The New Sheriff in Town

Since Community Unitarian officially adopted a mission statement last month, it's like there’s a new sheriff in town.

Our new sheriff, however, is somewhat enigmatic. All she does is simply stand there. Any question you ask, all she says is: "Nurture each other in your spiritual journeys. Foster compassion and understanding within and beyond this community. Engage in service to transform yourselves and the world."

That’s all she says. And she’s the one who’s in charge here.

We can ignore her, and she’s not going to come after us, pistols out. We can all ignore her, but we elected her, so I believe it behooves us to heed what she says. If we do, over the next few years she’s going to bring about some big changes around here.

I serve that sheriff. I was called by the Community Unitarian Church at White Plains, trusting that CUC would soon appoint my boss. And now it has. So I'm a deputy sheriff -- one of several, for every congregational leader focused on the mission is another deputy sheriff.

The mission will require us to develop some new programs.

Nurture each other in our spiritual journeys. How? Through what programs will we do that more effectively? Yes, it kinda happens by accident, but if that’s our reason for being here, we ought to be doing it with intentionality and purpose and focus.

Foster compassion and understanding within and beyond this community. How are we going to do that? These are the questions for the Board, Program Council, and every one of our committees to earnestly engage and creatively address.

Engage in service to transform ourselves and our world. How, exactly?

There are new things we’ll have to start doing to carry out this mission. And there are some old things we’ve been doing for years that we’ll see aren’t serving the mission, so we should stop doing them. Some of those things might be dearly beloved to some of our members, and it will be hard for them to let those things go.

To choose a hypothetical: we might have had here a stamp collecting group, or a chess playing group – a dozen or so members of CUC that gathered monthly at the church, and that a few times a year organized a big exhibition of stamps or a chess tournament here in the building. They drew on whatever publicity apparatus the church could provide, and if the turnout of church members for their event wasn’t high, they were disappointed.

Becoming a mission-driven congregation means saying to such groups: "These are worthwhile things. Stamp collecting is historical and informative and stamps are beautiful. Chess playing keeps the mind sharp, and it’s fun. No question these are worthwhile things. But they aren’t our mission. There’s a way to use our collective energies more effectively to focus on nurturing each others spiritual journey, fostering compassion and understanding, and serving others to transform our world and ourselves. That’s what we’re here for. If you want to be in a chess club, be in a chess club, but your church doesn’t need to try to also be your chess club. Your church just needs to serve its mission."

The reward for knowing what we're doing is we come to feel like we know what we’re doing. A clear focus on mission leads to a process of better and better operational definition of that mission, and as the operational definition gets worked out, the sense of uncertainty clears up. There’s no floundering here – we know what we’re here for, and we go straight to the work of nurturing our spirits, fostering our compassion, engaging our service.

Authorized by the authority of our mission to inspect all our pastures to see, as it were, how the water is allocated, we are likely to encounter the occasional angry bull. Flashing a card with the mission statement on it doesn’t stop that bull. So it’s worth remembering that authority is always contextual and always relational.

Carefully, lovingly, considerately, slowly let us do this work – the work that we are here to do.

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This is Part 4 of 4 of "Who's In Charge Here?"
Previous: Part 3: "The Day Things Changed at CUC"
Beginning: Part 1: "Who's In Charge Here?"

The Day Things Changed at CUC

There’s something that brings churchgoers to church. A congregation is not a collection of strangers who were on a ship that sank and now are stranded on an island together, making up their own governance because they're stuck there and there’s no one else. We came to church more or less on purpose. So why do we come? We don’t have to be there, but there we are. What are we here for?

On 2014 Jan 12, the Community Unitarian Church at White Plains answered that question. CUC said, "We’re here to nurture each other in our spiritual journeys. We’re here to foster compassion and understanding within and beyond our community. We’re here to engage in service to transform ourselves and our world." That's the mission that we adopted with a 95% vote in favor.

In the Catholic church, the cardinals elect the Pope, and the Pope then has authority over the cardinals. In the same way, a congregation elects its mission, and the mission then has authority over the congregation. Who owns the congregation? Its mission owns the congregation.

Our mission is our highest authority, as the Constitution is the highest law, though, in both cases, it’s up to a shifting body of humans to construct evolving interpretations of it. And that’s a good thing, because if we said the only authority was the membership, the membership’s called minister, the membership’s elected board, and the board’s hired staff, we’d still be left asking, "OK, but what GUIDES the membership, minister, board, and staff?"

Since congregants congregate by choice and aren’t Gilligan’s Island castaways, they need clarity on what they're here FOR.

