I remember thinking, "It may be accurate, but it is no slogan to stitch on a banner or around which to rally the troops." I put it on the pile of papers on my desk and went on with other, more pressing tasks. Every now and then, over the course of the next few weeks, as I shuffled through the pile of papers, the mission statement would emerge and I would find myself reading it over again. And each time, I felt something nagging at me. And then, one day it struck me. Behind those deceptively simple, straight forward words lay hidden questions and challenges with which we will have to deal, if we are to embrace the mission this statement offers us. Those questions and challenges form the basis of the reflections I would like to share with you this morning.
"Our mission is to be a welcoming and inclusive...congregation...." It seems fairly obvious, doesn't it? We know what that means, don't we? Or do we? In this congregation we have worked fairly diligently in recent years to overcome the Unitarian Universalist reputation of being "God's Frozen People." We have made it our business to be open and welcoming to strangers in our midst. It has not been an easy task, for Unitarian Universalists, as a group tend to be rather introverted. But over the past few years, we have made changes in our corporate culture and it is no longer true that coffee hour is the time when new people are ignored. We do welcome people to our church.
Beyond that, the church board and committees and staff have agonized over how to make certain that newcomers are not only welcomed, but are included in the life of the congregation. The membership committee instituted a mentor program so that new people would have a long-time member to whom they might relate and of whom they might ask questions and with whom they might share concerns and perceptions. We regularly go over the lists of new people to see if there is a way they can be involved in the life of the church that is welcoming rather than threatening. And we keep an eye out for long-term members who may be feeling less at home in the crowded confusion of our corporate life. While we have not solved these problems, we are more aware of them and better at responding to them than we once were.
But, as I look out on this congregation, it is clear that while we may be open and welcoming to those who find us, we have a tendency to reach out to people who are basically like us. There are a great many people in the region we serve who are not represented here. The Unitarian Universalist Association defines a welcoming and inclusive congregation as one which promotes
"the full participation of persons in all of its... activities and in the full range of the human endeavor without regard to race, color, sex, disability, affectional or sexual orientation, age, or national origin, and without requiring adherence to any particular interpretation of religion or to any particular religious belief or creed."
That definition requires not a passive acceptance of those who find their way to us, but a pro-active effort to be clear in our own minds and, to the region we serve, and to the world at large just how broad is the welcome and how inclusive the embrace. And that we have not done, except informally and sporadically. There has been no sustained attempt to inform the public that this is a place where people are actively welcomed, without regard to race or color, to national origin, or specific creed. And certainly, we have done nothing to make it clear to the world that we welcome people without regard to affectional preferences, that this is a place where gay men and lesbian women are welcomed and celebrated as they are and not on the basis that they pretend to be something they are not, that our welcome does not reflect a policy of "don't ask, don't tell." If our mission is to be a welcoming and inclusive congregation, a place were diversity may be celebrated, then it is critical that we let the world know where we stand, what we mean and just how open is the door into this welcoming and inclusive congregation.
And speaking of the open door, and the extent of our welcome, it is time we recognized that our facilities are not accessible to people who struggle with physical limitations. It requires massive logistical planning to bring people in wheelchairs into our services. There are no handicap-access restroom facilities available. And even those who can get into and out of the building and can make their way next door to use a restroom, sometimes find that the seats in this building are so uncomfortable that they cannot sit through a service. We are structured to serve the young and the healthy and the physically able. If we are to be a welcoming and inclusive community, we need to recognize and address those conditions which make it difficult, if not impossible for the full participation of the elderly, the disabled, the infirm.
And then there is that
other loaded term in the mission statement: "Our mission is to be a welcoming
and inclusive regional
congregation,
supportive of the individual's religious and ethical quest." In some ways, this
simply describes the nature of
the institution we already are. The last time I did an analysis, I discovered
that only twenty-five percent of our members live in Summit. Another twenty-five
percent live in the communities immediately around Summit. The other fifty
percent come from communities all over Northern and Central New Jersey--from
Moorestown to Elizabeth, from Hoboken to Whippany, from Bernardsville and Basking
Ridge to Newark. We are, in fact, a regional congregation with members scattered
across a great deal of geography.
But that fact, in and of itself, means that to build an institution which
can be supportive of the individual's religious and ethical quest is not an
easy task and can only be accommplished by deliberate and conscious and carefully
planned effort.
The fact is that most of us do not see each other outside of church, and distance and time factors being what they are, we are seldom in church except on Sunday mornings. We do not encounter each other at the bank, at the super-market, at the car-wash. Our children do not go to the same schools; our communities do not wrestle with the same political issues. And few of us have the time to attend meetings and programs at the church in the middle of the week. Consequently, our nature as a regional institution is frequently an inhibiting factor in our desire to support "the individual's religious and ethical quest." As an institution, we do not know how to become ethically and religiously engaged in the lives of the communities we serve, and yet, we cannot shake the nagging suspicion that the individual religious and ethical quest cannot be fully meaningful unless it engages the larger community. A congregation disengaged from the communities in which its members lives is at a disadvantage as it seeks to support the individual's religious and ethical quest.
Increasingly, as we grow larger, and find ourselves responding to a large geographical area, we discover that the structures we have inherited from the past--including the buildings we own and love, the organizational forms with which we are familiar, the programing patterns to which we are accustomed and the levels of staffing we support--are simply inadequate. We have built a regional congregation on the foundations of a community church and the stresses and strains are beginning to show. In some ways, this mission statement, which set out to describe who we are is challenging us to nothing less than to reinvent religious community for a new day, indeed, a new century.
There is one omission from this statement which I cannot ignore. This is not just any congregation. This is a Unitarian Universalist congregation. If that were not true, I would not be here and I suspect that there are others who would not be here as well. Our roots are in a specific tradition. It is that Unitarian Universalist tradition which gives peculiar weight and concrete meaning and specific definition to terms like "welcoming" and "inclusive." It is that tradition which insists that we are all one family, regardless of gender, or age, or race, or color, or creed, or sexual, orientation, or levels of ability or disability. It is that tradition which understands religion as focused on the quest rather than upon some revelation, and particularly upon "the individual's religious and ethical quest." As we attempt to reinvent the religious institution, concern for the tradition out of which we come will give us grounding. It is important to me that we affirm that tradition, even as we seek new ways to formulate it and reconstitute it in this welcoming, inclusive, regional congregation.
Over
the course of this autumn, the sermons from this pulpit have invited us to
think together of who we are, whence we have come, what is the importance of
our religious traditions for the times in which we find ourselves. In many ways,
this mission statement, at a local, less global level challenges us to respond
to those issues and build together
a congregation in which all are welcome, all may be included, in which together,
we carry on the religious and ethical quest, sharing whatever discoveries
we may make, and seeking always to incarnate that love which makes of our diversity
one kindred fellowship.