Chalice Northwest Unitarian Universalist Congregation
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The Meaning of Membership

The Meaning of Membership
The Rev. Dr. Morris W. Hudgins
Northwest UU Congregation
Nov. 13, 2011

 

Introduction
            For a second year the leadership of Northwest has been looking at the issue of Membership.  I would like to support the Membership Team in their work by talking about “The Meaning of Membership” today.
            We don’t have to do this alone.  From time to time the Unitarian Universalist Association recommends the need for a study of some aspect of our religious movement.  There is a body elected and assigned to this task.  It is called “The Commission on Appraisal.”  A study was published several years ago and was titled, “Belonging; The Meaning of Membership.”   The report begins on a very positive note about the importance of religious communities.  Underlying this statement, is a group of questions that our congregations need to ask:
            Why do people seek out our congregations?  Why do they stay?  Why do they leave?  What about people who grew up in Unitarian Universalist families?  Why do they stay?  Why do they leave? 
            The essence of the report of the Commission on Appraisal is about commitment, about encouraging people to feel they belong and are committed to a religious institution.  As the report says, “a religion is more than ideas.  It is also a set of behaviors, practices, ways of being in community.”  (p. 3)
            I remember my first interview with a Unitarian Universalist minister in Richmond, Virginia, in 1972.  I was a Methodist minister at the time.  I visited the Rev. Bill Gold and asked him about Unitarian Universalism and he encouraged me in the direction of transferring to this denomination.  Bill also recommended me as minister to the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Boca Raton.  A member of the Search Committee there had been a member of his church in Schenectady, New York.  Her name was Mildred Rhea.  Mildred was an important reason why I became a UU minister.  After I moved on from my first church, Mildred and I stayed in touch.  She attended my Installation in Raleigh, NC with her daughter.  She was there when I was invited to preach in Boca Raton several years ago.  She was close to 100 years old.  She died at 101.
            Bill Gold said something about Mildred Rhea.  He said, “There are many people who come into Unitarian Universalist churches.  Some come and go.  Once in a while someone joins for the long haul.  They become committed to their church, they are members through the good times and the bad.  When you find someone like Mildred Turner, you have to take them seriously.”
            I did.  I met with her and decided it was worth the risk to transfer from a large Methodist Church of 1400 members in Richmond, Virginia, to a small UU church in Boca Raton, Florida, with 80 members.  Their budget was $17,000 and they had $12,000 in the bank.  They risked spending that $12,000 for a full time minister.  I risked changing denominations. 
            I have never for one minute regretted that decision 39 years ago.  It is because of people like Mildred Rhea Turner that I continue to love this denomination.  In this sermon I am going to look at how we could have many more people like Mildred in our Fellowship, people who join our churches because of the values we hold, who live through frustrations, who stay with us even though they don’t agree with everything we do, and who give their time, energy and money so that we will grow and thrive.  
Why do people join a UU church?
1. First, we must ask why people join a church. We join a church to make personal connections.  As John Buehrens said in the report:  “To be human is to be religious.  To be religious is to make connections. . .each of us needs support in making meaningful re-connections to the best in our global heritage, the best in others, and the best in ourselves.”
One of my favorite stories about a UU congregation took place in Key West, Florida.  I was invited to speak to a struggling congregation in that city back in the 1970’s.  They worshipped in a Holiday Inn conference room.  There were 12 people in attendance.  They worshipped around a conference table.  I led them in a traditional service with hymns and a sermon.  I looked over my audience.  There was a man sitting in the corner reading the New York Times.  He couldn’t even face the front of the table.  I was appalled.
            Then to make things worse.  After the service was over, the man came up to me and said, “That was the best sermon I have ever heard.”  I wanted to smack him.
            We all come to a church to make connections, but we often have religious baggage.  Some don’t want to acknowledge that what we do is religious.  Many of us come to sit in the back of the room and watch.   Not many of us would go so far as to bring a New York Times with us.
            This story does reveal the challenge that we have.  Many of our members and friends have difficulty deciding between staying at home and reading the paper or walking the woods and coming to church.  At Northwest you can attend church and walk in the woods.  But I don’t recommend bringing your newspaper with you.
            Down deep, I believe, we all need to be in community.  We need to share our ideas, our talents, our joys and our sorrows with a group.  At times we need for the group to remind us of the values that we hold deeply, but don’t always live by.
2.  The second reason people join our churches is to feel spiritually grounded through religious education and worship.  We may have a variety of theologies in this room.  Some don’t even like the word spiritual.  I am convinced, however, that all of us have a theology, a view of the world and our role in it.  We come to a church to help us articulate that theology.  This is why our “Spiritual Journey” sermons are so powerful.  This is why we study “Building Your Own Theology” and “World Religions.”  We all are seeking our own spiritual grounding.
3.  Third, we want to continue our spiritual search with a group of people who have similar values.  All the studies of our association show that we are indeed a homogeneous denomination.  We may have different theologies, but we have similar values.  Those values are summarized best in our Purposes and Principles.
