Growing Younger

Opening Words

Mark 4:26-29 “If someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, the seed would sprout and grow. The earth produces of itself first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear. When the grain is ripe, the harvest has come.”

Reading

From “The Almost Church” by Michael Durall

The disheartening scenario of church closings is a matter of demographics as well as theology. Only about fifty to sixty UU churches, 5 percent of all congregations in the Association, have seen measurable numerical growth over the past decade. The remaining 95 percent have experienced negligible growth at best; or, more likely, membership plateaus and declines, as congregants grow older, grayer, and fewer.

The demographic trends also indicate that senior members, those in their seventies and eighties, the generation known as institution builders, will not be with us that much longer. This generation has supported churches with volunteer labor for decades and decades, through good times and bad. These older members also constitute a sizeable number of the church’s largest donors, through their gifts to annual pledge drives and capital campaigns. Once these dedicated souls have passed on, it is unlikely that younger generations will provide a commensurate level of financial support. Many churches will close simply because they will not have the money to remain open.

This brings us to a second demographic trend. Young people, in general, prefer large congregations because a lot more is going on. In the Association today, only forty-nine churches have 500 members or more. Three-fourths of UU congregations attract fewer than 100 people at Sunday worship, and many of those attending smaller churches are senior members… Younger people also prefer creating new forms of worship and congregational life to perpetuating the old. Since small churches place a high premium on stability and tradition, they may not be the kind of churches that younger generations are looking for.

Sermon

Growing Younger

Good morning. For those of you who I haven’t yet had a chance to meet, my name is Eric Luedtke, and I am both a member of this congregation and, as you can see, a young adult. A couple months ago, I was given a copy of this book, “The Almost Church,” by Michael Durall. What I found in it scared me. It scared me because I have a deep and abiding love for this congregation, and for the Unitarian- Universalist movement. It scared me because I believe our ideals, if shared with others, can help to make the world a better, more peaceful place. It scared me because if, as Michael Durall says, ninety-five percent of our congregations are either stagnating or declining, then my great love and hope for Unitarian-Universalism is in vain. Our faith must grow, and to grow it must adapt, or else it will be relegated into the tiniest, darkest corner of American culture. Or else our ideals will not be heard by the rest of our country. Our movement has the potential to again change America, as it did in the past. We often look backward to recall the lives and works of great UU leaders, philosophers, and activists who made a difference in this country, publicly avowing their faith and their ideals. But we too rarely seek to emulate them. If we are to be a movement, truly a movement, as we often call ourselves, then we must move. We must go forward. We must welcome change. Durall’s criticism of Unitarian-Universalism is that we are a 1950’s church in a 21st century world. We need to catch up sixty years, and in a short amount of time, because stagnation must, inevitably, lead to obsolescence.

The greatest threat to our movement is demographic. We are a faith that is mostly sustained by the effort and participation of older members. We must find ways to appeal to young adults, to recruit them into our fold, if we are to grow, or even maybe if we are to survive.

I have an inkling that one of the reasons I was asked to serve on the Board of Trustees of this church is because I am a young adult, and because it was felt that young adults should have a voice in the leadership of this congregation. I have appreciated the opportunity to serve this congregation, so it is with a little bit of regret that I say this: the very idea of appointing someone to ‘represent young adults’ is a fallacy. I can’t stand in front of you today and tell you exactly what all young adults in America feel, or what UU young adults feel. I can only tell you what I feel. I think I have some ideas as to how this congregation, and the movement as a whole, can better appeal to young adults. Maybe some of these ideas aren’t very good. Maybe some of them are just terrible. But here, today, I think we need to start a dialogue in this congregation about these issues. I urge you not only to listen to what I have to say, not only to think about it when you leave here, but to talk to me, to each other, to other young adults in and out of the congregation about these ideas. We have sixty years to make up, and Rome wasn’t built in one Sunday.

