THE STATE OF THE CHURCH (2005)

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts
Sunday May 15, 2005

There's a TV preacher named Joel Osteen whom I sometimes like to watch late at night when I'm having trouble sleeping, and need to remind myself why I got into this line of work in the first place. Pastor Joel is the minister of the 30,000 member (and growing) non-denominational Lakewood Church in Houston Texas, and he always begins his uplifting, practical messages by telling a joke, which may or may not be related to the theme of the rest of his talk. And this past week one of you e-mailed me this joke, which reminded me a lot of the jokes I hear from Pastor Joel. So I thought I'd experiment by telling it to all of you, and seeing how it goes over.

A well-worn one dollar bill and a similarly distressed twenty dollar bill arrive at a Federal Reserve Bank to be retired. As they moved along the conveyor belt to be burned, they struck up a conversation.

The twenty dollar bill reminisced about its travels all over the country. "I've had a pretty good life," the twenty proclaimed. "Why, I've been to Las Vegas and Atlantic City, the finest restaurants in New York, performances on Broadway, and even a cruise to the Caribbean." "Wow," said the one dollar bill. "You've really had an exciting life!"

"So tell me," says the twenty, "where have you been throughout your lifetime?"

The one dollar bill replies, "Oh, I've been to the Methodist Church, the Baptist Church, the Lutheran Church...."

The twenty dollar bill interrupts, "What's a church?"

As I was thinking about what I wanted to say here this morning, I couldn't help but reflect upon how it's been two years (and ten days) now since I stood here in this pulpit on the threshold of another congregational meeting, after a very intense week of being interviewed and inspected and examined from almost every angle, in eager anticipation of being elected as your next settled parish minister. It really doesn't seem like all that long ago, and yet two years ago as I stood here I looked out over a sea of strangers, whereas today I see mostly the familiar faces of my "neighbours and fellow cretures" -- people who I know by name, and who I routinely see not just here at church, but also at the library and at the post office and the town hall, or at the ball field or the ice cream stand, or when you're dropping off your kids at school, and sometimes even in the hospital, or in your own home if you've invited me there, as many of you have. And of course I still don't know each of you as well as I would like, but I can't begin to tell you how lucky I feel, and how grateful I am that you invited me to be your minister, even if it is making all my hair fall out. But it probably would have fallen out anyway, right? So I really don't have anything to complain about.

One of the things that makes my job so interesting, but also makes it kind of challenging, is that it is really a lot of different jobs all at once, any one of which could easily take up all of my time and then some. Of course, whenever I actually take the time to think about all this, I naturally tend to start with the job I'm doing right now -- my job as a preacher/teacher, writer and scholar of liberal religion. It's the job everyone sees, it's the job I was educated to do, it's the job I probably do best, and also the one I often feel like I'm shortchanging a little when I look over at the big pile of unread books next to my chair while watching TV preachers late at night. But preaching is really is just the tip of the metaphorical iceberg.

I'm also very sensitive to my duties as a pastor -- as the shepherd (or as Woody described it at my installation, the sheepdog) to this flock, this "promiscuous assembly of believers and seekers" known as the First Religious Society. Someone who has taken on the responsibility to try, at least, to be a faithful counselor and comforter to those who are troubled, and to represent as best I can the loving concern of this entire community for its individual members in their moments of personal crisis. This is an aspect of my job that doesn't necessarily come easily for someone who is basically a shy and introspective bookworm at heart, but it's also something I have learned to cherish because of the depth of the pastoral relationships that often grow out of it.

And then there is yet another part of my job which is probably best described as institutional administrator and community leader. The most challenging thing about this aspect of my job is that I share it with so many other people. I'm hardly the CEO of this organization, or even its Executive Director; I don't really manage or supervise anyone, and yet when things don't go smoothly it eventually comes around to being my problem to solve. Like a lot of clergy, I have a lot more responsibility than I do actual authority, and what authority I do have is based more on personal or moral influence than it is real power. There are all sorts of good reasons for this, of course, and I'm not so sure that I would want to change things even if I could. But it does sometimes make it complicated to get things done -- even relatively simple things that you might think would happen effortlessly in most other contexts. And then there is also the fact that I am my own assistant: I answer my own phones, keep my own calendar, prepare all my own correspondence and do all my own filing, and copying, and whatever else good assistants do -- not such a terribly burdensome set of tasks really, except for the fact that I'm so terrible at them.

And there's lots more as well. The ministry is a job that's been around for thousands of years; I don't think there's anyone alive who really understands all its various nuances and expectations, much less anyone who has ever mastered them. But as I was saying earlier, it's an interesting, and a challenging vocation -- especially when the community of people you've been called to serve is also facing difficult challenges of its own. This has not been an easy year at the First Religious Society. We have struggled with issues that have come to us from the larger culture, and at times we have struggled with one another as we've attempted to discern a path forward that is compatible with our core religious values, and the spirit of our covenant with one another. And it hasn't always been easy, because even people of good faith don't always see eye to eye on every issue. And yet I like to think, for the most part at least, that we have done a fairly decent job at recognizing that people can have different opinions and perspectives on the same issues, and still respect one another as human beings, even when they don't see eye to eye. For the most part. With the larger culture as polarized as it is these days, along with the palpable loss of civility at the highest levels of our civil government, it certainly isn't hard to imagine how things might have been much, much worse than they were.

