"Four Components of a Healthy Church"

This morning I want to preach a sermon on what makes for a great church. We’re kicking off what promises to be a banner year here at UUCCSM, with the completion of our longstanding building program and the likely settlement of a new minister. So today is a good time to ask, it seems to me, “What are we doing here?” Let me tell you what I think we’re doing here, or at least trying to do. Many of you—most of you—were at this long before I came on the scene: trying to nurture and keep alive a thriving, creative, truly liberal Unitarian Universalist congregation here in Santa Monica.

What is the key to such a community? What make it flourish? I think there are four ingredients. When I started thinking about this, years ago, the first image that came to mind was that of a four cylinder internal combustion engine; a four cylinder engine in which—when it’s functioning properly—all four pistons are moving in synch, and the engine puts out full power. A couple of hundred horsepower…more than enough to take you to San Diego and back at seventy-five miles per hour. Later I came across the image on the cover of today’s bulletin, discovered in a book by the Reverend Dick Gilbert, Minister Emeritus of the Rochester, New York Unitarian Church.

At the center is Worship and the Celebration of Life. Worship is one of those words that some Unitarian Universalists struggle with. But the etymology of the word, as I understand it, is worth-ship: the act of making (or re-making) worthy. Archeologists and anthropologists describe the content of ancient worship as ritual, and as dance. This is where religion probably began—celebrating shared joy.

The single most frequently mentioned aspect in common among growing churches is that they celebrate! Coming-of-age ceremonies, honoring elders, anniversaries of important congregational milestones. What are we celebrating? Ultimately, our connectedness to one another.

The great turn-of-the-twentieth-century Oxford Classicist Jane Harrison used to quote Aeschylus in claiming that ritual was one of humanity’s three great inventions:

1. Fire
2. Habitations
3. ritual

A people’s educational and cultural values are passed on by way of ritual. Worship, then, celebrates our connectedness to

- each other
- the culture
- and also, something deeper…

There’s an ancient myth that gives us a clue to the deeper connection that ritual sometimes gets us in touch with, the Egyptian Myth of the Mad King.

The story goes like this: Once upon a time a great sovereign sends his child on an important, secret mission. He is to go to Egypt, blend in, mingle with the people, and wait further instructions. And so the young person obeys, journeying abroad to that ancient land, finding himself a place to live and a trade, and settling down. To become fully integrated into the life there, the child learns the language, makes friends, finds a spouse, and starts a family. Moreover, life is good. In time, our hero all but forgets about the mission. Indeed, were it not for occasional dreams and vague memories she would have forgotten altogether. It goes on like this for a long time until one evening on her way home a man in uniform introduces himself as an emissary from her father the King. “It is now time to return home,” he explains. “Follow me.” Confused by the abruptness and unexpectedness of the encounter, she dismisses the man. Moments later, retracing her steps in search of him, he has vanished. Except for—is it his business card lying there on the street?—a note on the back of which reads: “Your heart knows the way. Follow it home.”

The ancient world organized social life to insure that we all got word from our homeland and started back to regain our rightful throne. The process was called initiation—initiation into our deeper mind, our Collective Unconscious, or—to use the Unitarian Ralph Waldo Emerson’s term—our true Self.

About fifteen years ago, while serving a church in suburban Pittsburgh, I led an Adult RE program, the Canticle of the Cosmos, in which we watched and discussed a 12-part video series narrated by the mathematical cosmologist Brian Swimme. In it, Swimme describes the human condition in the language of math and quantum physics. The earth is an intelligent, self-regulating planet and we—human beings—are products of the earth.

Let us, for a moment, contrast two images of humanity. The old image of human beings is that of heaven-sent strangers on earth who, after suffering nobly through this mortal coil, are released to return to our rightful home, in heaven. But this image is hopelessly out of date, for the truth is we do not come into this world at all: we come out of it. The new image of humanity is as a natural product of the earth. As Alan Watts once observed, our earth is peopling. Just as the apple tree apples and the vine grapes, our earth is peopling—and if we are intelligent beings then we are a product of an intelligent earth, symptomatic of an intelligent energy system—“for you can’t gather figs from thistles, or grapes from thorns.”

* * *

Some people, I suppose, never come to this insight. Others do, but—uncertain and unsupported in its meaning—dismiss it. Nevertheless, it can be nurtured. And, that’s what worship is all about—nurturing our connections, including our deep connection to the creative heart of life: to the Soul, the Self, the soul….

