Here's another question from the UUA Staff, appended to their strategic plan for ministry.


 Given that we operate within a system of congregational polity, how might we
help the lay leadership of our congregations understand and embrace the
imperative of becoming radically hospitable to a diverse world? How might our
ministers find willing partners in this work rather than resistance to change?


Since this question appears on a strategic plan for ministerial development, I'm going to reframe.   It seems to me that this is a more interesting question:

How might we create a corps of ministers who can lead congregations into the work of becoming radically open and hospitable to an ethnically diverse nation?  

Now, we've been asking and trying to answer this question for at least a decade.  The answers put in place have involved requiring ministerial education to focus on this question in virtually every area of study, and to include competencies on leading this sort of change.

As I watch new ministers and view theological education, it seems to me that we have excelled at the work of  teaching the reality and skills of multi cultural work to new ministers.  They come out of school assuming that this is the future and gung ho to be a part of this change, and feeling that they have a good deal of knowledge about what should be done and how to do it.   And it is true that they meet resistance from congregations. (hence the first question above, which could be rephrased impolitely as, "how can we change congregations so that ministers can do the job we have trained them to do?)

 Congregations are, by their very nature, conservative (as in, conserving the values of the past) institutions.  Theologically liberal congregations tend to be even MORE institutionally conservative than theologically conservative ones.  This counter-intuitive claim shocks UU's, but here's the reason.   Theologically conservative congregations have a very carefully defined corps of belief, doctrine, and mission which serve a unifying function in times of institutional change.  Theologically liberal congregations, NECESSARILY don't have this corps of unified belief and doctrine and it is therefore HARDER for us to change less centeral matters such as worship style and social assumptions, and HARDER for us to reach out to "the stranger".   Our center is squishier.  As an example, imagine the minister of an evangelical church, who says to his members,  "Jesus told us to take the gospel to all nations, and that surely includes the "nation" of young people who only know rock music, so we SHOULD have a contemporary music service.  Yes, it will be change of music but the gospel that we all believe in demands this."    That minister might meet some resistance, but he will have the congregation's core beliefs on his side.

A UU minister trying to do the same thing doesn't have the same advantage.  That doesn't mean we shouldn't do these things, but we should not beat ourselves up quite so much if we are not first to accomplish them in the religious world.  And it means that our ministers have to amass MUCH more "ministerial capital" to be change agents in congregations.

So once again, I am wondering about the usefulness of making multicultural congregations our number one goal and heading directly towards it, full tilt.   It might be that focusing our new ministers on the skills and motivations required for long and fruitful ministries (which have built that ministerial capital required to successfully urge major change on congregations) might be, in the end, a quicker path to the future we all desire than  impressing on new ministers that multiculturalism has to be first on their list.  That tends to create a corps of ministers who are eager to produce quick change, who think that they should be able to do that fairly easily, and who blame congregational resistance for their failures.

And that's not a step forward, it is three steps backwards.

In its strategic plan for ministry, the UUA staff left some open questions for discussion.  Here's another one.  


Even if it is a moral and religious imperative for UUs, does becoming more multiculturally welcoming and competent necessarily mean that our congregations will grow?


The way this question is stated highlights the confusion in the UU World about the issue of multicultural competence and welcome, because it places this factor, not only at the top of the list of factors influencing growth but suggests that it alone might trump everything else.  

It's easy to imagine a scenario in which UU's perfect multiculturally welcoming and competence but still don't grow.  If, for instance, we don't find ways to reach the Gen X and Millenial generations (who are far more skeptical about religious institutions than their elders), it won't matter how competent we are as we age into oblivion.   If we have nothing to offer the world except our multicultural competence we'll attract fewer and fewer people.  I devoutly hope that

Our values demand that we welcome everyone with skill, and it can hardly hurt us to make sure that our doors are really open to all people and not just white people.  If we don't do this work, we will surely flounder, if only because muilticultural INcompetence won't be tolerated by younger generations.  This work is necessary but not sufficient; part of a plan that also has to include a focus on spirituality and a willingness to become multi-generationally competent and welcoming.  

Another question posed by the UUA staff in their strategic plan for ministry was this:  What can we learn from our community ministers about living into the promise of our multicultural world?


Interesting question which I hope some folks with more experience in community ministry will chime in to answer.  But I have  (what a surprise!)  a different bias on this question, which comes from my experience of modest effectiveness in diversifying congregations.

I believe that multi-cultural congregations are like happiness.  You don't become happy by setting that as your goal and going towards it full-tilt.  You get happy by making relationships, developing interests, lending a helping hand, dealing with your inner demons and so on.   Happiness, in other words, is a by-product of life effectiveness.

I think that multi-cultural congregations are similarly a product of congregational effectiveness, rather than goal-setting or learning,  especially effectiveness in reaching the Gen X and Millennial generations, where "multi-cultural" is the name of their game.   Sometimes it seems to me that our fantasy is that if we learn enough about being a multi-cultural congregation, we will enjoy great waves of 50 and 60 year old persons of color who have been patiently waiting for us to get our act together.  I doubt this.  If we achieve our goal of multi-culturalism, it will be because we have attracted young people to our church and welcomed them...their music, their visual learning style, their multi-culturalism, and most of all, their desire to explicitly address their spiritual lives.

It seems to me that Community ministers might have something to teach us, but that our RE community has more to teach us and that they should be consulted, too.  

Another question from the UUA Staff's Strategic Plan for Ministry

What are the implications of social networking for the future of our bricks and mortar ministries? As Philip Clayton put it in his article Theology and the Church after Google, “Do we really inhabit two different worlds: those who text, Twitter and blog, and get 80% of our information from the Internet, and those who are “not comfortable” with the new social media and technologies?


In the article mentioned, Clayton follows this question with another question:  Could we today be facing a change in how human society is organized that is as revolutionary in its implications as was the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg over 500 years ago?


I answer the second question,  "Yes!"  although, we are not "facing" that change, we are "living" that change.  How it will all play out in changed lives and societies is a big question.  Clearly it has changed leisure among the wealthy and revolutions among the poor.   No doubt there is more to come.  Those of us who care about liberal values will have to be light on our feet and deeply thoughtful to work on the right causes in such a climate.


But because I answer the second question,  "yes!",   I am impatient with the tone of the first question.  Those who are "not comfortable" with new technologies will get more and more out of the mainstream and it will be harder and harder to work with them.  Frankly I think that one of the great favors that a church can do for it's elderly or otherwise challenged members is to entice them into the digital world.  


I am not ready to think that the digital world will be the end of the bricks and mortar world, however.  I could be wrong, but I believe that there will still be church buildings in 2061.  I believe that people will still enjoy worshiping. learning,  and eating together, that staffs will still work together in offices, and that much will be as it is now.  What will have changed is how we attract people to church; that will be almost 100% digital (It is nearly that already.), and the fact that we will have the option to have  on-line groups, trainings, and meetings, and that the resources we provide for spiritual development of our members (which will be the only reason people join churches in the future), will be available on our website as well as in sermons and classes.  A church doing its web ministry well will reach many more people, dispersed all over the globe, than any one church ever could before.  Helping those folks contribute to the upkeep of those resources will be a challenge, as we have all come to expect that the best things on the internet will be free.  


As always I welcome your comments!   And just as an example of how quickly things have changed,   most of the comments from the blog post, will be left on my Facebook page, where this post shows up automatically.  So if you want to see the discussion,  friend me on Facebook! 

The UUA Staff's strategic plan for Ministry (posted here) makes one recommendation about ministerial credentialing, which is a creature of the Fellowship Committee which, by bylaw, reports to the Board, not the staff.  They recommend that the RSCC get out of the gatekeeping business and act in a support and advisory capacity.  I have to agree with this recommendation; it's clear that, for all the good intentions this program started with, it has just become a second MFC.  I hope that the MFC takes this up.

The staff appends a set of questions to their recommendations which they feel need more and wider discussion.  One of which is:

 Do the various credentialing programs mold the leaders we need for the future,  or are they based on outdated models of ministerial excellence?

This is an interesting way of stating the problem, which, I believe is one of  the most important problems we need to solve as we face the future.   I've made no secret of my doubts about the effectiveness of our system; if you search this blog for the tags,  "credentialing" and "Excellence in Ministry", you will see lots on the subject.

but back to the question, and about it, I have a question.  Should it be the task of a credentialing program to MOLD leaders?   That starts to smack of "teaching to the test", which appears to be the current bane of public education.   Given the general lack of accountability in our current system with the MFC, which keeps no statistics about its effectiveness and does not publish its standards, and their overwhelming work load, perhaps we need two bodies, as a denomination; one to ask the question,  "What do we Want in our Leaders?" and another to be the gatekeeper, using those standards.

But my overall reaction to this question is that the problems I see with the MFC don't have to do with outdated models of ministerial excellence, but rather with outdated models of professional formation...which assume that a person should not enter a profession until they are fully qualified.   I would say that that model doesn't fit ministry...probably it doesn't fit most "wisdom" professions.  I think that the best we can do is make judgments about safety, rather than qualifications.  Is this a person who is mature enough and moral enough to avoid doing harm?   Are they minimally qualified?  If so, let them try, because frankly, we can't tell at this stage how effective they will be...and it is too expensive for everyone to wait until we are sure!

If I could wave my magic wand over the UU World,  we would have a system whereby new ministers were screened (probably by the staff) for basic competence (by which I mean, they have passed their academic work and have raised no red flags in the minds of their internship and CPE supervisors, and have a clean background check).  These new ministers would enter into a probationary period during which they were actively mentored by UUA staff as well as colleagues.  (the current once a month phone call with a self-chosen and usually far-away "mentor"  is completely inadequate to the task of ministerial formation).  The congregations who hired them would be mentored and watched as well. (because it is not unknown for congregations to choose a "green" minister in order to keep the balance of power in the lay leadership and remain complacent)   During this time their ordination would be local and temporary.  When a new minister completed three years of full time ministerial work (or its equivalent in part time work), they would be eligible for Final Fellowship and a "tenured" ordination.  Their task at that point would be to present the actual results of their ministry, rather than the results of their experience in seminary, which is really quite a different thing.  Much of this would be a matter of portfolio review.  Not everyone would be asked to interview with a committee; it's obvious after three years who is succeeding in ministry, and who has never gotten a job or who has failed. It's an expensive thing we do, interviewing virtually everyone who asks us.  

Just a thought, and I welcome comments!

(Which you can find at the UUA.org website)

Is the Masters of Divinity still the best pathway to the ordained ministry? What alternatives might we explore?

This question could have a couple of meanings.  The first involves the degree itself, which is actually not required for our ministers if you can show you have equivalent preparation.   The M.Div is one of the few generalist masters degree programs left in the educational pantheon, and a UU minister certainly needs that broad preparation; academic, religious, spiritual, and practical.  We want our ministers to have knowledge of religious history, theology, UU'ism, world religions, psychology, social theories, the multi-cultural world, scriptures, literature.  We want them to be mature and have basic management and leadership skills, not to mention wisdom, writing and public speaking skills, and church smarts.  Most of all, we need them to be theologically and spiritually grounded and able to assist others (of different theological and spiritual bents) to be grounded.   The M.div attempts all of that.  When added to clinical work and church internship, I think it covers all the bases.

But I have a feeling that the question really means,  "is seminary education as we used to know it still the best pathway for ordained ministry?"  That is to say, is the best preparation for ministry embedding oneself in a community of persons preparing for ministry, probably within an interfaith/academic context?

The answer to that question is that even if it is the best, it is probably unaffordable, and even then, only by mooching on the Methodists (and a few other old-line denominations) who endowed their seminaries with scholarship funds which they are generous in sharing with UU's.  I myself took advantage of this generosity and got a fine education.  After a semester of sabbatical, watching our Seminary at Meadville re-make itself for a more affordable and sustainable future,  I believe that we will feel this loss, and will have to find ways to compensate for it.  The graduates who will not come into ministry in debt to their eyeballs will, it is hoped, be able to continue their ministerial formation more easily in their early years of ministry.

Meadville has gone to a distance-learning model which embeds those preparing for ministry in local congregations and gathers students for intensive learning experiences during the year.  I think that it is possible that these students will get something out of their seminary experience that traditional students don't get; a long-term view of ministry and congregations.    Students are also involved in learning groups which meet by telephone and with their professors via email and teleconferences, and it is clear that they form deep bonds in these groups.   They have some brief experiences of traditional seminary during the intensive course month of January, but the coursework they are involved in is, well, intense.

I hear that Starr King is also reaching out in distance-learning, although it still offers a more traditional resident community.  And I believe that about 2/3 of students studying for the ministry are studying in seminaries of other denominations, either because they are near where they live or because they  want that traditional seminary experience and have been offered scholarship help to afford it.

If the question means,  "Would it be possible to do as the Evangelicals do, to self-educate ministers within congregations?"  I think that the answer is "no."    The Evangelical model of ministry is different from ours.  It is deeper in some ways, and considerably narrower.  The areas in which it is deeper, such as spirituality and biblical study, can be taught within a large church (quite a bit larger than any of our churches...) The breadth that we expect in our minister's training can only be gotten within academia, and probably within a program specifically designed to prepare for our kind of ministry.  The distance-learning models that, in different ways, ours and other seminaries are exploring, will probably be the "new way" that people prepare for ministry.   What we should be exploring is how churches and the support of ministry need to change to produce fine ministers, given the reality of this distance-learning preparation.

The UUA staff has released a strategic plan for professional ministry, which has some important, needed changes and plans in it (not all of which can be staff driven, and must get buy-in from others) in this document.

More interesting to me, the end of this document poses some very interesting questions that they feel the UU World (that is, all of us, not the magazine) needs to discuss and think about.  So...I thought I'd do that and start conversations on this blog and other places.   Here's the first question:


• Given that many congregations now and in the future will struggle to afford full time ministry, should we open up our ministerial credentialing system to some variation of a deaconate – a lay leadership program to serve in entrepreneurial and part-time ministry settings.

