Tango or Two-Step?

(the State of the Church, 2006)

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts
Sunday May 21st, 2006

As I’ve been thinking these past few months about what I wanted to say here in my annual “State of the Church” sermon, I’ve also been playing around in my mind with alternative titles. I’ve always been kind of proud of my ability to come up with clever and catchy sermon titles (even if I don’t always like to publicize them in advance); and the one I’d pretty much settled on for today (in keeping with the theme of “dancing” from the reading) is “Tango or Two-Step?”

Personally, I’ve never really been much of a dancer myself, although I have seen it done, both live and on TV; and like everyone else I know perfectly well that “it takes two to Tango.” And I’ve even had Tango lessons. Well, one Tango lesson -- apparently I was such an enthusiastic Tangoist that my partner... who at the time was also my wife... refused to step foot out on the dance floor with me ever again. Or at least not if I had a rose clenched between my teeth.

The so-called “Texas Two-Step” on the other hand, is a dance I became familiar with while serving as the minister of the Unitarian Universalist church in Midland, Texas. It’s not nearly so complicated a dance as the Tango, and if you go to the website “eHow.com” you can even download instructions about how to dance the Two-Step in twelve easy steps, which begin: “Stand with your feet together facing your partner” and continue with “Wait for the music to start” before eventually concluding with the simple, single-word instruction “Repeat.”

But my favorite part was the instructions for the “follower,” which are basically “Do the opposite of what your partner does,” along with the warning “this isn’t as easy as it looks.” Yet this is also the magnificent thing about the Two-Step. Because basically, it was doing the opposite of what my partner did that got me into trouble with the Tango. But with the Two-Step, that’s not only normal, it’s expected.

I am now approaching the completion of my third full year of ministry here at FRS. And coincidentally, next month also happens to be the twenty-fifth anniversary of my graduation from the Harvard Divinity School, and my subsequent ordination the following Sunday at the First and Second Church in Boston. I’ve been trying to decide how big a deal I ought to make of this anniversary, and I’ve decided not much; Harvard, after all, is already throwing me and my classmates a pretty expensive party as it is, and I certainly don’t feel the need to celebrate this particular occasion more than once.

Besides, three years of ministry in one place is a pretty solid accomplishment all by itself, especially when you consider the fact that three years is now the median tenure of a minister in our denomination, a statistical quirk in part explained by the circumstance that long-tenured ministers like Woody tend to serve a lot fewer churches (and thus represent a lot fewer “ministries” over all) than someone like myself who has worked extensively as both an interim minister and a consultant, and therefore have served a total of 13 different congregations (full or part time) in the past 25 years, with a median tenure of only 22 months.

But getting back to the subject at hand, after three years in any relationship, the honeymoon is typically pretty much over and the partners have started to see one another through more critically appreciative eyes. I imagine by now most of you have probably figured out that I don’t walk on water, or change water into wine; that I can’t be everywhere at once (or even two places at the same time); that I don’t read minds or know everything there is to know without first being told (or at the very least reminded, sometimes more than once); and that no matter how hard you may pray otherwise, I personally am powerless to solve every difficult problem little or large that comes into our lives, or to create Something out of Nothing by Word alone.

And I hope you’re all OK with this. I know these revelations may have been disappointing for some of you (especially the “water into wine” part), but I’m trusting that if you haven’t gotten over it by now, you will get over it eventually.

Likewise, in three years I’ve certainly learned plenty of things about you as well, both as individuals and as a community. You’re still the same remarkable group of folks I fell in love with three years ago, but I have a much better appreciation now both of the things you wanted to keep secret from me when I was first here visiting as a candidate for this pulpit, and also for your hidden strengths -- the things you probably take for granted, because they are so routine and familiar to you, but which from the perspective of a relative newcomer are truly quite extraordinary.

Most good churches enjoy many of these same qualities to some degree or another: competence, creativity, generosity, forgiveness, and a willingness to engage the problems of the wider world beyond their own four walls. The challenge is finding the shared vision which gives these qualities focus and purpose -- a shared sense of mission which can shape them into a coherent and cohesive set of tangible strengths.

Here at FRS we are blessed, not just with one, but with two distinct visions of who we are.

The first is that of a community church, the First Religious Society of CARLISLE. It is an expression of the traditional and historical role this church has played in this community since its beginning -- “the only game in town” (as Hal Sauer so frequently used to remind me) -- a community gathering place, a visible landmark at the center of town, an institution whose public mission includes not just worship, education, fellowship, social action and pastoral care, but activities like the Greens Sale and the Harvest Fair, the Memorial Day Luncheon and the Strawberry Festival -- activities which bring members of the larger Carlisle community into this building at times other than on Sunday mornings, and which support the creation and nurture of a civic community much larger than the congregation of the First Religious Society itself.

The second vision, which is of more recent vintage and thus somewhat less fully-formed than the first, is one of a more active, (and “activist”) program-style church. Basically, many of you have looked around at the thriving, dynamic Unitarian Universalist congregations all around us (in places like Littleton, and Concord, and Bedford for example), and then said to yourselves “we want some of that here.” A regular coffeehouse. More extensive Adult Religious Education offerings. Small Group Ministries. Even MORE dynamic than they already are Music, Youth, and Social Action programs. You’ve seen other possibilities and correctly thought to yourselves, “if they can do it, why can’t we?”