“Say something spiritual,” I am forever being petitioned. “…something funny, intellectually stimulating, and also up-to-date. All this, of course, I do try to do. But whatever I say, it also has to touch the wellsprings…or folks will eventually find something else to do with their Sundays.

So worship and celebration are at the center. That’s the taproot. However, the outer circle is just as important. Indeed, note that all four components of a healthy congregation touch the other three aspects—in other words, all these aspects of congregational life link with one another, influence one another, connect with the other three.

What does this mean? Consider: a second element of a healthy church is that it’s a Caring Community. Members support one another, take care of one another in crisis and behave like—often as—a group of loving friends. We have CARENET, but it needs to be strengthened with the addition of a team of six to ten Pastoral Associates—something I am working on currently. Many congregations of our size have done a great job organizing Care Teams of members to look after one another, make regular calls on shut-ins, and fill in the gap between a get-well-soon card and a visit from me at the hospital. You’ll hear more from me on this subject in the weeks to come—culminating in a special service on March 7.

Being a truly caring community also means being non-judgmental and understanding of another’s views, ideas, and—within reason—lifestyle. Healthy congregations are communities where we nourish one another despite our political differences, bind up the wounds of our defeats and share our joys both personal and social. In 1983 the Rochester Unitarian Church voted 156 to 1 to endorse the nuclear freeze. In his newsletter column Reverend Gilbert wrote a “Note to a Minority of One,” paying tribute to the woman—apparently everyone knew who she was—who had cast the dissenting vote. Her courage, Dick wrote, serves to remind the majority that conscience counts for something in liberal religion. The caring and the prophetic are one.

The third piston of our well-tuned congregational engine is Religious Education. Now by religious education I mean more than just Sunday school. I mean a lifespan community of religious learning and growth. The main ingredient here is attitude; an attitude that we can still learn, and that we can learn to see a religious dimension in all the situations that we’re learning about. Moreover, we can help one another model this attitude for our children and youth. And include our young people in the other aspects of congregational life. In our celebrations. And in our social justice projects.

Here—social justice—is the fourth component of a health church: Moral Discourse and Action. A few years back I co-taught a class at the Ohio-Meadville District’s Summer Institute on Social Action in the Local Congregation. One of the participants, Carolyn Johnson, was a strong UU from one of Pittsburgh’s other congregations. At the week’s beginning Carolyn was adamant in her conviction that social action only created divisions within congregations. By the week’s end she felt completely different. The problem at her home church, as she eloquently expressed it the last day, was that the social activists tended to act independently, off on their own. What she wanted was for them to be in dialogue with the whole congregation—so that everyone was talking about how to be better, more wholesome people. And helping each other learn new ways to be better people. Carolyn’s initial feelings were not all that off base, however. Too many Unitarian Universalist congregations are somewhat politically knee-jerk—and not safe for those who don’t share the majority view. But I am purposely not focusing on congregations that fall short; I am talking about something else: about religious communities that are not indoctrinating or neutral. And not political propaganda stations for the latest social action fad, either. To be a true church, the church must seek to penetrate the political order with justice, but at the same time it must not itself be co-opted into any political party or social movement.

Any church worth its name will include ethical reflection as a central part of its raison d’etre. In such a congregation, moral discourse is carried on in pew and pulpit, class room and coffee hour, in office and seminar. It draws on historical “for instances” of ethical reflection and behavior. It delineates the moral traditions in which we stand.

* * *

So how do we get there? How do we focus, and continually re-focus, our energies here at UUCCSM to make this church function at full horsepower?

1. Remember to keep Sunday morning celebrative. And worth-ship full. Folks want to be fed and inspired on Sunday. And we have just the message to do it!

2. Whatever else we do here, let us always strive to care for one another. Even the one among us with an iconoclastic point of view.

3. We have to keep our commitment to Religious Education high. For all of us, but especially for our young people.

Finally: We have to be comfortable recognizing that there is an ethical dimension to every decision we make. Let this place be one where we can struggle together to figure out what the most moral choices would be. And to help each other make them.

Here at the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica we are well on our way. But there is a ways to go, too. In the wake of the Radical Religious Right’s manifold successes over the last thirty years we will have to be focused and determined—“wise as serpents and gentle as doves”—if we want to articulate clearly an alternative message, one that truly wholesome and liberating, regarding what congregational life is (or can be) all about. Please, over the coming months ahead between now and late June, won’t you join me in bringing that model to fruition here in Santa Monica?

Thank you. And blessed be.