And let's not lose sight of the fact either that there are still more challenges ahead of us. There are always more challenges ahead. Like this past year's challenges, we will often have to address them on at least two levels -- one of content, and the other of process. And we're not going to get it perfect every time. But that doesn't mean that we can't learn from our experiences, and improve the next time out. It's easy to concentrate on minimizing friction if all you want to do is coast; in fact, it's really the only thing that matters. Developing enough traction and momentum to get out of a rut and on down the road, and maybe even over a few bumps in that road (never mind all the way to the mountaintop), is a somewhat more complicated endeavor. But we have a lot of engineers in this congregation, so I'm confident that we'll be able to figure out the technical aspects of the challenge. It's the emotional part I'm worried about. How do we keep ourselves all facing in the same direction, walking and pulling together toward a shared goal? How do we keep people from being run over; how do we make certain that no one gets left behind? And what do we do about people who want to get off the bus, because they don't want to go where the rest of us want to go? Do we wait around for awhile in the hope that they might change their minds and get back on board, or do we simply wave goodbye in our rear view mirror as we leave them behind in the dust?

From my own perspective, as a professional religious leader who has worked with other congregations facing similar challenges in very similar circumstances, the First Religous Society is now entering the final stages of a long period of transition in its natural, generational cycle of slow decline and gradual rejuvenation. Since its most recent heyday a decade ago, perhaps best characterized by the construction of what is still called by many "the new Addition," this congregation has faced and worked through the final few years and subsequent retirement of its previous, long-tenured minister, a dynamic two-year interim period coupled with an extensive ministerial search, and now two years of my ministry, as we have slowly gotten to know one another, and hopefully built-up trust and mutual understanding for the years ahead. And during that same ten year period (more or less), you have also witnessed the surrounding Carlisle community gradually change around you as well, in ways that are perhaps not quite so easily characterized -- younger (or maybe we've just gotten older), more affluent, less "rural," more "exurban," and so on and so on and so on. And in the even larger community beyond Carlisle, there have been even greater changes...and in the midst of all that change, the one compelling challenge that confronts you right here in this moment is answering truthfully, and honestly, and authentically, this two-part question. "What is at the Heart of our Religious Society? Where is our Center; what is it about us that makes us who we are, and gives us our identity as a people of faith?" And the second part of the question is "Where is our Growing Edge? How do we bring the essence of who we are to life, right here, right now, in this place and at this time?" How do we connect what is essential about who we are with the context in which we live, and do so in a meaningful and effective way? That's the big question we have to answer as an institution. And from our answer will flow everything else we want to do in the way of worship, and outreach, and education and program and everything else that churches do to express their faith in the real world.

Now I recognize this is all rather abstract, but if you like, there's another, more tangible way of coming at this same question from a little bit different direction. If this all sounds just a little too theological for your tastes, you might try looking at things the way you would if you were Peter Drucker. What is the core business of this enterprise? Are we in the entertainment business -- providing uplifting music and inspiring intellectual stimulation at regular intervals for all who wish to attend? Are we in the "fellowship" business, creating opportunities for congenial social interaction between sympathetic, like-minded individuals? Are we a social service agency, in the business of assisting the less fortunate; are we child-care providers, with an emphasis on facilitating appropriate peer socialization, ethical reasoning, and moral development? Are we in the historic preservation business? The investment and property management business? Or is our core business something slightly more profound, something toward which all of these other activities play a part?

I personally believe that churches are (or ought to be) in the business of healing and human transformation: of calling people into a disciplined process of self-discovery, which changes their lives for the better, and in doing so makes the world better as well, one person at a time. That's what I think churches do, and that's what I think this church ought to do. We have everything we need, right here in this room. We have one another. In my time in the ministry I've served a lot of UU churches, and I've visited plenty more, in three very distinct regions of the country; I've also studied and taught on several college campuses, but I don't know that I've ever met a more interesting, a more talented and accomplished, a more creative, committed, and genuinely kind-hearted group of people as I have discovered here in Carlisle. And I don't think it's just because I need to get out more either. You routinely amaze me -- you come from so many different places and backgrounds (some of them quite modest); you enjoy various levels of education, and span a wide range of ages; your experiences in life are as varied and diverse as the opinons you have formed from them, and yet you care about one another and the future of this community, you are generous and resourceful and hard-working, and you generally know how to have fun together too, after the work is done. Good will, forgiveness, a genuine interest in one another and a profound concern for the well-being of all -- these are the qualities that allow churches to grow and thrive, and you possess them in abundance. The best days of this congregation are just ahead of us. It is simply a matter of walking together on the way forward to tommorrow, hand in hand, and one foot in front of the other.