Among the most important issues we must address is the stealth conservatism that afflicts our faith. We pride ourselves on being a theologically liberal religion, and we are. If you look around the room, you’ll see people who identify as Christians, Jews, Buddhists, as one of the many varieties of earth-centered spirituality, as atheist or agnostic. But too often in our services and our methods of church governance we look to the past, to precedents, instead of looking for new, invigorating ideas. Think about your average service, like today’s. You walk in, sit down, are welcomed, stand for the lighting of the chalice, the uniting statement, and the song of exultation. You might come up for joys and sorrows, or not, you might drop a little something into the offering basket, or not, and then you sit back and observe whatever entertainment is being offered from the pulpit that day. All of this is about as unpredictable as the results of skydiving without a parachute. We inherited this type of service from the protestant roots of our faith. Why do we still do it this same old way? Because it’s comfortable. Because we lead hectic, sometimes confusing lives and many of us want to come to a place on Sundays where we can feel comfort. By this view, church is the ultimate security blanket.

But should church just be comfortable? Should Sunday be a security blanket? Sure we can mix up the way we do things on Sunday, move around the order of service a little bit. But these are surface features, details, they are not the root of what needs to happen here on Sundays. I believe that our church needs to become more challenging. We need to push ourselves. We need to question ourselves. Church should be a place that confronts us with ourselves, with our own search for spiritual and personal growth. Comfort is deadening, it is the absence of growth. Every single Sunday, we need to be asking ourselves, “What have I done lately to affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person? What have I done to promote justice, equity, and compassion in human relations?” We need renewal, spiritual renewal, but renewal can be achieved through challenge with just a little more work than it can be achieved through comfort. When we come here on Sundays, we should challenge ourselves spiritually and ethically. We should push each other to look at our lives, to see if we are really living the ideals we promote. I don’t remember a time when I came here and was asked, “What have you done lately to make the world better? What have you done to uphold our principles?”

Some of you might be thinking right now that there is a down side to what I am speaking about, and there is. Challenging yourself on a weekly basis is a difficult thing. Won’t some people leave, won’t they go somewhere else if all they want from church is comfort? I think it’s possible. But I think most, if not all, of the people in this room joined this congregation because they had some major event in their lives that pushed them to think about fundamental issues, about their own personal place in the world. Maybe you realized that there was something missing in your life, that you wanted to join a community of people who shared spiritual goals. Maybe you lost someone close to you, and wanted to join a community of support and love where we help each other through tough times. Maybe you had a child, and realized that you wanted your child to grow up with a liberal spiritual education to go with the book learning they get in school. For me, in the days after September 11, I wanted to become a member of a community of people that have hope for humankind, that believe in values that will lead to a more peaceful world. So no, I don’t think we’ll lose members if we become more challenging to ourselves and each other. I believe that people who want to grow spiritually and will flock to us.

We have the same problem in how we govern ourselves as a community. Rather than bore you with gory details of organizational development, let me just say a few words about our church governance. Too often, what guides us in making decisions is what’s come before, the past. Too often, we act as if the way we do things now is immutable. This needs to change. Some large congregations purposely reorganize themselves every two years, just to avoid the problem of stagnation. I’m not saying we need to go that far, but we need to be more open to new ideas about how we run this church, how we organize our community. Since I’ve been here, the largest addition to the structure of the church has been the creation of a deaf access committee. This has been an extraordinary success, which has made us better as a congregation and as individuals simply because being welcoming to the deaf community is in keeping with our purposes and principles. It’s also challenged us to be more welcoming, to learn some sign language, to accept something new into the structure of our Sundays. But the reason the deaf access committee has been such an exceptional boon to this church is because of the incredible hard work and dedication of just a few members. Why, if someone comes up with a new idea, do we challenge them to defend it and then to do all the work themselves? We need to be welcoming not just to new members, but to new ideas for programs and activities. If we had a dozen deaf access committees, whose ideas were welcomed and promoted and given a chance as quickly as possible, this church would be twice as big as it is now. Why don’t we have a committee in this church whose sole purpose is to find and encourage new ideas, to get new projects started?

