"Many Ministries"

Perhaps this is you, or someone you know. You’re new to Los Angeles, and your demanding job fills most of your days. You don’t have time to make friends, and you feel lost in this vast and fast-paced city. You long for a place to feel at home.

The stress of moving across the country has caught up with you. You sense that this transition has affected you more deeply than others and you feel shaky and vulnerable. A spiritual yearning rises from the space opened up by your loneliness, and somehow, one Sunday, you find yourself here.

It happens every week. People come here yearning for something. Not only people starting new jobs three thousand miles away from home. But also empty nesters looking for new adventures, survivors of harrowing crises, retired folks with time on their hands, over-achievers asking themselves what it all means. People looking for a way to put their ideals into practice. Some just want to serve.

Everyone comes in need: to be heard, to give, to grow, to listen to the still small voice. Some find it and stay. But the simple needs that bring us to this community are not always that easy to meet.

If you’re an outgoing, confident person, who talks to people easily and quickly finds a way to fit in, you might feel at home right away. Or if you seek only to be close to your god and don’t care whether anyone learns your name, you might feel at home here too. But if you’re like most of us, you won’t find what you are seeking until you find a small group of people to get to know. That could be a committee, or a book group, or the folks in the kitchen the day you offered to serve coffee.

Sometimes, however, even friends don’t quite meet the need you brought with you. You want to discover if there can be something different about the friends you make at church. You’d like to find spiritual companions. You wonder how to have relationships with others that will help you to grow and to change.

You might also hope that the groups and activities a church offers will be inclusive and safe. So people will accept you as you are, and you can discover your true self. Maybe learn how to be a leader, or a teacher.

Our church is all these things. But up until now, people seeking such a place couldn’t always find it, even once they were here. What they found instead were too many Sundays standing in Forbes Hall, feeling lost. Thinking that this was not the spiritual home they were seeking after all, they retreat, perhaps never to try again.

Our church has grown too large to provide the intimacy so many of us want and need. Despite our very best efforts to reach out and to provide a welcoming and warm environment, people slip out of our grasp, never to return. Some of our practices are left over from days when our congregation was smaller. They hold out a promise of closeness, but can no longer deliver.

Into this gap has come our small group ministry program. As you heard in the reading from Thandeka, small group ministry is a spiritual practice, bringing people together for sacred time. It’s a way to pay attention to time, not as a series of fleeting moments, but as a heightened awareness and an experience to treasure.

It’s also a way to pay attention to each other, listening and encouraging, perhaps centering on a topic you have chosen. I chose the children’s story the dot to read today because it is such a simple, elegant expression of how we need each other to discover our true selves. In the story, the little girl thinks that she cannot draw. But when her teacher frames the dot she applied to a blank piece of paper, the little girl discovers her creativity. Not only does she make dot paintings that please herself and others, but she helps another child discover the artist in himself. This is the power of relationships.

Small group ministry provides a safe and easy-to-facilitate structure in which to get to know other people, and in doing so, get to know yourself." As Unitarian Universalists," Thandeka writes," we affirm right relationship as a reverential act. This affirmation is our covenantal act together as a noncreedal people. This is our religious history. Today, we are doing it ten at a time as an embedded ritual practice of our congregational life."

According to Unitarian Universalist small group ministry advocate Bob Hill, gatherings like covenant groups have been part of our history for hundreds of years. Universalist George de Benneville, whose name we associate with our own retreat center in the mountains, had a "house church" in the mid-1700s, in Pennsylvania.

Other Universalists in Rhode Island and the Mid-Atlantic states" met in small study circles once a week to share their stories, discuss the Sunday sermon, and interpret scripture." Margaret Fuller, the nineteenth century Unitarian feminist, formed conversation groups for women to learn from each other. For many of them, it was the only education they were allowed to pursue.

Small group ministry is not new, but its most recent incarnation, covenant groups, is taking hold in Unitarian Universalist churches all over the country. As Bob Hill writes in his book, "The Complete Guide to Small Group Ministry," it is a "deeply populist" movement, reflecting perhaps a broader trend away from "large-scale institutions." In a community as diverse as ours, we need strong relationships to help bridge theological and philosophical differences. The contentiousness that can arise among us when we disagree - often passionately - about so many things can also hurt and divide us. Covenant group relationships practice tolerance and mutual respect. Participants do not debate or argue with each other, they listen and share personal stories. They discover the person beyond the differences.

Skeptics, take note of what has already happened here. Last year, a handful of people responded to the invitation from our intern minister to explore small group ministry together. A couple of them had some experience with covenant groups in other churches, or with therapy groups or extended families. But it was a new concept nevertheless, with its own format, purpose, and understandings.

The group applied itself to learning what this program was all about. I did too. Practicing the discipline of covenant group meetings for their organizational sessions, eight church members - the people I thanked earlier in the service - as well as many others, who helped along the way - found the leadership, took the training, and created the program. It was hard work - especially dealing with the creative chaos of a startup activity. But it was also a transformational experience, as Marv Pulliam attested earlier. And this group of eight people, who came together, not knowing each other or what to expect, found something that inspires their commitment and bonds them to each other.

People come to church, liberal theologian James Luther Adams once said, "seeking ultimacy and intimacy." Perhaps it is also true that we can’t find one without the other. For covenant groups bring people not only into a relationship with one another, but also into a larger sense of connection with life itself. They invite people into sacred time.

Our covenant group program is starting small - just two groups to begin - and we will add more as we go along. Participants make a commitment six months at a time. Leaders receive training. Everyone agrees to the format of the meetings, including behavior guidelines. And all groups provide service - to our church and to our larger community - in the course of their time together. These commitments are what make the covenant. As Thandeka wrote, "Sacred time begins here." Think about the strangers who come through our doors, seeking hospitality and a place to stay. Think of all the ways we are strangers to each other, yearning for a deeper affirmation of the humanity that underlies our differences. Think of all the ways in which our world needs people, working together, towards peace and sustainable life. Think of the power we can generate by gathering in small groups, to practice hospitality, discover our humanity, and work together in service. "Covenant groups," writes Bob Hill," are compassion in practice, tolerance guided by principle; the mutual trust they foster will lead us to change. Through compassionate hospitality, we may, ten people at a time, save the world."

Sacred time begins today. We welcome it - and each other, with a renewed appreciation and respect. For the present moment. And for the presence of one another. So be it.

References used to prepare this sermon include "Small Group Ministry as a Spiritual Practice," by Thandeka, published by The Center for Community Values (www.the-ccv.org) and "The Complete Guide to Small Group Ministry," by Robert L. Hill (Boston: Skinner House Books, 2003).