“The salt of the earth.” The phrase refers to a person or group of people characterized by kindness and reliability. To say “they are the salt of the earth” means they are hardworking, honorable, down-to-earth people. Another colloquial way of putting it is “them’s good people.”
 
This morning I take back up the sermon series on Our Midwestern Heritage that I began at the end of January. Midwesterners are generally “salt of the earth” type of people. As you may recall from the intro sermon, I traced several cultural patterns that apply both to the Midwest at large, and specifically to Unitarian Universalists in this region. Those four interwoven cultural patterns include an enthusiastic embrace of democratic norms, both politically and culturally (that’s small-d democratic); a belief in education and lifelong learning for all people; a more middle class society with less economic and social hierarchy than in other regions; and pragmatic, ‘get ‘er done!’ attitudes. Salt of the earth.

Safford’s language may sound old-fashioned to our ears:  obedience to a heavenly vision. But the sentiment underneath her biblical turns of phrase is very similar to the one you will hear from our Stewardship Team this year:  there is so much we want to do to fulfill our mission and live out our values. All of us are INcluded in the joys and the learning and the bringing to life of what really matters, through this church. And all of us are INvited to INvest in its future – so that we can do that and even more going forward. Continuing “to proclaim most earnestly in words and deeds the glad gospel of eternal love.” Or in more contemporary lingo, putting love at the center as we support each other and the community around us – as we transform each other and the community around us.
 
One of the chroniclers of Unitarian history in our region, Charles Lyttle, once served this very congregation. In describing the spread of Unitarianism westward from Massachusetts, he notes that in some areas our liberal tradition was met with some resistance. Extensive efforts to bring Unitarianism to Minnesota, including a Norwegian mission, for example, met with considerable success - but they also faced pushback.
 
In contrast, Lyttle writes, “There was no … opposition to liberal views among the Nebraska pioneers of New England lineage who settled in Omaha.” Lyttle names the Joslyns among a number of others.
 
Lyttle sees “an alliance of culture with religion” reflected in First Unitarian Church Omaha’s Bond of Union, which dates to 1890. Here's an excerpt:

Lytte tells of how Unitarian churches in this region took up literary, educational, and humanitarian activities. They increasingly zeroed in on “true religion” as being “primarily Jesus’ spiritual and ethical teachings.” The region embodied (quote) “a rational faith, yet intensely rapturous and lyrical; science and philosophy were fused in it with genuine religious fervor.”
 
I learned something new about First Unitarian from Lyttle – that during a period when All Souls Unitarian, as the church in Lincoln was then called, was “limping along,” not exactly thriving, this church’s minister at the time, Newton Mann, supported them with “neighborly ministrations,” presumably some guest preaching and perhaps encouragement to lay leaders. This pattern of generous sharing and collaboration among area UU churches continues today. Being in relationship not only within this congregation, but across neighboring congregations, benefits all of us.
 
I turn back now to Jon Lauck, historian of the Midwest in general. He writes, “Dissenting religious groups, with the exception of the Mormons, and utopian reformers found a home in the Midwest. [He observes that] one historian linked this openness to the ‘joyous pantheism of the frontier’ and noted a strain of religious skepticism …” as well. The historians seem to be pointing to characteristics of Unitarian and Universalist religion:  embrace of wisdom from many sources, and welcome of rational thought and humanism as positive forces in religion.
 
That kind of breadth of inspiration may seem unremarkable to us today, certainly in a Unitarian Universalist church, sometimes even a bit in other progressive traditions flowing out of the Jesus heritage. But it was quite new when Unitarians and Universalists began expressing such broad-minded ideas in Midwestern congregations. Let’s hear again from Mary Safford:

I agree with Mary Safford. Even still today, as new people find Unitarian Universalism, and those of us already in the tradition continue to grow and develop in our faith, hanging onto the heart and soul of Unitarian Universalism is a worthy challenge. Not only high aspirations for a more just society, a greener world. But also the “reverence and moral earnestness” and commitment to shared life that enables us to live out those beautiful dreams.
 
Our Unitarian forebears knew about this. They knew about heeding the spiritual example and ethical teachings of Jesus with continued fervor and dedication, while welcoming in the new knowledge brought by science and the arts – from Newton Mann and others arguing that “true religion” had nothing to fear from evolution, to our wrestling today with artificial intelligence and its ethical place in our society. As long as we stay clear on our purpose as a congregation, as a faith, we will have positive contributions to make to all of the challenges of our time.
 
The salt of the earth. Midwest Unitarian Universalists, at our best, are the salt of the earth.
 
The phrase has more than colloquial meanings. It appears in the Bible as well. 

The first part of the selection, “You are the salt of the earth,” is a variation on similar language found in Mark and Luke about salt that has lost its saltiness. Only, Matthew’s twist seems to point specifically to people who are part of the Christian community as that community was then defined. But the Jesus Seminar, whose counsel I value, observes that insider/outsider discriminations were rejected by Jesus himself. So the writer of Matthew is taking editorial liberties with that part. I’ll stick with our contemporary, Midwestern understanding of “salt of the earth.”
 
The next part appears only in Matthew: “But if the salt loses its zing, how will it be made salty? It then has no further use than to be thrown out and stomped on.” Scholars from the Jesus Seminar believed that Matthew’s version aligned, in sentiment at least, with the known teachings of the historical Jesus. This feels authentic.
 
Another version appears in Mark (10:50a):  “Salt is good (and salty) – if salt becomes bland, with what will you renew it?”  With what will you renew it?
 
What is this aphorism communicating?  The saltiness, the zing, is good. If it becomes bland, it must be renewed, the zing restored. 
 
I hear in this that our sense of purpose as a religious community, our passion for making a difference in the lives of our members and the world around us – that is critical. It’s not enough to just go through the motions of being a church. We need to know why we are here. We need to be motivated by a deep and abiding love for one another and for all those around us. We need to take pragmatic actions to keep growing, and to express that love in concrete ways.
 
Like working to preserve democracy in our society, as our social justice team gives us ways to do. Like supporting members of the congregation through illnesses and new babies and other occasions, as we do through our caring ministries. Like coming together as a bunch of households in the church are doing, to provide support for food for an immigrant family, in collaboration with Restoring Dignity. Because we recognize the inherent worth of all people, and the absolute necessity of good food in people’s bellies. Coming back here, week after week, to fill our hearts with love and amazing grace… to breathe in peace and breath out love… to rekindle our connections in community.
 
Let’s hear one more time from Mary Safford, who knew something about how to maintain or restore the zest of this faith:
 

One of the noteworthy things that happened in Unitarian congregations in this part of the country, historically, was a cultural shift toward shared ministry rather than more top-down model. The “Iowa sisterhood” of women ministers on the frontier in the late 1800s contributed to that shift, bringing a different leadership style that built community and developed others’ leadership.
 
Later, the Fellowship Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, which planted more congregations, to serve more communities, continued that trend. Fellowships were originally lay led, and as such they developed lay leaders more extensively. This period again saw many women enter into leadership in UU churches, bringing with them more egalitarian and collaborative approaches. Holley Ulbrich, writing on the Fellowship Movement, notes how it “facilitated the emerging pattern of shared ministry” between lay leaders and professional religious leaders. The model of shared ministry eventually spread from fellowships to more traditional churches that had long had ministers, like this one – and is now the norm in most UU congregations.
 
I bring forward shared ministry because it is so consistent with the can-do, pragmatic, egalitarian spirit of both the Midwest in general, and Unitarianism in this region. And our ministry – all the ways we support connection, learning, care, justice – it is shared not only in terms of talent and leadership, but also in financial support.
 
To echo Mary Safford, this pledge season, I invite you to “Bravely stand by your convictions.” With your pledge and your participation, you can declare “I’m in!” You are included here. I hope you are regularly inspired here. And I invite you to generously invest in our shared future.
 