These two visions often compete, sometimes conflict, but are in no way fundamentally incompatible with one another. Rather, they simply require the development of a single, articulate, unifying vision to bring them both together -- a vision which honors the values, heritage and shared identity of the past while embracing the new opportunities for mission offered by the future; and, above all else, addresses an even more basic reality which hampers our ability to accomplish either of these missions effectively: the fact that most of the people who are here already pretty much like the church just exactly the way it is and was and always has been -- a small, comfortable, relatively intimate community where everyone knows everyone else, and where things pretty much just sorta go along smoothly the way they always have, somehow managing to be all things to all people without ever any serious disagreements or harsh words...

You know, it’s a simple and well-known fact of life that often times our greatest strengths are also the source of our greatest shortcomings. In his book Dynamics of Small Town Ministry, Lawrence Farris observes that, like the small towns they often serve, small churches are not only have a well-deserved reputation for preserving a shared sense of place and history, along with the kind of intimate community that blossoms of long familiarity; they are also sometimes notorious for being shortsighted, small-minded, and dominated by the power of both long memories and petty gossip. At once both change-resistant and conflict-adverse, they are not only places where everybody knows your name, but also probably all of your personal, private business as well.

See if any of this sounds familiar to you. According to Farris, “in small towns, longevity of presence is valued by residents. The longer one has lived in the town, the greater the likelihood that one has understood and accepted the town’s norms and traditions. This valuing of long-term presence shapes the town in several ways.... But valuing longevity, while understandable and necessary in the pursuit of continuity, can also contribute to an acceptance of mediocrity. Retaining what is good enough for the town just because it has been around a long time can crowd out what would be truly good for the town -- new people, new ideas, new approaches to problems. Furthermore, leadership kept in the hands of a long-serving few tends either to burn them out or to consolidate control in too few people. Valuing longevity can protect the town from those who would seek to change it without understanding it, but doing so can also prevent the town from accepting new people who do understand it and could help it creatively meet new challenges....”

Of course, I suppose one could always argue that Carlisle really isn’t a small town at all anymore, but is actually much better understood as a very affluent and exclusive suburb of Boston. And one could also make a similar observation about FRS -- that with approximately 100 member households and an annual budget in the neighborhood of a quarter of a million dollars, this is a very different kind of congregation than it was just a quarter of a century ago.

But the continuing challenge of honoring the accomplishments of the past while effectively engaging the possibilities of the future remains the same. Perhaps the most difficult aspect of facing this challenge is simply recognizing the fact that things AREN’T the way they used to be, and that we have a choice: either to dig in our heels and try to resist change (or at the very least die honorably in the attempt), or instead deciding to accept the reality of change, embrace it, and then attempt to shape it in ways that are congenial both to our time-honored values, and our ongoing sense of mission and purpose.

Acceptance often begins with Understanding. Or more accurately, acceptance begins by accepting the possibility that you DON’T understand, and then seeking greater Understanding with the understanding that the more you learn, the less comfortable you will feel about the things you think you already know.

Learning this lesson, both about churches and about myself, has been a very significant element in my own ministry, well before I ever arrived in Carlisle. As I mentioned earlier, for nearly a decade before accepting the call to become your minister, I worked as a part-time “consulting” minister to small congregations in the Pacific Northwest, while at the same time earning a PhD in American history at the University of Oregon. These small congregations typically functioned “without benefit of clergy,” but at least they understood that they weren’t really living up to their full potential, and were motivated enough to contact someone like me in an attempt to change things for the better.

During those years I got to be pretty good at doing what management consultants sometimes call “getting to the balcony” -- finding a place where I could see the big picture, and then sharing that perspective with the regular lay leaders of those congregations, along with some tangible suggestions of things they might try doing differently, before turning the whole process back over to them to implement and execute. I was like a coach, who draws up the play on the sidelines and then hands the ball to the players. Or perhaps like a Doctor: examine, diagnose, and prescribe, then leave the patient to take their medicine while I moved on to the next consultation.

And what I realize now is that at the same time I was getting really good at getting to the balcony, I was also getting a little rusty at “getting out on the dance floor,” and actually leading my partners in time with the music as we kicked up our heels and enjoyed the party. The part-time nature of my consulting work (typically just one or two weekends a month over the course of a year or two), together with the built-in boundary of a three or four hour commute each way from my home in Portland, placed very tangible limits on my ability to serve as a more hands-on leader in those congregations.

So now, after twenty-five years in the ministry, I find myself both learning new skills (and trying to relearn some old ones), in my attempt to lead you in this important process of articulating and fulfilling a vision not only for your future, but for our shared future: a future grounded in the faith that the best days of this congregation are not behind us, but still before us.

It can be very difficult work, this work of ministry: work which as a community of faith we must inevitably endeavor to do together, since no single one of us can do it all alone. It requires commitment, and dedication, and devotion... but most of all it requires the recognition that often times this work of service to Something Larger than Ourselves can be very demanding: intellectually demanding, financially demanding, emotionally demanding, spiritually demanding... and these demands are only in a small way offset by the fact that it can also be very rewarding, and (at least in my case) has the additional benefit of now involving a very, very, SHORT commute.

But I’m not just here to minister to you, I am really here to minister WITH you -- to help you to discern your own unique gifts for service, and then to encourage you to use them in ways that are more than merely self-serving. I’m here to invite you to dance: to teach you some of the steps I know, and to try to learn some new ones from all of you, forsaking “the possessive clutch, the clinging arm, the heavy hand” as together we attempt to move to the same rhythm , “now arm in arm, now face to face, back to back,” creating a pattern together which will nourish, not only ourselves, but every one else who hears our music, and who desires to join us out on the dance floor.