Have
you ever been asked to "keep your fork" as the main dish has been cleared
away?Holding on to your fork may
just have a little spiritual significance.
A
pastor went to visit a deathly ill parishioner.Knowing
his time was short, he gave her precise instructions for his funeral—the
hymns to be sung, the suit he wanted to be buried in.With
his strength ebbing, he seized the pastor’s hand and whispered, “I want
to be buried with a fork in my hand.”
“I
don’t understand,” she said.
“In
all my years of church socials and potlucks, whenever the dishes of the
main course were being cleared, someone would say, ‘Keep your fork.’It
was my favorite part because I knew that something even better was coming,
like chocolate cake or apple strudel—something wonderful!When
people see me in that casket they’ll ask you, ‘What’s with the fork?’And
you tell them for me: ‘Keep your fork.The
best is yet to come!’”
I'm
keeping my fork too, because I believe the best is yet to come for our
congregation.I believe the decision
to expand our building will be good for our health and vitality.Adding
space will relieve the crowding we already experience and permit this congregation
to accommodate an expanding membership.At
a time when many liberal religious traditions are shrinking, I find it
delightful to be serving a congregation that is growing steadily.
I
fully expect that growth to continue because the Capital Region is experiencing
significant immigration.On Tuesday,
I met with the President of the Albany-Colonie Chamber of Commerce, Lyn
Taylor.She spoke with several of
us from our ARISE Executive Committee about the future of the region.Sematech
coming here and the biotech initiatives associated with RPI demonstrate
our region is coming to the attention of our nation as an emerging "Tech
Valley."
The"Tech
Valley" factor is not the only reason we’re growing. September 11th
has people wanting to move out of the big cities.Big
city dwellers want to stop commuting two hours a day and move to a place
they can get to work in 20 minutes.Taylor
talked about one executive crowing that he could leave work, see his child's
school play and return in a couple of hours.He
never could have done that in New York City or Boston.
Like
it or not, significant growth is coming to our region.And
the kind of highly educated people coming here as part of that growth are
likely to find their way into Unitarian Universalist congregations like
ours.
The
current and expected growth of our congregation demands many changes.Change
is difficult.In particular, I'd
like to address one area of concern that has come up around our building
expansion proposals.I've heard concerns
expressed about our congregation getting too big.In
particular, I've heard from some of our long time members a frustration
that if we get too big, they will not know everybody anymore.
In
my analysis, this concern has two dimensions.One
is the depersonalizing societal trend of the last century.More
and more we are treated as a social security number and not a person by
a faceless bureaucracy.Personal
mobility means people don't get to know their neighbors and don't feel
connected to their communities.Too
many feel anonymous and alone, like a commuter on a subway train to eternity
packed with strangers all trying to avoid eye contact.People
come here Sunday morning to be with others who know their names and care
about them.The lettering above
the bay window in Channing Hall says in Latin, "Here, let no one be a stranger".
The
other dimension is the insularity that can happen in the aging process.People
with established social networks of friends can stop reaching out and bringing
new people into their network.As
the years pass, they get to an age where they find themselves attending
far more funerals than weddings and child dedications.Expanding
one's social network to include those who could be your children's or grandchildren's
age isn't easy.Each is experiencing
different stages of life.Each generation
is shaped differently by the great events of their times.But
if those boundaries are not crossed, the aging survivor becomes more and
more isolated and alone.
Clearly,
for the success of our congregation, we must continually embrace newcomers
and integrate them into our congregational life, building new relationships
and connections between our older and newer members.Yet
at our size of congregation, we cannot all know each other's names.Besides
a few like our membership chair, Kathy Hodges, and Dave Stone, our sexton,
I probably know more people by name in our congregation than anyone else.I
work at it very intentionally.And
there are still a few names in the directory I can't put a face to.If
you wanted our congregation to be a size where everyone could know everyone
else, it's too late.It's been too
late for 40 years.In fact, members
of the congregation I served in Port Charlotte, Florida, regularly fretted
about not knowing everyone - and they didn't even have a 100 members at
the time!
I
know very personally that feeling of wanting someone to know my name and
feel part of a community.In the
fall of 1977, close to 25 years ago now, I bought a rail pass and boarded
a train in search of adventure and identity.This
time of year brings back memories of my big adventure to--as we said in
those days--"find myself."A week
and a half later, tired and lonely, I ended up in a residential hotel next
to a railroad station full of drug addicts, alcoholics and mentally ill
outpatients inPalo Alto, California.The
only person I knew there was a visiting professor at Stanford and his wife
who were acquaintances of my parents.Otherwise,
I was all on my own, running out of money and looking for a job.My
first stop was the Palo Alto Unitarian Church.