Prior to Jan 12, I think, the members of CUC probably felt they had an informally agreed upon reason for being together. But did they actually agree? That wasn't clear. The members joined for different reasons, and stayed because it satisfied some need, though that need might or might not be one that very many others shared. It’s good to have stated what we’re here for.

There was previously some language that, for years, was printed on the back of the order of service at CUC and was referred to a the mission. The problem with that was twofold. One, I understand from the history of the congregation as I have read and heard it from long-time members, that the congregation never actually adopted it. It apparently went back to Rev. Clifford Vessey, who was CUC's minister in the 1950s and early 60s, but was never congregationally approved. It’s good to have a mission the congregation actually chose.

The more serious issue was this. No one at CUC -- as far as I could ascertain -- could say what that previous supposed "mission" was. No one I spoke with could even paraphrase it. No one. I’ve looked at those old Orders of Service, and I’ve read it, and I can’t paraphrase it either. That’s a problem.

It’s like saying, we have elected a king who is the highest authority among us, but we’ve all forgotten who it is. If no one knows who the king is, then there is no king. And in the case of kings, in my opinion that’s a good thing. I’m a believer in democracy. But in the case of a mission, a congregations really needs to be guided together by its mission. And if no one can even paraphrase what it is, then the mission is providing no guidance.

Having a mission changes things. It doesn't make everything drastically different right away, but over the next few years, it should.

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This is part 3 of 4 of "Who's In Charge Here?"
Next: Part 4: "The New Sheriff in Town"
Previous: Part 2: "Congregational Polity"
Beginning: Part 1: "Who's In Charge Here?"

Congregational Polity

Unitarian Universalists have congregational polity. If you don’t know what that means, it’s worth knowing. So today's blog will review the basics of polity in faith-based organizations. It's crucial to understanding authority in those institutions. Polity addresses such questions as who has the authority to ordain a spiritual leader, install such leaders in a congregation, start up new congregations, close congregations, relocate a congregation?

The three main forms of church governance, or polity, are congregational, Episcopal, and Presbyterian.

In Episcopal polity, the chief authority over a local congregation is the bishop. The bishop appoints the spiritual leader (priest, vicar, minister, rector), and a person becomes eligible for such appointment by seeking ordination from a bishop. Bishops oversee various other matters of church operation, and the church property, under full Episcopal polity, would be owned by the diocese. Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican churches, and a number of Lutheran churches have Episcopal polity.

In Presbyterian polity, local churches are ruled by assemblies of presbyters, or elders. Reformed churches and Presbyterian churches have this kind of polity.

In congregational polity, each congregation is autonomous. Unitarian Universalists, along with Baptists, Christian (Disciples of Christ), and United Church of Christ, have congregational polity. The congregation, by whatever process its own members decided to have, makes its own budget, raises all its own funds, makes its own bylaws, hires its own staff, owns its own property, and makes its own decisions about buying, building on, or selling its property.

Under congregational polity, the congregation, not the bishops or the presbytery, has the authority to ordain. (On Sun Jan 26, Community Unitarian Church hosted an ordination service for Lara Campbell – now Rev. Lara Campbell. If you were able to witness that, you saw that ordination is not conferred by a hierarchy but by a congregation – in this case by two congregations, the Mt. Kisco congregation and the Church of the Larger Fellowship.) Ordination as a Unitarian Universalist minister, a.k.a. clergy, is not conferred by any higher authority, because under congregational polity, there is no higher authority.

In the Unitarian Universalist system, we also have a thing called ministerial Fellowship, which is governed by the central authority, the UUA, Unitarian Universalist Association, in Boston. (This is basic church stuff, and it’s not terribly exciting, but some of you might not know this, and I think we all need to.) While a local congregation can exercise its own authority to ordain – using any standards, or no standards, as it sees fit -- admittance into ministerial Fellowship has very specific standards, including a Masters of Divinity degree, an internship, several rounds of psychological and career assessment, a unit of clinical pastoral education, and passing an interview with the Ministerial Fellowship Committee.

When Community Unitarian Church needed a minister, there was no bishop or presbytery to simply send one. CUC had to form a search committee of its own members which selected a candidate who was then called by a vote of all members. As a matter of congregational polity, you were free to call anyone you deemed right for you. Unitarian Universalists congregations don’t have to choose a minister and at all – and many of our smaller ones don’t. If a congregation does choose to call a minister, almost always it chooses someone who is both ordained and Fellowshipped, but this is not a requirement. Congregations may, and sometimes do, call a minister who is ordained but not Fellowshipped, Fellowshipped but not ordained, or neither Fellowshipped nor ordained. I learned a couple days ago that a UU congregation out in Michigan this year called a Jewish rabbi to be their minister. Interesting. It can happen. That’s how we roll.