Even this might not be enough, though, to attract the new members, the young adults that we need to continue to grow as a congregation and as a denomination. One of the greatest disappointments to me in coming to this community originally was the lack of open theological discussion and debate. When I was a teenager, I had this idea that theology is something you develop by the time you are twenty, and then you just believe it for the rest of your life. But as every year of my life has passed, I have become more questioning of my own spirituality. Sure, I have developed core beliefs, but I still question them, and there are a great many questions I have never been able to answer for myself. I came to this church as a direct result of September 11, because I felt for the first time that I could not understand on my own the world, the evil in it, and how I can make my life a force for good. I realized that I needed a community to support me in my quest for spiritual fulfillment, that I needed the ideas and critiques of others if I were to ever have any hope of finding the answers I seek. This has never happened for me here. Where is the adult religious education that challenges me to defend my beliefs? Where is the debate and discussion? Just because we respect everyone’s beliefs does not mean that we can’t discuss our beliefs respectfully. I expect that many young adults, indeed many people generally, would like that sort of discussion, a community of a thousand different theologies and ideologies refined through interaction, shared in love, made greater by that sharing.. We can reinvigorate the theological debate in our churches, we can invite new ideas and welcome new worship practices and forms of church governance. But the only thing that gets new people walking through those doors is outreach. With the possible exception of Massachussetts, where Unitarian Universalists seem at times to be a dime a dozen, our faith is a quiet one. We are an introspective community; we look more often inward than outward. This is perhaps the greatest flaw that we have.

My own path to this pulpit was one I forged myself. I found out about Unitarian Universalism on the internet, mentioned it to a couple people, and happened to receive a book about the faith as a Christmas present. “A Chosen Faith” by John Buehrens and Forrest Church, was like an epiphany for me. I had always mistrusted organized religion, and I found myself nodding along as I read it. It took me less than two days to read it. But even with that, I don’t think I would have ever begun to attend services, let along joined the church, of my own accord. Even after September 11, which inspired me to a new spirituality, the only reason I began coming this church was because my wife, Emily, convinced me to. If we rely on random happenstance, on people happening to pick up books, then our religious community will stagnate and, eventually, die.

Recently, the Unitarian Universalist Association ran a major ad campaign in Kansas City to try to recruit new members. It was apparently pretty successful. The churches in the area got a large number of visitors during and after the campaign. That’s great, in fact it’s necessary. In this world of information, we have to reach out with the newest methods, we have to use all available media to share our principles with the world. Indeed, the UUCSS Outreach Committee has done a great job of advertising this congregation among our own community. But campaigns like that in Kansas City are expensive, and money is always tight. I’m sure anyone on the outreach committee can tell you how hard it is for them to do their work with the scant resources they have. We can’t run ad campaigns all the time, every day, in every place that there is potential for new membership. It’s simply impossible.

So, the low-key method won’t work, and we can’t sustain the multimedia method to the extent we need to. What’s left? What’s left is each and every one of you. When he was asked by a reporter how he managed to become such a force in American politics, Cesar Chavez said, “I talked to one person, then another, then another.” Think how many UUs have been involved in community organizing over the years, and yet too often we forget that simple method that Chavez used. Too often, we forget to just talk to people.

For many other faiths, this is the very foundation for growth. I have friends who are Mormons, and most of them dedicated two years of their lives to spreading their faith, TWO YEARS, at an age when most American youth are attending college. Two years of going door to door, getting doors slammed in their faces more often than not. Two years just talking to people. Does it surprise anyone that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is the fastest growing religion in the world? I’ve heard it said that within a decade or two, Mormonism will join the ranks of the world’s largest major religions, along with Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, and Hinduism.