4.  Fourth, and finally we join a church in order to be challenged to live out these values in the world.  Some come to a church for the fascinating discussions of religious issues.  If you have attended a Lunch Bunch meeting, you know this is a place where some of our long-term members come to discuss the most recent social, political, religious and scientific issues.   
What the church growth experts tell us is that growing churches need to have many groups like the Lunch Bunch.  We all need the opportunity to learn from others and to share our personal views with others.  This is what we do in our Building Your Own Theology Class, Fresh Theologies and Sharing Your Journey classes.  We connect with others, we deepen jour spiritual lives, and we investigate the world of values.  The ultimate goal is to join with others in standing up for those values in the world.  This is why we join the Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration each year, encourage each other to live more simply and help our world become more diverse and just.
            The theologian, James Luther Adams, tells this story about an experience in his Church, First Unitarian Church of Chicago.  The church was discussing the challenge of desegregating their traditional all white church in the middle of a growing Afro-American part of town, Hyde Park.  Two members of the Board objected to this goal.  They said:  “Unitarianism has no creed and we were making desegregation a creed.  It was a gentle but firm disagreement and a couple of us kept pressing.  ‘Well, what do you say is the purpose of this church?’  We asked, and we kept it up until about 1:30 in the morning.  We were all worn out, when finally this man made one of the great statement, for my money, in the history of religion.  ‘Ok, Jim.  The purpose of the church. . .well, the purpose of this church is to get hold of people like me and change them!”  (p. 12)  Yes, a Unitarian Universalist church has a larger purpose, to encourage us to stand up for our values.
Membership As a Process
These are some of the many reasons why people join a church.  What we know and what the report concludes is that just because someone joins a church doesn't mean they are going to give themselves to the vitality of the church.  Membership in any organization is a process.  We usually come to the church with many questions and some reservations.  We may be harboring some resentments with a former church or religious organization.  We may be rejecting the religion of our childhood.  We may want a church without religion. 
I get calls from people from time to time asking me if I would marry them in a non-religious ceremony.  I sometimes wonder why they call a minister if they want a non-religious ceremony, but I understand what they mean.  They want a service that emphasizes relationship and not religious belief.  It goes back to John Buehrens’ statement about connections.  A marriage is about the ultimate connection—the love between two people.  My challenge as a minister is to get the couple to think about ultimate things—and not merely the romantic love they often prefer.
            The problem of any minister, both in marriage counseling and in guiding a church, is getting people to work through the difficult times.  I often say to a couple:  “Come back and see me when you are struggling.  Don’t just come when you are ready to celebrate.”
            Churches have the same problem.  We don’t like to face the issues that cause friction.  I quote from a UU author, Peter Fleck, who writes in his book, The Blessings of Imperfection:
            Well, let’s be frank and admit that the church has its aggravations.  The eternal and oh-so-necessary concern about finances, the annually recurring problems of balancing a budget, of finding money for repainting the vestibule, repairing the boiler and tuning the organ, the ongoing criticism of the minister’s sermons (Not at Northwest, of course), which are too liberal for some and too conservative for others, too pedantic for some and too colloquial for others, the endless committee meetings about the Sunday School curriculum and about the propriety of social action, the persistent shortage of tenors in the choir.  Who wants it?  Who needs it?
            The answer to this question is that we. . .want it, because we need it.  The answer is that the church, and I am now speaking of the liberal church, in spite of its shortcomings, the imperfection that characterizes everything made by humans, is better, infinitely better, than no church.  For isn’t it true that in our churches, in these communities of the spirit, we have more resources than outside of our churches to accept each other’s imperfections, to reconcile our differences, to forgive and be forgiven, to comfort and to be comforted, to love and to be loved? (p. 10)
Meaning of Membership
The third aspect of the commission’s report that I would like to mention this morning is the key to the report.  This has to do with the meaning of membership.  In many UU congregations membership doesn’t mean much.  We don’t demand anything for people to join.  The Report encourages us to look closely at this.   I think this is a good idea.  We should never require a certain belief, but I do believe we need to ask more than we do when people sign the book.
            The in-thing in UU circles today is to talk about covenants.  Many churches are forming covenant groups, to encourage people to make promises to each other.  Maybe joining a church is like a marriage.  We need to look at our values, our relationships with each other, and with the larger world. 
            Some possible covenants we could make are:
To worship together regularly.
To pursue our personal spiritual growth with the help of others.
Dedication to the teaching of our children.
A promise to help the church financially to the best of our ability.
Reaching out to the larger community, seeking justice and compassion in our human relationships.
And finally, becoming involved in the larger UU movement.
Most of us in this room, do not see these as part of our requirement in joining this church.  Maybe we should.