As a salt of the earth people, a people of kindness, reliability, and pragmatism, let’s get ‘er done! Let’s secure our shared future, with pledges this stewardship season. May it be so. And blessed be.

Adapted from a sermon delivered January 25, 2026 at First Unitarian Church of Omaha. (Video available below or on YouTube here.)
 
* * * *
 
“The American Midwest was the most democratic place in the world as it took shape in the nineteenth century.” So writes Jon Lauck, in his 2022 history of the Midwest in the 1800s, titled The Good Country. Again, “The American Midwest was the most democratic place in the world as it took shape in the nineteenth century.”
 
I’m not sure if it feels ironic or prescient that I scheduled this topic for a week when our democracy is dramatically under assault in the Midwest. In recent days I have been taking in some of the news, and particularly watching the testimony of colleagues who either serve in the Twin Cities area, or who traveled there in support of the local people late this past week. One voice of testimony came from Mel Duncan. He’s co-founder of Nonviolent Peaceforce, a major unarmed peacekeeping NGO. Duncan just returned from Gaza to his home in the Twin Cities. Nonviolence Radio interviewed him about what he is seeing in Minnesota now, and how he makes sense of it.
 
Duncan said, “Little did I know that I would be leaving one occupied territory in Palestine and be returning to my home in the Twin Cities, to another occupied territory… Just as the settlers on the West Bank and the Israeli police backed up by the Israeli army patrol the area with impunity in the West Bank – I was in the Jordan Valley [Duncan said], where the settlers would attack at will, the shepherds and the farmers, and would take their land and beat people – that’s what’s happening on the streets of St. Paul and Minneapolis right now, where they are attacking primarily people of color and taking them indiscriminately off the streets, with impunity, no accountability. Taking them to holding cells in federal buildings near the airport and taking them to points unknown.”

Duncan went on to describe some of the most egregious things that have happened, like ICE using an eight-year-old child as bait to draw out his father, before capturing them both, who are here on asylum. Worse things happened yesterday, after the interview I heard with Duncan.
 
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the administration has chosen Minnesota for this show of force. Though I doubt they anticipated how effectively the community would respond. Not only are the attacking a winter people in the winter, they are attacking Midwesterners who are caring neighbors, who are practical people, and who have been building their skills since George Floyd and before.
 
Mel Duncan told Nonviolence Radio, “We’re not waiting for the story of nonviolence to happen here. It is happening. I’ve lived here for over fifty years, and I’ve never seen the Twin Cities so well organized on multiple levels. There are thousands of people who are acting, who are being creative and are carrying out nonviolent activities in very creative ways.”

​He describes taking groceries to scared neighbors, driving people to school and work, providing a protective presence in neighborhoods and outside schools – just what Duncan himself was doing in the West Bank – supporting immigrant owned businesses, mass demonstrations, and on.
 
The past is prologue. Jon Lauck, the historian tells us, “The old Midwest could be a reservoir of idealism and hope if we knew its history… Maybe this knowledge will bolster our spirits, provide a light, and help guide us out of the current darkness and loneliness and cynicism.”
 
It is with that hope that I share with you today on the topic of “Our Midwest Heritage” – both our heritage as Midwesterners in general, and specifically as Unitarian Universalists in this region. This is the first in an occasional sermon series on the topic, and lays the groundwork for the series.
 
And by the way, if you’re not from the Midwest, it doesn’t matter – you’re here now, add yourself to the mix. If you are new to Unitarian Universalism, likewise, we’re so glad you’re here!
 
Let’s start with culture. Here I turn to the work of Colin Woodard, in his 2011 book, American Nations. His thesis is that the United States consists of eleven different regions with distinct cultures that have shaped our history and continue to shape our present. Here is a map showing the locations of those eleven regions or nations.

Eastern Nebraska and most of Iowa are in the Midlands region. Its cultural roots go back to Philadelphia, and reflects the aspiration to be a model society rooted in Quaker religion and culture. It was egalitarian, rejecting hierarchy in religion, in gender relations, and suspicious of slavery. Germans from other religious sects immigrated to Pennsylvania later. They shared the Quakers’ moral and religious objection to slavery and melded into the Midlands culture.
 
As they spread westward into the Heartland, Midlands people brought with them a pluralistic culture. Woodard writes that “the Midland Midwest would develop as a center of moderation and tolerance, where people of many faiths and ethnicities lived side by side, largely minding their own business.”
 
As the map shows, southern portions of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri are part of the culture of Greater Appalachia. I’m more interested for our purposes in the region to the north of us, Yankeedom. The upper Midwest, including our friends in Minnesota, traces its cultural roots to New England, most influenced by its English heritage and Puritan roots. Woodard explains that “The Yankees represent an extreme example of Public Protestantism, a religious heritage that emphasizes collective salvation and the social gospel.”
 
Despite continuing waves of immigration since the regional cultures of the U.S. formed, those regional cultures stuck, and continue to feed into cultural and political divides. Analysis of recent elections supports this. In later waves, immigrants favored regions most welcoming to them – one of two that, Woodard wrote, “had been explicitly multicultural since [its] foundation” was the Midlands. “The American model of cultural pluralism originates in the traditions of … two nations” – New Netherlands (what became greater New York City) and the Midlands.

I saw fascinating parallels as I explored Jon Lauck’s history of the 1800s Midwest in The Good Country, and the development of Unitarianism as it moved westward in that same period. They are all intertwined, really, but those parallels involve democratic cultures, both politically and culturally; an embrace of learning throughout the lifespan as a core cultural characteristic; a flatter social class structure; and pragmatic attitudes out here on the prairie.

Lauck traces how the democratic culture of the Midwest starts with the legal charter for the region. He writes that that charter “yielded freestanding sovereign states that ensured the rights of citizens and contributed to the steady erosion of various forms of aristocratic privilege persisting elsewhere around the world.” Further, “a mixture of Christian denominations instilled a basic morality but also fostered a degree of pluralism and toleration and theological freedom not present in other polities dominated by one religious sect.”
 
State charters were created democratically, each one including a detailed bill of rights. Lauck writes, “These democratic documents were reinforced by a culture held open by settlers from varying regions and ethnic groups who embraced egalitarian norms and eagerly sought to participate in democratic life and an economic system open to all comers.”
 
The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which established the region, explicitly provided for public education. Each township had to set aside land for schools. Per Lauck, “Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas saw enrollment of over 90 percent of school-age children by the end of the nineteenth century and ‘led the entire nation at that date’”; the Midwest “’produced the most literate people in the nation.’”
 
Book culture was big in the Midwest too, and not just in schools, with major book publishers, bookstores, and print publications thriving. Libraries, Lauck notes, “were common public projects. The Midwest would later see the building of more Carnegie libraries than any other region.” There was also a lively lecture circuit – the original self-help culture, especially popular with “the young and ambitious.”
 
Higher education also flourished in the Midwest – one historian described the region as “thickly strewn with colleges and universities.” Like the schools for younger ages, the colleges incorporated character development and vocational subjects like agriculture, as well as being co-ed from the start. Many colleges had religious affiliations and strong social agendas related to social reform. Land grant universities feature here too.
 
The social life of Midwesterners in the 1800s included not only church programs and school activities, but book groups, literary societies, civic clubs, and improvement efforts.
 
As its regional culture and identity was formed, the Midwest contrasted with both the South and the Northeast. It was a land of educated, civically engaged people, most of whom, as Lauck put it, “were farmers who prospered on the fertile lands of the region and lived in rough equality with their neighbors.” Scholar Jess Gilbert concluded that “late nineteenth-century rural Midwest was substantially a one-class society.”
 