Ministerial Fellowship is a stamp of approval from a centralized authority that is known to be very careful about who it approves. That credentialing is often very helpful for congregations looking for a minister, but not always.

Some years ago, I was chatting with an Episcopalian rector and we were talking about the differences in our church governance. He shook his head at this concept of congregational polity. He said, “that’s letting the inmates run the asylum, isn’t it?” I had to laugh because, it’s funny, yet kinda true, because sometimes things do get a bit crazy in congregational life. Still, we’re all in this asylum together. There’s nobody here but us inmates. We’re all crazy, and sanity, if we find it, emerges from our collective support for the best in each other.

I should hasten to note that, in practice, the differences between these forms of church governance are smaller than the formal description implies. Under our congregational polity, the congregation officially has the authority, but, when calling a minister, for instance, something like 97 percent of the time, they choose someone who is Fellowshipped – so there’s a lot of de facto authority resting in that centralized Fellowshipping agency. We can sing any songs we want to, but every Unitarian Universalist congregation I’ve ever been in uses the same hymnal – so there’s more de facto authority in our UUA, which assembled and publishes the hymnal.

And under Episcopal or Presbyterian polity, there’s a hierarchy with the formal authority, but they know it’s wise to listen carefully to the local congregation – so there’s a lot of de facto authority resting in the congregation. So in practical terms, the differences are really rather small.

Still, we have this congregational polity and we exercise it in a lot of ways. And congregational polity means the members own the congregation, right?

Earlier, I said, ordination "is not conferred by any higher authority, because under congregational polity, there is no higher authority."

Let me amend that. Actually, I think there is.

Next: The "higher authority"!

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This is part 2 of 4 of "Who's In Charge Here?"
Next: Part 3: "The Day Things Changed at CUC"
Previous: Part 1: "Who's In Charge Here?"

Who's In Charge Here?

Who’s in charge here?

Authority is a complicated business.

There’s the story of a Department of Water Resources representative who stops at a Texas ranch. He tells the old rancher, "I need to inspect your ranch for your water allocation."

The old rancher says, "Okay, but don't go in that field over there."

The Water representative says, "I have the authority of the Federal Government. See this card? This card means I am allowed to go wherever I feel I need to on any agricultural land.”

The old rancher nods politely, “All right, then.” Later, the old rancher hears screams and sees the Water Rep running for his life. Close behind is the rancher's bull, gaining with every step. The rancher throws down his tools and rushes toward the Water Rep, hollering, "Your card! Show him your card!"

So: authority is contextual and relational. The authority created by, and held within, some contexts and relationship doesn’t exist in other contexts and relationships. Many statues and pictures of the Buddha depict him seated, with one hand touching the earth. The story goes that when Siddhartha Gautama, who became the Buddha, attained enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree, he was challenged by Mara, the voice of limitation, death and delusion. Mara asked the Buddha by what authority he could claim awakening. "By what right and authority do you think you can solve the mystery of suffering? Just who do you think you are?"

In response, Buddha extended his right hand, touched the earth, and said, “The earth is my witness.”

It’s a lovely story. And there is one important question of authority that it answers. You, just like Buddha, have authority just by be being on this Earth. The Earth brought you forth and that is all the authorization required for you to be who you are – all the authorization needed for you to end your suffering. As important a point as this is, as crucial as it is recognize that everyone gets to be who they are, there are further issues of leadership and followership.

Someone needs to be in charge.

A few weeks ago, I posted a humorous quip on Facebook. I wrote: Why would a standing committee need a chair?

Some readers missed the pun, and wrote back, for instance: “Because when no one’s in charge, no one’s in charge.”

So, just to make clear that I was making a joke, I added, “And when the chair has the floor, where does the committee stand? Do they get tabled?”

(Clearly, I have spent a lot of time in committee meetings musing on subjects that maybe weren’t on the agenda.)

But to get back to the serious question: Who’s in Charge? And a related question: Who owns the congregation?

When I ask this question, I think the first thought most of us have is: the members own the congregation.

After all, Unitarian Universalists have congregational polity, so we're beholden to no higher authority, right?

Yes and no. Let's explore that.

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This is part 1 of 4 of "Who's In Charge Here?"
Next: Part 2: "Congregational Polity"