I believe that if we are serious about being a religious body; that is, a faith that helps people deepen their spiritual lives, we have no choice but to have a program which trains and authorizes lay people to be agents of deepening spirituality in their lay-led congregations.  Otherwise, not only will the religious needs of people in lay-led congregations be largely un-met, but there will remain a substantial minority of UU's who will be resistant to this focus because they themselves can not benefit from it.   (And it is my opinion that if we don't embrace this focus, we will not survive the next century.  Hardly anybody, anywhere,  is going to join our congregations in order to experience freedom from religion any more.)

However, it is also true that authorizing lay ministers make professional ministers very nervous, and should make us all a bit nervous.

• There is the issue of possible competition.  A Lay Ministry program would probably seem to some ministers as hampering their ability to get a job.  It would no doubt happen that some congregations would opt for talented and energetic lay leadership over an ordained minister who might not, in their opinion serve them as well.   (in my opinion, we ministers have to let this one go, for the good of the whole.)
• There is the issue of congregations choosing Lay Ministry because they don't want to be challenged to be the best UU congregation they can be.  (I think this objection can be met by a good training program)
• There is the issue of creating a group of people who do not have the training or boundaries of professional ministers "acting like" ministers and doing harm.  (I think that this objection can be met by only authorizing "local" ministers, ie, you're a lay minister when you are doing the work of ministry your congregation has asked you to do, nowhere else, and no longer than that work  lasts.) 
• There is the issue of determined lay people forcing themselves on their overwhelmed, lay-led congregations,  creating a situation where a close-knit group  doesn't feel free to say,  "no" to an aspiring lay leader.  (I think that this objection can be met by carefully created criteria of authorizing lay ministers).  

There are  probably other issues and I look forward to hearing what some of them might be.  Just to throw out a proposal, here's mine

Authorization for Lay Ministry would begin by a person's successfully completing several very substantial weekend moduals...as RE directors, for instance, have had in their Renaissance program.

It would continue with an inquiry from a local congregation about bringing this person on as a PAID (even if only at "honorarium" or "expense-only"  lay leader in some capacity.  (nothing like budget implications to give a group good boundaries!)  That congregation would be helped to put good personnel practices into place and form a "Lay Minister" committee which would help this person continue their formation. (like an intern committee)   Training opportunities would continue, the aspiring lay minister would be assigned to a peer group, and to a professional minister-mentor.  If all went well after a trial time, the lay minister would acquire an official title; perhaps with an installation service.  However, that title would only be valid in that place.

I would not start this program by allowing lay ministers to serve in entrepreneurial (self-gathered) situations.  There is a substantial extra burden of risk of dysfunctionality  which we should avoid, at least at first.  However, I do not think we should preclude full-time work by lay ministers, especially in large congregations.

Ok, readers, go to it!  I look forward to seeing your comments and programs you lay out on your blogs!

from the staff are...

Who are we? Who are we becoming? To whom do we belong?

You all have been such good readers, I'm going to let you answer these questions.  Comment away!

Traveling on Sabbatical, I've been visiting UU Churches, and the way I find them is with Google Maps, which gives me addresses, map placement, street-side pictures, websites, and directions using car or transit.  (the transit directions are particularly valuable; Google knows when the trains run and tells me how long it will take to walk from the train station to the church.)   

Is simple: welcoming the stranger by attending to their needs first.
I have been visiting churches during this sabbatical.  (This is always the most fruitful activity of sabbatical).
And not been too impressed with the welcome, frankly.   Tools seem to be in place, but the spirit is all wrong.

For instance, a friend and I showed up in a UU church where one came out of the cold into a foyer.  Ushers stood in a line perpendicular to the doors, and handed us programs with a perfunctory smile....but didn't catch on to our  "what now?" looks.  It wasn't at all clear from them, from architecture or signage where the sanctuary actually was.  We looked around, bewildered, and nobody rescued us.  Finally I turned back to the usher and asked him which way to the sanctuary.  "Oh, are you visiting?" he asked.  "Here, here's the welcome table".  He handed us over to a woman standing behind the table.  Nothing was clearer than that her only sense of what she was supposed to do was get  our information....and entire page of information.  She handed us a notebook and a pen and then remembered to say good morning.  She pointed out name tags.

I'm from out of town.  I didn't need to be followed up on or to get a newsletter.  I came to worship that day.  That's all I did, and that's all I wanted to do.  It happens that I'm a UU...I knew I'd be in tune with the message at this church.  .  If I'd been a seeker, I'd have been even less interested in giving my information to these people...until I was sure I'd want to come again.  But short of being rude, it was impossible.

The moral of the story:  Smile and guide visitors on their way in.  Give them whatever information they ask for.  Get contact information on their way out....when and if they want to give it to you.  Better Yet, put a "Thanks for Visiting Us" link to your website in the order of service explaining that at this site, visitors can give feedback, leave contact information, and ask questions.  (if you have lots of elderly visitors, you can also invite them to do this after the service at the visitor's table.)

For a humorous look at things from the visitor's perspective, check out this little video which comes to us from the Evangelical world...but parts of it are oh, so, pointedly true of us, too!
What if Starbucks Marketed Like a Church?


P.S.  Architecture and signs are really important in giving newcomers a clue as to what they are supposed to do. If you are not blessed in this way, your greeters and ushers can be on the look out for the bewildered or even standing in such a way that they make clear where a person is supposed to go.   For most people, nothing gets them started off quite so badly as feeling like an idion...

When someone tells me that they don't believe in God, I usually say,  "That's interesting.  Tell me about the kind of God you don't believe in."   When they get over their surprise, they quickly warm to their task and tell me about the God to whom they were introduced as children...the guy in the sky; possibly angry, sometimes spying, always meddling.   Sometimes they worked out for themselves at a very young age that sitting in the clouds was an impossible feet.  Sometimes they came early to the conclusion that no God who could be called, "good" would cause them such pain and anguish.  Sometimes they believed it all for a good long time, and then met science teachers or loving non-believers and then felt that they had been duped.

There are many good reasons for not believing in God.  But there is no good reason for a grown up to insist that the guy in the sky is the only kind of God and that all believers in God believe in that kind.  That's a patent falsehood about theology and about people, and UU's, dedicated as we are to truth, have no business espousing it.  

For a quick and lively run-down of  other kinds of God you might or might not believe in, check out this article,  Got God?   from the Winter UU World.

I have three thoughts about what looks to be the most interesting...and in some ways very important...news of the moment...That a fellow refused to go through the new scanners at the airport, told a screener,  "If you touch my junk I'll have you arrested"  (while filming the whole thing on his phone...hummmm....).

My first thought is that I'm sorry that men have taken to calling their sexual organs "junk".   How self-demeaning that is?  If it's just junk, why be so pissy about it being touched?   Think, guys! Your bodies are sacred.  That's the point of all this upset.

My second thought is this.  Has anyone who objects to someone in a room far away scan the unclothed outline of their body for 20 seconds before discarding the picture come up with a better idea for how to manage safety in a world in which people put bombs in their underpants?  If they have, I'm all ears.  I think that the TSA has done a great job thinking out the necesseties of this kind of scanning and making it as unhurtful as possible.  Albuquerque has had these scanners for a couple of years now...we were a test site.  Believe me, folks, they are quite benign.   And I'm willing to trust that they are safe, (as much radiation as 3 minutes at 30,000 feet they say...not even pilots can object to another three minutes.) until I hear something a little less hysterical than I've been hearing about safety.

So...actually, I don't have much sympathy for people who refuse to go through these scanners and then get upset about the indignities of the pat down.

But I believe that there are some people who, because they have knee replacements and such, have to go through the pat down every time.  And that pat-down does sound pretty invasive to me.  Not quite as invasive as what a doctor does, of course, but still...it would take the pleasure out of flying for me if I had to do it every time.

So here's my idea for a compromise.

Let's we Americans grow up, buck up, adjust to the new realities, and thank TSA for making this new kind of  scanning safe, painless, and dignified.  In return, let's demand that those who for reasons they can't help, like medical hardware,  have an alternative to an invasive, uncomfortable procedure every time they fly.

Of course, we could decide that it's ok with us if underwear bombs go off in airplanes every once in a while, because safety procedures are just too onerous.   It probably wouldn't happen very often, and the carnage would be less than the number of highway deaths in the nation for that month in any case.  Whatcha say?

A generation of GLBT teens is in the process of integrating the nation's middle and high schools.  That's the truth of the matter..most GLBT teens in previous generations didn't come out in High School, didn't ask to bring same sex partners to proms, didn't demand equality.  This generation and their parents are, and apparently they are taking it on the chin.  Some are taking it so hard they are committing suicide, and you know many more must be succumbing in more moderate...but still very dangerous to their long-term mental health... ways to the depression which causes suicide.

In the 1950's-70's a generation of African American teens integrated often very hostile schools, sometimes in situations where adults were a part of the hostility, and, as far as I remember, there was no rash of suicides.  Depression and long term consequences of a difficult adolescence is harder to measure, of course, and non-experts like me wouldn't know about them.

But I wonder if anybody learned anything about racial integration in teen society that could be applied to GLBT integration of teen society.

Just as a for instance, I imagine that many Black teens believed that the abuse they were taking was in the service of something important for society.  Do GLBT kids feel that way?  If not....perhaps besides telling them that "it gets better", perhaps we should be telling them that they are courageous, strong, and the vanguard of a better world for us all.

I have loved a few dogs in my life, but lately, I've od'd on them.  Not on the dogs themselves, actually, but on the role they seem to play in people's lives, which is attention getting/intimacy avoiding.

I went to a workshop in New Orleans last weekend and, among other things,  heard  about "thin" stories and "thick" stories.  Thin stories are stories about other people, and tend to be short on detail, on understanding what was really going on, on meaning.  Thick stories are about ourselves, what we wanted, meant, hoped for...much more useful.

Today is Blog Action Day 2010, and the invitation is to blog about water...quickly becoming a limiting factor in our global life.

1. Did you know that more people die because of lack of clean water in our world than because of all forms of violence combined?  
2. Did you know that more people have access to a cell phone than a toilet? (and of course you realize that this is intimately related to #1)
3. Did you know that here in Albuquerque, a high desert climate, more than half of water use is for landscapes, playing surfaces like soccer fields and golf courses,  and pools? 
4. Did you know that one gallon of reverse osmosis bottled water takes 7 to create?  
5. Water is not very portable, so no amount of saving water in Albuquerque will help the folks in Africa. But it may be that the US is maxing out its more abundant water resources pretty fast. (see this article, for instance: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/10/is-the-us-already-past-the-point-of-peak-water.php)

Two Ghost Bicycles have appeared in my life, both on the same street, my major commuting street, about five miles apart.   Ghost bicycles commemorate bicyclists killed or severely injured, usually by cars.  They are stripped down bikes, painted white, labeled with the name of the bicyclist, and since this is New Mexico with our major Hispanic influence, decorated with flowers like the roadside crosses which commemorate motorist deaths in our state.

The project started in St. Louis, just 7 years ago, when a homeowner saw a car strike and kill a bicyclist in front of his house.  Horrified, he painted an old bike white,  added a sign,  "A cyclist was killed here", and locked it to a signpost.  He noted the effect this had on motorists and got together with a few others to post 15 more bikes where cyclists had died in the metro area.  From this humble start, Ghost Bikes have appeared around the world.   There have been some controversies, of course, about where the bikes can be, but most cities are eager to be bike friendly, and it's good for everyone to remember that the worst can happen in a moment of carelessness.  This particular bike was moved so far off the road that I hadn't seen it from my car in months; I met it when I took the bike path.

Cyclists have to be reminded to ride safely and sanely, of course, but the vast majority of the bike fatalities in this nation are the fault of the driver of the cars.

So...be careful out there!

It's a common formula. It happened today, here in Albuquerque.  It happens a lot.  Here are some of the most infamous..which is to say, the ones where more than two people died.  The dots on the map of fellows who "just" kill their girlfriend would leave very little white space.  (and there'd be a tiny scatting of pink dots representing gals who killed their boyfriends.  Usually because he abused her.  Has there ever been a girlfriend murdered boyfriend just because he left her?   I can't remember it.

When guns are allowed freely in society, there is nothing you can do to protect yourself from gun violence.   Which is too bad.  In a universe without the current interpretation of the second amendment, this kind of violence would be almost fully preventable.

And you can bet that a man who walked into a crowded office conference room intent on knifing his ex-girlfriend to death would not have been able to do it and would not be now wandering the streets of Albuquerque.

Instead...six dead, four wounded, gunman at large.  What a tragedy.

I'm sorry to say that I know Hate.  I know it from news of young men tied to fence posts and left to die in a snowstorm because other young men were afraid of their sexuality.  I know it from pictures of houses torched because the owner was planning to sell it to someone of a different race or religion from the rest of the neighbors.  I know it from the personal experience of escorting patients into the Planned Parenthood clinic...shouting, angry men waving bloody overblown pictures at women who mostly were there to get birth control so that they would never have to make the choice the men abhorred.  That didn't matter to the wrought-up men.  They spewed their fury at anybody who walked in the parking lot.   I know it...just once...from the snarled words of a man who believed that God hated women ministers and needed me to know it.   It was just once, but I remember it well.  Words of hate, someone said, leave footprints in the mind.  


Hate is dislike gone rogue, and there is no doubt it exists in our world and does terrible damage.  It's a stage of conflict where you're not looking for a solution or even a separation, or even an effective end to your pain.  All you want to do is hurt the one you hate.  


It's a strong word, and when hateful behavior needs to be named and stopped, we need a strong word.  


So...let's not waste the word "hate" on the current immigration debate; at least, not the part of the debate that is taking place in the most civil and democratic way, as it is in Arizona.  Call Arizona bill 1070 misguided, unconstitutional, dumb, ineffective; point out all the ways it will hurt the innocent, like children separated from parents and legal residents who don't happen to have their "papers" on their person when they have run a red light, and all of us as our civil rights are eroded.    Work endlessly for it's repeal, march and write letters and refrain from entering such a backwards state if that's how you feel.


