“Envisioning Our Future” by Rev. Wendy L. Bell – January 12, 2020

It’s hard to believe that we are almost a quarter of the way through this two-year interim period. I have thoroughly enjoyed beginning to get to know you, and hearing some of your stories. And I thank you for welcoming me in and sharing with me some of your concerns and some of your hopes.

When people ask me what interim ministry is about, I sometimes say that it is about journeying with a congregation as, together, we look back, look around, and look ahead. This morning I invite you to look ahead and begin to envision your future. As the wise visitor in our story said to the king, “Change requires work. But one must first see before doing.”

Vision is an important factor in the health of any organization. While mission is about what we do and for whom, and covenant is about how we promise to be together, vision is about who or what we want to become.

Generally speaking, it is always good to have shared assumptions and clarity about these things. That information can help you decide how to spend your time, your energy, and your financial resources. It can energize a congregation, and help draw people to you. It’s exciting to be part of a congregation that knows where it’s going and what it collectively aims to become.

It is especially important to think about vision in the interim time, not only in terms of where you want to go and who you want to be, but also in terms of what kind of a minister will help you to get there. What skills, what qualities, what training ought a minister to have if he, she, or they are to be a good fit for both who you are and who you wish to be?

Once you have chosen your Search Committee – ideally before the end of this church year – it will begin its work in earnest. And you will have opportunities to convey to the members of that committee, through survey and small group meetings, what you think is important for them to know so that they can represent you well as they search for your next minister.

Today is simply an invitation and an opportunity to begin to think and talk about your vision…not to create an end product, but to begin to discern together through individual reflection and sharing. If I had a magic spyglass among my interim tools, I could spare you this piece of work, but, alas! I do not. So this is yours to do. But I will try to help.

So this morning, I want to offer you a chance to begin to reflect on two related areas: your vision for the congregation and your vision of the minister who will become part of its ongoing journey.

And because I want you to stay after the service, if you can, to talk more with me and with each other, and to begin to share your ideas, your visions, please feel free to take notes on your thoughts as I talk.

If you are a newcomer or first-time visitor, you may be thinking, whoa, this is a weird morning to be here. But think of it, if you can, as an opportunity for you, too, to imagine the church of your dreams. And know that you are also welcome to be part of the conversation after the service.

I want to start with a kind of guided meditation to help you begin to imagine and envision.

And so, I invite you to make yourselves comfortable. Put both feet on the floor, if that feels best. Shut your eyes, if you’re willing. Relax. Take a deep breath…

Now imagine yourself in your own home, in your own bed, waking up on a Sunday morning…It is a beautiful day, the sky is clear and deep blue… You get up, you stretch, you go to open a window and breathe the fresh, cool air…

It is Sunday and it is five years in the future. You are in the best future you can imagine for your congregation. You smile, because you look forward to being with your community this morning. You get a bite to eat, a cup of coffee or tea, aromatic and awakening. You get dressed. And then you leave your house. If you have a family, imagine them with you, happy, talking, excited, and ready to go…

Are you driving or walking – taking the bus or riding your bike? Either way, you are traveling along a familiar path to church, relishing the day, noticing how beautiful it is… What do you see? What colors are the flowers, the leaves?

You arrive at church. You park your car, if you drove, and walk to the door. Is it the building you have now? What does it look like on the outside? Has it changed in any way?

You stand outside and look at the building with affection and pride. You notice people entering. Are there many people you don’t know? New people? Or the same familiar faces? Some of each? Are people pouring in, standing and talking, or both? Is the outside entrance welcoming and inviting? What does it look like?

 You notice children rushing in to greet their friends. You go inside. Where do you go? If you have children, do they come with you?

Imagine that you look into the worship space first. What does it look like? Is it the same? What do you see? How many people are there? What do you hear?

Or imagine you start downstairs or head there next, perhaps to drop something off for coffee hour or to use the restrooms. You are walking through the rest of the building now. What do you see? Is the space the same as it is now? Are the rooms the same or different? If they are different, how so? Is the space more crowded? What is the religious education space like? Is it attractive? Spacious? Cozy? Child centered? How about the kitchen? The bathrooms?

You wave at the children and parents and teachers getting ready, and you leave. You move back up to the worship space. You enter. It is almost time for the service to begin. Notice the people. Is the sanctuary full now? Crowded? Half-empty?

The service begins. What is happening? What do you notice first? Is it music or words? Who is speaking? Who is up front? Where are the children? You look around and smile at faces you know and love…

During the service you sing, you listen, you hear words spoken, prayers prayed… You are moved. You are challenged. You are inspired…

After the service you head downstairs again. You look at the announcements, the bulletin boards, the walls, the literature rack. What is your congregation doing now, five years in the future? What opportunities are there for people to connect with one another? What opportunities are there for people to join together in service to the larger community? Is it the same things? Different things? Some of each?

You get a cup of coffee and some food and talk with others. You talk with a couple of newcomers who tell you why they like it here. You smile and agree. What did they say to you?

