I was in Canton, Mass., yesterday, for the installation ceremony for their minister, Diane Teichert. As a matter of fact, I gave the installation sermon, just as I am going to give the sermon next Sunday in Lexington for the ordination of Rebecca Cohen, while Kimi will give the charge to the minister and all of you who are there will get to state together the words which will recognize Rebecca as a minister, as led by Alice Shafer and in combination with the members of the Lexington church, in which she grew up and of which her mother is the senior minister. If you haven’t seen the big, front-page write-up in the Sunday New York Times of two weeks ago on Rebecca and her mother and the upcoming service, you might enjoy reading it downstairs.

Anyway, as I was saying, yesterday I was part of the installation ceremony in Canton for Diane Teichert, who was our ministerial intern four years ago, before Lyn Plumb, Erin Splaine, the afore-mentioned Rebecca Cohen, and now Robin Zucker. In case you have been wondering about the year ahead, the rumors are true: after a dozen interns serving fourteen years, for next year the Intern Committee has selected our first male since the early ‘70s, before I arrived: Stephen Landale, a graduate of our theological school in Berkeley, from which Emily Manvel also came.

Anyway, as I was saying, I brought greetings to our fellow UUs down in Canton from this congregation, six of whom were there for the festivities. They will be the ones near you nodding off when I repeat sections of my remarks – unless they were so attentive then that even more disturbingly, they predict out loud what I am about to say.

What I had to say were some thoughts about what it might mean to be a minister. That is what often happens at occasions like that, strange to say. I say strange because, when you get a new mail deliverer, the neighborhood does not gather for a talk about the postal service.

But for the last three or four hundred years in these parts, the tradition in churches has been that some distinguished person, or at least someone who comes from out of town, delivers a sermon on some major matter of churchly concern, like the state of our religion or the nature of its ministry.

For next Sunday, I am supposed to have thoughts about the state of our religion, specifically, thoughts that at least take note of the fact that with Rebecca’s ordination, about exactly half of our ministers will be women, no small accomplishment at a time when the vast majority of the American clergy are men, as was true of us as well not so long ago.

But for Diane’s do, I decided to talk about ministry, even more than I usually do with you, with whom I practice the trade. So I thought I might share some of those observations this morning, even if they contain some insights that people in Canton hadn’t heard before, but some of you may recall my having said before.

And I can tell you now, lest this all seem oddly self-centered, my talking today about the ministry will mean my talking about you, about religious community, about the people in the pews in Canton, Wayland, or anywhere, because as it turns out, that’s what I think ministry is mostly about.

I know, ministry is also about truth, beauty, spirituality, social change, counseling, maybe changing the hymn numbers every week, maybe being the person the fire department insists upon calling at three in the morning if the alarm system malfunctions, and certainly a whole lot more.

But in case I have not told you so before so clearly, let me say now: I think ministry is mostly about you, about how truth, spirituality, a passion for justice, and all those other good things can be made vital and vibrant in a gathered congregation.

Let me offer you three images of how a minister might be part of the creation of that kind of congregation: as missionary, as maid or manservant, or as midwife.

A first way of ministering to a congregation might be defined as missionary work. I do not think it’s the best.

Now missionary work was always viewed with some ambivalence by Universalists, and more negatively still by Unitarians. Trying to convince people to change their religion seemed disrespectful to most Unitarians and Universalists, who were happy to have new people join, but didn’t want to be pushy. This may have something to do with the fact that both movements remained so small, but that’s not my interest this morning.

Instead, I want to talk about ministry, and about some UU ministers who see their role as being missionaries to the congregations to which they are called. If this seems like a far-fetched idea, good, you are already on my side. But a disconcerting number of new ministers of late have been going forth to serve churches with the hope of converting those churches to their own theological or political outlook or style.

The most conspicuous examples have been those ministers who regard it as their mission to make their congregations more amenable either to traditional Christian or to New Age theological language or practice, just as the most conspicuous examples when I began my ministry were those ministers whose mission was to make their congregations less amenable to some of those same things.