But let's not throw around that word,  "hate."   No doubt there is some, but the majority of legislators who passed it don't hate anybody, and they know it.  They are trying to solve a big problem that nobody else has been willing or able to solve and they may be misguided and the result unconstitutional and dangerous, but I see absolutely no evidence of hatefulness.  It is possible to do great harm, be foolish, and hurt people, all without hate. 


To call someone hateful is a very strong accusation.  Do it too much and you lose a word which you need when someone has been lynched, when a wayward policemen has spit into anybody's face, when emotions are way out of control and doing terrible, memorable damage for the sheer hell of if.  Throw that word "hate" around too much and those you accuse start writing you off as inarticulate and without a real case.  Call other people and the causes they think are legitimate "hateful"  and it gets harder and harder to convince people that you are standing on the side of love, harder and harder to join the fight, harder and harder to make the compromises which are the essence of politics.  


The Buddhists call that "unskillful"; a word which, for it's sheer, understated glory, is unmatched.  

iMinister has a friend who has been writing a Passover Haggadah for about a decade (It's a very cool interfaith sort of Haggadah which has finally been published with layout by my husband...you can find it here)
Because of this project, iMinister has been invited to many seders and long ago developed a reputation for making amazing macaroons.  Although all she did was follow a recipe from Cooks Magazine, her macaroons never failed to get rave reviews from her friend's mostly Jewish friends who claimed they had never imagined that macaroons could taste so good.   It's a pretty easy recipe, once you've found the ingredients.  Read carefully!

You will need:
1 cup cream of coconut (the stuff used to make pina coladas; you will find it with the alcoholic drink mixes.)
2T light corn syrup
4 large egg whites
2t. vanilla extract
1/2 t. salt
3 c. UNSWEETENED coconut, shredded (8 oz.)  (try the health food store)
3 c. SWEETENED coconut, shredded (8 oz)

1. Preheat oven to 375 and line two cookie sheets with parchment and spray with cooking spray.
2. Combine the two kinds of coconut  in a large bowl , break up lumps and toss with your fingers.
3. Combine the other ingredients well, and pour over the coconut and mix until evenly moistened
4. chill dough for 15 minutes
5. Drop heaping tablespoons of dough on the cookie sheets, 1 inch apart.  Use your fingers to shape into little pyramids.
6. Bake until light golden brown, about 15 minutes, swapping trays if necessary for even baking.
7. Cool on cookies sheets 2 minutes before removing to cooling racks
8.  Dip the bottoms of  cooled cookies in melted chocolate chips if desired.

The Rev. Cynthia Landrum has some good tips about Facebook's security settings...a good review for everyone, which you can find here

Alban Institute's Susan Beaumont has written about the emerging area of multi-site in mainline congregations here:   She has some interesting observations from her work, and the differences between the ways Mainline congregations do Multi-site and how Evangelicals do them.  Since most of the multi-site literature assumes the Evangelical mindset, this is interesting stuff!

This will be most of the news that's fit to print about the matchmaking between UU churches and ministers.   Here is the list of candidates as far as I know them.   I hear that five churches are still actively looking for candidates, and at least two have extended their search to another year.  And it seems likely that lots of announcements were made in church this morning which have not been posted to websites yet.  

Leslie Becknell Marx - Ashland, 

Peter Boullata - 1st Parish Lexington 

Eric Kaminetzky - Edmunds, Wa 

Kathy Schmitz - Orlando, Fla 

JD Benson and Mary Ganz - Brewster, MA 

Tom Perchilik - Tacoma, Wa 

Bill Sinkford - Portland, Or

 Lois Van Leer - Woodenville, WA

 Lilia Cuervo - Cambridge (associate)

 Shana Lynngood and Melora Lynngood - Victoria, BC 

A colleague has asked about Facebook for Ministers, specifically, how to use Facebook without encouraging or (heaven forbid) engaging in boundary violations, and how to use Facebook without it being a time sink.

Boundaries

The most important thing to get clear on is that this world has "friends" and it has "facebookfriends", and they are not the same thing at all, even if the share a syllable.  Ministers need to be careful about having "friends" in their congregations,  that is to say, people the confide in, let their hair down with, giggle and share and travel with and so on.  There are so many good reasons for ministers to be careful about having friends in the congregation that many ministers don't have friends in the congregation at all.  These reasons include:

• Most people who actively court their ministers as friends don't really want to befriend the person who giggles and shares and travels, they want to befriend the MINISTER and partake, somehow, in the ministerial glitter. (or worse, use the ministerial glitter or the minister's ear to advance their agendas in the church, or, worst of all, what to befriend the minister to assure themselves that scary people like ministers are really just regular joes.)  Any sensible minister avoids this like the plague for personal and professional reasons.
• Even when the minister develops relationships more naturally, with healthier persons who actually want to know the minister as a person, giggles and glitches and all, there will be some others, who, seeing this relationship, can become jealous and make the minister's professional life difficult. 
• And when things go south politically in a church, among the very painful things for the minister is to lose friendships just when one most needed them or to see one's friends become estranged from their congregation because of their friendship with the congregation's minister.  

Some wise ministers have no friendships in their churches, and some wise ministers have a few, carefully developed friendships with very mature people which, while not secrets, are conducted out of the public eye.   All wise ministers nurture friendships outside of their congregation, whether or not they have friendships with members of their congregations

"Facebookfriendship", however, is a completely different critter from friendship.  Facebookfriendship is to real friendship what coffee hour is to an encounter group.    Facebook is a way of keeping in touch, briefly and pleasantly, with aspects of people's lives in one sentence, one picture, one "read this that I've linked to" bites.

Does FacebookFriendship have boundary issues for ministers?  It depends on what you post, not on who your Facebookfriends are.   To my mind, the minister's Facebook life should be conducted the way the minister's semi-public life always is...carefully.

I think of it this way.  If I was in a long airport security line and behind me was someone from my church...or even someone from my former church,  I would not ignore them out of anxious concerns for boundaries or my privacy.  We'd exchange news about the doings of our children, our gardens, our political opinions.  We might mention things we were reading, how we are feeling, and talk politely about the people we know.  That's the kind of stuff I put on my Facebook update.

So, my policy is I Facebookfriend anybody in my church who asks.  Any UU who asks, actually.  I set all of my security to "only friends can see this".  I don't say anything I wouldn't say in the airport line or post any picture I wouldn't, under the right circumstances, show around at coffee hour.  And I doubt that I will unbefirend people when I leave this church, any more than I would refuse to talk to them if I found myself in their company.

I only very occasionally leave comments on congregant's posts, although I do very often click "like" when they are reporting happy news.   When I read things on congregant's posts which warrent a pastoral response, I send a private messange, an email, or pick up the phone.  I've also used the live chat feature in what seemed to be dire circumstances.  The point is that the minister doesn't play favorites or have "special" Facebookfriends, at least not on the public side of Facebook.

Therefore...nobody gets any "ministerglitter" from being my facebookfriend, any more than they get it from watching a video from the church website.  It's there for everybody.  Nobody gets jealous. There are no political implications.  There is connection, but not real friendship.  But those connections are interesting and valuable.

A colleague has asked me why she should be involved in Facebook, what the boundary issues are, and how to not let it be a time sink.  Good questions.  Here are my answers.

One reason to be on Facebook is to interface with the many ministerial colleagues who are on Facebook.  In terms of keeping us in touch with each other, our families, transitions, and daily lives, Facebook rocks.  The UUMA Chat (email list) is fine for asking people's opinions of things.  Facebook is for whose kids have graduated from preschool, whose parents are dying, who is having a rotten week, who has what hobbies.   It's for sharing links to articles and crowing over the perfect sermon title.  It's quick to post, quick to read, quick to comment on.  I feel MUCH more connected to my colleagues than I ever have before.

A second reason to be on Facebook is that the people of our churches are on Facebook, from the 9 year olds to the 70 year olds.  They, too, are commenting about what they are reading, how they are feeling, what's going on with their parents and kids, what the stresses and joys of their lives are.  The savvy pastor can, in minutes, respond to those things with a quick click on "like", or easily send a private message of support or congratulations.   The preacher who is wondering what her people are thinking and worrying about will be very interested in the links they post, and enriched by reading the articles and comments.

A third reason to be on Facebook is that if you serve a mid-sized or larger church, only some of your congregation will have the opportunity to know you the way all would in a smaller congregation...that is, know about your children, your parents, your hobbies, your reading interests.  They might ask you about such things if they caught you around church in an idle moment, and you'd probably respond, but...they mostly can't get to you.  Through Facebook, they can see the public side of the minister's life.  They like that.

A fourth reason to be on Facebook is that your church should have a page on Facebook, for the same reason it has a website; people will look for it and use it to get information and work up their courage to visit.  If you want to see that page, you need a Facebook account.  The fact that the minister has a Facebook page is an important signal to trend-setting Facebook users, that this church and its leaders are a part of the culture in the 21st century.  You want to appeal to anybody under 50 and many over, you want to send that signal.

A final reason to be on Facebook is that the wise minister has fun, and lots of people find Facebook to be a fun way to keep up with friends, relatives, and culture, and they use it as a platform for computer games.  Speaking for myself, I love knowing what my niece and nephew are up to and there's nothing as relaxing after difficult board meetings than working on my Farmville virtual crops.  But...that's optional.

The Rev. Harlan Limpert, VP of the UUA, has asked to be an author on this blog to get input and feedback about ministerial matters from this distinguished group of readers. He will write more about his work and his questions in the next few days.   I hope you will welcome and comment on his posts.

The real "hot stove" list of invitations from churches to ministers to candidate is being kept on Facebook this year.  Some people are still slogging away without Facebook, and for those readers, here is the list so far.

 Leslie Becknell Marx - Ashland, 

Peter Boullata - 1st Parish Lexington 

Eric Kaminetzky - Edmunds, Wa 

Kathy Schmitz - Orlando, Fla 

JD Benson and Mary Ganz - Brewster, MA 

Tom Perchilik - Tacoma, Wa 

Bill Sinkford - Portland, Or

 Lois Van Leer - Woodinville, WA

 Lilia Cuervo - Cambridge (associate

 Shana Lynngood and Melora Lynngood - Victoria, BC 

Posting all the candidates for new UU pulpits as they are announced in the next week is a big job and I'll need lots of help.  For starters, the list of churches in search is always a work in progress.  Search Committees which asked that their application period be closed are no longer on the list, for instance.  So, the first task for all of us interested folks is to compile the list of churches expecting to settle ministers in this search season.  Here is what I know.    Readers?  It's up to you!   Are there other "pregnant" churches out there? 

Because my church has an intern and staff member in search and is itself in search, and because I was listed as a reference for several colleagues in search, I've taken a greater-than-usual interest in the search process this year.  In past years another blogger has taken on listing who is going where but that blog is off the books now.  If no one else is planning to provide this public service to the UU world, I will volunteer for the blogsphere and Facebook.  Monday is the first day churches are making official matches, but yesterday the UUA announced their pick for the next Transitions Director (coordinates UUA services to churches and ministers in search), so that seems to me to be the fitting opening of the endgame of the season.  So, dear readers, please do let me know when you discover who is going where....

Keith Kron    -Transitions Director

iMinister has made a discipline of studying the Tao Te Ching for many years.  At the moment she has set herself to creating a twitter reminder of each chapter. (Twitter rules: only 140 characters to a "tweet".  Just call this modern Haiku.)  You can follow her on Twitter.  www.twitter.com,  under "revcrobinson".

One church meeting at multiple locations is a very hot trend in American church life, for lots of reasons. I wish it were a hotter trend in the Unitarian Universalist world, but two churches are actively trying it, mine and First Unitarian in San Diego. There are lots of variations on the theme, and here's some of the media buzz on the subject. If your church is thinking about multi site, please leave a comment..I'm feeling very lonely!

Earl Koteen replies here to Wayne Arneson's post which is, here.

Here are my thoughts on his thoughts:

On the subject of who should be involved in credentialing ministers...

I think that our current system of having ministers, lay persons, and representatives of the denominational institution all involved in ministerial credentialing is the single strongest aspect of our ministerial credentialing process. Many professions attempt to be self-regulating and disaster lies in that direction. All the stakeholders in the health of Unitarian Universalism should have a part in the creation of the standards and in the examining process.

I have my doubts about regional credentialing, since few ministers stay in one region for their career. I would prefer to think about dividing the massive MFC workload in another way. Currently one MFC deals with all levels of credentialing, from setting the standards in the first place, through overseeing the RSCC, through the Preminiary Fellowship Process. It also does all the work (increasing) of granting waivers to MFC rules (whether an intern can remain for a time in the employment of the internship church, for instance), deals with the renewals of Fellowship during the probationary period and granting of Final Fellowship, and finally, deals with complaints about ministers and the disciplining of ministers.

It seems to me that this could be broken down into as many as four areas; the standard-setting itself, the admission into preliminary fellowship (and waivers needed up until that time), the probationary period leading up to admission into Final Fellowship (and waivers), and the disciplinary process. Yes, once upon a time it made sense to give all this related work to one committee for the sake of consistency and buy-in. With a ministry twice the size and quadruple the complexity of a generation ago, it is time for a change. This would have the additional benefit of getting more people involved in this important process.

Earl writes:

3. The broader question is the following: Should there be a substantive review/examination before a candidate is accepted for preliminary fellowship, or should a candidate automatically be accepted for preliminary fellowship when the candidate has successfully completed all the requirements (M.Div., CPE, internship, etc.)? This question revolves around whether this examination is worth the resources expended. Without going into a long argument here, let's just note that some ministers have reported that getting a "3" (do "X" and come back for a 2nd interview) helped prepare them for ministry.

Two issues here...

