The following letter was written by Thomas Schade, minister at the First Unitarian Church in Worcester, Massachusetts, and published on the Unitarian Universalist Minister’s chat. I found it very compelling and believed it should have a wider reading. So, with Tom’s permission, here it is.
My Beloved Colleagues,
When will we start correlating the theories that we espouse about the religious life and the condition in which we find our churches and congregations?
On the one hand, our worship life is weak, and not nourishing. Our churches do not grow despite many visitors, and instead of looking at our worship life as being un-nourishing, we think that we don’t incorporate visitors well enough into the community of the church.
But in our theorizing about worship here, we don’t place a high value on our worship life.
We assume that our worship life will be unsatisfying to youth and to young adults. We mock our singing, our music and our overly intellectual sermons. Ministers regularly say that we don’t think that attending one of our worship services is a better experience than the proverbial walk in the woods. We say quite clearly that a congregant could hardly expect to come into contact with the transcendent at a UU worship service. When we talk about having a spiritual practice, we certainly don’t mean going to church on Sunday morning. We say that what happens in the worship service is not anywhere close to being the most important thing that happens on Sunday morning.
As a result, we attract a certain group of congregants and friends of the congregation who would act out disrespect for the worship service. Some don’t attend ever. Some won’t come unless it is about a topic that they like. Some make it clear that they aren’t participating.
There are lots of people who don’t come to worship, or do something in worship to divert themselves because they are too antsy. Some people teach Sunday school every chance they get. The question is “do they respect the worship life of the congregation?” The person who does crossword puzzles in the service probably does, but needs a way to focus. The people who drink coffee and eat donuts in the kitchen probably do not; at least, they count it less valuable than socializing. The people who surf the net on the patio do not.
Of course, we love them all as parish ministers.
But one of our duties as UU ministers is to spread the UU gospel, which includes an assertion that congregational worship (a values driven community ritual facilitating individual and corporate self-reflection) is a spiritual path that leads to individual and community development and the apprehension of the transcendent. It is one piece of our good news, and it is good news people are looking for exactly that: a way to reflect upon their own life in way that promotes their spiritual health and brings them into contact with the transcendent.
Not everyone in our congregation agrees with that part of our good news. We ourselves are humble when we consider what we try for in worship and what we so often actually achieve. And just as the Buddhist teacher is patient with the student who has trouble sitting still and not falling asleep, we have to be patient with the ones who don’t get what we are trying to do.
But, we ought not to back away from our basic commitments. The Catholic priest may say to you that those on the steps and in the narthex are also part of the Mass, but you can be sure that he doesn’t say it to those guys. He keeps inviting them in– keeps setting out there an expectation that to be a Catholic one needs to come in.
Put another way, we are not the same as our congregants; they called us to lead worship — which includes insisting that the congregation’s worship is respected. We are called to set an expectation. Sometimes, that will lead to friction and even conflict, but so it goes.
If we don’t respect worship enough to ask our congregants to respect it, then worship dies and atrophies — becomes weak, and uncared for, and unexciting, and trapped in the narrow cultural bounds, and is watered down and watered down until it looks like a PTA meeting, and fails to engage visitors for an extended period of time, and becomes a variety show to attract people who might make a pledge and serve on a committee, or becomes a church business meeting with candles and songs, and becomes no better than the walk in the woods.
Such lack of care shows and breeds more disrespect, and will kill our movement, because if do not offer a path to spiritual health and the transcendent, then we are just another club to join, and a kind of odd one at that.
Keep the faith,
Tom Schade
Minister
First U, Worcester
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