A DIFFERENT WAY OF DOING CHURCH

a sermon preached by the Rev Dr Tim W Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts
Sunday October 15th, 2006


I once heard a story about an earnest young county extension agent, just out of Ag School, who was eager to teach all of the farmers in surrounding area the latest techniques of scientific agriculture. There was one old-timer in particular, one of those irascible white-haired Scandinavian bachelor farmers, who’d been doing things just the way his grandfathers had done them for as long as anyone could remember, that this young man was especially eager to win over. He tried sending him letters, and then calling him on the telephone... and eventually he just started driving out to the farm in person, where early one morning he finally caught up with the old-timer out behind the barn repairing his tractor.

Astonished by his good luck, the Extension Agent immediately started to describe with great enthusiasm all of the new scientific techniques he’d learned about in college. But the farmer just started shaking his head.

“It’s no good, sonny” the old-timer said. “I already know how to farm better than I do....”


I love this story for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is because it reminds me that things are often a lot simpler than they appear, and that “success” (however we may choose to define that term for ourselves) often comes not so much from innovation as from a commitment to excellence. It’s not just a matter of learning how to do the latest thing, but rather remembering to do the things we already know HOW to do just a little bit better than we are doing them at the moment. Innovation can be good too, especially when it contributes to excellence... but we don’t have to reinvent the wheel to make certain that our tires are all inflated to the proper levels, correctly balanced and aligned in the same direction. And we certainly don’t have to have the latest GPS technology simply in order to figure out where it is we WANT to go.

Churches can often be like this. When you stop to think about it, “church” really hasn’t changed all that much in the past 2000 years. It’s still mostly about singing, and praying, and preaching, and breaking bread together. Worship, Education, Fellowship, Community Outreach and Pastoral Care (or what the old-timers would have called “evangelism” and “ministry”) -- five basic things that good churches all know how to do well, and struggling churches sometimes lose sight of, as they glance around the landscape looking for something new and innovative that will restore them to their good old “Glory Days.” It’s a very common situation, and not just in churches either. In any human activity, Complacency is often the offspring of Success, which in turn sows the seeds that form the roots of subsequent decline.

Of course, I’m not really sure it helps matters much that clergy are often a lot like that enthusiastic young County Extension Agent I was talking about earlier, always eager to embrace the latest innovation that comes down the pipeline from On High. I think UU ministers in particular like to think of ourselves as being part of the theological avant garde, out there on the “cutting edge” in terms of applying the timeless wisdom of the ages to the problems and challenges of contemporary society in fresh and innovative ways. So it’s easy for us to overlook that sometimes all people really want to hear is that Yes, life is often hard, but still it’s pretty good; and that God (or whatever passes for God these days) still loves us, and is still responsible for everything that is; and that our neighbors are basically pretty decent folks as well, despite their many obvious shortcomings, all of which we are generally well aware of, because we also share them simply by virtue of our own humanity.

In any event, it would be natural to assume from the title of today’s sermon, “A Different Way of Doing Church,” that I was planning to talk about something new and innovative this morning. But actually I want to talk about something tried and true, which probably goes back to the earliest days of religion itself (even if we do keep reinventing it in new and innovative ways in the attempt to keep it fresh and cutting edge). But as you already know, this month we are starting up a new Small Group Ministries program here at FRS. Small Group Ministries (capital “S,” capital “G,” capital “M”) are a relatively new and increasingly popular program in many Unitarian Universalist churches around the country these days. Sometimes known as “Chalice Circles” or “Covenant Groups,” they provide an opportunity for people to meet together once a month in groups of 8 to 10, either here at the church or in someone’s home, simply to talk with one another in a meaningful and intentional way about topics that are ultimately important to us all.

But small group ministries (small “s” small “g” small “m”) have been a staple of religious life from time immemorial. In fact, in many ways small “fellowship circles” are the building blocks out of which larger religious communities are built. The Choir. WomenSpirit. The Men’s Monthly Breakfast. The Green’s Sale Committee. And so on and so on and so on. Just about any group in church can become a fellowship circle, provided that it gives individuals enough time together that they are able to create significant, meaningful and authentic relationships with one another that go beyond a mere passing acquaintance.