First, there's no question in my mind that we need a substantive review before new ministers are allowed to serve churches. It is quite possible to get an M.Div but with such poor grades that one's fitness is in question, to complete a CPE or internship but with major red flags raised in evaluations. Someone, staff or volunteer, has to go through this material and make recommendations and decisions. The question in my mind is how this gets done. Interviewing might not be necessary, at least not in most cases. On the other hand reference checking, (by phone and email) something that is not now done, might be a much more useful and cost-efficient way to get a picture of the candidate.

As to the issue of folks who got a "3" finding the work they were required to do useful, hopefully, that is what mostly happens. If you've got to spend a year you didn't anticipate preparing for a career, with the shame, the financial costs, and the family issues it often raises, then the strongest candidates will find a way to make that year useful and will be smart enough to say so to the committee. (That doesn't mean that the extra year and work were necessary, only that they were useful.) But it also does happen that people who must return for a second interview are basically told, "it just wasn't a very good interview. We don't have any real recommendations, you seem to have a lot of strengths, we just want to see you again." This, as a matter of fact, is what happened to me, lo these 30 years ago. And I've heard of it happening since, more than once. It's actually inevitable with this system of a high-stakes interview. Sometimes the candidate will have a bad 45 minutes, sometimes the committee will have a bad 45 minutes. Sometimes the committee will have helpful suggestions, sometimes they just "don't see a minister", and leave the candidate with this baffling information and an invitation to, in a year, try again. Maybe it's the only way. Useful as it may be for some, it is dreadfully expensive for all.

I was struck with Earl's recommendation that during the probationary period of a young minister that a more independent evaluation be made than currently. At the moment the MFC relies on the minister's self-evaluation and two evaluations from within the congregation; usually the Board and the Committee on Ministry. Ministers in preliminary fellowship live in fear that some rogue person on one of those two committees will get enough licks in that their application for renewal will be denied. It seems to me that the fear of this is heightened in the past 30 years, but perhaps I was so isolated from most of my colleagues during my preliminary fellowship years that I missed this. At any rate, I would note that District Execs often have a more holistic view of a ministry/congregational relationship than either party and their wisdom should be a part of the mix of Preliminary Fellowship renewals. I also wish that the mentoring process for new ministers was much stronger; that mentors made site visits and the relationship was something more than 9 or 10 phone calls a year. But that's another subject.

Some interesting comments about the MFC and our credentialing process here

David asks what I would do. The most important thing I would do is study, talk to people, and learn, not only in our denomination but from other faith communities, for the potential for unintended consequences in any changes to our credentialing processes is very large. I have loved this creative conversation...I think it's the "out there" ideas that will help us thread our way through the many aspects of our needs and hopes.

I am remembering back about 15 years, when John Weston re-worked the settlement process. When I first entered ministry, the process could only be described as paternalistic. The Settlement Director, using his knowledge of ministers in search and of congregations, created lists of applicants for each search committee. If the settlement director didn't think you were an appropriate candidate for a particular church, you could submit your name without recommendation, but that put you at a huge disadvantage and was rarely done. If the settlement director thought you should broaden your search horizon, your name might appear on lists you had not imagined. (That's how I got to Albuquerque, as a matter of fact. I had limited my search to the east, but my name was submitted in spite of that. I got over my anoyance, I was wooed, cupid struck, and 22 years later, here I am. I was also not permitted to apply for a church that I and others felt I was qualified to apply for and had to appeal that decision to the director of the Department of Ministry. By the time my name was actually sent, that search committee had made it's choice of pre-candidates. I tell these stories not because I'm mad but to illustrate the power that position once had and how it was used.)

Polity Wonk has an interesting, extensive reform proposal here.

The comments made thus far make me want to review my own understanding of the reason we have a centralized Ministerial Fellowship Committee system. As I understand it, it's because the representatives of congregations serving on the UUA Board (mostly lay people, with some ministers) decided that congregations needed some system of assurance that the diversity of ministers who might be candidates for their pulpits all meet some agreed-upon basic standards of competence, apart from and independent of the standards created by the seminaries or the ministers association, neither of which are subject to the control of the association of congregations. The pre-merger system that the Universalists had, which involved accreditation of ministers on a regional basis (more like what the much larger UCC uses) was rejected. My presumption is that this rejection happened in part because of a Unitarian penchant for more centralized control, but I also think that the representative of congregations rightly believed that the different geographic regions of the United States and Canada had different kinds and concentrations of congregations and therefore different capacities for doing this kind of in-care and credentialing in a consistent way. From the beginning, we had the premise that our search and settlement system would be an open continental process, without any geographic limitations associated with the region in which you currently live or were credentialed (as is the case with some other congregational polity settlement systems). The system we created at merger believed that a centralized system for ministerial settlement would work better over time for an association of congregations our size.

So imagine with me a conversation that goes through the logic of the system we currently have. Imagine a group of lay members of search committees being asked to design a UU system for ministerial accreditation from scratch. Let 's assume that they have figured out that a system with most of our current requirements has merit. (This is a big assumption, of course, and the MFC is currently planning to review how we read the Career Assessments and the CPE evaluations,) For purposes of this essay, let’s assume that we agree that a system that requires from candidates an M. Div. or equivalent, a required reading list, a CPE, an internship or its equivalent, and recommendations from suitable lay leaders, teachers, and ministers is one we have agreed on. So after that the conversation might go like this:

"Person A: So who reviews all this to make sure it's in order?

Person B: It would have to either be done by volunteers or a hired staff person. I guess it depends on whether you see the review’s purpose as just to check off these requirement on a list? Or would this staff person or a volunteer group have to go through all the documentation to assure that it was in order and had no red flags?

Person C: I wouldn't want it to just be a check list system. The evaluative materials can have a lot of variation in them. They would have to be read through. So can this be done by just one person? How many of these new ministers would we expect to have to handle in a year?
Person A: Well, over time, as our ministry grows, it wouldn't surprise me if we had several hundred ministers in preparation and as maybe sixty or seventy a year who would be ready to have their preparation evaluated.

Person B: It's more work than a staff person could do. We would need a few of them.

Person C: Is this really staff work? Isn't it likely that the staff people hired to oversee a credentialing system would be ministers? I think we'd need to have significant lay involvement in approving credentials if the purpose of this is to assure congregations that the minister that can apply to serve them have a basic standard of competency.

Person A: I guess ideally you would like a blended group of experienced ministers and lay people. So maybe you could have staff members assemble and even summarize the evaluative materials that needed to be read and send them to readers, maybe one lay and one minister? and if they agreed that the person's written material was good to go, they could enter in "fellowship" with the UUA and be recommended to congregations.

Person B: I guess that could work -- but would these two people never actually meet the candidate? I've been on a search committee before, and we read through several thoroughly prepared packets, but the choice we eventually made for who would be our minister was finally influenced by the interviews we held, and not just by the packet. Don't you think that the persons reading over the evaluative materials should also meet the person at least once and talk with them about their preparation? That's more like what really happens in a search.

Person C: That sounds like a good idea to me. But how would you feel about your minister being chosen by a group of only two people on a search committee? If we're going to create interviews I'm not sure the opinions of two people is enough when it comes to whether we “see a minister” in that person. It’s hard to get much diversity in a group of two! Maybe the interview should be done a full committee of people, at least six or seven.

Person A: A national committee of people? Sounds expensive! Why couldn't it be done by regional volunteer groups? Maybe you could avoid the interview if the people in a regional volunteer group already knew the candidate?

Person B: That could work in a region that has the occasional ministerial candidate coming out of the congregations in a district. But what about districts that contain one of the seminaries that many UU students attend? What about those with large congregations that might have three or four candidates for ministry emerge over a period of a few years? How do regional volunteer groups work when a candidate for ministry has left the area to attend a seminary or where there are many candidates in a small geographic area? Does each have their own in-care evaluative team? How many volunteers would this need? Who would gather them and to whom would they be accountable?

Person B: A centralized national evaluative group would likely be less expensive than the cost of supporting district based committees. If you go with the premise that an interview is valuable, then a regionally based system would still require face to face meetings and the expenses they incur. I guess the cost would depend on how big the regions were. I'd be more comfortable with a system where I knew that no matter where a person went to seminary, UU or non-UU, and no matter what size or style of home church they came out of, they all get reviewed by a group of people who have developed common standards and disciplines from this review.

Person C: When would this review and interview happen? Maybe we could have a local checklist system that allows a person who has completed all the requirements to be ordained and begin working? The congregation or agency would evaluate the person after three years and then the person would be interviewed by a national credentialing body that would grant them final fellowship.

Person A: I'm not sure whether I'd want my congregation to be served by someone whose preparation had only been affirmed by a seminary or regional body. That is, unless it was someone we already knew who had a history with our congregation? I'm starting to get the feeling that regional credentialing would somehow need to be matched with a regional settlement system, and I'm not sure that the UUA is large enough for that to work. The regional volunteer demands on lay leaders and ministers are already pretty heavy."

Here ends this imaginary conversation that suggests to me the way that the logic of the current system has evolved. The values that inform it seem to me to be consistency of standards and good stewardship of limited resources and volunteer time. As we continue this discussion about credentialing, what I’m hearing from the President and the Board is that the reason we’re doing this is to insure we can attract and form new ministers who can not only serve the congregations we have but also help transform and create the congregations we need for the future. While suggestions for reform of particular parts of the current process are and will be welcome, I would like to see them framed by consideration of the resources required to make the change and the payoff in terms of formation of the ministers we need.

Wayne Arnason

My perception is that there have been four major questions about the architecture of the current accreditation system mentioned on this web discussion so far.

1) should the UUMA be responsible for accrediting ministers or should the UUA? Several people posting have suggested that it should be a UUMA responsibility although without much elaboration on the practical difficulties of that proposal. Clyde Grubbs has noted that the position of the UUA Board always has been that credentialing must be owned by the congregations, not the ministers, and their view is unlikely to change.

2) should there be a centralized credentialing process or should it be done by regional systems? Some colleagues posting believe that a regional system would be inherently more intimate and authentic than a national system and that there would be no issues with consistency among regionally based systems.

3) should there be an interview? So much anxiety seems to focus on the interview. Would our credentialing process be just as effective without it? Steve Eddington argues it would.

4) should there be preliminary fellowship? or should those who complete the documentable requirements be ordained, allowed into settlement, and then evaluated for fellowship one time, after three years of service.This is a possibility that Christine Robinson has explored.

This guest post from Wayne Arnason comes in multi parts. Keep checking in!

What I notice in this discussion, in the several venues that it is taking place, heartens me about our faith.

A guest Posting from my colleague Clyde Grubbs

The UUA has since the merger maintained a list of ministers in fellowship and the Board of Trustee's has appointed and exercised oversight over its Ministerial Fellowship Committee. The mandate of the MFC is maintain the list of ministers in fellowship. The UUA Board of Trustees jealously guards its fiduciary responsibility over ministerial fellowship. I recall when I was on the UUMA exec there were discussions with the MFC of the UUMA being involved in panels that would work with ministers seeking specialized ministries that would be recognized at Final Fellowship. The UUA BoT said no way, the UUA has sole responsibility for Fellowship. (No outsourcing.)

My observation of the UUA is that an attempt at fundamental change to the principle of a unitary MFC overseeing the whole process would meet massive institutional resistance. Such a proposal would need a broad and committed constituency to enact such a radical change. Since, I do not see that constituency, I think that it safe to assume the MFC will survive as long as the corporate UUA survives.

I think the discussion has indicated that present process is dysfunctional (works with pain) and not user friendly (seeks objectives unrelated to the perceived needs of the students.)

We could compare our credentialing system to other professions, and conclude that ours is just as terrible as others, but that does not help us seek some possible reforms that might make the credentialing process work a little better and with a little less pain.

1. First, our present system is trying to do too much with too little funds. So proposals must be redistributive, take money from somewhere and put it somewhere else. We can't add on to the present system, without cuts.

1. When the Regional SubCommittee(s) on Candidacy was proposed in the early 1990s it was supposed to function as a UU version of an in care system. The advocates talked of retreats and getting to know the students and finding ways to discern who should continue and who should not. By the time the RSCs were actually instituted in the late 1990s the vision had been watered down to a way to discourage unlikely aspirants to the ministry before they acquired to much debt. The RSCs have failed even this more modest goal.

2.

3. We must conclude that the RSCs have devolved to just another hoop for students to jump over, granting candidate status based on an interview and paper work. They function simply to prescreen aspirants and while that function takes some burden from the MFC it does not change the quality of the ministerial formation process at all. Students are screened rather than nurtured and formed. Like child abuse victims many survivors enter our ministry resentful and regard the good people who serve on the RSCs and MFC as "strangers," "people with their own agendas" and other language indicating alienation rather feeling collegially embraced. For me, the Unitarian Universalist Ministry belongs the community of Unitarian Universalists and we together serve that community. Our process of credentialing must be part of a process of formation for full participation in that Unitarian Universalist Ministry.

4. Based on the above, I propose we seriously think of phasing out the RSCs and instead building an in - care system for formation, discernment and support closer to the students. I pray for a in care team made up of ministers in final fellowship and experienced lay folk who would work with a aspirant through the candidacy process and to the point of appointment with the MFC. The MFC would extend candidate status when the local in care team recommend that the aspirant has the potential to pursue fellowship. The student would make an appointment with the MFC when the local in care team recommends that they are ready to see the MFC. Since these local structures would not need funds for travel, hotel and what not they would free up funds for program costs. (Things we require students to do like CPE and Career Evaluation should be paid for.) The MFC could also meet more often or be expanded so it could meet with students on a timely basis. Long waits are cruel.

4. I am convinced that theologians need supervised clinical practice and reflection on that practice. But we do need to find ways to help pay for the cost of taking Clinical Pastoral Education.

5. I think theological education must evolve away from expensive residency programs toward on line and week long intensives. This would mean students would be less concentrated in Boston, San Francisco Bay, Chicago etc. and could continue deep relationship with congregations. It would mean in care and formation would be shared by a larger cadre of ministers in the vicinity.