Of course, we raise our young people to be free spirits, and I’m not sure anyone who hangs out in the fellowship house is going to go to Brazil for two years to try to recruit new UUs. That doesn’t mean we can’t be missionaries for Unitarian Universalism in our own community. That doesn’t mean we can’t talk to friends and family, to invite them to church every chance we get. So why don’t we do it? Why is it that we almost seem embarrassed to talk about our faith? Are we shy? Not necessarily, but the circles we travel in are often automatically distrustful of faith. I’ve experienced that myself. Most of my friends are, to say the least, liberal people. When I converted to Unitarian Universalism, it took me a few months to work up the courage to talk about it. And when I did finally talk about it, most of them looked at me out of the corner of their eye and considered whether I needed to be committed to an institution. They thought it was weird. I’m sure some of them thought I had joined a cult. One of them even looked at me, surprised, and said, “You mean the religion with the mass marriages?” And yet, when I talk about our ideals, our purposes and principles, they nod their heads in agreement, just like I once did. I got over my embarrassment, and began talking about what we believe here, and it worked. Since joining this church, one of the things of which I am most proud is that I have spread our message to other people too. My brother is now a member of this congregation, as is a close friend of Emily’s, and though my mother claims that this is too far a drive for her, I’m still trying to get her to stop by the UU church in Rockville. We can not let ourselves be restrained by our own embarrassment. We can not be shy about our faith. We espouse ideals that would appeal to millions of Americans, and yet we are virtually unknown to most of the people in this country. Just because we separate ourselves from the aggressive evangelical recruitment of some Christian churches does not mean that we can not spread our message by talking to one person, and then another, and then another. I’m sure it’s been said before, but we need to have bring a friend Sunday every Sunday. Maybe some of what I’ve said here today is a little uncomfortable. But change is always a little uncomfortable. The fact is that we need more young adults in this church, and in our faith worldwide. If we stay a 1950’s church, we will not get them. They will not come, except the few of us who manage to happen upon a church by accident, and stay because we believe in its ideals strongly enough that we are willing to overlook its flaws, its obstinence. How can all this happen? How can we make all this change happen? Trust me, if the Board of Trustees of UUCSS passes a resolution, not much will change. Our faith has always been a democratic one, we are a grassroots religion. We, each and every one of us, will need to affirm and promote change. Only then will Unitarian Universalism fulfill its potential. Only then will we get the young adult congregants that will be able to sustain and grow our church in the decades to come. Each and every one of us in this room needs to walk out of here today with a few questions in our heads. Who can I get to come to church with me? How can I help make our worship more dynamic? What new ideas do I have that might be good for the church? How can I be welcoming to new ideas from others? How can I bring more young adults into this sanctuary? I would like to turn to one of our greatest ministers for the final reading today. Many of you have heard of A. Powell Davies. For those of you who haven’t, he was for many years the minister at All Souls Church in Washington. It was his work that helped plant many of the suburban congregations in this area. During a sermon, he once asked…

Reading

From a sermon by A. Powell Davies

“Do you belong to a religion that says humankind is not divided—except by ignorance and prejudice and hate; the religion that sees humankind as naturally one and waiting to be spiritually united; the religion that proclaims an end to all exclusions—and declares a brotherhood and sisterhood unbounded! The religion that knows we shall never find the fullness of the wonder and the glory of life until we are ready to share it, that we shall never have hearts big enough for the love of God until we have made them big enough for the worldwide love of one another.

As you have listened to me, have you thought perhaps that this is your religion? If so, do not congratulate yourself. Stop long enough to recollect the miseries of the world in which you live; the fearful cruelties, the enmities, the hate, the bitter prejudices, the need of such a world for such a faith. And if you can still say that this of which I have spoken is your faith, then ask yourself this question: what are you doing with it?”

A. Powell Davies spoke those words many years ago, but that question he asks at the end is eternal. What are you doing with your faith? Are you helping to make this church more vibrant, more dynamic? Are you making it more inviting for young adults and other visitors? Are you wearing your faith on your sleeve, or on your lapel, or on the bumper of your car? Are you willing to accept new ideas, new methods of worship, new members with new skills and new energies? Have you dreamt up and advocated for any new ideas in this congregation in the last six months? Have you convinced anyone to come to church with you in the last year, the last month, the last week? What role have you played, and what role can you play in making this congregation, this denomination, younger, stronger, and larger?

Closing Words

“I Am Only One” by Edward Everett Hale

I am only one, but still I am one.
I cannot do everything, but still I can do something.
And because I can not do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.