That made it different from the slave-holding South, the industrial northeast, and Europe. All of those were more aristocratic than the middle class Midwest. Lauck reports that “Over half of the Union’s troops would come from the Midwest, even though the region constituted only a quarter of the country’s population… the Midwest provided nearly all of Lincoln’s generals and most of his cabinet.”

​Turning back to Woodards’ groups in American Nations, the Midlands formed a bloc with Yankees and New Netherlands against a southern bloc (or Dixie bloc) in causes like the abolition of slavery and women’s suffrage. Despite its frequent alliance with New England, though, the Midwest developed its own identity, and pushed back against “feared hegemony of the East” in culture. That included distinct Midwestern voices in arts and literature, appreciation for the natural wonders of the region, and more.
 
Lauck explains, “Midwesterners saw their region as different from the aristocratic Northeast and the feudal South. This pride of place and sense of identity fostered a healthy desire to resist outside domination.”
 
All of these qualities are on display in Minneapolis right now. The pragmatic ways people are helping their neighbors, across any lines of class or culture – and how Minnesotans and their allies are embracing democracy and civic spirit at the most local level, school by school and block by block.

Resisting outside domination – as armed and masked ICE agents swarm through neighborhoods, that phrase is thrust into the present. Resisting outside domination. One of our Unitarian Universalist clergy who traveled to Minneapolis for a day of action described just yesterday being boxed in by ICE, crowded into a local store, unable to get out. Lucas Hergert, who serves our congregation in Deerfield, Illinois, wrote “They are sending buses to arrest us and prepping rubber bullets. Deploying tear gas. Beating us with truncheons… This is America now. It’s just the start. Choose your side.”
 
It feels surreal to me, like I’ve been transported back to the era of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement, these images of violence coming across screens, and reports of what is happening on the ground from activists working so hard to de-escalate tense situations and prevent harm. Another colleague, Oscar Sinclair, formerly serving in Lincoln and now in St. Paul, was one of the clergy arrested at the Twin Cities airport on Friday. (He was released and is okay.)
 
Our forebears came to a point where they had to choose a side in the Civil War of their day, and again in the Civil Rights Movement of their day. Domination is on the move again, and it is time to resist.

That brings us back to the Unitarian Universalist part of this pattern in our Midwest history. I’m going to draw here from Freedom Moves West, a history of the westward movement of Unitarianism published in 1952. It was written by Charles H. Lyttle, who briefly served this very congregation, around 1920, before becoming seminary faculty.
 
I’m going to focus on one particular Unitarian who is one of my heroes. Someone posed the question at the Ask the Minister service a few weeks about what historical Unitarians or Universalists should people know more about. Well one of them, for me, is Jenkin Lloyd Jones.
 
Jones grew up in Wisconsin and knew he wanted to become a Unitarian minister someday. He went to Meadville theological school, then based in Meadville, Pennsylvania. (Hmm, Midlands.) Meadville would later move to Chicago, which is where it was when I attended seminary there. As I describe Jenkin Lloyd Jones’ service to our faith in the Midwest, see how many parallels you can spot with what I’ve already shared about the region. 

Early in his ministry, Jones championed religious education. Per Lyttle, Jones “abandoned the catechetical question-answer memorizations, as well as the ‘preachy’ story lessons,” instead favoring a more interactive, practical, and character-development approach that paired “the best of universal secular culture with religious ideals.” He expanded adult activities too, including a Mutual Improvement Club. The model Jones advocated for religious education was well received by Unitarians, especially in the Western Conference. (The word Western in Western Conference is in relation to New England – it was mainly what we now call the Midwest, although Unitarian churches were also started in this period in Denver and on the west coast.)
 
Tensions with the American Unitarian Association back in Boston, which was subsidizing clergy in the West – and potentially excluding those it perceived as radicals – led the Western Conference to assert its independence. By funding its own missionary work, the Conference could continue its efforts, unhindered by the Eastern establishment. Jones had championed this idea, and his peers appointed him the first leader of this work.
 
As mission secretary, Lyttle writes, “Jones visited distressed churches, dormant churches, isolated groups of radicals, liberals that aspired to become church societies, gatherings of delegates to form state conferences.” He was frugal, resourceful, diligent, and passionate for the cause of liberal religion in the Midwest.
 
Under Jones’ leadership, the number of active societies (churches) blossomed, debt dropped, more state conferences of Unitarian churches were formed, and the power of the Western (Midwestern) Conference in the denomination grew. To the point that the AUA in Boston declared their confidence and impartial support for the work of the Western Conference and the ministers placed there.
 
Jones was not only a pragmatist, but a feminist as well – another reason he’s one of my UU heroes. He supported the leadership of women on church boards, denominational leadership, as speakers, and then as ministers. Known as the Iowa Sisterhood, these women ministers started in Iowa and were concentrated there, but expanded into other parts of the Midwest and beyond. 

Scholar Holley Ullbrich describes them thus:  “The women of the Iowa Sisterhood generally approached ministry differently from their male counterparts, with less emphasis on the intellectual Sunday sermon and more focus on pastoral care and social ministry within the community. These women clergy were also more egalitarian and more open to experimentation. In that respect, their churches reflected a frontier culture that was less anchored to tradition than congregations in the Northeast.”
 
Champions of the freethinking Western attitude were, Lyttle writes, “like Jones, … social radical[s] in fidelity to the long Channing-Parker tradition in American Unitarianism, which antedated by decades the Social Gospel of Washington Gladden and Walter Rauschenbusch, [as well as] Christian Socialism.”
 
Humanitarian work by Unitarians in the Western Conference included addressing poverty (including impoverishment of indigenous people), humane treatment of animals, temperance, women’s rights, and support for immigrants and black Americans migrating northward – like the story we heard earlier about Jane Addams and Hull House in Chicago.   

Beyond the Western Unitarian Conference and his role in fostering the spread of liberal religion westward, Jenkin Lloyd Jones is best known for organizing the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893. Open curiosity toward other faiths was developing in Western Unitarianism alongside religious humanism. Humanists focused on human worth and human capability to improve life, with particular concern for social injustice and remedies. They exhibited a quality of “spiritual democrats” who respect people regardless of atheism, agnosticism or theism. Lyttle notes that another aspect of the dawning humanism was “appreciation of truth in non-Christian religions.”
 
I’ve slipped in a number of teasers today, for future installments of the Midwest Heritage series. More to come on the role of women in Midwest culture and Midwestern liberal religion, racial failures and advances (particularly in relation to both African Americans and indigenous peoples), other social reforms, and religious humanism, as well as the Universalist side of our UU family tree in the Midwest.

​The through-line I want to convey, to start with, is that the geographic expansion of Unitarianism coincided with the expansion of the tradition’s identity in theology, class and culture.

Unitarianism had emerged in New England, back in the 1820s, when folks who pushed back against narrow theological thinking and rigid creeds were pushed out of what is now Congregationalism (United Church of Christ). The boundaries of liberal religion were subsequently tested by humanism, the role of women, and world religions. And the Western Conference was where this tension in Unitarianism most palpably played out – both within the Conference, but especially between these more expansive-minded, less class-bound Unitarians in the (Mid)west and the Eastern Unitarian establishment.
 
Unitarian Universalism would not be as we know it today if not for the ways that people of pioneering spirit – people embracing Midwestern culture – stretched it.
 
My invitation to you is to lean into these qualities that are so Midwestern – and so Midwest Unitarian – as our moment in history calls us to do.

• How can we carry forward the rich heritage of democracy, in politics and culture?
  
• How can we support continued access to the kind of education and critical thought on which functioning democracy depends?
  
• How can we build alliances across social classes and create a flatter economic structure, or at least one without poverty inescapably built in?
  
• How can we use our Midwestern pragmatism in service of our values of pluralism, justice, equity, generosity?

 
Let us awaken both our caring Midwestern culture and our broad religious sensibilities. Let us draw upon our down-to-earth, democratic heritage as we resist outside domination.
 