6. The above wouldn't work for everyone. Lots of folks go off to theological school to discover themselves and end up in our ministry and would find the long time nurture and more intimate locality of an in care system an imposition. They would long for the day when becoming a UU minister was just a series of hoop jumping exercises. But one can't please everyone.

These are the thoughts of my colleague Steve Edington of Nashua, NH

Say we take a population of 100 individuals who have prepared for the UU ministry and have all met the following criteria at approximately the same time:

*Have an MDiv or equivalent degree

*Have completed the requisite CPE requirement for Fellowship

*Have done an internship and received a favorable evaluation from their supervisor

*Have taken the required psychological evaluations and been declared sane enough, and emotionally fit, for the UU ministry

*Have completed any of the other requirements for Fellowship that I've overlooked, short of the MFC interview

We divide this population into Groups A and B with 50 in each group. Those in Group A each go before the MFC and those who get good numbers go into the search process as per usual. Those in Group B bypass the MFC and go straight into the search process. Enough persons in each group (say, at least 30) get settlements in parish or community ministries and launch into their ministerial careers.

Now, (for you who are still with me) those conducting this experiment devise a set of criteria for measuring a successful ministry, which I will not spin out here. We track the ministers in each group for, let's say, ten years to see how they measure up to the "successful ministry" criteria; and at the end of those ten years we see how many successful ministers/ministries we have from Groups A and B.

And the question is (if you haven't guessed it already): Do you think there would be an appreciable difference in the successful ministers in Groups A and B?

My answer, based as I'll admit, on sheer personal speculation, is No. This does not mean I'm opposed to any kind of a credentialing process, only that I have some serious reservations about how well the one we now have in place is serving our ministry, and by extension, our liberal religious movement.

Final caveat: Nothing contained in this post is in any way meant disparage, diminish, or demean the fine, competent, and dedicated individuals who serve, or have served, on the MFC. I'm only asking if there's a better way. Got some thoughts on that too but this has gone on too long as it is.

My colleague Dan Hotchkiss writes this very interesting comment to an earlier post, which I thought I'd bring up to the front page:

Your suggestion of waiting till a candidate has three years of ministry service before evaluating fitness is an interesting one. My experience as UUA settlement (now transitions) director, 1990-97, was that the search committees not only gave more time and attention to candidates, but also were the only part of the system that consistently had the spine to say no. The seminaries had a financial incentive to say yes; the MFC caught flak whenever they said no, and so did I. My impression is that the MFC says no a little more often than it did then, but that the Department has relinquished the gatekeeper role. So more than ever, the search committees are the place where the buck stops. When they make a mistake, though, three years' bad experience is a high price for the congregation.

My first thought is that a congregation evaluates a minister's performance, up close, personal, and continually and is perfectly free to part company with that minister long before preliminary Fellowship is over. For the MFC, a pattern of short tenures would surely weigh very heavily against the granting of Final Fellowship, just as it does now.

However, since the main reason...I believe the only stated reason.. for the whole credentialing process is to try to prevent the high cost (to congregations, although ministers and their families bear a hight cost, too) of inept, unprepared, or unsuitable persons getting through the search process and doing harm to congregations, I think we should ask ourselves (and probably gather real data on) the kinds of ministerial issues which do real harm to congregations. Because, as any HR director will tell you, every time you hire somebody you take a risk, and even pros have a considerable failure rate. No credentialing process will make ministerial settlement easy or foolproof.

It is my impression (based on 30 years of cursory observation and in depth knowledge of two church histories and lots of anecdotal evidence...but I know of no real statistics on this matter) that there are two kinds of minsiterial settlement "mistakes," and that that have different costs. The first kind of settlement mistake happens when someone is called to a position that they don't, in retrospect, have the skill or interest to hold. Their preaching may be just not up to snuff in the long run, they may lack real understanding of church systems, they may not be able to muster the emotional energy or emotional intelligence to cope with the situation, they may discover that they can't cope with the social situation, hate the landscape, or have health or family issues that keep them from focusing on their work. The cost of this kind of problem, when it is bad enough to require the minister to leave, is considerable, there's no doubt about it; money and lost momenteum on the part of the congregation, and the need to move to a more appropriate job or line of work for the minister (and their family.)

But almost everybody adjusts and moves on from this kind of situation and lives happily ever after.

The settlement "mistakes" that I think of as terribly costly and damaging, the ones which come up over and over again in histories of congregations are not simple matters of lack of skill or focus, they are instead matters of poor ministerial mental health, personality disorder, leadership style, lack of emotional intelligence, and inability to maintain good boundaries. (All of these problems can become predominant in the lay leadership of a congregation, which also causes settlement failures but that's another subject.) It may be that others have a different take on this issue, but if I could wave my magic wand, I'd give us a foolproof tool for weeding out candidates with the above issues. Lacking the magic wand, I'd focus ministerial credentialing on doing a better job on this part of the score.

For the past 30 years, ministers have been screened for mental health and fitness in a psychological exam (the old days) or Career Center Screening (current practice). There is almost always a psychologist on the MFC. But it's clear to me that these tools are not adequate to the task and people with significant problems slip through. Fewer now than in the old days, and there's less damage done now that, as a society, a denomination, and a professional organization we've become clearer about the incredible damage that sexual misconduct can do and are quicker to report it and act on it. Still, I wonder if we are using state of the art tools. (Actually, I'm pretty sure that we are not). Because my observation is that this is where the rubber of preventing harm hits the credentialing road.

This is a guest post from Eliz Curtis. She blogs at Politywonk

My political science undergraduate training emphasized what was called

"small group dynamics" and "group think" as a pitfall in decision-making.

Small self-contained groups tend to make decisions based not on discreet

sets of facts, but on the needs and dynamics of their ongoing

relationship. Each player comes in with larger goals and continuencies;

they need these other folks on board to serve those objectives. In

military parlance, this is the difference between "tactical" thinking --

short-term, here-and-now goals -- versus "strategic" -- how does this fit

into the larger objective. We who see the MFC do not want to be cannon

fodder for the larger visions of ministry each committee member brings,

but that can be what happens.

It does not mean any MFC member is to blame. It means they spend tons of

time fashioning their larger visions, rather than listening to specific

congregations.

Purists among our historians point out that during the heyday of

congregational authority, ordination applied only to the congregation

which bestowed it. There was no such thing as a pure ministerial gift: it

was all relational.

What I like about the pulpit rotation system and learned ministry is that

it formed an early attempt at bicaleralism.

For the record, I STILL support this kind of bicameralism. RSS's would be

more accountable not only spend time with the aspirant, but also to visit

their home congregation for story-telling. There would still be a central

MFC, with powers of arbitration, appeal and review when the local

processes get stuck on particular cases.

All records, being essentially employment records, would be public and

publicly available.

Elz Curtiss

Burlington, Vermont

Can be found here (The Rev. Ron Robinson, no relation) and here. (The Rev. Scott Wells)

My colleague Margret O'Neall, interim minister of the UU church in Sarasota, Florida, lately wrote this to her colleagues, and gave me permission to reproduce it here.

I give a lot of thought to our MFC processes, having seen the committee within the past year, and comparing it both to other professional credentialing systems, and to the process one of my colleagues in the UCC is going through (their "in-care" system). I believe that a more relational and grounded process could, if thoughtfully cultivated, be more consistent with our theological and philosophical understandings and commitments, and contribute more fully to the process of formation.

In my own case, both the idea and the actual experience of being examined by a board of strangers, who knew me only from paper and a brief personal exposure under extremely stressful conditions, felt disrespectful of my ministry and inadequate as a pass-fail system of judgment on my preparation for professional engagement with a congregation or community. No matter how they tried to be both objective and relational, those who sat in judgment over me did not know me, some clearly had their own agendas, and had a lot of power over my future.

Much of my career prior to ministry has been invested in community and academic systems. I find that our current process of admitting ministers into fellowship picks up some of the worst faults in a range of systems, and would do well to be re-thought systematically and with a stronger grounding in congregational, seminary and ministerial mentoring relationships. Some good things are clearly happening -- strengthening RSCC's, mentored praxis in seminaries, the Mountain Desert District's "Living Into Covenant" initiative. Perhaps it will trickle up to the MFC, but trickles do not usually run in that direction unless there is a pump involved.

Margret O'Neall

Actually, I'm all for helping working ministers reduce the monumental debt of their educational expenses. However, this approach has several significant down sides.

One more thought on this topic...

There is growing concern in our denomination about the cost of ministerial formation these days, which is up vastly from 30 years ago. (I ended my seminary career $300 in debt, having worked my way through as a dorm manager. This was unusually low even then, but today, it is not unusual for new ministers to have $50,000 debt. This is causing all kinds of obvious and subtle consequences and so...folks are talking. Here's my part of one such conversation.

The Catholic church has focused, wisely, on "pro-life" as the doctrine that it brings to bear in public when defending restrictions and bans on abortion. Not only does this ring well with us all...who, after all, is "for death?" but it hides a much more fundamental Catholic belief which argues against abortion rights but which, when brought to the light of day, is not widely shared by anyone, including rank and file catholics.

This quarter's UU World contains this article about abortion by my colleague, Scotty McLennan. It's a well researched article about Christian (and Jewish) positions about when human life begins over the centuries. Abortion rights folks, so often battered by people with their Bibles, do love to see that the biblical and religious view is not as clear cut as conservatives think it is. But UU's don't tend to look to the Bible for advice about specific moral issues, so the article is at best, preaching to the converted and at worst, doing more harm than good to the pro-choice cause by belaboring the wrong point.

The UUA's Board of Trustees is appointing a task force to study the issue of Ministerial (and RE and Musician) accrediting. This is a direct outcome of last December's Excellence in Ministry Summit, and I am glad to see the action.

In writing a memorial eulogy for a woman in our church who was for some years, our parliamentarian, I was recalled to this statement, from Mr. Roberts himself, about his purpose in writing his rules.

You think interracial marriages are wrong? It's your right to believe that.

This has been running around the Jewish internet, and one of my lay leaders sent it to me as we're doing a simple version of this ritual on Sunday. I thought it was the funniest thing I'd seen in weeks.

On the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, there is a ceremony called Tashlich. Jews traditionally go to the ocean or a stream or river to pray and throw bread crumbs into the water. Symbolically, the fish devour their sins.

Occasionally, people ask what kind of bread crumbs should be thrown.

Here are suggestions for breads which may be most appropriate for specific sins and misbehaviors:

For ordinary sins - White Bread

For erotic sins - French Bread

For particularly dark sins - Pumpernickel

For complex sins - Multi-Grain

For twisted sins - Pretzels

For tasteless sins - Rice Cakes

For sins of indecision - Waffles

For sins committed in haste -Matzoh

For sins of chutzpah - Fresh Bread

For substance abuse - Stoned Wheat

For use of heavy drugs - Poppy Seed

For petty larceny- Stollen

For committing auto theft - Caraway

For timidity/cowardice - Milk Toast

For ill-temperedness - Sourdough

For silliness, eccentricity - Nut Bread

For not giving full value - Shortbread

For jingoism, chauvinism - Yankee Doodles

For excessive irony - Rye Bread

For unnecessary chances - Hero Bread

For telling bad jokes/puns - Corn Bread

For war-mongering - Kaiser Rolls

For dressing immodestly - Tarts

For causing injury to others - Tortes

For lechery and promiscuity - Hot Buns

For promiscuity with gentiles - Hot Cross Buns For racist attitudes - Crackers

For sophisticated racism -Ritz Crackers

For being holier than thou - Bagels

For abrasiveness - Grits

For dropping in without notice - Popovers

For over-eating - Stuffing

For impetuosity - Quick Bread

For indecent photography - Cheesecake

For raising your voice too often - Challah

For pride and egotism - Puff Pastry

For sycophancy, a**-kissing - Brownies

For being overly smothering - Angel Food Cake

For laziness - Any long loaf

For trashing the environment - Dumplings

For those who require a wide selection of crumbs, we suggest a Tashlich Mix available in three grades (Taslich Lite, Medium, and Industrial Strength) at your favorite Jewish bookstore.

There's no doubt about it, we have a problem with illegal immigration in this country. Fueled by our desire for cheap goods...food mostly....and our lack of will to get it together and hammer out a policy, we've got a lot of people who are here, working, raising their families and taking care of each other who are breaking the law and whose employers are breaking the law.

My old home state of South Carolina is certainly having its problems lately. First it's govenor disappears for a while to have an affaire, and now its Republican senator heckles the president in the most formal of settings. South Carolina is a beautiful state with a rich culture and a reputation for being backwards, and this certainly doesn't help matters. I enjoyed living there enough to be embarassed for them. Wilson appologized (at the request of his party, he made it clear.) President Obama accepted. Obama is a grownup. People who heckle a president in the senate chambers show themselves to be undisciplined hicks.

Before this week, all I'd ever heard about Van Jones was glowing. He spoke at a UUA General Assembly a few years back and I heard numerous people tell me that it was the best speech they'd ever heard or that he was the smartest person they'd ever heard. I'd missed his speech, and I was sorry.

After I get through the "lost credentials" routine. This is the first time in 30 years I've left my credentials at home...sheesh...

Let me start by saying that I think the world of Laurel Hallman and will not despair if she is elected president. But I'm casting my vote for Peter Morales. Here's why.

First of all, It is obvious to anyone who sees both candidates that Peter has more energy and enthusiasm for this very difficult job. Both candidates have great qualifications. But it is a REALLY hard job, and doing it well takes passion. Peter's got the passion.

Secondly, as the minister in a city which is 1/3 Hispanic and a church which has several dozen Hispanic members, living in a time when the demographic shift of our nation is towards a much, much larger percentage of Hispanic citizens, I value Peter's bi-lingual heritage and skills.