The most conspicuous symptoms – then and now -- are ministers sent packing, not infrequently complaining about their congregations’ recalcitrance, when they could be apologizing at their own obtuse indifference to the people they were called to serve.

On the other hand, some ministers go to the opposite extreme. Another of the most common reasons for ministries that don’t work out is a failure to offer any sense of leadership or commitment. The word "minister" does mean one who serves, but in practice that has meant something other than one who is a congregation’s manservant or maid. As honorable as both jobs are, congregations call and pay us to do more than put up the hymn numbers, deal with the fire department, and try to figure out what else needs doing that no one else much wants to do and do it.

 So if ministers are neither around as servants, here to do your bidding, nor as missionaries, here to convince you to do theirs, what might one offer as a third and better image?

I want to suggest the one I first offered in 1970, when I was asked to describe my understanding of ministry for the biographical record sheet that went to every congregation that might consider me as a possible candidate for their ministry. It was the image I kept when I looked for a church again, the one your Search Committee saw. It is still the one on file at headquarters: the minister as midwife, as one who helps with the act of birth.

There are obstetricians who do that, too, and that metaphor would also work, I guess, although it introduces a lot of hospital equipment and other attending personnel, and I start to lose control of my imagery. Plus, I have a hard time with the word obstetrician. So while I mean no disrespect to any doctors or nurses who also deliver babies, I’m going to stick with my old notion of the minister as midwife, as someone who helps with the birth of a new creation -- for the midwife, a child; for a minister, a religious community.

The minister does not herself create this precious entity, a religious community. The people of the congregation do that themselves, it is the product of their creativity, their effort, their caring. But the minister is there to call forth, urge on, facilitate, and celebrate that creativity, effort, and caring. The minister is there to tend the community’s well being, to be comfort when that well being is threatened or damaged, to try to restore it when necessary, as much as she can.

What is this creation that the people and their minister seek together to bring to life? In some places, some of the details will get pretty specific and particular to local circumstances, like a need to grow in membership, to deal with space or building needs, to build or rebuild a workable committee structure, to bolster the endowment or the annual canvass. Several such needs  may be urgent at once, depending on the time and place.

I think of all the important challenges I have watched this congregation face and resolve in the last twenty-five years, almost doubling in size and in attendance in the worship services, the Sunday school, and the youth groups. Just in terms of office equipment, if people wanted copies of a sermon, the secretary had to make stencils on the typewriter to run off on the mimeograph. There was one phone line where now there are three, not counting the fourth line they make us have for the telephone in the elevator.

There was no elevator. There was no addition, no new parish house on this side of the street. There was half the staff we have now, and far less than half the number of adult education or social action programs. The committee structure has been studied and redesigned, the buildings renovated, the grounds improved, all several times over.

Boston minister Carl Scovel once remarked that "the ministers we need are the ones … who take people as they are and then take them [or I would say, go with them] a little bit further" – not force them nor merely follow, but help the congregation in the effort to go a little bit further. And "further" may mean any of the particular needs I just cited.

But for me, what "going further" means most, in every instance, whatever the matters most presently pressing, is the on-going birth of greater religious community – a deepening of the relationships between the members, an enrichment of their worship life, a strengthening of their institutional commitment, an excitement of the spirit as it lives in their midst, a greater engagement with the issues of contemporary life and faith.

That’s what I think ministry means, to be midwife to the on-going birth of a community that can be a religious home and haven for your spirits, your children, your hopes, and your values, a religious community alive with activity, dedication, faith and affection.

Because whether it is in Wayland or Canton, Boston or Victoria, Atlanta, Georgia, or Houlton, Maine, what the church can be is a people striving together to be, as the Rev. Desmond Tutu put it, a model of the world as it could be, with people actively engaged with one another in the quest for life more loving, more kind, more free and more lovely, more committed, more joyful, more sane and more just.