Can I get an Amen?
 
Amen, and blessed be.

This is the full service in which the above sermon was delivered. The Time for All Ages, telling the story of Dangerous Jane (Addams), begins around 11 minutes in; the sermon around 30:20.

In a previous post, I suggested that innovation in worship is important for congregations who are interested in (as Susan Beaumont put it) "living into your potential." For progressive congregations that want to not only survive - but thrive - into the future, transformation starts in the sanctuary.

New ways of worshipping can enrich the spiritual lives of existing members. Expanding our worship repertoire also holds the promise of drawing in and serving people who are NOT already in our congregations. We can better welcome in diverse people, and meet the whole person, with sensory-rich worship experiences.

In this post I reflect on two areas of worship experimentation in the church I serve.

Experiment 1:  Sensory-Rich Worship Series
 
This was my attempt to adapt the framework of Marcia McFee to be workable in my setting. McFee is a worship artist and consultant who has worked for decades to help churches create more engaging, multi-sensory worship experiences. Her worship planning process, summarized most recently in Think Like A Filmmaker: Sensory-Rich Worship Design for Unforgettable Messages, was featured at the Institute for the Learning Ministry, a bi-yearly professional development offering of the UU Ministers Association. That was winter 2018. I got stalled trying to apply her involved model whole-cloth in the church I served then, and determined to try again after attending an online retreat with McFee in summer 2022.
 
In the 2022-2023 church year, I developed three sensory-rich worship series in a modified version of the planning process McFee teaches. The process stretches over months and involves many people in the process:  “metaphoraging” for core images/ideas; developing an inspiration page (capturing anchor images, quotes, a series blurb); brainstorming with interested parties; collecting sources and multi-sensory “layers,” and selecting the ones that will bring continuity across the series; coordinating with musicians, artists, and story-tellers in the development process; writing a synopsis for each Sunday in the series; creating special promotions for the series, including video invitations and postcards.

For the curious, here are resources from each series:

• “The Way of Not Knowing”   inspiration page (pdf)   video playlist
• “Who We Are”  inspiration page (pdf)    video playlist
• “Our Living Tradition”  inspiration page (pdf)    video playlist

 
Reflection  How did it go? What was learned from this experiment?
 
There was definitely positive feedback – and some indication, anecdotally, that these services were reaching different people and reaching people differently than the typical service.
 
We got bumps in attendance with each series. That could be attributed to some combination of the extra promotion, interest in the topics, or coming back for more after liking initial experiences. I believe it helped re-engage more people from the congregation post-pandemic.
 
People were drawn into participation as co-creators of worship, most notably with visual elements. Interest in participating in brainstorming was higher for the first series than by the third series; the novelty wore off over time.
 
I ended up incorporating in some new ritual into one of the series, and overall often had more good stuff on hand than fit neatly into 60-minute worship services. Learning to curate in this new way was a learning curve.
 
It did not require any less of me in sermon-writing, and it added new work to create the theme, the multi-sensory elements, and the co-creation of it all.
 
I thought I might repeat this process occasionally – not turn into THE way of worship here, but do it once or twice a year. But it was hard to sustain the advance planning for these McFee-ified series, amid the planning cycle of regular services. So instead, I think the lasting effect of this experiment was to feed into Experiment 2.

Experiment 2:  Participatory, Multi-Sensory Culture Shift
 
This was less a one-off experiment and more an ongoing effort, one that got a boost from experiment #1. We have increased active participation in worship services in a number of ways.

One is incorporating more embodied ritual. As in many UU congregations, the liturgical year includes two touchstones that bookend the year, Water In-gathering and Flower Ceremony, with variation in how we do the rituals from year to year. The year before I arrived, our religious educator (the wonderful Christina Strong) brought a procession of gifts ritual that enacts generosity and interdependence through donations of food, winter gear for unhoused youth, and other items. We have continued it every year as part of the December holiday all-ages service.
 
I introduced three more new rituals that now happen annually here. The Honoring Our Ancestors themed service, with ritual of remembrance for ancestors, takes place around All Souls Day; it was well-received and has become a tradition here. That was true, as well, for a December ritual with wreath and ribbons that I created in a previous congregation and introduced here. It acknowledges those that may be particularly missed around the holidays. And in collaboration with lay worship leaders, we have incorporated a Fire Ceremony ritual around the new year into our annual cycle.

One-off rituals have been sprinkled in too, like dirt communion, and a procession celebrating volunteers. (Various ritual pics on this page.)

One type of worship service that is almost always more participatory and multi-sensory is a story-based, theatrical service, as inter-generational services tend to be. This is a strong suit of our religious educator. It is fun for me or a worship associate to partner with her on the ones she develops and leads. I have made a foray into this myself once, with success (on Christmas Eve!) – which helped me appreciate more how much time, energy and care goes into such services. I admire clergy colleagues who have the talent to create and produce these, many of whom are generous in sharing. (People can also turn to resources like story services on Worship Web and Story, Song, and Spirit.)

​This movement toward waking the senses in worship has also involved visual elements, including curated installations and special banner hangings. Thematic props can also help convey ideas and feelings, evoke the feeling of being in a particular setting, and even involve people in the action – like gift boxes that were under our tree last Christmas Eve, containing readings for the evening that were read in the order in which children chose “presents” for opening.   ​

A cornucopia installation of abundance graces our chancel every November. ​

Beauty is for the ear, as well as the eye. While much of traditional worship reaches the ear – the hymns, the spoken word throughout – there are additional, vivid ways of evoking meaning in audible language. Tapping diverse voices to deliver readings, and setting individual readings for multiple speakers – whether a few voices on the chancel, or the full gathered community delivering refrains together – can bring richness and depth to what is heard.
 
And then there’s music. To me, music is the heart of worship. Weaving music artfully into services helps create the emotional arc and resonance of effective worship. This includes special music from the choir, staff musicians or guests, as well as congregational singing. Music can set the tone for ritual actions of attendees. It can be melded with prayers or meditations to bring comfort, voice grief, or invite joy.
 
Let’s not forget tactile experience. Participants created playdough sculptures as part of a service on “Playing with Purpose.” More recently, folks were invited into contemplative braiding of yarns or pipe cleaners in a service on (re)building trust. Our Chalice Dancers have enlivened several services with motion and color, too.
 
On the audio-visual front, I am particularly proud and pleased that the congregation I serve now has a modern big screen. A group of lay leaders worked with me and our techies to develop options, gather input from the congregation, and select a course that would serve our mission through multi-sensory worship, while integrating into the look of its beautiful, historic sanctuary. This change was a long time coming because it needed to be handled with care and thoughtful communication. Kudos to all the people who led the way!

​Installed in late 2023, the screen has been a boon in our worship life. Children’s stories, seasonal photos, response lines for readings, and video meditations have graced the screen. It’s been useful for business meetings, too… and enabled us to bring voices from the wider UUniverse into our sanctuary with their own faces and voices.
 
A recent example of a visually-rich service making the most of the screen’s worship-enhancing potential is on “Beauty Before Me.”

​Reflection  How has all this gone over? What have we learned?
 
My sense is that with any of these ways of increasing participatory and multi-sensory worship, most people are feeling ministered to by it. Individual feedback suggests that it is both serving the core well, and expanding to serve adjacent needs (including for existing members) as well as new people.
 
While positive feedback that I have heard comes from all demographics, it’s notably stronger among young adults and people with families.
 
Regarding intergenerational services in particular, appreciation seems to be growing broadly over the past several years – including from older congregants who have expressed a desire for more experiences of all-ages community.
 
That said, there are likely some individuals who don’t care for the occasional talk-to-your-neighbor invitation (it’s always optional); I doubt every last person is personally touched by more ritual opportunities; and there are probably some that could take or leave the use of banners, videos, and other enhancements. That's okay. Church is not a consumer experience, and there is something for everyone.
 
