A MEMO TO THE WORSHIP COMMITTEE
A Background Document
James Ishmael Ford
Twenty years ago when I was, as we say in my trade, in search for my first pulpit, I wrote a series of essays about my understanding of some crucial aspects of church life. I am now serving the fourth congregation in my ministerial career. While one should never say never, I do not expect to be in formal search for a call again.
Some of what this means is that I am at liberty to reflect a bit on various things. But, also I feel the pressures of time closing in on me, and a certain urgency to get “this one right.” And so reviewing my understanding of these aspects of our common life is for me terribly, terribly important.
I entered into the conversation with the pulpit search committee of the First Unitarian Church of Providence for a number of reasons. It wasn’t the only church I was considering and was considering me. But upon hard reflection and deep conversations I decided this was the church I should be at. Fortunately the committee felt the same way, as did, when the vote came, the congregation at large.
This is a congregation that is at once old and new. The First Unitarian Church was gathered in 1720. It actually had antecedents that go back a generation or two earlier. Today the church reports a few more than four hundred adults and has a religious education enrollment of over two hundred. In church speak this makes our congregation “young.” Our college age group has forty members. And every Sunday a significant part of the worshiping community is under forty.
As to our theology, this has always been a liberal pulpit. Our first minister was condemned for preaching the “damnable doctrine of good works.” The second minister had been deposed from a Connecticut pulpit for similar heresies. When the Unitarian movement finally congealed in the early nineteenth century, this congregation was among the leading lights of the movement. In the twentieth century it called a minister whose spiritual journey led him to be one of the early Unitarian Universalist Buddhists. After he retired they called a second minister who identified as a Buddhist. And, when they called me, they expressed delight that they would be served one more time by a Buddhist.
This is not to say this is a liberal Buddhist congregation. It is a liberal church, following the trends of Unitarian Universalism over the many years. Possibly the majority of the congregation would self-identify as humanist. Although what I also see is a trend line. And that trend line is of a decidedly more spiritual sort. Our younger members are mostly theist. That is they believe in a higher power, but at the same time they will not allow others to define that power or God for them.
So, against this background, I pulled up my old although constantly revised essay on public worship, our Sunday worship. This is what I wrote.
The most visible activity in belonging to a religious society is our gathering together on Sunday mornings. In fact, many people think there is nothing more to belonging to a church than attending Sunday services. (How goes the old joke about ministers? Missing six days a week, incomprehensible on the seventh?) Of course, there is much more to our shared lives than that. What is true is the Sunday service is the visible focus of our religious lives. And, I believe, the Sunday service speaks to deep and ancient human needs.
I believe a consideration of the words “worship,” “religion” and “liturgy” may be helpful here. The best definition for worship I’ve discovered is derived from the Old English and means simply to “find worth.” While there is some debate about its etymology, many people believe the word religion derives from religare, to “bind together” or to “bind back.” This view certainly informs my understanding. And, finally, liturgy means “the work of the people.” All these meanings; finding worth, binding together, and work of the people; are, I really believe, the substance of our Sunday services. They also speak to what we should be about seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. But, symbolically, this all comes together on Sunday morning.
In his famous “Divinity School Address,” our ancestor Ralph Waldo Emerson spoke of two gifts to humanity from our Christian heritage: “first, the Sabbath, the jubilee of the whole world…. And secondly, the institution of preaching.” Sunday, set aside for contemplation and celebration—and preaching, what Emerson called “the speech of person to person;” I believe these two things, celebration and the sermon, inform each other. Taken together, they give us much of value whatever the particular shape of our individual understandings of our contemporary free faith.
Unfortunately, within the liberal religious community there is a tendency to reduce the Sunday service to a “sermon sandwich.” That is a hymn or two, a reading or two, some announcements, and an offering, all merely filling out the time around a sermon.
I believe the sermon is very important. Just paying attention to a carefully crafted sermon can be an opportunity for engaging the deep places of our human condition. Well done, the sermon is a place where we can consider, reflect and meditate on some issue.
And this is important. When I preach, I try to focus mainly on the concerns of life and death: Why are we here? Where are we going? Why do we die? And out of this, what is morality and social choice? How do our beliefs affect our actions? Illuminating them with stories out of our personal experiences as well as Jewish and Christian scripture, the epic of science, great mythic sources, the earth-centered traditions, and the traditions of the world’s faith’s we can discover much about ourselves and the direction of our lives. In short the sermon is anchored in the depths of our human condition, and is about our human condition.
Now, while I am intimately concerned with the questions of meaning and the possibilities of direction in our lives, this doesn’t mean all has to be solemn. Frequently the theme should be lighter—we need laughter and celebration and song every bit as much as reflection. I think of Emma Goldman, who said, “If I can’t dance, I won’t join your revolution.” And I see our church as a dancing revolution. We are engaged in a dance within the mystery of the cosmos.
The preacher is a voice of the community. Certainly not the only voice; but very much the visible, corporate voice. As a preacher I bring an intellectual, but, I hope, also deeply personal and spiritual voice to our community’s Sunday service. And that voice needs to be understood within the context of our living community. We are drawing together, discovering what binds us together, that which gives us worth. So, this is the work of the people, all of us.
