of the church learning how to trust itself. In a book titled Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway psychologist Susan Jeffers claims that all we have to do to diminish our fear is to develop more trust in our ability to handle whatever comes our way. She points out that at least 90 percent of what we worry about never happens, so we waste a lot of energy and postpone a lot of important decisions and actions as a result of illusions that ultimately don’t matter.
Somewhere in the last five/six years, the members of this church decided that they wouldn’t be derailed by worry, that they would focus on what was actually happening more than on what might go wrong, that they would place an emphasis on thriving rather than just surviving, and we have all reaped the benefits.
Which brings me to what lies ahead for our thriving church…and there is a lot to be excited about.
First of all, planning for the upcoming capital campaign scheduled for this fall is fully under way. A great mix of long-time and more recent members have been working wonderfully well together for several weeks to put together a campaign that promises to challenge each of us to fully realize our potential as members of a thriving church community that is truly ready to bloom. Next year at this time we may be celebrating the groundbreaking of our soon to be transformed space. As any minister would be, I am delighted to see the dedication and talent already focused on this project and I can’t wait for all of you to hear more about it.
Equally exciting for this fall is that after discussions with the board, the religious services committee, the religious education council, the staff and assorted members who came to an April meeting on the issue, we are going to experiment with switching around our programming times. In an attempt to even out our attendance at our two Sunday services, we will be shifting them to a half-hour earlier, offering Sunday school opportunities for children and (probably) adults during both service times, and adding a third service and religious education opportunity for our children on Saturdays at 4:30.
There are many reasons why we might be anxious as a community about these changes. Some of you have expressed concern that I would be over-burdening myself by preaching on Saturday and Sunday, but I assure you that I am willing to push my writing schedule up so that I will be ready for Saturday service, because I believe that a significant number of people would be well-served by a Saturday service option, people who aren’t normally able to attend on Sunday. Sure, when we roll out this new schedule in September, we may hold the services in Channing Hall, as the attendance might be on the light side at first. But I expect we will grow this service over time to be just as viable as our Sunday services.
There has also been some unease about how the Sunday forum meetings may be impacted by these changes. Concerned members have already been meeting and are proposing different alternatives to help make forum more viable and attractive to members. The forum might end up at 9am or it might be better at 10:30. We’ll keep you posted and offer an invitation to anyone who has an interest in being on a forum planning committee to get involved by letting Joan McDonald know.
Perhaps the biggest fear around the programming changes is related to recruiting the volunteers needed to fill all the slots required to maintain religious education programming for children and youth during three different weekly services. I admit, this is a concern for me, too. After all, our members and friends are busy people with enough commitments in their lives. But the staff, RE council and I have determined that it is worth trying. We have faith that once we offer three options to attend church programming, our members and friends (whether they have family in the Sunday school or not) will be more willing to do their part to nurture our religious education offerings. After all, those who have helped with classes for our children and youth know the gift it is to be nurturing the next generation of UUs. It’s time for others to be encouraged to share in the experience. Time will tell how all this will unfold and nothing is set in stone. If we don’t get enough people willing to help out, we will need to rethink what we are doing, even if it means eliminating some classes during some service times. No matter what happens, the outcome will not be decided by our fear, but by our trust to handle any challenge we might face through our flexibility, our creativity and our willingness to keep our community thriving for all ages.
I propose that we need to have a church-wide effort to fill these slots. If you have already signed up for a slot, try to recruit someone to join you, especially someone who hasn’t yet signed up. We need everyone to participate and to nudge someone else along too, especially those who know how much fun working with our children and youth can be. You never know, someone may simply be waiting for the right encouragement, the right invitation. Let’s embrace our religious education programming and make it a real showpiece of our church community by doing our part.
After all, our membership growth will only continue if we keep increasing the entry points by which people can participate. Religious education programming is one of the most important entry points we can offer.
One more exciting thing brewing in our church these days is that we are in the midst of a promising effort to reform how we do social action within the church and as a church. Toward this end, several of us have been meeting to improve how we communicate to our membership and the larger community the things we are already doing, as well as to consider how we might approach more corporate social action as a church. Now we all know that there are limits to what a community of “free thinkers” can accomplish together and that it is dangerous to try to propose a common social action theme or goal everyone will agree with. But here’s something to consider. Democracy doesn’t mean we have to all agree. And very little worthwhile was ever accomplished without some dissent. Here we are back to fear again. In this case, fear of tension. But, tension is good…it reminds us that we are alive and that there are some things worth being tense about. I like what holocaust survivor Victor Franklsaid:
“What [we] actually…[need] is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of [us]. What [we] need is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled….”
The call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled.
It is this call that enables us to make the choices, to take the risks, to overcome the tension that leads our church to do more than just survive…but to be the thriving community that “…joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done…[that offers] arms to hold us when we falter…A circle of healing…A circle of friends.”
We hold our future as a thriving church in our hands. We always have and we always will.
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