Thirdly, I value Peter's business experience. We who have been in church work all of our lives get lots of experiences, but we often miss the experiences that a career in business presents. I think our denominational president needs to be a minister for lots of reasons, but I value Peter's business experience and skills he brings from earlier in his life, just as I thought that this was an important part of Bill Sinkford's presidency.

Most of all, I love the way Peter talks about our future, about breaking up the same old same old ways we have doing things and not succeeding all my life. Our movement has everything going for it to meet the spiritual needs of our time and the near future, but our internal culture puts glass doors between us and the people we want to serve. I think it is more likely that under Peter's leadership, we can open those doors.

GA is preceded by two days of minister's meetings. I went to the business-oriented day. It's been a while since the continuing education day was useful to me, so I just come late. It is so good to see one's colleagues! That pleasure was deflated by a business meeting run with such poor process that it felt like an abuse of power...was an abuse of power at least in terms of parlimentary rule....and all for a cause I would have probably supported. I'm feeling very alienated and that's a hard place to be.

The Berry St. Essay was very interesting this year, and a nice blend of a scholarly lecture and a passionate response. The lecturer held up the embarrassing reality that while our denomination had been pursuing anti-racism and multi-culturalism with a passion for a decade, no records have been kept on our progress because nobody wants to ask for statistics about the number of persons of color in congregations. The few statistics we do have come from an outside source (National Pew Research data), or are somewhat suspect. We are amateurs in the statistics business! The speaker went on to point out that a theology underpinning our multiculatural efforts is very much a part of deepest history...a good reminder. The respondant gave a heart-felt personal testamony. An African American, Rosemary finds this the only faith for her but regrets that her children are so lonely as the only children of color wherever they go in UU land, beginning with their own Sunday School.

I was sad to hear this, not only because of the human drama of being a mom wondering if one's work and chosen life is the right one for her children, but because our denomination has put a lot of resources into nurturing ministers of color on the assumption that ministers of color would attract congregants of color. Apparently, that has not happened, even for this splendid, talented minister who lives in a very multi-cultural area. Gives one pause.

(There are plenty of UU Youth of color at GA, by the way, and it seems clear to this casual observer that they enjoy the experience of having a critical mass of peers. But most UU kids don't come to GA.)

Last week I based my sermon on the aspect of last year's Berry St. Essay which I found most interesting; the dynamics of shame and scorn in our religious communities. I share it with my blogging and Facebook friends here, where it is available in audio, video, and text.

One of the three doctors in the nation publicly willing to do late term abortions was murdered today, probably by a "pro-life" fanatic...murdered as he ushered at his Lutheran Church.

If nobody is pro abortion, then absolutely nobody is pro, "late term" abortions, abortions during the third trimester, abortions which happen after the legal age of viability. Most of these abortions are abortions of wanted, loved, even named babies, and they are caused by tragic circumstances. Nobody talks about them, few people defend them, fewer find a calling to provide them. When they happen they are tragedies, and the only good thing one can say about them is that because of late-term abortions, even greater tragedies are averted.

I found one woman's story of a late-term abortion here, and another story where late-term abortion was contemplated, here. I was once involved in a similar situation. It was a long time ago, soon after my own baby was born, and on the one hand, I hesitate to tell her story, but on the other, the world needs to hear these stories so that they can understand the need for this kind of medical care. I hope "C" doesn't mind...and I hope I remember all the details.

I met "C" in the pregnancy exercise program I went to, post-partum. She was still pregnant, and she discovered late in her 6th month that her baby had genetic abnormalities "incompatable with life outside the womb." The testing took a while, her shock and her husband's made decisions difficult. During those weeks every time she went out of her house people smiled at her pregnant body and sometimes even made small talk about her baby. It was...way too hard. They realized that they couldn't do this for three more months and decided to terminate the pregnancy. The baby was going to die probably during birth, certainly within a few hours. Why keep it on life support for three months...especially since 100% of the life support was being provided by my friend's swollen body.

The hospital ethics board had to be involved in this decision, since it was now in the third trimester, and that delayed things a few more days. In the end, they induced an early labor, and that worked. Technically, it wasn't an abortion, but surely they would have had to resort to that if labor had failed.

The baby did die during birth. The family had as planned, a bedside naming ceremony for her. She was held and loved by parents and grandparents until it was time to let her go.

And about 18 months later, I met their second child in the delivery room, and that was a special joy.

I have read that the doctor who was murdered today was an exceptionally gentle man who not only performed a difficult medical procedure, but who did so with compassion for parents in extremely difficult circumstances. May he rest in peace.

There's a false idea left over from the Enlightenment which dogs our society in several ways; this week, it's in law.  That's the notion that pure rationality is possible and that, for instance, a good judge brings no bias into the courtroom and is capable of pure justice.    

That Skinner House Press has released the book I've been working on for several years with Alicia Hawkins. It's a book of resources and session plans for small groups that want deep conversations about important issues.

We wrote it for UU congregations' Small Group Ministry programs, hoping especially that very small congregations would find this approach easy to manage. But we also imagined that families, women's groups, and book groups might benefit from these conversations.

The book's Website has more information, and you can order the book from the UUA bookstore. Every person in a group should have a book of their own, and there is a quantity discount.

David comments below that he feels much safer in places where people carry guns and is therefore against any kind of gun control. Also, he comments that since guns are so ubiquitous there would be no way to get all the guns out the hands of the "bad guys."

My thoughts, in no particular order:

It is certainly true that there are a lot of guns around, and that getting them out of circulation would be a massive, probably multi-generational problem. However, all that means is that if we want to end gun violence, we ought to get crackin'

I think it is worth noting that a pistol-packing public is of small use against these mass shooters; they are almost all suicidal and take out their victims too quickly for anybody to respond before damage is done. Many victims are children; surely we were not expecting them to have guns?

Also, although this has not yet happened, even in pistol-packing parts of the country, it's easy to imagine that would-be heroes firing at a mass-shooter could kill bystanders in the fray (there's a reason police practice through their whole careers) and further the carnage.

While it will no doubt be true for a long time, even if we do get crackin', that bad guys will be able to obtain guns, it is also true that (1) at least some of these mass shooters, like the last one, seem to have "cracked" and done their violence without the kind of planning that it takes to get contraband, and (2) the fewer guns there are, and the more illegal they are, the more likely that the authorities will be alearted to a here-t0-fore law-abiding citizen bumbling around in the underworld trying to get a gun.

It seems that these mass shooters have a sense, not only of rage but of entitlement; they seem to think that using guns is a natural and reasonible thing for an angry person to do. That sense of entitlement would also be reduced. If only criminals had guns, people who considered themselves ordinary, law abiding citizens would be less likely to resort to them.

Finally, I certainly agree with Robin, that this epidemic of angry, violent men must be tackled with understanding and social interventions besides gun control if we are to al live well together in this increasingly small world.

Today a man whose wife had told him she was leaving him up and shot his five kids, then himself. That'll teach her..and her sisters with uppity ideas.

The map of deaths caused by men who control "their" women by killing them would be, I imagine, without any green space, such is the rampant nature of this drearily familiar story. It happened in my very neighborhood, and, no doubt it has happened in yours. And it seems possible that at at least many of those deaths could have happened without guns, given the fact that few women can beat off an enraged man. But the idea of a man killing five of his children by, say, stabbing or strangling and then somehow doing away with himself without resort to guns...that staggers the imagination.

My map has a sub text. How many more will have to die because we can't find a way to control handguns in our nation? So I've added Mass Domestic Violence to my map. It's the red markers.

Three more "mass" gun deaths today...yet another man taking his disappointments out on the world. Yesterday it was 15 dead.

I've been thinking about making a memorial list of these kinds of deaths and I did it this afternoon on Google Maps. It's here. Because I'm especially interested in churches, I added the incidents from churches, even though "only" one or two persons died. Yellow Flags are incidents that happened in schools, red flags, religious institutions (there was one synagogue murder a few years back...it took place on Rosh Hashana)

It doesn't add up to many people; more died in traffic accidents every day than have died in these kinds of multiple, innocent death gun incidents. Many more died in war. And many, many, many more people have died in the routine, one-at-a time shootings which are the background noise of our lives. A jealous man, a robbery, an anger, an accident, and somebody is dead.

There is so much sadness and violence in our world. Widely available guns make it worse. How many markers on the map will it take, I wonder, before we decide to do something about it?

What might we do to make our UU Congregations more multi-cultural?

1. It is crucial to remove dissatisfaction factors as much as possible. I believe we have two major areas of dissatisfaction in the multi-cultural area. The first is the irritation to persons of color of clueless white privilege. That's an ongoing issue. The good news about it is that the school, corporate and governmental world has huge resources that are deployed here, and many of our folks get much better multi-cultural training at work and school than we will ever be able to provide.

2. Because of this, all attempts to be a multi-cultural congregation should be matched by attempts to be a younger congregation. With all due respect to the over 60 generation who got us started with integration in this nation, the future in this matter, as in so many, is with the young who have lived their lives in a multi-cultural world. My own experience in churches is that a concerted focus on bringing in young people will go a long way, all by itself, to bringing in persons of diverse ethnicity and race.

3. If there are incidents and issues, they need to be addressed, of course. People being people, there will always be issues and incidents. Discussion is necessary. Does the congregation want to put on "South Pacific?" Are there parts of that lovely show which are racist? Is there a difficult person whose conversation about social subjects like population or imigration boarders on racisit? How will we address that? Etc.

4. The second issue of baseline social comfort for those persons whose presence would signify multi-culturalism is that they need to see others like them. This is the critical mass problem, and it's a real catch 22. The only way for a church to be attractive to diverse persons is to already be a diverse congregation. But how to start? You start with signals. The UUA has done this part of multi-cultural development much better, in my opinion, than it has done the anti-racism training, but, oddly, it's never talked about. Still, go to the website of this denomination which sports a population of persons of color in the range of 5%, and you'll see a vastly disproportinate set of photos of persons of color. That's one way to help new persons of color feel legitimized and welcomed. The respectful, inclusive use of multi-cultural music and authors sends that same welcome message. Leadership of color is even more powerful. We have to give ourselves considerable credit here.

All of these strategies can be overdone, can even be a form of false advertising. But subtle use helps us to substitute for our critical mass of multi-culturalism, until we have it.

All that work, remember, only creates a baseline of lack of dissatisfaction. Now, on to Satisfaction. There enlies the transformative work.

Kim's comment (here) sparks a couple of thoughts about this issue. Firstly, I think that Kim is correct, that, like almost all of the rest of American society, especially in persons under age 60, who grew up and have worked their whole lives with this consciousness, we have mostly gotten beyond the easy-to-spot, easy-to-agree-upon racism and xenophobia of, say, 50 years ago. No small achievement, either. Yeah, us!

There is a fair amount of lingering subtle white privilege, however, and it's important to stay aware of it. White privilege is that assumption that "our way is the only way and others are different, odd, and ought to change." There is no necessary problem in the kind of human diversity of which Kim speaks...how close we stand, whether we interrupt, who looks whom in the eye, how much space is left between speakers, what time is "on time", and so on, the problems happen when some people (white people) don't realize that they need recognize those differences as legitimate and work around them when they are in mixed company.

Which brings us to church and what would motivate persons of color or other difference, to come to church and have to continue, even there, their dreary daily battle with the irritating obliviousness of white privilege, when they have every reason to prefer to go to church and relax with a community of people with whom they don't have to struggle. That is, what is the answer to the question, "Why don't UU churches, whose people think of themselves as open and welcoming, have more persons of color, and what would help us be more multi-cultural?

We have attacked this problem as a denomination from one direction; the direction of trying to educate white people to be less oblivious and irritating to persons of color. A lot of that education, unfortunately, has been ham handed, but we've done it. Has it helped? No doubt it has helped some, but not enough. And why? Because that kind of openness does not create satisfaction, it only relieves dissatisfaction.

This is a huge and important distinction in the "customer satisfaction" business, and it applies to many areas in church life, so let me digress.

There are factors in church life which create satisfaction; great sermons, exciting RE programs, warm community, opportunities for spiritual deepening. The more you have of these satisfaction factors, the greater satisfaction people will have, and they sky is the limit with how happy and enthusiastic they can be. But only if they are not dissatisfied.

Satisfaction and Dissatisfaction are two very different things, caused by completely different factors. A happy church-goer is both satisfied and not dissatisfied.

Dissatisfaction factors are basic things like enough parking, clean restrooms, safe children's programs and basic social comfort. (the sort a person of color might find in a diverse congregation not flaunting it's white privelege)

You gotta have enough parking, dirty restrooms a huge turn-off, and if parents think their kids are not safe, they're outta here. If a person of color encounters the assumptions of white privelege every time they turn around, they'll be dissatisfied. It is crucial to improve dissatisfaction factors, but...here's the key....an improvement of dissatisfaction factors doesn't make people satisfied, it only makes it possible for people to be satisfied. One too few parking spaces? That's a problem. Twice as many as you need? Ho Hum. Dirty bathrooms? disgusting. Palatial, sparkling bathrooms? I'm happy for you...but it's no more likely that I'll return to your church. Social comfort? It's vital, but if that's all you've got here, I could stay home.

May I repeat? "Social comfort? It's vital, but if that's all you've got here, I could stay home."


Given the fact that people come to church for more than baseline satisfaction, all our anti-racism/white privelege trainings, even if they were excellent, would only bring us up to baseline. And about that, it can only be said, "I don't get no satisfaction."

What should we do to become multi-cultural UU congregations? More Tomorrow.

Kim left this perceptive comment buried in a past post that I thought I'd bring forward here. Thanks, Kim!