Here I want to return to the issue of that “sermon sandwich,” and why I think we can aspire to a more meaningful experience. I believe our Sunday worship must be grounded in liturgy—a considered, and well-structured and regular service that involves the whole of the community in this great work, both symbolically, and, as much as possible, in actuality. Possibly this includes all the elements in that sermon sandwich. Possibly not. What is important is that we consciously investigate how best to serve the larger purpose. If the sermon is a “jewel,” the setting truly is equally, and occasionally more, important.
Some of our congregations have rediscovered, and a few have never lost, the understanding of liturgy at the center of our Sunday service. I profoundly understand that the pattern of worship we’ve developed in our individual congregations is a sacred liturgy and should not be casually changed. Liturgy arises out of the community as a whole; it is genuinely the work of the people. There can be great strength, and deep feeling, found in such a regular and well-designed liturgy, where the sermon is an integral part, but not the only important element.
There is no great mystery in the power of liturgy. All it takes is awareness, the realization that the whole service is valuable, and giving each part its proper its attention. When this is done with care and respect; then we’ve found worth, then we’ve found what connects us, then we’ve really done the work of the people.
Okay, that’s what I wrote twenty years ago, and have tinkered with ever since.
I would add a few things. One, is that as a worshiping community, as in all other things, we need to always be giving ourselves away to the future. That is we need to find those things that comfort and challenge us, here today. But at the same time we need to be always giving our hearts and time and energy to the next generation.
And there are few places in our common life where this is more immediately important than on Sunday morning.
I look at our history, as relentlessly liberal, as deeply informed by the power of reason and the humanist tradition. I also see a current open to other views, particularly Buddhism. But I wouldn’t exclude the allure of the earth-centered traditions as a secondary current, nor a fascination with the possibilities contained all the world’s faiths. These and a profound commitment to ground this is a moral, ethical and socially engaged life.
That’s the background.
Then there’s that future, there are those who are coming into our churches seeking the place for them to make their lives, to raise their children, to find comfort and challenge, and in turn, in turn, well that’s their problem.
Ours is what are we to do?
I see a group of people who largely are not coming into our congregation because they are unhappy with traditional Christianity. Rather these are people who hold the form of their faith lightly, but who at the same time seek something deeper. They are often marked by the term “spiritual but not religious.”
And yet they want decency and good order. And, I think, believe strongly, for the most part they’re here because they respect the traditions of the Christian way while not wanting to be held to any literalist view. They’re not seeking Christian-lite, but rather a real religion that respects the Western tradition.
So, I see us as somewhat post-Christian, a vague but interesting term, but also with roots that are definitely Christian. And that it is important for us to not lose that connection even as we constantly reinterpret for us and the future.
What that means for us, I believe, is that our worship services need consciously to embrace those parts of our heritage that celebrate our place in the Western tradition.
The basic form of our worship service is recognizably Protestant. I think this is a good thing. And I think this is part of what is attractive about us. I also think it needs constant livening, through various things, it needs to constantly be held as being heartful. More than anything our worship needs to be heartful.
And there is our liturgical calendar.
I think the Christmas season must be focused on a liberal celebration of the birth of hope through the metaphor of the birth of a child, and specifically through a recapitulation of the Christmas story. This is why I have insisted the Sunday before Christmas be a humanist/paganish and totally recognizable Christmas pageant. And why the Christmas Eve services themselves should be a “traditional” service of carols and lessons. The numbers attending these services seem to bear this sense out.
First it allows us to ground ourselves in the Western tradition and guarantees our children will not be spiritually ignorant of this ancient holiday. Second, it is very much a Unitarian holiday in that it shifts the Christian story from Easter with its mythic elements to a myth of the value of humanity expressed in a child. Lastly, it is a time when we can bring relatives to worship where they can see we haven’t in fact wandered completely away from the Western tradition.
Now Easter is more problematic. But, still, needs to be permanently and always the theme of that day.
As we consider the holidays there are other Christian festivals, particularly All Hallows/All Saints that make sense to continue. While the worship form itself should continue to be the Protestant form, the subjects of sermons should also take into account major events in the Jewish calendar. After that when possible, noting earth-centered and Buddhist holidays. Lastly, a sprinkling of the world’s religions, as the living calendar allows.
I also believe our church is going to be a social justice community. Therefore a significant number of sermons should be explicitly in support of this aspect of our common life.
I am also deeply interested in what it is we can do to use our tradition of communion services. I would like to move them from three or so Sundays throughout the year following worship to well planned evening events inspired by the Soulful Sundown. My observation of that program is that it has tended to turn into a concert. By connecting it to a clearly Unitarian Universalist celebration of the Christian communion together with a real sermon makes me think we could have a lively program aimed at our younger members. Perhaps four times a year for a start on a suitable evening…
As the called minister of this church ultimately decisions about how we approach worship must be mine. The ultimate accountability for my decisions is found in the annual evaluation, and for me most importantly in the five-year evaluation. But, that said only a fool would make decisions in a vacuum. And while I see the worship committee’s primary charge the summer services, and support during the regular church year, I think the committee needs to be the primary voice within the congregation in dialogue with me, to challenge and to collaborate as possible.
So, I want and need an engaged committee.
But, I ask that the committee not simply bring old appetites and opinions, but rather reflects deeply on the issues at hand, of our history, of our present condition and of our future. And to make it your business to know something of the theory and what is going on in our larger worshipping community.
And, in service to our larger covenant, to enter into the conversation.
To scheme and to plot.
And to make ours the church it can be.
Sincerely,
James
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In