Between the shift to multi-platform worship and more participatory and multi-sensory worship, we have become more high-tech behind the scenes over the last several years. The impact on volunteers is the main down side I see - every increase in tech can make serving as a worship associate, or AV tech volunteer, more intimidating to some folks, as it does become more involved. (It has an impact on staff too – we HAVE paid tech staff now, and a minister these days has to have a certain degree of aptitude.)
 
All in all, this shift in worship culture has been a net positive for the church’s mission, both in serving existing constituents and the same needs as before, and expanding outward to adjacent constituents and needs.

After returning from sabbatical, while gearing up for the coming months of worship, I have been reflecting on worship experiments of the past several years. This graphic helps articulate why I have been investing my time and creativity into innovation in worship. 
​
The image comes from a piece by congregational consultant Susan Beaumont, which in turn builds on a Harvard Business Review article about innovation in the for-profit sector. To congregations who want to thrive into the future, Beaumont directs attention to the process of “living into your next potential.”
 
Beaumont suggests that core innovation initiatives modify existing programs and ministries to better serve existing constituents and the needs you’ve been addressing. Adjacent innovation efforts build on existing strengths incrementally. Thus they serve additional needs, and reach new people – not dramatically different populations, but folks who are already within reach of the groups currently being served. The most headline-grabbing experiments, transformational initiatives, are meant to serve people who are in different orbits than current constituents. These “breakthrough offerings” go well beyond tinkering and constitute fundamentally new approaches.
 
Beaumont thinks we might learn from corporate innovators. The research indicates that the most successful organizations are those that “allocated about 70% of their innovation activity to core initiatives, 20% to adjacent ones, and 10% to transformational ones.”

How might that translate to a church? For a typical progressive congregation, programs in the core include religious education, small groups, and caring ministries, along with worship. Let’s zero in on worship.
 
Worship is how new people most often check out a church. It is the program many members participate in the most. And it is THE program that serves the church as a whole, gathered community.
 
Every aspect of a congregation’s mission plays out in worship:  building a community of care and connection, tending hearts and minds with inspiration, teaching from the roots of our Unitarian Universalist tradition, shaping commitments and courage that participants take back into their everyday lives. Worship doesn’t have to be everybody’s “thing,” individually. But it is the beating heart of religious community.
 
So it makes sense that, if we’re trying to meet the moment, and co-create the future of our living tradition to serve all comers, a significant amount of energy in a congregational setting will go toward innovation in the flagship program, worship.

In the congregation I serve, First Unitarian Church of Omaha, I can group experimentation with worship in the past several years into five areas:  sensory-rich worship series à la Marcia McFee; a broader cultural shift toward participatory, multi-sensory worship; a music-centered worship format I’ve been calling Soulful Songs Sundays; a food-and-community rich format we call here Brunch Church; and a sermon co-op I piloted with a dozen UU colleagues.
 
The desire to engage in these experiments emerges partly from an entrepreneurial spirit and my sense of yearning for worship that feeds the spirit. I am someone who thrives on creativity and developing new systems; I don’t like to be bored, or to bore others. And I know how good worship touches and transforms me. I want everyone to have that.
 
My penchant for experimentation also emerges from other goals I have long held for worship. Here is one articulation of those goals, as shared with worship teams:

1. Support UU faith development for all who attend – newcomers and long-timers, young and old, with diverse theologies and learning styles
2. Support high quality worship regardless of whether minister is in or out of pulpit
3. Provide enough consistency from Sunday to Sunday to create a supportive container, and enough variety to engage people and prevent boredom
4. Create an integrated worship experience; elements form a meaningful whole
5. Bring in diverse voices, directly or indirectly, and broaden worship norms to welcome a wide range of people
6. Offer experiences of intergenerational community, including full services
7. Enhance the use of music and ritual, as well as rootedness in the earth
8. Help to integrate all our ministries (RE, pastoral care, social justice, etc.) and create a unified identify for our diverse and evolving congregation

 
If one is serious about serving the people who aren’t here yet, people of all ages and identities and walks of life – not to mention serving the people who *are* already in the church, but might not be in the pews, or might be under-served there – well, that calls for fresh approaches. Defaulting to “the way we’ve always done it” may not get us where we want to go.

​Rev. Kenneth Patton and the Charles St. Meeting House (Universalist) in Boston were at the forefront of innovation in an earlier era of liberal religion, in the middle of the last century. This photo from UUA archives shows Beltane at this hotbed of Universalist experimentation. For more on Patton and Charles St., see "A Religion for One World:  Kenneth L. Patton, the Charles Street Meeting House, and the New Universalism."

To be clear, I don't regard this as an either-or choice. Just because we sometimes do story-based, theatrical services for all ages, or ritual-centered services, or introduce other alternative formats, doesn’t mean we’ll never have “traditional,” sermon-centered worship. We still do more of the latter than the former where I am, and I don’t expect that to radically change. I also believe in the power of a good sermon; I put a lot of care into my sermons accordingly.
 
But more variety across worship services – and more ministering to the whole person in any service format – is all to the good. For newcomers and long-time congregants, alike.
 
Similar themes seem to be bubbling up throughout our UU movement. In sessions of the UUA Meet the Moment worship cohort I participated in last spring, the conversation touched on the intentionality required to create and hold sacred space, the power of embodied experiences that make more room for more people, worship that honors both the individuality and connection of participants, the ability of good worship to leave us more whole and integrated as individuals and in community, and the human alchemy that can take place because of what happens in the sanctuary on Sunday morning.

In the next two posts, I’ll describe four things we’ve tried at First Unitarian in recent years, and for each one, consider how it’s going:  How has the response been to this experiment? Is it serving the core well – existing people, and the needs previously met? Is it reaching the adjacent –new people or those who haven’t been in the center of congregational life, and needs not previously met (well)? On a practical level, have we – staff and lay leaders, everyone involved in creating worship – taken in stride the changes required behind the scenes to continue to offer this kind worship ministry? 
 
I’m also interested in whether the preparation for new modes takes the same, more, or less time and energy than for standard worship. I’ll have more to say on that in later post(s). There I’ll focus on questions of process and efficiency in the work of worship, reflecting also on the sermon co-op model. Why does efficiency matter? It is not the paramount value when it comes to worship. But effort saved in worship preparation would mean capacity freed up for other ministry beyond worship – and perhaps even for more audacious, transformational experimentation.
 
Meanwhile, I’m curious to hear from you. Does Beaumont’s graphic, and the concepts of core vs. adjacent vs. transformational types of innovation, illuminate what’s happening in your congregation’s worship life?  If so, how?  How do you think UU communities might effectively “meet the moment” in worship?

​“By their groups you shall know them,” wrote noted UU theologian James Luther Adams (JLA). [1]  He was talking about congregations, civic clubs, reform movements, political groups – all the associations through which people build social connections and work together to get things done for their communities. We need each other. And we need to be deliberate in building our associations with one another.
 
Around this time of year, while gearing up for fall, many church leaders are thinking about groups on a small scale. Small group ministry, covenant groups, chalice circles, sharing circles – whatever you call them, small groups have been a staple of social connection and spiritual growth within Unitarian Universalist congregations since at least the early aughts.

 
And they go back much further. John C. Morgan writes of house churches, as well as study circles, lay ministry, and individuals engaging in their own spiritual growth, as themes of early, Pietistic (heart-centered) Universalism in the 1700s mid-Atlantic U.S. Then and now, smaller cells within a religious community are key to meeting the dual purposes of intimacy and ultimacy – belonging and meaning – which JLA recognized as the core concerns of a church. [2] As Adams also underscored, you cannot really separate the spiritual from the prophetic. Not only does social action emerge from voluntary associations and the social capital they build, it is always grounded in theology (even when implicit). [3]
 
Small group experiences were formative in my own journey as a Unitarian Universalist. When I joined my home congregation in the late 90s, I found my niches in the choir and the young adult (YA) group. I particularly remember going through the Evensong curriculum with other YAs – my first experience of small group ministry. We also had a run of About Your Sexuality – the predecessor to Our Whole Lives – for the YAs. I joined in on classes offered for the congregation at large, too; a particularly memorable one for me was on the historical Jesus, tapping materials from the Jesus Seminar. Small groups were vital to both my finding a sense of belonging in a large congregation, and to my spiritual development.