 

Institutional Loyalty and Commitment
The main challenge of the report on the Commission on Appraisal has to do with our institutional loyalty.  There is one characteristic of many Unitarian Universalists that makes it difficult for our churches to grow and prosper.  For some reason many of us are skeptical when it comes to institutional loyalty.  I quote from the Commission on Appraisal study on Membership:
                        One of the continuing challenges for liberalism is its inability to inspire and engender institutional commitments, transcendent of the concerns and interest of a given time and place.  Albert Einstein’s wife was once asked if she understood the theory of relativity.  She replied, “No, but I know my husband, and I know he can be trusted.”  Most Unitarian Universalists are not quite so trusting.  Liberalism necessarily carries with it an edge of suspicion.  But you have to be trusting to be disillusioned, and surprising as it may seem, such disillusionment plays a crucial role in developing loyalties and commitments.  (p. 10)
            Many people who visit with us are suspicious about religion and churches.   They see devout religious people with the same problems as others.  They see religious people say one thing and do another.  They see religious institutions always asking for money and doing very little to help people in the community.  One religious organization, led by Jim and Tammy Baker, actually double sold lots to their theme park in North Carolina.  Where were there Christian values?
            Many of us have become disillusioned with a religion or a religious institution and have carried this feeling into our involvement with Unitarian Universalism.  This results in a skeptical outlook for many new people. 
            It may be that we are expecting too much of a religious institution.  All institutions are made up of humans who are fallible.  The Commission Report admits that some of this skepticism is based on our experiences with our own congregations.  Listen to the report:
            The congregation that is supposed to be affirming and gentle can become narrow and unfeeling.  Decisions can be made with which we disagree.  People can become disagreeable. . .The church is a human institution and it can become all-too-human.  When such difficulties arise some walk away, others step back.  But fortunately there are also those who remain steadfast through these times of disillusionment, whose loyalty grows beyond it.  They are not better or worse than the others, just different. . .   (with a recognizion) that institutional as well as personal failure is virtually inevitable.  This is loyalty of a high order.  It requires extraordinary patience, tolerance, and the capacity to forgive.  These are spiritual gifts, learned in real community.
            What the Commission is saying is that belonging to a UU congregation requires some commitment and some loyalty.  You notice I did not say “blind loyalty.” At Northwest we ask you to be loyal and committed but we don’t ask you to look the other way when you see wrongdoing.  I wish the staff at Penn State had been more critical ten years ago.   
The Commission asks commitment “not so much to the institution as to the values and ideals we exist to promote and uphold—even in periods of failure to do so.  We ask for patience with brash young ministers and tolerance of plodding older ones.  We need cheerleaders in the good times and steady supporters through the bad.  We need people who keep a perspective, and take a longer views.”  Both universities and churches need people with perspective, not blind loyalty.
            The theologian Paul Tillich defined religion as ultimate concern.  A student of his, Henry Nelson Wieman, a Unitarian and process theologian, wrote of religion and faith as ultimate commitment.  The Commision concludes by saying:
            Inevitably in our lives we commit ourselves to something, whether worthy or not.  The direction and intensity of our loyalties give shape and meaning to our lives.
            Loyalties, commitments, covenants, the promises we make to one another.  These are the things that relate to the deepest meanings of membership.  They tell us what we belong to.  And by doing that they tell us who we are.  (p. 12)
So may it be.  Amen.
  Northwest Unitarian Universalist Congregation
1025 Mt. Vernon Highway, N.W., Sandy Springs Atlanta, GA 30327
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