A Covenant Group is just like that, only by design. In Covenant Groups, individuals intentionally promise one another (which is to say, they form a covenant) that they will meet together regularly for a given period of time for the specific purpose of creating significant, authentic, meaningful relationships intended to deepen and enrich the spiritual lives of everyone in the group. And in this respect, they truly are “a different way of doing church” -- a church which receives its inspiration from the ground up, rather than from the top down.

Unitarian Universalist Covenant Groups have a very unusual family tree, which can be traced back in two very different directions. The most obvious ancestors of this current generation of “Chalice Circles” are actually the “cell ministries” popular in Korean Christian megachurches, which were imported into this country by graduates of the evangelical Church Growth Institute at the conservative Fuller Theological Seminary in California, and then “borrowed” and modified by a handful of innovative UU ministers for use in our denomination about a decade ago. Some of these original Korean megachurches, such as the Yoido Full Gospel Assembly of God Church in Seoul, have over 700,000 members and approximately 25,000 “home cell groups” which meet regularly for prayer and Bible study.

But the more intriguing ancestor of Unitarian Universalist Covenant Groups are the “Basic Christian Communities” developed by Latin American Liberation Theologians among Roman Catholic compesinos in Central and South America. These basic communities also had their origin as Bible Study groups, but they also quickly evolved into “Bases” for Community Organizing and Political Activism among peasant villages whose needs were often overlooked or forgotten by a church hierarchy closely affiliated with the ruling elites. The “Base Community” concept came into the United States as part of the Sanctuary Movement in the 1980’s, where (as you might imagine) it quickly found a sympathetic home among politically active religious liberals of all denominational affiliations.

And yet, for both Religious Liberals and Evangelical Conservatives, “small group ministry” was not so much an alternative to traditional congregational life as it was a supplement and an enhancement to it. Just as distinct local parishes and congregations of whatever theological tradition all come together on some spiritual level to form “the Church Universal” -- each one of them doing God’s work as they understand it for their particular constituency of believers and seekers -- small group ministries might be thought of as the “cells” which make up the “body” of the church. Because even though it may be possible to be “spiritual” by yourself, it takes at least two or three souls to “be” a church. According to Roman Catholic theologian Fr. James O’Halloren, Church is a place that accepts us as we are, challenges us to grow, and creates an environment conducive to that growth. And small group ministries, of one form or another, are perhaps the most basic environment in which this process takes place.

Let me briefly explain again how our Small Group Ministry program works at FRS. The first thing you have to do is sign up for a group. We now have three groups to start out with: one group will meet on the 3rd Wednesday of every month (beginning next week) at 9:30 AM at Alison Saylor’s house, and is facilitated by Alison Saylor and Michael Dundorf. A second group will meet on the fourth Monday (beginning October 23rd) at 7:00 pm here at the church, and is facilitated by Ellen and Ernie Huber. And the third group will meet on the fourth Tuesday (beginning October 24th), also at 7:00 pm, and is facilitated by Steve Kirk and Bob Luoma, and will meet in one of their homes. Or if none of these times will work for you, you can also sign up for “option D” which means that you’re interested in joining a new group that will meet at a time and place still to be determined.

Once you’ve signed up, you also have to commit to showing up. This is really important, because the only way these groups really work is if everyone can count on everyone else being there. Obviously, sometimes things come up that keep us from keeping our commitments, and those things can’t really be helped. But the basic rule is that participation in the group is a priority, and that anything other than a real emergency gets scheduled around it. When I was part of a group of Unitarian ministers down in Texas, we were told that the only thing that should prevent us from attending a meeting was a funeral... our OWN! As I mentioned earlier, Small Group Ministries are ultimately about forming significant, meaningful, authentic relationships. And it’s hard to form a relationship with an empty chair.

You can read a lot more about the groups in the four-page Participant’s Handbook, which you’ll find near the clipboard with the sign-up sheets. But the basic format of a meeting goes like this. The participants gather in a circle around a chalice (which is why they are sometimes called “Chalice Circles”), and begin with a brief ceremony consisting of an opening reading and a chalice lighting. The next step is for group members to “check-in” with one another simply by sharing around the circle whatever important has happened in their lives since they were last together, much like we do on Sunday mornings during our “Candles of Community,” but on a slightly deeper level.

