A Sermon in Four Parts: A Dialogue

Part One, Ed Johnson

Today’s sermon is a dialogue between our minister, Liz Lerner, and me. It comes in several parts, starting with a brief recent history of our church from my own personal perspective to help set the stage for what follows:

I started as board president in January of 1999. Our minister at that time, Jim Bank, gave his last sermon here on January 3 and left after a difficult negotiation on what we agreed to refer to as a “terminal sabbatical leave.” Some of our members left the church, upset over Jim Bank’s departure. Many more were concerned about what our future would bring, and frankly I was one of them. I really only took the job as board president because the nominating committee got to my wife, Cathy, and she convinced me it was a good idea (a neat trick, huh?). I certainly didn’t feel ready to do the job.

So we started a search for an interim minister, looking for someone to start in the Fall of 1999 and serve as our minister for a year. In the mean time, I was the “ceremonial head” of UUCSS, in effect a lay-led congregation, for the next 8 months. We formed a second search committee to carry out the task, truly terrifying at the time, of conducting a search for a permanent, settled minister—hoping to find a minister to start in the Fall of 2000.

It was a wrenching time for our church community—we were still bruised up over Jim Bank’s departure, strained by operating as a lay-led congregation, and running two ministerial search committees. And our finances were tight as we continued to pay Jim Bank through his sabbatical leave. Wow!

The interim search committee proposed Kerry Mueller, the board agreed, and she started in the Fall of 1999. To give you an idea of how that worked out, and some small idea of how important Kerry’s time at UUCSS was to our church community, I’m going to repeat some of what I said from this pulpit at her last service on June 18, 2000:

A Permanent Thank You for an Interim Minister

It has come to me to say a few words on behalf of the Congregation on the occasion of the last service of our regular church year with Kerry as our Interim, and all too soon to be former Interim, Minister.

…thank you Kerry, for restoring my faith.

For not just teaching us, but showing us, by your own example, how to learn from each other.

For not just being our minister, but showing us, by your own example, how to have right relations with a minister.

For not just helping us each to grow, but growing together with us.

For all the things, both great and small that add up to a year of restoration and repair and rebirth. Revisiting our past. Re-centering our present. Refocusing our future.

There were lots of tears, in lots of eyes, on that day, now over two years past. Today’s service is about emotions and relationships and lessons learned. About those things that change and those things that last. I’ve taken us from January of 1999 through our interim minister’s departure in the summer of 2000. It’s your turn now, Liz.

Part One, Rev. Elizabeth Lerner

This is where I come in, because this is when I came in. I went through the settlement process of looking at lots of different congregations, and fell for all you guys. Among lots of packets, yours had a humor, a warmth, and a history of endurance and remarkable achievement in the face of adversity that made you stand out in a crowd.

Some church’s stories are pretty boring. Ours isn’t. We started on a shoestring, with a lot more commitment than resources. We’ve grown over time, often in bursts, rather than slow and steady. We’ve known times of flourishing and hard times and “iffy” times. We’ve known ministers who were pretty strange, and ministers who were pretty wonderful. We’ve been a voice for different movements that have swept us along as they’ve swept through our country.

When I read or hear or learn another piece of the story of this congregation, two things always strike me. One is how much things have changed here over time. This church has really been different than it is now in style, activity, atmosphere, space and even theology.

The other is how much things have stayed the same. This has always been a place for real people to be human beings together. Anywhere in our story you can find people keeping this church vital and relevant, welcoming new members in, sustaining long-time and older members and then being sustained in turn, reaching out to help folks who have come to us, not just acknowledging, but responding to the issues of our day: war, relationships, civil rights, gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender rights, social justice, spiritual searching.

When I came, I came because of who this church already was—loving, generous, committed, fun, open, enthusiastic, willing, strong, deep. And that identity of yours is reconfirmed all the time by the careful, courageous choices this church has made. We¹ve invested financially in carpets to make our community hall an attractive and clean space, chairs for more people to sit in worship and special services, boosted staff hours and given health insurance to our administrative assistant, and established signing for our deaf members and friends in worship, RE and inreach groups.

We’ve invested emotionally and spiritually in those same inreach groups and adult and children’s religious education development and the coming holy lands trip next summer to Greece and Turkey and our annual Catoctin retreat and celebrating our 50th anniversary. All these things grow us, yes, but they also reveal how rich and exciting this faith community already is in spirit and love and strength and courage.

Part Two, Ed Johnson

Liz mentions investments of money and time and spirit and emotion, and some of the choices we have made in the time she has been with us. The time and the effort invested in these choices has changed me and our church. And from these changes comes the opportunity to learn. This part of today’s sermon is about things I have learned about myself and about our church community.

I’ve learned that it’s never as bad as I fear, or as good as I hope.

I’ve learned that making secret decisions in smoke-filled back rooms doesn’t work here. Too few smokers … almost nobody can keep a secret… everyone knows where all the rooms are… well, anyway it just doesn’t work. However, the search for the cabal running UUCSS is a worthy effort. I’m hoping to team with Larry Macaneny to expose them all, and I consider this fair warning. And although I’m being a little silly here, our property chair might say humor is the only thing at UUCSS that works reliably.

But seriously, one of my most important roles has been to make time to honor our commitment to democratic principles. I have to tell you, that is a lot harder than it sounds. On a personal level, I try hard to remember even the board president only gets one vote. But it’s also true the board president has a lot of influence, and the chair of any group—and I have chaired the Board of Trustees and the congregational meetings—has a lot of authority. Sometimes it is essential that the chair use the authority of the position to move the institution forward. But the chair can also abuse the authority of the position to press a personal agenda. It is not easy to tell the difference, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t always get it right.