I am working on an idea I have about "diversity". My idea is that, having gotten beyond the most obvious outer layers of racism and other prejudices, we are working on the more subtle parts. And, of course,the subtle parts are difficult to pin down because of their subtlety. My impression is that where we are stuck is that the real things that keep people of different back grounds from being comfortable with each other are the unconscious cultural differences in how we speak to each other and our world view. Those unthinking things like how far apart we stand when we talk to each other, how long we pause when we want to communicate that the other person can speak now, Whether we communicate directly or indirectly, whether we negotiate from specific to general or vice versa, how often we touch the other person while speaking. All these things are unconscious, "self-evident", and really annoying when someone does them differently because we interpret difference in custom as intended rudeness, or just strangeness. We get along with people who are more like us, we have communication problems with people who are less like us.
I think this level is where a lot of UU problems with diversity resides now. when I talk to people about this, many of them say things like, "I thought we were all the same." Or they don't say that and just imply it, if they are more indirect. It seems it's a hard concept to "get". That would seem to validate it being a problem.
I think we could work on this level of "diversity" to our advantage. Maybe it would help us achieve some more diversity in our congregations.

They're starting to get feathers and are about double their 1 week size....takes two hands to catch them, now!

Twenty or so years ago, the Rev. Max Coots, whose passion was gardening wrote this beloved and much used meditation. Max died last week at the age of 81. We remember and give thanks!

LET US GIVE THANKS

Let us give thanks for a bounty of people:
For children who are our second planting, and though they grow like weeds and the wind too soon blows them away, may they forgve us our cultivation and fondly remember where their roots are.

Let us give thanks:
For generous friends with hearts as big as hubbards
and smiles as bright as their blossoms;
For feisty friends as tart as apples;
For continuous friends, who, like scallions and cucumbers,
keep reminding us that we've had them;
For crotchety friends, as sour as rhubarb and as indestructible;
For handsome friends, who are as gorgeous as eggplants
and as elegant as a row of corn, and the
others, as plain as potatoes and so good for you;
For funny friends, who are as silly as Brussels sprouts
and as amusing as Jerusalem artichokes, and serious friends,
as complex as cauliflowers and as intricate as onions;
For friends as unpretentious as cabbages, as subtle as summer squash,
as persistent as parsley, as delightful as dill, as endless as zucchini, and who, like parsnips, can be counted on to see you through the winter;
For old friends nodding like sunflowers in the evening-time and young friends coming on as fast as radishes;
For loving friends, who wind around us like tendrils and hold us, despite our blights, wilts and witherings;
And, finally, for those friends now gone, who like gardens past that have been harvested, but who fed us in their times that we might have life thereafter;
For all these we give thanks.

Let Us Give Thanks
from View from a Tree
--Max Coots

Rest in Peace, Max. You fed us well...

Web Kitchell's memorial service was this afternoon, at the Santa Fe church which he served as settled minister for 17 years and as Emeritus minister for another 10. The church did itself proud. Stephen Furrer, the current minister, told us that Web had left a list of the music and hymns, didn't want any god-talk, and did want "droll stories" shared. So, that's what we heard. In lieu of god talk, I read these quotations from Camus.

I shall tell you a great secret, my friend. Do not wait for the last judgment, it takes place every day.

You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.

there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him. In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.

My colleague Jim Zacharias got to read from one of Web's coyote books, and there were, indeed, several droll stories. The best of them? The church administrator said that before Web arrived, the church had signed up for call waiting, but Web hated hearing the little beep of an incoming call while he was on the phone. He called it "telephonicus interruptus". They got rid of it.

The second best story? The Santa Fe church was a Fellowship when Web arrived, and they didn't like it when Web, still the New Englander, wore his robe. So it was suggested to his wife that she suggest to him that he might preach in a suit. (That's how things were done in those days) Web obliged, but in his own quirky way. Turns out that old New Englander didn't know how to put an outfit together. So there was the Sunday...judging by the laughter, some people remembered it...when he wore a green suit with a blue checkered shirt. The members suggested to his wife that she take him shopping. This she declined to do. "I married him as he is," she said. Web went back to wearing a robe and the congregation accepted it.


It was a lovely service. Rest in Peace, Web...good colleague, good minister, good man.

P.S. Was Coyote there? Well, I didn't exactly see him. But after the service, on the table of photographs Web's family had arranged, some thoughtless person had left a bag from Dunkin Donuts...

It surely is great fun to have a big article in the UU World! (Imagineering Soul, in this month's issue) I've had emails and letters from members of my internship church, my first church, people at whose weddings I officiated, former members of this church, seminary buddies and even someone who thought he remembered me from Methodist Youth Group. (mistakenly...iMinister grew up UU and was way too shy for youth groups of any kind.)

Also a bunch of emails and even a phone call from people who liked the article and felt we were kindred spirits. Also, it goes without saying, a couple of people who hated it and needed me to know. One even went so far as to express the opinion that the real reason that the denomination is declining is that there are too many women ministers and women ministers just don't think or preach powerfully. It's been a long time since I heard that sort of thing. A professor from and Episcopalian seminary wrote to ask permission to reprint it for her students, someone wrote to remind me of another author's ideas about faith and shame, and her own, and someone sent me excepts from his book which he felt were relevant.

Great Fun!

You can find the notes which others took at this event, here. (If you're new to this discussion, scroll back to late November to begin the conversation. iMinister was the official blogger for this conference.) They also promise more news and presumably the report which will be made to the June UUA Board Meeting, so check back.

With this, iMinister respectfully resigns from her first and most educational experience as a journalist. It's an almost pole-opposite experience from her usual role as a preacher; comprehensive rather than focused and attempting to be fair rather than subjective. She has renewed appreciation for the journalists in her life. She thanks the Pannel who asked her and who have been kind in their feedback and is appreciative of all the work and thought that has gone into this project and will continue, she hopes, in spite of economic constraints.

She's discovered that her general and career-long interest in ministerial well-being has developed into something of a passion about the process of credentialing ministers, and she intends to continue to follow that discussion as a private citizen, so to speak. To that end she wants to hold up again, a fascinating article from last Fall's New Yorker, which deals with the credentialing of teachers. It can be found here.

This month's UU World features my article, Imagineers of Soul, which is a version of last year's Berry St. Essay. I was so pleased that they published it; after spending a year's worth of creative energy on that Essay, it's awfully nice that it's getting a second life!

On my trip to Santa Fe, I thought about dropping by the Dunkin Donuts, purchasing a couple of dozen heart busters, and seeing if Web's Kitchell's friend Coyote would show up to converse with me. That's how Web did it, and he got three books of sermons out of the conversations he had. He called his books God's Dog, forever changing my view of these smart, adaptable animals. Web died last week after having a fairly miserable time with Parkinson's disease.

Well, no fairly about it.

Coyote would insist on the truth.

So, this is the truth. Damn, but that was a hard end for a good man and a good minister, and I've been missing him and his furry friend for a while now. No amount of donuts will get either of them back, and I'm sad. He was very supportive to the young minister with the unexpectedly hard job to the south of him, and oh, did my congregation love to hear him come and talk about his conversations with Coyote!

Happy Trails to you both!

I offered a prayer to our State House of Representatives this morning.
I have strong feelings about public prayer. I was asked to lead the Representatives in prayer, and that's what I did; reminding them of their gratitude for our beautiful state, our democracy, our connections, giving them a moment to call to mind those they wished to pray for and asking a blessing on their work. No big deal.

But expressions of gratitude and appreciation I got suggested to me what my Santa Fe colleague confirmed, which is that too many persons of the cloth preach rather than pray, or pray only with and for persons of their own faith tradition.

I was glad to have offered something of value to hard working legislators!
And glad to see that the Domestic Partnership bill has had a sudden resurrection for this year's session.

....went on last year, when a list of core competencies for large church ministry was put together in anticipation of the "Thinking Big" program which is giving a small group of ministers advance training in Large Church ministry. Their work was published in the Alban Institute's "Congregations" last month and can be found here.

This list of competencies was formed with Large Churches in mind, but there's not much in it that doesn't apply to good ministry in every size of church.

One of the interesting turns my career has taken in the past few years is exposure to seminarians, interns, new ministers, and lay persons who are taking on ministry roles. It's given me a new lens to look at my own ministry and has been a very enriching experience.

Among the things that it has made me wonder is whether it is a good idea to expect persons to have developed a sense of ministerial authority before they are ordained.

This is one of the things the Ministerial Fellowship Committee looks for, and when they don't find it their diagnosis often utterly baffles candidates who don't know what to do with this feedback. It's such a "I know it when I see it but can't explain it" item...which is to say, it is extremely subjective, that I've been uneasy with its increasing cachet among students who are, naturally enough, anxious to develop this mysterious ministerial quality.

I've reached a few conclusions about this.

One conclusion is that this quality does exist. It is related to feeling secure in the knowledge that you, in your ministerial role, have something of value to deliver and you know the conditions of delivering it. So you march right up to the boss nurse in the ICU and request the room number for the patient who, she says, won't even know you are there. You know that you and the patient and the patient's family need you to be there and you stand in front of her until she lets you be there. Since you know that your listening ear and someone else's ability to speak freely really has a healing effect, you help someone you know needs to talk to move with you to a private corner. Since you know that this fractious group needs to take a break and a deep breath, or that this scattered group about to eat together needs to be recalled to their gratitude before they eat, you take the risk of suggesting a break for a moment recollection of our deep values or grace and a recollection of our deep thanksgiving. That's ministerial authority.

A second conclusion I've reached is that while ministerial authority is a good and important thing, no ministerial authority is better...far better... than fake ministerial authority. Fake ministerial authority comes from a person acting the way they think they are supposed to act, rather than out of a deep knowledge of the value of their action. At worst, it comes from a person who is so in love with their role that they're over-eager to exercise it. They come across as self-important and give ministry a bad name. In its more common form, fake ministerial authority is an honest attempt to do what one understands one is supposed to do, but since it lacks the inner authority that makes the risk-taking work, it...doesn't work.

A third conclusion I've reached is that I started my career deficient in ministerial authority and I've developed it over many, many years. I started way young in this business, and I'm downright bashful by nature, and in the UU circles I grew up in, "ministerial authority" was not a valued quality...quite the opposite. I was fortunate to have the guidence of a lay leader who came from a long line of Baptist preachers in my early years in ministry, and who several times found ways to instruct me. ("Christine, Lisa (whose husband had died while they were vacationing) is coming home in a private airplane with Joe's coffin. You'll be meeting the plane, won't you? (significant pause) It will be in at 11pm. And then I've invited you both to drop by the house and visit a bit while my husband goes to her home and gets the lights and the furnace on. " Well...no, actually, it hadn't occurred to me that I should meet that plane. I'd been planning to call the next day, after the widow had had a good night's sleep. Clueless, clueless me! But when Frances spoke, I paid attention, learned, and through those experiences came naturally to believe that there are powers of healing and renewal that sometimes focus themselves in the relationship between a person and their minister, and that it's the minister's job to take the risk of reaching out to them and creating the conditions in which they can appear. I hasten to say that in spite of that developmental need of mine, the congregation thrived even with their very young, very green minister.

Therefore....

I'm coming to the conclusion that you don't learn much about this until you are a settled minister in a community. Internship and CPE might give some ministers a taste of ministerial authority, but then again, they might not.

Also.....

I think that one might have a general clue about ministerial authority...enough, at least, to navigate around a congregation, and not be able to come close to dredging this up in what is, for most candidates, the single most nerve-wracking hour of their career, their interview with the MFC. My guess is that very best that most candidates can do is fake it. That requires knowledge of a sort, but I don't think we want people to learn to fake it, or feel that they must fake it.


All of the above and other reflections are leading me to think that we have our whole certification process backward. It's the entry into Final Fellowship that ought to be the nerve-wraking one, where one demonstrates that one has figured out what ministerial authority is all about, can produce references and stories that demonstrate one's ministry as one has actually done it, where one has successes and failures to discuss and reflect on. The entry into preliminary Fellowship should be a much broader gate, perhaps a matter of UUA staff checking off the Candidate's To-Do list. Internship with generally positive feedback, CPE with generally positive Feedback, Degree, UU Experience (we should pay more attention to this than we do.) Reading List. Comprehensive Exam (we really need this!), Background check. References checked at least as well as a new employer would check them (including checking with persons not on the candidate's list.) If major questions came out of this check list process, perhaps an interview, but for most people, the interview would be at the time of entry into Final Fellowship, when one's success in ministry and development of ministerial authority could be more realistically judged.

iMinister came out in support of Peter Morales for president of the UUA months and months ago. She agrees with him that the UUA needs to see, not just a little change, but transformational change if we are to be healthy in this new era. She's sure that our dialogue about diversity has been woefully lacking in Hispanic voices, which Peter would bring, and she loves the energy and commitment to our shared enterprize which he brings to the campaign.

Here's what I mean.

In a candidate's forum, this question was asked.

Imagine five years have passed and imagine that your vision for UUism is fully alive and thriving. What three to five goals have been realized?

Here are their written responses.

Peter Morales ...
The goals that will have been accomplished in five years are intimately interrelated. The guiding vision behind them all is a revitalized Unitarian Universalist movement that transforms lives and that helps to heal the world. In five years we will have a new sense of urgency and excitement across our movement. The following accomplishments are manifestations of living out our mission:

1. We are growing at a rate of three percent per year. Growth is not the goal, it is the measure by which we determine whether we are meeting the fundamental human need for religious community. We are growing because we are doing a better job of welcoming the seeker, retaining our youth, and engaging our existing members. As we grow we are becoming more diverse in terms of race, class and culture. Our growth rate has tripled and is accelerating.

2. We are more engaged in the great moral issues of our time. As a natural outgrowth of a deeper sense of compassion and connection, we are a more powerful force for justice, understanding and environmental stewardship. At the local level, it means that more members of our congregations are involved in social action and public witness. At the Association level, it means that we are building on our tradition of public witness and that we have forged a new partnership with the UUSC on social action.

3. We have developed a strategic vision for ministry and are beginning its implementation. Our strategy for ministry has been developed through consultation with stakeholders. Our strategy is a comprehensive approach that includes recruitment, training, placement, mentoring and development of professional ministry.

