We Seek To Join The Greatness of the Venture
A sermon by Rev. Roberta Finkelstein
Reading: My Uncle Terwilliger on the Art of Eating Popovers by Theodore Geisel
My uncle ordered popovers from the restaurant’s bill of fare.
And, when they were served,
he regarded them with a penetrating stare…
Then he spoke great Words of Wisdom
as he sat there on that chair:
“To eat these things,”said my uncle,
“you must exercise great care.
You may swallow down what’s solid…
BUT…you must spit out the air!”
And…as you partake of the world’s bill of fare,
that’s darned good advice to follow.
Do a lot of spitting out the hot air.
And be careful what you swallow.
Thus endeth the reading. And therefore knowest thou why there is a picture of a popover on the front of the order of service. When Dr. Seuss was invited to give the commencement address at Lake Forest College in 1977, he must have thought long and hard about what to say to the idealistic young graduates about to leave the walls of academia and enter the real world. That poem was his entire speech. And you have to admit, he pretty much gave them exactly what they needed – a lens of discernment to distinguish between what is genuine in life and what is hot air.
In our search for truth and meaning, which is the heart of the liberal religious life, we all need those lenses of discernment. We may not always have Dr. Seuss to guide us, but we have something better: each other. One of the enduring legacies of the Protestant Reformation is the idea of the whole church as ministers - the priesthood of all believers. This morning we celebrate a particular
What exactly is small group ministry? On one level it is the practical application of organizational development to congregational life. Organizations thrive when they grow 10 people at a time. Healthy growth is not the product of expensive media outreach or professional evangelism. It is not the lure of a fancy sanctuary or a basketball court in the basement. Churches grow best in small groups that divide and multiply to allow for the continuous welcome and inclusion of new people by experienced church members who value healthy intimacy and have learned the art of hospitality.
Think about it. Why do people come to church? Why did you come for the first time? As my colleague Roy Phillips is fond of saying, people don’t join churches because they get up one morning and say, “You know, the real void in my life is not being on a committee.” What people do wake up in the morning and say is probably something more like, “There is an empty place inside me that needs filling. I need to be with other people who care as much about life as I do, who have the same deep and scary questions that I do, who have known love and loss like I have, who are willing to be companions with me on this amazing spiritual pilgrimage that is my life.”
Former UUA President John Buehrens said: “To be human is to be religious. To be religious is to make connections. To lead a meaningful life among the many competing forces of the twenty-first century, 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.” Connections, support, meaningful re-connection to our heritage . . . all this and more is what small group ministry offers.
Unitarian Universalism came late to the small group ministry movement. It has been used with great success for years by the mega-churches of more fundamentalist persuasion. That is why people flock in droves to churches that seat 5000 people in their sanctuaries on Sunday morning. Those thousands of people know that for a couple of hours during the week, they will meet with a group of 9 others who know them well and care about their personal and spiritual lives. Their small group, or covenant group, is their touchstone, it is the place where they are grounded in their faith.
UU minister Glen Turner has been a UU drum major for small group ministry. In a paper he wrote several years ago he said, “The small-group ministry concept has been especially effective in growing fundamentalist and Pentecostal churches. It has been adopted and adapted by Baptist, Presbyterian, non-denominational, and Catholic churches. The generic name for the concept, and I’ll use it only once, is the Meta-Church.
The fundamentals of small group ministry are pretty simple. Set up a number of groups with fewer than 10 people in them. 10 seems to be the ideal number for fostering both personal intimacy and a strong group identity. Convene each group with the understanding that there is always an empty chair – that is, there is always room to welcome a new person into the group. When the group gets too big, it divides into 2 new groups. This insures that people new to the church or to the program are not segregated in an ‘all new people’ group, but are immediately welcomed by a circle of seasoned veterans of small group ministry who are more than willing to share their group, and by extension their church, with new folks.
The structure of the group meetings is also pretty simple. A brief opening ritual, an extended personal check in, introduction of a topic and a lively discussion, a check out based on each person saying, “What I liked . . . “ and “What I wish . . .”, then a closing ritual. Groups are facilitated by trained volunteers. (In fact, this Thursday evening I will be offering a training session for the facilitators who have agreed to convene this year’s groups. I also meet monthly with the committee charged with nurturing the covenant groups. We will discuss ongoing ways to foster positive group dynamics, solve problems as they come up, and keep the groups going in a healthy direction.) Each leader, or really each group, should also have an apprentice facilitator, so that when the group needs to divide, new facilitators are always ready.