Then comes the “Topic of the Day,” which is an open discussion on a “religious” topic (broadly-defined) which has been selected in advance and is focused around a series of questions intended to evoke a thoughtful conversation. To start out with, each of the groups will be discussing the same topic at their monthly meetings, which will be selected by the group facilitators from a long list of potential topics we’ve “borrowed” from other churches. Finally, at the conclusion of the discussion there will be an opportunity for group members to briefly share their “Likes and Wishes” about the session, and a short ceremonial closing during which the chalice is extinguished.

And that’s the program. Simplicity itself, and all it takes is a commitment of a couple of hours a month. And yet I hope you can see how even among just a handful of people, participants can enjoy the experience of reverent Worship, engage in Fellowship with one another, and Educate themselves about spiritual matters simply by talking in a meaningful way about serious topics of religious significance.

But wait, there’s more! (and now I really am starting to feel like this sermon is turning into an infomercial). Because there are also aspects of Community Outreach and Pastoral Care to our Small Group Ministries program, which really DO make it a different way of doing everything else we try to do in church.

The Pastoral Care part I hope is obvious. It’s easy to get lost in a congregation of 600. It’s possible to get lost even in a congregation of 150. But there’s no way you can get lost in a Small Group of 10. If there is something significant going on in your life, the other members of your Covenant Group are going to know about it, and are going to be the first ones there to look after you, and to help gather the resources of the entire congregation to help you out.

The Community Outreach portion is a little more subtle. But as part of their mission, each Covenant Group is asked to take on one service project a year, either to the church or to the larger community. The project can be anything the members of the group decide among themselves they would like to do, large or small. But service is an essential component of the overall Small Group experience, both to remind us that service is also an essential part of our lives as people of faith, and also to prevent our Small Groups from becoming too inward-looking and self-absorbed, rather than connected to the larger community beyond our intimate circle.

I understand that life here in Carlisle can be much more busy and hectic than it was just a generation or two ago, when this truly was a sleepy little rural community of farmers, who worked long hours alone in their fields, yet craved a community church of their own, so that they could see all their neighbors on a Sunday morning, and avoid the long walk into the big city of Concord. And I truly believe that these new Small Group Ministries can help revitalize some of that community spirit as we approach our 250th year here on this hilltop. We already know how to do church better than we do. What we need is the commitment to one another, to do it as well as we know how....

***
READING: from Bonifacius or “Essays to Do Good” by Cotton Mather [1710]

WE CANNOT DISMISS this part of the subject without offering a proposal to animate and regulate private meetings of persons for the exercises of religion. It is very certain that when such private meetings have been maintained and well conducted, the Christians who have composed them have, like so many “coals of the altar,” kept one another alive, and been the means of maintaining a lively Christianity in the neighborhood. Such societies have been strong and approved instruments, to uphold the power of godliness. The disuse of such societies has been accompanied with a visible decay of religion, in proportion as they have been discontinued or disregarded in any place, the less has godliness flourished....

It is proposed that a select number of families, perhaps about twelve, agree to meet (the men and their wives) at each other’s houses alternately, once in a fortnight or a month, or otherwise, as shall be thought most proper, and spend a suitable time together in religious exercises....

The members of such a society should consider themselves as bound up in one “bundle of love,” and count themselves obliged, by very close and strong bonds, to be serviceable to one another. If anyone in the society should fall into affliction, all the rest should presently study to relieve and support the afflicted person in every possible way. If anyone should fall into temptation, the rest should watch over him, and with the “spirit of meekness,” with “meekness of wisdom” endeavor to recover him....

It is not easy to calculate the good offices which such a society may do to many other persons, besides its own members. The prayers of such well-disposed societies may fetch down marvelous favors from Heaven on their pastors; their lives may be prolonged, their gifts augmented, their graces brightened, and their labors prospered, in answer to the supplications of such associated families. The interests of religion may also be greatly promoted in the whole flock by their fervent supplications; and the Spirit of Grace mightily poured out upon the rising generation; yea, the country at large may be the better for them....

It is very certain that the devotions and conferences carried on in such a society will not only have a wonderful tendency to produce the “comforts of love” in the hearts of good men toward one another but that their ability to serve many valuable interests will also thereby be much increased....