I find myself thinking about small groups for another reason. Through a period of study on spiritual trauma and healing – aided by taking a graduate class on Trauma, Healing & Care this summer – I have gotten clearer about a new program I want to create. One that provides a supportive small group setting for healing from high control religion or similar kinds of harm, and that can be offered in progressive congregations. With all the come-outers who make their way to UU and other progressive communities from other faiths, including fundamentalist and evangelical expressions of Christianity, I believe many might be interested in and benefit from such an opportunity. (Would you see such a curriculum being embraced in your congregation?)
​
Robert C. Hill observes that most of our congregations have plenty of visitors (be they come-outers, geographic transplants, or, increasingly, unchurched). Our challenge has long been successfully integrating people into congregational life, so that they stick around. Hill relays a comment offered by an astute observer from one of the fast-growing conservative traditions, who quipped:  “Relative to total membership, you Unitarian Universalists draw in a higher proportion of visitors each year than any other religious body. If you ever solve your retention problem, you’ll be dangerous.” [4]
 
There has never been a more urgent time for Unitarian Universalism to pose a clear and present danger to the forces of conservative traditions, theologies, and policies. Our country needs us. To my fellow (sister) religionists – to all those who share our values of interdependence, pluralism, justice, transformation, generosity, and equity, all grounded, like the faith of the heart-led Universalists before us, in Love – I say, let’s get more dangerous!

There are many options to choose from in small group programming. Among them, congregations can:

• use resources like The Complete Guide to Small Group Ministry and ever-growing session plans from the UU Small Group Ministry Network, for a traditional, deep-listening oriented approach
• tap into a subscription theme-based ministry program, like Soul Matters or newer offerings, that include support for small group ministry
• draw on the UUA’s curriculum library to offer adult religious education programs on a range of topics  (along with newer curricula, it includes all the archived Tapestry of Faith stuff – among them an oldie but goodie, Owning Your Religious Past, which I have offered before, with some adaptation, as Integrating Your Religious Past)
• consider or work with this year’s UUA Common Read, Social Change Now, and the resource kit developed for congregations
• offer programs like UU Wellspring, Faith Forward, or your own small group spiritual direction program, to help people deepen in their UU faith
• access UUA resources for small group ministry on LeaderLab, including a new webinar from March this year on revitalizing your program

 
To circle back to James Luther Adams (JLA) and civil society, I believe we need these nodes of connection all the more in times of distress. Times when people are lonely, and scared, and want to come together both to cope with daily life and to organize together for the greater good. Times like now! I suspect UU churches will be as flush with visitors this fall as we have ever been. And we need to be ready to help new people get connected up.
 
Yet, I am wondering what is working these days in small group ministry. Perhaps that varies somewhat across regions and churches. Where I am, the pandemic dampened participation in small groups, and it has yet to fully recover to previous levels. People seem less interested in long-term commitments; yet drop-in groups don’t build the same level of trust, friendship and sharing that is possible with greater continuity. What is working where you are? Are you trying something new?

I’m convinced UU churches need to be as intentional as ever in providing opportunities for human-scale relationship-building and spiritual growth. Not only for the visitors who continue to come, but for our youth – whose youth culture is of the small group, relational, experiential, head-and-heart-together sort. And for long-timers, too, who can be just as lonely and hungry as newer folks, over different seasons of life.
 
Worship is vital to religious community, of course, and I for one love worship. But if all folks do is show up in the sanctuary (or on their device) on Sunday morning, they will not develop the relationships or experience the growth that leads people to seek out spiritual community in the first place. They will not be fed. They are less likely to start or sustain social action for the common good. And they are more likely to fall away from our churches.
 
As a minister, I have been trying for several years to figure out how to provide high-quality worship with less prep time. So I can then devote more time and creative energy to building the small group infrastructure, the interpersonal connections, the spiritual development opportunities that will serve our people well, individually – and help unleash our potential at the congregational level and beyond.
 
Arguably the last movement within our tradition to generate significant growth in membership was the Fellowship Movement. Morgan observes that “the fellowship movement represents an Enlightenment version of the Pietist house churches of the early Universalists.” Like many early Universalists, fellowships focused more on personal experience than formal beliefs, met a need for community, tapped lay leadership, and had a practical orientation to ethics. [5] I’m not sure to what extent they formed sub-units within each fellowship. But my sense is that they tended to be smaller congregations with dense friendship networks.

The Fellowship Movement had its down sides. One was distrust of religious professionals. Most of the fellowships that thrived over time – like my home congregation – eventually did call a minister; others largely petered out. As Morgan points out, seeing themselves as “alternatives to religion, not as religious alternatives,” was another drawback in fellowship culture. Whatever language they use for it today, people are hungry for spiritual depth. Morgan believed in 1995 that spiritual growth and sustained numerical growth went hand-in-hand; I believe that is just as true in our era. [6]
 
These days, we’re more or less level in membership as a denomination – but that hides the variation within. By the most current data, half our churches are growing, while the other half are declining. [7]
 
Much like the storyline of the fellowship movement, my impression is that the congregations that are growing tend to be those with professional leadership that can nurture cultures of trust and encourage the spiritual development of members, including through small groups. Effective lay leadership is doubtless also a critical ingredient. UUA staff lift up commonalities in growing churches like welcoming environments, clear mission and identity, and the ability to handle conflict in healthy ways. [8]
 
So I’m not suggesting that small group ministry is THE answer to spiritual and numerical growth in our congregations. To my mind, effective small group connections are a necessary but not sufficient ingredient for serving our members well – and for making an impact in the wider world, as we put our values into action together. One thing seems clear: effective pathways to build connection and make meaning are critical to sustained growth for Unitarian Universalism.

Whether you are a lay leader or religious professional – and whether you are UU or in any other religious tradition – I’d love to hear from you! You can comment on any of these via the comment feature.

1. What is working well in your congregation, to help new people build relationships, and people of any tenure develop spiritually?
2. Have you tried anything new on these fronts in the past few years?  If so, what have you learned?
3. If a small group curriculum for healing from high control religion were offered in your congregation, would people participate?  Who might facilitate it?
4. What’s working logistically in small group ministry, adult religious education or other programs these days (meeting frequency, length, program duration, etc.)? Or is it more about what particularly is offered, and the quality of communication and support provided to share that opportunity effectively?
5. What kinds of group programs are youth and/or young adults showing up for?
6. Are there other / new resources for small group ministry that should be lifted up?

​ 
“If you can do anything else, you should.” This advice is commonly given by veteran clergy to people considering the vocation of congregational ministry. No one said it to me, but I have seminary friends that did hear it, and mentors who heard it too. While the advice is not new, perhaps more people are heeding it these days. Congregational ministry has, in recent years, fallen out of favor among clergy as a way to answer their calling.
 
That reality, plus the experience of taking a class that has put me in frequent conversation with a vocationally diverse group of religious professionals – and finding myself regularly speaking from the barely-represented parish minister’s point-of-view – has prompted me to write about why I love congregational ministry. It is a vocation with at least as many rewards to recommend it as drawbacks.
 