This simple structure allows all of you who choose to participate to have a place in the church where you will be known well and deeply. By checking in honestly and in trust, the group learns what is on the mind and heart of each member. From month to month the group follows the progress of heart breaks, illnesses, blossoming romances, and other life adventures. But the real magic of the small group ministry concept is not just that it allows each of you to get your needs met, though it does that. The magic is that at the very same time that you are getting our needs met – being ministered unto - you all become ministers. Your meaningful participation in a small group is your ministry. That is why, when the time comes, the groups willingly divide and reconstitute themselves. Because the members have come to understand their group as a ministry.
Among the most valuable fruits of small group ministry are healthy growth and an enhanced ability to practice the ancient art of hospitality. Another fruit is deepened faith for all participants. As you risk trusting each other, as you respond to each other, as you build on the trust formed in the groups to take discussions of spiritual topics to deeper levels, you grow in your UU faith!
I spoke, just before, about deepening faith. In service of that ideal we have chosen “The Ideas That Have Formed Us” as the year-long theme for covenant groups this year. The first inspiration for this topic came to me from a sermon written by a colleague, Mark Belletini, who I believe to be one of the best preachers in our movement. He introduces his sermon with a quotation from
Because I believe that knowing our history is so important, I was delighted to come across Mark Belletini’s sermon, entitled – by the way - “The Entire History of the Unitarian Universalist Movement and Institution in Twenty Five Minutes Flat.” With his permission, I am going to make that sermon the basis of our covenant group sessions once per month. At each session, the facilitator will offer a brief introduction to an idea that contributed in some significant way to the evolution of contemporary Unitarian Universalism. You will then have a chance to talk in depth about that idea and how it informs your personal faith.
Mark introduces each of those historical threads with these words, “Once upon a time, before we (Unitarian Universalists) were born, we were . . . “ We were Arians, Origenists, Pelagians, Anabaptists, Heretics, Socinians (which my spell checker wanted to change to Sicilians), Unitarians, Universalists . . . and a number of others besides! Some of those words may be completely unfamiliar to you. Further enticement to get signed up for a Covenant Group this year, which you can do today simply by filling out the registration form in your bulletin. Each month I will also be preaching a sermon on the topic. Those of you in the Covenant Groups will be able to compare your shared reflections to mine; and those of you who are not in groups will get a little taste of what your fellow congregants are wrestling with.
A couple of years ago, while preparing a sermon on the meaning of membership, I came across this quote by Napoleon Lovely. “Though our knowledge is incomplete, our truth partial, and our love imperfect, we believe that new light is ever waiting to break through individual hearts and minds to enlighten our human ways, that there is a mutual strength in willing cooperation, and that the bonds of love keep open the gates of freedom.”
A small group ministry experience can be, for you, an experience of having that new light break through, it can be an experience of finding the gift of mutual strength in willing cooperation. And could there be a better or more compelling time for us to do the kind of spiritual work that keeps open the gates of freedom? What a gift this practice of small group ministry is – to ourselves, to each other, to the people waiting just outside our doors for an invitation to come in! I invite every one of you to get involved in small group ministry. I also want to invite you all to participate in another experience in building mutual strength. There is a ½ page flyer in your bulletin inviting you to an all-church pot-luck and town meeting on October 4th. The Committee on Ministry and I are planning on holding these dinners and conversations once a season. We envision an ongoing conversation about the life of
Whether it is in a Covenant Group, a town meeting, or one of the many other ministries of this congregation, at
Benediction: adapted from A. Powell Davies
We seek the grace to understand what it means to share in the human venture. We call to remembrance the many generations of those who have gone before, living on the earth as we do, searching for the meaning of life as we search for it, hearing the call of duty as we hear it, entering the struggle between true and false, engaging the battle of right against wrong, deciding between love and hate, even as we do.
We seek to join in spirit with those who struggled until they triumphed, raising the level of our common life and broadening the scope of human possibility. We seek to know that what was done by them, we can do: that greatness of life is not the gift of circumstance but the fruit of high resolve.
Let us not say that such living was for others but it cannot be done for us. Take away our shelter, our evasions, our excuses. We seek to join to the greatness of the venture, until we are ennobled by it and it’s joy is in our hearts.
Amen
© Rev. Roberta Finkelstein 2006