4. The UUA staff has a culture of transparency, accountability and effectiveness. As a matter of course we evaluate our programs and our people. We learn from our mistakes. Our staff is more involved in being the means for sharing best practices and innovative ideas across congregations.

5. We are forming strong relationships with groups that share our values. This includes international Unitarian and Unitarian Universalist movements, public policy advocacy groups, the UUSC, and others.

---

Laurel Hallman's written response:

1. Our children and youth will participate in UU congregations as adults.

2. Our UUA endowment will grow to a sustainable level, and our dependence on its income for operating expenses will diminish.

3. We will wed our religious and theological future to our historical past, and will experience the power of that synergy.

4. The Free Spirit will become a source of inspiration, activism, humility and strength in our association.

5. Our alliances will enlarge our effectiveness in the world.

The Rev. Sarah Lammert who attended the Excellence in Ministry conference as a delegate from the UU Minister's Association, posted her reflection on the conference on the UUMA Website.

Other blogs are discussing the content of Lay Theological Education programs...the questions we'd like to have answers to. I want to think more about process; what kinds of programs might one fund to help people answer their questions?

I have three thoughts. Firstly, a set of Chautauqua-type programs that could travel to districts, clusters, camps and conferences. The ministers have their CENTER programs which do this; a different set of ministers offer to teach their specialty several times over a year to colleague groups. A similar program could be set up for Lay theological education, which might result in a blossoming variety of "Seminary for a day" programs all over the nation.

A second thought is to help ministers and others put together good distance education courses. iMinister has tried to explore this and found it beyond her geek-level. Universities, however, have developed platforms and taught less geeky (and more resistant) persons than herself how to offer knowledge in this new way. It just takes money.

Once there was a Seminary-on-line, experts of all sorts could offer on-line courses and study materials for anyone who wanted to partake, and for follow-up to those one-day Chautauqua programs suggested above.

Thirdly, I believe that the longing is not just for theological education but for ministerial education. That is, my guess is that people don't just want to learn theology, they want to learn ministry in order to be of service to their congregations. They don't just want lay theological education, the want lay ministry. And frankly, we need them.

Not all ministers agree with this, and there's not doubt that there are some really tricky pieces to the whole thing. But I think we ought to be thinking about this and looking the models other denominations have used.

I'm at this conference on New Mexico new media conference. I'll soon be on a panel about building virtual communities, from which I expect to learn far more than I contribute. The keynote speaker is making the point that video games give a platform that teaches the skills of dealing with a complex world. Today's kids don't just go to theme parks, they manage them in their gaming world. This fellow is working with news organizations to quickly develop games that would teach people about the complexities of World Events. I can see it now... Mid-East Tycoon. Sim Global Warming. Very interesting...

I hope to have an opportunity to insert the idea that we need games for moral and religious education. We'll see.
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

You can find the excellent keynote speech from the Excellence in Ministry Summit here. It's well worth reading and very amusing, too! In it we may see ourselves as others see us...

Doug Muder, at Free and Responsible has asked his fellow bloggers to give some help to the Task Force on Lay Theological Education.

That's the group looking into the gaping chasm between what most people can get at most of their UU churches by way of deepening their UU'sim, and going to theological school.

They've got a chunk of money to come to some conclusions and actually do something.

iMinister has a bunch of ideas about how that money could be used but that's not what he's asking for. He's asking for comments about what that cliff edge looks like. That's the place where people have come to understand Unitarian Universalism through sermons and a few classes, have grown in spirit through participation in worship, have served their church and want, well...more. But they are not ready or able or willing and might never be, to jump over the cliff and go to theological school. Or maybe they're unlucky as a young mom I just spoke to this week, to live in a state the size of New England which has not one theological school to its name.

iMinister can't speak to that condition personally. When she got that "deeper" urge she was a footloose and fancy free young adult she cheerfully jumped the chasm and landed in New England, and started Theological School. Worked for her, then. She totally gets it that it would be harder now, even for that same young adult, and that it would be impossible now, for the mom of a college-bound 18 year old and wife of the just-career-changed husband. iMinister was raised by Depression Babies, and unlike the rest of her generation, she has never shaken their teaching to be prudent about things like loans, bank accounts, and retirement savings.

Anyway, lots of people who want opportunities to grow in mind and heart in their faith don't want to be ministers. They just want more than their local church can provide.

Doug and the Task Force want to hear from you, dear readers. You can post comments on this Blog or you can go directly to his blog. The question, "What would help you go deeper? What do you want to learn, to do, to experience? What skills would you like to develop? What certification would you like to have?

There are some fights you can't win. Even if you had all the fire power you needed (however you define fire power in your particular fight), if you used it, you'd destroy something too precious to you to make it worth it. So even though you might have every right to fight, you don't fight. Even though you really need what you might win in a fight, you don't fight. If you're angry and feel threatened, you master yourself and you don't fight.

This is a very hard lesson. But most people have to figure out how to learn it. Most nations have to figure it out, too. There are some fights in which no amount of force will get you what you want, need, or have a right to. You have to get those things in a slow, roundabout way. Sometimes the other party has to come to exactly the same conclusion.

It is usually perfectly obvious to bystanders when someone has started to destroy themselves in their quest to get what they need. It is rarely as obvious to the involved parties. And because the calculus of when, exactly the use of power becomes detrimental to the powerful is a very personal calculus, only the involved parties can actually know where the line is.

It's hard to watch.

A colleague is planning a book on long term ministry and is interviewing me. Interviews are one thing I don't do very excellently, so I asked for questions in advance. As I look them over, it suddenly comes to me that one thing that has allowed me to stay in ministry and stay in ministry in one place is a high degree of personal tolerance for bumbling....just the opposite of all this excellence-talk that we've been doing for the past two months on this blog.

Yep. Even after 30 years in this business, I feel pretty inept at many things I do, day after day. Leadership development? All I can say is that I try to let people do what they really want to do and fill in the gaps (and patch up the problems) that come. Stewardship? It's definitely not something we do excellently here and I'm not sure how to fix it. We specialize...perhaps even excellently, in chearful frugality. Building Planning? This is my third time around and I still find it messy and confusing and I've been very little help to our committee. Governance? See "leadership development." Staff management? Don't get me started. Pastoral Care? Never my speciality. I do the best I can. It's an important part of the job. Contemporary worship? Small Group Worship? As we start trying to do these thing I realize how very narrow is my realm of excellence. I can do really good worship in a sanctuary, with a hymnal, a pianist, a choir. The rest is bumbling. Now that four of our six weekly services are in the these non-traditional categories, I feel downright inadequate to the need.

Anti-Racism and Multi-Culturalism, the current darlings of ministerial competency? Well....I know a bit of the theory. I'm told we have a pretty multi-cultural congregation by UU standards, but it's mostly because we've been successful in drawing young adults who come by this trait more easily than their elders. How did we do that? I don't have a clue. I noticed it was happening, smiled at them, and dispatched our intern to see how we could help them organize themselves. Now they fill a section of the sanctuary, week after week. Teaching? I did a lot of it as a solo minister and assumed that people just didn't much want courses, these days. Now I have a colleague whose classes draw throngs. I can only assume that that's something he does much better than I ever did. I'm told I'm an excellent preacher, but I know, week after week, how flawed my contributions are. There's only so much time.

Now lest you think that this recital shows that my mental health is in jeopardy in this post-holiday season, please be assured that I have come to regard all of these non-excellencies as just the way things are and I am not deeply bothered by them. Obviously there's a gestalt of ministry around here that is working about as excellently as anyone could expect. We grew by 10% last year, both in membership and in contributions, yet another year on a growth spurt that has outpaced the growth of our city and has now topped 50% in the past 8 years. And in this hard time, the congregation almost doubled it's Fall contributions to the UU Service Committee and to our local Food Bank over last year, which I consider a sign of spiritual maturity that warms my heart. We've just had to add another service (The contemporary one I feel inadequate about) because we're bursting at the seams (and because I couldn't figure out how to initiate a building process 5 years ago when we should of...).

Which brings us back to tolerance for bumbling.

I think, especially in this generalist business of ministry, you have to be downright chearful about all the things you don't do very well, lest you sink under the weight of depression. It's probably important to have a speciality you cherish as your area of excellence. But in the long run, it might be even more important to give oneself a wide latitude for bumbling and trust in the Great Powers of Healing and Renewal to fill in the gaps and patch up the problems.

Check out this link for a very interesting article from Internetmonk on the contemporary pastorate. (Thanks Chutney, for pointing it out!)

The author is an Evangelical Christian, but the first half of the article raises interesting general points about how ministry has changed in the past 50 years. The second half is much more specific to the Evangelical community but does make some interesting points about what he calls the pragmatic philosophy of Youth Ministry. Although it takes some major religious translation, I think that UU's were not immune from the downsides of this philosophy, which, crudely stated is, "if it brings kids and keeps kids it must be good." His objection is that it's not Biblical, our UU objection might be that it doesn't help kids on their spiritual journey and when they outgrow it, they depart from us, never to return. Of course, in our case, only between 10 and 30% of our kids even partake in our youth programing.

His claim is that Pragmatic Youth Programing has led to Pragmatic Adult Programing, and he's again' it all. An interesting point that's probably off the topic of ministry.

There's been ministerial interest in Freedom of the Pulpit again, so I've brought this post forward from July of 06, and added a bit to it.


iMinister defines Freedom of the Pulpit as freedom from advance censorship. This important doctrine exists to protect a minister from a demand that s/he "never speak of that issue" or "don't tell anyone what you believe about that." It exists because we cherish the integrity of the minister and because it is sometimes good for a congregation to hear things they don't want to hear.

Freedom of the pulpit doesn't belong to the pulpit, and you don't get it by virture of standing behind the thing. It is a trust bestowed on persons who are in covenant with the congregation to speak the truth in love, to honor the congregation's mission, to be fair, balanced, and wise etc. All called ministers, many hired ministers, and, if the congregational covenant is strong enough, members of the congregation can be said to be a part of this covenant.

Guest ministers are often granted Freedom of the pulpit by courtesy (If we didn't trust them, we wouldn't have invited them.) In my congregation, everybody else is asked to speak on a particular topic and, if there's any question about what they are going to say or how they plan to say it, we ask for a manuscript.

We do this more for reasons of quality and length control, than to censor their ideas, but neither I nor our worship committee would hesitate to disinvite a speaker who was not being truthful, loving, or productive about what they had to say. In practice, we mostly help people get their point across more effectively, rather than censor content, but I have done it once. (The speaker was a mile over the "no partisan politics in a non-profit organization" line. It made it easier that I could invoke the IRS on the matter and I managed to salvage the relationship.) We came to this policy after some difficult experiences.

A congregation will entrust its desire to hear many sides of the truth, spoken in many loving, careful ways, to its minister, worship committee or both. Those so entrusted must have and use some discression, because "Freedom of the Pulpit" is a principle meant to serve the needs of the people, not the egos of the mouthy.

"Freedom of the Pulpit", even for a called minister, does not mean that "you can't be fired for what you say, "

A minister who gets obsessed with one issue and preaches about it out of proportion to its importance to the members, who uses the pulpit to scold those who disagree, who preaches in a way that causes damage to the church's reputation in the community, and who does not speak responsibly about the pros and cons of the issues s/he talks about will probably be judged out of bounds of the covenant and can very appropriately be asked to make changes in their preaching subject, manner, and priorities. If the covenant stayed broken for long, the congregation would probably dismiss the minister by it's democratic procedures.

Certainly the blogging highlight of my year was blogging the Excellence in Ministry conference. Sometime this blogging business seems like an exercise in journaling; quite solitary. I go weeks on this blog with no comments and only by studying my hit counter do I realize that anybody reads this blog at all. So it was a pleasure to be asked to blog the conference, and it was an even greater pleasure to be there. And, what fun...that hit counter went wild, with 4-5 times more hits than average for that week and my highest ever daily count, 350 readers on December 12. (average daily count is about 35...I love you all!)


The most popular single post by far, far, far and away, however, was the first post of the year, "How To Find Your Daemon", a meditation for the intergenerational worship service the week before, which focused on the movie, "The Golden Compass", and which, according to my afore-mentioned hit counter (which also tells me what google searches brought people to my blog) brought people to my blog week after week, all year long. Most of those folks were probably not UU's...hope they got an eye-full of liberal religion!.

February brought a post on gun violence, tragically refered-to in August after one of our churches saw yet another incident, which I discussed here.

There were a number of posts on what turned out to be the biggest tempest in a teapot of the year, checking of ID at GA.

And my single favorite story of the year, Our Pentacost Visitor.


But the biggest story of this year for our our world was the election, summed up, finally, in the post called, "Tears" If 2009 brings us even a fraction of the hopes of that night, it will be a wondrous year, indeed.

And may your year, dear readers, be also blessed and your lives and work be a blessing to you and those around you!

Two interesting additions to the conversation in the blogsphere about ministry, ministry preparation, certification and other areas of interest.

Politywonk has an important post about updating the overall ministerial ideal which comes to us from the Renaissance/Enlightenment.

And, there's a whole new blog devoted to the question of things to think about as we consider our ministerial certification processes. Calling Ministers is authored by a new minister who came to us with experience in Human Resources.

As I read his early entries, I reflected that this is a very difficult area to talk about. It's hard for the folks with left-over anger and pain to talk about without seeming bitter, it's really hard for the folks who failed to talk about, (and they usually leave us completely anyway) and it's hard for the folks who sailed through to talk about without seeming to brag. I think it's no accident that only a few people came to the conversation on certification at the EIM conference, and most of them came to listen rather than to talk, and yet the topic got a large number of votes in the non-conversational voting process. I'm glad we're talking.

I invite you all to check out The Naked Theologian, a new blog devoted to "stripped down theology" by UU Ph.D candidate Myriam Renaud. (U.Chicago) Myriam is a deep thinker and a good writer, and she came out of the Albuquerque church, so we're right proud of her!