If you are in theological school (or considering it), and still in discernment about what you will ultimately pursue, I hope you will find this reflection helpful to your process. If you are doing some kind of community ministry, but considering a change, there might be something here for you too. Perhaps lay leaders will also find relevant insight here about how things look from a minister’s perspective, as you seek to retain a good minister – or when you need to find a new one. (My colleague Sharon Wylie’s post on How to Keep Your Minister will also be of interest.)
 
Drumroll please…
 
Ten Reasons I Love Congregational Ministry
 
1 – You get to be a generalist!  Parish clergy get to play many roles – preacher, teacher, pastor… prophet, administrator, servant leader in the community and denomination. Doubtless this aspect of parish ministry plays into the growing minister shortage – the role can stretch a person thin. [i]
 
But for some of us – me among them – the variable nature of parish ministry is central to its appeal, too. “I get to use all of me” in ministry, as one colleague put it. Earlier in my vocational journey, the need for variety and change led me to question whether I would be happy in academia, and to take a different path. It’s also why I never made it to the five-year mark in a non-profit job, prior to ministry.
 
Ministry is many things. Boring is not one of them. (I’m not saying no one ever gets bored in congregational ministry; but if you do, you can develop new skills, or start a new passion project that fits within your ministry.)

​ 
2 – Sustained relationships. All ministry is relational. In churches, relationships with particular people and with the community as a whole are sustained over a significant period of time. While there is a continual flow of visitors and new members, you get to know many people in a way that allows depth and trust to develop. You learn their gifts and quirks, share in good times and bad, and build community together.
 
In this kind of ministry, you are part of the holistic development and healing that can happen in a religious community, as it does in few other places. Spirituality is for the whole person, and church is a rare part of society that does not relate to us on narrower grounds (e.g., learner, worker, consumer, patient, parent, voter).
 
You get to watch children grow up, and be part of the community that shapes them. You have the privilege of facilitating and honoring milestones in people’s lives, from Coming of Age and marriage, to child dedications and various kinds of coming out. Personally, I experience a particularly deep sense of purpose in the tender ministry of supporting people through the final transition, individually and in the shared ritual of Celebration of Life (memorial) services.
 
3 – Seeing people grow. A parish minister catches bright flashes of in-the-moment growth among churchgoers, and can also look back over years and recognize the positive development that the church has nurtured in various individuals. It happens in worship, and in classes and workshops. It happens in governance and in the work of Right Relations. It happens as people lean into your invitations and example, maturing in faith as we act on our UU values together. Congregational ministers help people grow, in ways small and large, every single day.
 
The young person who finds their voice and their tribe in youth group… the new member who explores new ideas and ways of being religious in their new UU home, and begins to heal from past spiritual harm; the established member who stretches their skills, as a committee chair or trustee; the young adult who finds their niche in a social action program, or on the Worship Arts Team. There are as many stories of growth as there are participants in the church. In time the minister will have the privilege of witnessing many of them – and of being inspired in your own continuing growth, in turn.

4 – Developing an organization. Beyond the individual changes, as a parish minister you will be able to look back over months or years, and see how you shaped an institution. I believe there is greater potential for this in a church than in many larger institutions in which one might otherwise serve.
 
The first time this potential really “popped” for me was as I was preparing to leave the first congregation I served. We’d had only four years together – but I believe it was enough to matter for the long haul. New and younger people had joined long-timers in the ranks of lay leadership. With my encouragement and participation, the church had leaned hard into its prophetic voice and taken courageous actions on multiple justice issues. Committees were strengthened in their membership and processes. The worship culture had become more inclusive of spiritual as well as humanistic ways, while becoming more multi-cultural and multi-sensory, too.
 
But wait, there’s more! I helped build the staff, including one excellent hire who is still there. The new congregational covenant put down roots. The stable period of my ministry had also lent itself to success in a capital campaign and major building renovation effort, driven by lay leadership, that will serve them for decades. An institutionalist serves future generations of a church, helping to build something good that can endure long after you’re gone.
 
5 – Innovating for the future.  Don’t think of yourself as an institution-builder?  Never fear. The entrepreneurially inclined will find plenty of opportunities to channel their imaginations and try new things with their congregational partners. In fact, we very much need you in parish ministry! I believe that some of our churches need an injection of exactly that kind of enterprising spirit, if they are to survive and thrive in these changing times.
 
In many ways, existing communities are ideal laboratories for experimentation. Local congregations are where so many new things get tried, be they new styles of worship, innovative curricula and small group programs, intergenerational efforts, ways of connecting with the wider community, and more. You don’t have to start from scratch with infrastructure and audience-building when you are working with an established community. Almost every community will also have within it, already, allies for the imagining and implementation of new ways. You can spread your wings together.

 
6 – Using your unique gifts. Because congregational ministry is, by and large, a generalist’s playground, almost any gift you bring into it with you can be put to good use in the parish. You won’t be able to do it all – no one can. So go ahead and marshal your strengths and passions. The church will reap the most from your efforts when you do.
 
Are you an astute observer of the human condition? Pour it into your preaching. Have a soft spot for youth or young adult ministry? When you build it, they will come. A natural pastor? Dig into that one-on-one pastoral care, create support groups, or start an end-of-life program in your congregation, like one of my mentors did. Love to teach? People are hungrier for those opportunities than a Hungry Hungry Hippo. Maker of Good Trouble? Put on your clerical collar and get out there! There’s no shortage of need to champion our values.  You’ll embolden your congregation, too.
 
Or maybe you are theatrical?  Weave it into worship and more!  Musical?  Write and share liturgical music, like other mentors and I have done. Super communicator? Pump out those videos, do your social media thing… whatever the growing edge is, you can lead the way with your savvy story-telling. Administrator par excellence?  You’ll have a leg up on a lot of seminary grads, and will be valuable to any congregation you serve (even if they don’t realize it yet, or see it when you bring it). Advanced tech skills?  There’s more of that in ministry than ever these days – we need you! Nothing is wasted in the parish.
 
7 – Nurturing human connections. Religious communities are hubs of community connection – so vital in our lonely, disconnected country these days. Visitors and new members frequently identify the search for community as a driving force in their checking out churches I’ve served. It’s the first thing most long-timers name, too, when asked why church matters to them. Experiencing connection in corporate worship, finding one’s niche(s) in small groups or teams, serving and being served through the caring ministries of a congregation, developing individual friendships within the congregation – all of these help create a sense of belonging that is existentially essential to humans.

People who have community are healthier, happier, and more resilient. Congregations are unlike many other community groups in that they include and connect people across generations; at their best, they include economic and cultural diversity too. The social capital generated in a community like a congregation can benefit individuals in tangible ways, such as gaining clients or finding mentors.  Connections made in congregations can benefit the wider world, too; people are more likely to take positive social action when they do it with others they know, as is often the case with community service programs, interfaith relationships, and social movements that are rooted in or bolstered by congregations.
 
I recognize that fundamentally, a church is its people – that buildings are tools for meeting the mission, not ends in themselves. But having physical places of comfort and connection, places besides work, school and home where folks can meet and mingle, is important in its own right. Social commentators lament the loss of such ‘third places’ in Western life today. As people spend more time at home and online, they are spending less time in libraries, parks and coffee shops. Congregations are important third places, including when they welcome in groups from the wider community, to use space that could otherwise sit empty much of the week. Some are even figuring out how to use their facilities to foster friendship and inner nourishment, beyond the immediate members of the congregation. [ii]
 
8 – A platform for ideas. There aren’t many places outside of academia, these days, that will pay you to be a public intellectual. You don’t even need a doctorate to do it as clergy (though some of us wind up with one). In Unitarian Universalist congregations, the free pulpit tradition guarantees you can speak your mind and heart without fear of censure or reprisal, so long as it is consistent with your higher calling.
 