One of the most important things which can help our democratic process is simply paying attention to the calendar. Sometimes we ran out of time to deliberate and had to make decisions in a rush, but I tried hard to use the calendar to look ahead to when important decisions had to be made so we could make time to consider them carefully.

I’ve also tried to remember a central fact about our church: everyone here is a volunteer who can leave anytime they choose to. This means trying to get people to do things with fear or threats doesn’t work here. OK, OK, it works maybe once with each person you try it on, then they avoid you like the plague. The central fact that we are all here by choice also means controversies have to be dealt with immediately—in fact, by the time something is controversial it is already too late. It also means a sincere thank you is owed to everyone for every single thing they do, big or small, to make our church what it is. And people do a lot of amazing things for this church.

In our recent hard times we turned to small groups of dedicated, capable, folks in our congregation to take on both of the most critical tasks for our future survival—our two ministerial searches. And these two groups of people worked incredibly hard for our church community and, basically, hit two home runs for us. From my perspective as board president for the last four years, these two simultaneous ministerial searches were the first example of something I learned to count on—mostly other people, not me, have done the heavy lifting. It has actually been easier to be board president than several other jobs I have had at UUCSS. Running a pledge drive, for example.

Overall, I feel very humbled by my experience the last four years. I’ve learned everyone here is just as smart as I am—yes, even the children. This is a place with folks you can use “cabal” in a sentence with. Folks who can put up wallboard. Folks who can write a winning grant application in a week. Folks who can start up a new adult education program, make beautiful music, create a garden, run a loan program, paint a painting, write a book, make a pot, tell a joke, fly a plane, build a web site…the list is absolutely astonishing and as far as I can tell, absolutely endless. It is always exciting to me to find out what great things people in our church know and have done and can do. So I have a deep faith in the ability of our members to step up to leadership positions in our church. Maybe we don’t know who they are yet. Maybe they don’t even know who they are yet. But they are most certainly here—you are them!

We’ve changed a lot in my four years as board president, and even more in the 50 years we have been a church, but change is an everyday part of our church community. People come and go, and sometimes come back. Every day each of us gets a day older. But in the midst of this change, other things endure. The most enduring things about our church community are hard to see when times are good, but become crystal clear when times are difficult. Since times are good for us now, I’m going to say that again—the most enduring things about our church community are hard to see when times are good, but become crystal clear when times are difficult.

I learned during the hard times that this church has a core of people committed to our church as an institution. And it is the good times, like now, when we are build up this core of people that our institution may have to count on in the future. I’m one of these people, and I think we all have something in common: The church has been there for us when we needed it at some time in our lives. Been there in some very real and personal way. For me, it started with the response of the whole congregation to my son’s death 18 years ago—his name is right there in the Milky Way—and has been repeated many times since for me and for my family.

So my prayer for our 50th anniversary year is that our church will continue to be there for other people, and that I can continue to count on it to be there again for me when I need it. After all, the first 50 years is the hardest (at least all of us baby boomers hope so).

I will close with the very particular prayer of all board presidents—may every board president be blessed by a good relationship with a good minister. Our interim minister, Kerry Mueller, and our current minister, Liz Lerner, have answered this prayer for me in full measure. I’m confident Liz and our new board president, Janet Coffin, will find a way to make an effective team to move us into the future, and confident all of you will help them as much as you have all helped me. Your turn, Liz…

Part Two, Rev. Elizabeth Lerner

The minister doesn’t make the church—no single person does, though many wonderful and influential members, and ministers, have lastingly enriched the life of our congregation. It’s funny—though over years and decades and even centuries people come and go, it’s the church’s culture that endures. Sometimes that’s a problem, and a congregation has to work, in an intentional and long-term way, to change ways that it operates which limit it or undermine it. Not here. In our church, our culture is one of openness and liveliness and commitment on the part of our members, qualities which develop rather than constrain our community.

It’s a complex and delicate system, which is why it’s so great that this system is a lasting part of this wonderful church. All faith communities need a foundation that gets them through the hard times, and that foundation needs to be commitment. The commitment needs to take many forms: money, labor, time, planning, helping, sharing—but the commitment itself is the bottom line, the foundation. And with that foundation of commitment what is possible is not just endurance, not just lasting, but something even better, far better: transformation.

Because transformation requires an environment of stability. Things have to be safe enough, stable enough, to allow for change. Without a firm foundation, commitment, stability, we can’t endure the experience of change, of transformation, even when it’s transformation we are choosing.

This church is still the church it has always been—and it is also different. It is changing, and lasting, both. We are transforming each other, each of us changed because each of us is here. Like a tree we are branching out, deepening our roots, still the same tree we were, the same kind of tree, in the same place, and yet different, renewed and new, with the changing seasons of our existence.

Like that tree, we are strong. Like any living thing, we are fragile. We are a voluntary association, we are as vulnerable as each of us walking out of this room, this community, and not coming back. We are as enduring as all the people who have walked into this room and stayed and shared and given and grown and stayed. That’s really strong. That’s why this church is flourishing right now—our successful changing is a testament to all the commitment that is our marvelous foundation—all of you.

I can’t close without acknowledging that I have somewhat of a valedictory mood in me, reflecting on this topic, because, I think having Ed’s presence as board chair has had such a strong influence on my own time with our church. Ed, few ministers are lucky enough to have such gifted chairpeople to work with ever, let alone starting a new ministry. What a pleasure and a growing experience it has been for me to work in partnership with you. Much as I am looking forward to this next time pulling in harness with Janet, and that’s a lot, I’ll also miss sharing the harness with you. Thank goodness this is only another beginning, another transformation.

Amen