Don’t worry, I do know, better than most, that the church is made up of humans; and being one of those myself, even if an ordained one, I am pretty sure our nature is not pure, even regarding matters religious. But Tutu did not claim that we were, only that in church, people can strive together to be that model, with the encouragement, the midwifery, of those they call to ministry. That is what ministry is for.

One likes to think it is not in vain. Truth is, there are days when a minister might wonder. A sense of ministry of the sort I have been describing leaves a person pretty vulnerable. If one’s professional goal, to which one is devoting the long, long hours and emotional weight of a minister’s life, is the creation of a lively, caring, consoling, creative religious community, all it takes to be cut to the quick is to have someone assault, defame, or betray the community.

For ministers who measure success, not in how they take over churches and make them run and believe as they do, nor in how effectively they evade public notice and still manage to get paid, but who deem their success to be the healthy religious communities they help to create, there is a special, deep pain in the work of the gossip, the habitual detractor, the egoist, the nay-sayer, the liar, the bully, the fanatic, the traitor, the deserter, and others who place their personal gratification above the health of the community.

There are days when a minister might wonder, are my hours and efforts for naught? Luckily, in most congregations, most of the time, there are plenty of good, positive folks, doing just the work that Tutu describes, trying to build up the model of life as it should be, while welcoming and gladly supporting the clergy they’ve called to aid them at that task.

The expectation is not that any congregation will produce a Paradise, but that for all their oh-so-human  imperfections, with a ministerial midwife’s aid, they can achieve something together that is important, good for their spirits and good for the world.

It can be something as simple as appreciation, being a place where people value each other, and learn that they are valued, too. UU minister Will Saunders noted that congregations are not as dissimilar in theology as they are in congregational culture. Be they predominantly Christian, humanist, eco-feminist, or whatever, there are some congregations that have a culture of criticism, and there are others that have a culture of appreciation.

There must be some continuum, with only a very few at either end, probably none for long, for how could a perfectly critical congregation survive, or a perfectly appreciative congregation permanently protect itself against every perverse stirring of the crankiness of human nature. And there are probably some congregations that fall right in the middle.

But a lot of congregations fit into Will’s schema, either as places where criticism is quick and frequent, or congregations where folks find things to value in each other and in their common efforts. Oh how grateful I am that for the most part, you find things to value in each other, relishing your differences, accepting with grace what might be fuel for judgment in a culture of criticism.

I told the folks in Canton as I tell you again (for these are the words I have said here before) that is part of my hope and vision for theirs or ours or any of our churches, a dream that is recurringly near to fulfillment: a church where all are appreciated, and their appreciation is nurtured; a church in which to delight and often to take pride; a church for worship and counsel, for discussion and learning, for friendship and fun, for common effort and yes, the inescapable, occasional family dispute, undertaken in love and with care; a church to which to bring children to be treasured and taught; a church to which our contributions of time and money make a difference not just in our own lives but in the life of this area and even, in some small, real way, in the life of the world; a church as the community that should be, and that it often nearly is.

It is a community that will never quite make it to perfection. But the church can be a model of how close we can come, the expression of our highest ideals, the product of our most devoted efforts, the incarnation of our fondest hopes.

As one who has been honored to have been called to be one of your ministers for some years now, I like to think, not that I have converted you nor merely followed orders, not that I have been missionary nor manservant, but that I have to some helpful degree, midwife to the birth of that community and the flourishing of its life spirit. That has ever been my hope and intention, and so it is still and will remain.

BENEDICTION
In our going out and on our return,
In the midst of all this beauty
and then in stark, foreboding clime,
When we are blessed with good fortune
and when we are burdened with struggle or grief,
May we feel in every circumstance that we are not alone,
that this community holds us in its thoughts and in its care,
bidding us well in our going out
and ever ready to greet us on our return.
 
 
 
 

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