Opportunities to share and teach abound, both formally and informally:  from the pulpit, in classes and workshops, in church publications, on blogs, in videos, via social media… you can write books or develop curricula… speak to history, culture, theology, ethics, current events, and more… if your jam is anything like this, you can include it in your ministry as you serve a congregation.
​
9 – Flexibility and warmth. Congregations are relatively low on bureaucracy. There are some policies and procedures, to be sure – one of the reasons for “the [slow] pace of church” – but far less than one would find, I expect, in hospital or military chaplaincy. The smaller the church, the less bureaucracy there is apt to be.

​As a chaplain intern, I experienced a hospital setting to be hard (literally, walking those halls made my feet hurt), aloof (with its large, hierarchical staff and ever-rotating patient population), and sometimes arcane (why do things work this way?). Churches, in contrast, are homey places. Here you will know others, be known by them, and generally have many possible ways to get any one thing done. Change efforts will still, predictably, draw resistance – there’s no escaping human nature – but strategic change agents can introduce new ways of doing things.
 
Ministry can be family-friendly, too. Congregational ministry never fit into a 9-to-5, Monday through Friday schedule. The flip side of being “on” more than you might in another vocation is that you get a high degree of control over when, where and how you do your work. You can set your hours to a certain degree, deciding on your day(s) off, your meeting night(s), and which portions of a day you work. You can flex work hours around the needs of others in your life (children, partner, an aging parent in your care). This means you can experiment with schedule, workflow, and when you are based out of the church vs. your home office, choosing what helps you be most effective.
 
While historically ministry was modeled on the life of a priest – a single person solely and wholly dedicated to religious service – newer cohorts of ministers have been pushing back on that unsustainable model in UUism. Norms are tangibly changing, including in contract and call letter templates. With good priority- and boundary-setting skills, you can establish a work-life balance that leaves you happy and resilient.

 
10 – Reliable income and benefits. Compared to someone building a client base, like a spiritual director, or an entrepreneurial minister starting a new organization from scratch, a congregational minister has a relatively stable source of support for themselves and any others who rely upon them. That includes health care costs and retirement savings supported significantly by the church. Depending on the size and resources of the congregation you serve, your compensation may be as competitive as, or better than, working as a chaplain, or for many positions at the denomination level.
 
Plus, parish clergy tend to have more robust professional development funding than many other ministry jobs may have built-in. This goes a long way toward sustaining relationships and support from peers, which is a lifeline in ministry, as well as continuing your skill-building and tool-gathering.
 
Notably, the choice of parish OR community ministry is not necessarily an either/or situation. As part-time parish positions become more common, due to changing realities in congregations, service to a congregation can provide a source of reliable income and benefits to your household, while leaving you some flexibility to pursue other kinds of ministry. Including riskier or less predictable (and sometimes less remunerative) ones like freelance officiating, PRN chaplaincy, spiritual direction, or entrepreneurial ministries in the wider community.
 
Ministry of the Future
 
Our current model of congregational life is heavy on fixed costs, both staff and buildings. Given the changing financial realities of churches, that may not be the way of the future. It’s not how church has always been done; many early Christian communities had neither – they had house church. I’m not suggesting a lay-led model is the ideal for most 21st-century churches, or that there aren’t benefits to having designated gathering spaces; I’m simply observing that the way we’ve long done church in U/Uism is not the only way.

​Whatever ministry to congregations looks like in the future… perhaps a return of circuit riders in some areas (like the notable Universalist Quillen Shinn), or multi-point charges (like many Methodists today), more multi-site ministries and congregational partnerships (as some UU communities are now doing)… more online communities or churches without walls (like the UU Church of the Larger Fellowship and some LGBTQ-oriented entrepreneurial ministries of any or no tradition)… and more congregations sharing facilities in common across different traditions… one thing that seems clear is that there will probably be more part-time ministries.
 
There are changes afoot at the national level toward Widening the Pathway to Ministry. Leaders recognize the need to make the process of becoming a minister more accessible – more inclusive of many identities and stages of life, less demanding in time and money, more doable for people with families and geographic ties. As stated at the end of a report from an initial stakeholder conversation, “By embracing flexibility, transparency, and shared accountability, we can build a system that nurtures all who feel called to serve, sustains our institutions, and fulfills the promise of our living tradition.” [iii]
 
However the preparation process for ministry evolves going forward, and however ministry is delivered to communities, I believe most congregations can best flourish when they have the support of professional leaders – people who are firmly rooted in the values and history of their tradition, and who are trained for the unique challenges of leading a religious community. Service to churches by people called to ministry goes way back to the roots of our UU tradition.

Personally, I have zero regrets about answering my own ministerial calling in the context of congregations. I did get very tired, and am oh so glad to be on sabbatical currently (the minister shortage would no doubt be worse without sabbaticals!). But I have never second-guessed answering the call. I would do it all over again.

Yes, congregational shenanigans are A Thing, and sometimes a big one. But don’t let others’ war stories cast too long a shadow over the beautiful, meaningful vocation that is parish ministry. If you feel a pull toward the parish, I encourage you to take it seriously. You might just find your life’s calling.
 
To any current congregational colleagues reading this, I invite you to share your thoughts in the comments. What do you love about parish ministry?  Would you make the same choices again?
 
If you are in discernment about whether you’ll pursue ministry (and what type) –regardless of what tradition you call home – I would be pleased to hear your reactions to this piece, and any questions it prompts for you, in the comments too.

Endnotes

[i] I’ll share my perspective on Where Have All the Ministers Gone? (the minister shortage) in a future post. Meanwhile, you can check out coverage from NPR , a local paper in Pennsylvania, and many others available via your browser.

​[ii] For more on ‘third places’ and their decline, check out coverage by the New York Times, The Atlantic, The Week, and even research sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. An intriguing example of a congregation connecting with the surrounding community – broadening its audience while bolstering its budget – is the Grace Arts program of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.

[iii] You can access the Widening the Pathway to Ministry report here, and read cover letters from UUA leaders that accompanied the report when it was shared with members of the UU Ministers Association.

In a few weeks, I start a sabbatical from my role as a congregational minister. Today, as I journaled on a postponed day off, I felt a strong pull towards an idea I've had in the back of my mind for a while -- writing for UUs (and potentially other progressive faith communities or seekers) who are interested in what the future of faith community might look like.

​This is one of the great questions that intrigues me:

My mind and heart circled back to this guiding question, partly because I know I will have the sort of spaciousness soon that allows one to step back from the everyday and contemplate the bigger questions. That is, in fact, part of the point of sabbatical. (Plain ol' rest is also a big part of it.)

​This question is on my mind partly, also, because of conversations the lay leadership and I have been having in the church I serve -- including at last week's board meeting. Conversations about the role of a shared sense of mission and vision in the life, longevity and vibrancy of a religious community such as ours.

And it's on my mind partly because of a conversation I had with several colleague-friends over tacos a few days ago. I'm in the weekly rhythms of ministry at the congregational level -- which also is where innovation most often happens​ -- while these two fine people are both serving our faith tradition at the national level, in touch with wider currents.

​But we were animated by some of the same big questions. Including this one:  if we were to start from scratch -- without buildings (let alone pews) and Sunday morning worship as the unconscious archetype of church -- how might we create religious community today?
​
I have a lot of ideas, that I've been collecting from hither and yon, and a few original ones too. We've even tried some of them in the congregation I serve, like Brunch Church (shout out to the folx at Nourish) and Soulful Songs Sundays.

​Those actually fit within the building and the Sunday morning worship container. We don't *have* to throw it all out!  I'm not really the burn-it-down kind of person, hence the theme here of the evolUUtion of spiritual community.

The catch is, though, it's hard to be REALLY creative, or get beyond quite incremental change, when you are confined to the Way We've Always Done Things. Like in a churchy building on Sunday morning.

When you're churning out 52 worship services a year as a community (religious professionals and lay leaders together), that doesn't leave a ton of energy left for experimenting with things that *are* beyond Sunday morning and/or beyond the building.