Now, please allow yourself to remember this morning and your congregation of the future… Then return your attention to this room, here, now, and the people in it. And, as you are ready, open your eyes…

Take a moment or two to jot down some notes about what you saw, if you’d like…

 Now, let’s think for a few minutes about your new minister…

The word “minister” comes from a Latin word that means “to serve.” In our tradition, there are ways in which we all serve one another, and so we are all ministers, in a sense. But more often than not in our Unitarian Universalist congregations there is also at least one person who is a paid, professional, ordained minister.

We tend to have a lot of expectations of our ministers, some of them reasonable and others less so. Someone named “Anonymous” once wrote a piece called “The Perfect Pastor,” which I thought it would be fun to share with you this morning. It goes like this:

Results of a computerized survey show that the perfect pastor…

• Preaches exactly 15 minutes, condemns sin, but never upsets anyone.
• He works from 8:00 AM until midnight and is also the janitor.
• He makes $60 per week, wears good clothes, buys good books, drives a good car… and gives about $50 per week to the poor.
• He is twenty-eight years old and has been preaching for thirty years. He is wonderfully gentle and handsome.
• He has a burning desire to work with teenagers and spends all his spare time with senior citizens.
• The perfect pastor smiles all the time with a straight face because he has a sense of humor that keeps him seriously dedicated to his work.
• He makes fifteen calls a day on church families, shut-ins and the hospitalized; Spends all his time evangelizing the “unchurched” and is always in his office when needed.

If your pastor does not measure up, simply send this letter to six other churches that are tired of their pastor, too. Then bundle up your pastor and send him to the church at the top of the list.

In one year, you will receive 1,643 pastors and one of them should be perfect.

WARNING!!! Keep this letter going! One church broke the chain and got its old pastor back in less than three months.

 Now, that may not be your vision of a perfect minister, but I think it is safe to assume that most of us have one. We probably have an unspoken list in our heads of what a perfect minister would or would not do, as well as a picture of what that person would look like. Take a moment now and begin to imagine the minister of your dreams…

Now I’m going to speak some truth to you about ministry…

• Most full-time ministers work between 40-60 hours a week, and it varies most weeks, but 15 to 20 of that is almost always spent service preparation and sermon writing

• We get asked to do and are expected to do a lot of other things, too, of course, and we spend a good deal of time juggling tasks, and trying our best to prioritize them

• Our choices regarding priorities don’t always match other people’s priorities

• We have very multi-faceted jobs and we are not all equally skilled at or equally interested in all aspects of ministry; we come with different skills, different backgrounds, different personality types, and different leadership styles

• We cannot read minds very well, so you have to tell us when something is on your mind

• Some of us are more technologically adept than others

• We are not perfect, we sometimes make mistakes

• We have wonderful jobs with a lot of flexibility and great variety, but we are also on call for emergencies 24/7 for most of the year.

• We’re not all good about taking vacations, or making clear boundaries between our work and home lives, but healthy congregations support us in doing so

• We work with people who are often anxious when they come to us and we can easily absorb that anxiety

• Our families do their best to support us, but they cannot be the only source of our support

• We’re not always good at getting the emotional support that we need outside of our congregations and our families; healthy congregations encourage us to get that support both because they are compassionate and because they know we are able to serve them better when we have it

• The most successful among us have mentors or therapists or coaches or clergy support groups, or at the very least, close groups of friends and colleagues whom we can turn to for advice and support.

• We always struggle to create and maintain a balanced family/home life – ministry and ministerial schedules can take a toll on relationships

• We are guided by a code of professional conduct and are accountable to our colleagues and our professional association

• Which is good because ministry can be complicated and we wear many hats

• We are simultaneously religious leader and employee, and sometimes, in addition to that, we are also the tenant and/or the parent of a child or youth in your RE programs

• And those things work best when we – and you – are able to maintain some awareness of which hat we are wearing when, and are able to remain mindful of our boundaries

• We can never really be your friends without those boundaries getting blurred because…sometimes as your minister we have to disappoint you and no one likes to disappoint their friends…

• And finally, we have different levels of comfort with conflict

Next month I plan to talk a little more about conflict when I preach about community and covenant, but I want to say just a few words about conflict this morning. Conflict is a totally normal thing. It can happen whenever more than one person is present in the room. It’s about difference, including difference of opinion. It’s not always a big deal, but there are certainly different levels of conflict.

And so, as part of envisioning your future and your future minister, I think it’s worthwhile to acknowledge that some degree of conflict is inevitable in any relationship, including the ones at church. But it doesn’t need to be big and scary. It’s worth taking time now to imagine how you and your future minister will be together when you hit proverbial bumps in the road, because you will. I guarantee that you will sometimes disagree with your minister.

So, take a moment to envision a best-case scenario of how conflict could be handled or managed in the future. What structures are in place to help? What qualities or skills do you imagine will be important for your new minister to have? What would help you move through inevitable conflict in ways that leave you feeling okay, heard, stronger, more trusting of one another rather than less so, and able to continue working together productively and joyfully in pursuit of your vision?

I’m going to stop here for now…and again invite you to continue to reflect and to get some coffee and food downstairs…and come back up here to the sanctuary at noon for our conversation. We will aim to meet for about an hour.

I am very much looking forward to hearing some of what you are beginning to envision…