The
Palo Alto Unitarian Church has now and had then a much larger membership
than my parent's Unitarian Fellowship.There
were lots of people in attendance in the sanctuary my first Sunday.The
church's excellent 25 member choir was led by a professional choir director.They
had a big religious education program.They
had an extensive bookstore.
I
remember the size of the congregation wasn't a negative for me at all.I
delighted in the quality of the service and the crowds of people.Rather,
I experienced the congregation's larger size as a significant positive
even though there were few people my age.I
didn't need to know everybody.I
just needed to make a few friends.
From
my experience in nine small, medium and large congregations around the
country, I would say that it is far easier to form relationships in larger
congregations than smaller ones.This
is one of the counterintuitive facts about large congregations.Larger
congregations create larger pools of people with the same interests, facilitating
the formation of small common interest groups.
One
of the struggles we have yet to address in our congregation is the gap
in our membership of young people in their twenties and thirties.We'll
be doing a service about this gap next month as part of the Unitarian Universalist
Association's initiative called, "Mind the Gap."The
Unitarian Church I served during my internship in Rochester, New York,
is our largest upstate congregation with about 800 members.They
have a thriving twenties and thirties group called TNT that meets regularly.The
size of the congregation permitted that critical mass of people to find
each other and start a group.
All
the church growth experts agree that the key to increasing people's satisfaction
in congregations as they grow is to have lots and lots of small groups.Thankfully,
our congregation already has quite a number of special interest committees
and groups.Like quilting?Join
the Projects and Quilts group nicknamed P's & Q's.Want
to meet people in your neighborhood?Attend
one of the neighborhood potlucks.Struggling
with cancer?Join our cancer support
group.Like to read?There
are several book groups.Enjoy theater,
opera, music?Go with people in our
congregation who regularly get together to attend local performances.
These
small groups are important ways for newcomers to feel connected to our
congregation.Valuable as these interest
groups are socially, they are not designed to fulfill a deeper hunger to
go inward and examine personal beliefs and values and expand one's sources
of meaning.
Last
year, our congregation developed a way to address that hunger through Small
Group Ministry.Small Group Ministry
is an idea burning through our congregations like wildfire, serving a need
we've never met very well before.
I
remember I was going through lots of inner turmoil when I moved to California.I
wanted more out of life than I found in my home town of Newark, Delaware.Life
felt like it had passed me by and I wanted to be right in the middle of
it.The potlucks I attended at the
Palo Alto Unitarian Church were great and I met interesting people.But
there wasn't room for me in that setting to talk much about my search for
truth and meaning.Small Group Ministry
is designed to be just that kind of group.
Small
Group Ministry breaks the participants down into manageable size groups
ofseven to ten people.The
twice-a-month meetings begin with check-in and then focus on a topic designed
to encourage the sharing of feelings, values, and sources of meaning.The
groups are designed to help the participants learn about themselves and
each other. These groups have been particularly helpful for connecting
the older and the newer members.These
are not groups interested in analyzing and debating outer truth, rather,
they are for pursuing inner truth.That
inner truth reveals itself through the stimulating fellowship of conversation
sharing feelings, thoughts, values and beliefs.When
people share their inner truths with each other, they minister to each
other.
Another
one of the counterintuitive lessons of larger churches is that ministry
is the job of the members rather than the minister.In
larger congregations, the minister administrates, raises money and develops
and strengthens the leadership.A
minister can do a little ministry from the pulpit but this is a one-way
communication.Even at our current
size, I can't visit every member of this congregation on a weekly or even
monthly basis.It is a physical
impossibility (much as I wish I could clone myself).I
feel good if I can make personal contact with everyone on a yearly basis.Small
groups step into that gap.Small
group ministry helps our congregation get smaller while it gets bigger.
Small
groups can't do it all.Small Group
Ministry will not appeal to everyone.There
is yet another way for our congregation to get smaller as it gets bigger.That
is by engaging in the habit of hospitality.Hospitality
is a sacred duty with an ancient history that too few of us practice religiously.
I
read recently about a man who visited 18 different churches on successive
Sundays.He was trying to find out
what the churches were really like.He
said, "I sat near the front.After
the service, I walked slowly to the rear, then returned to the front and
back to the foyer using another aisle.I
smiled, dressed neatly."I asked
one person to direct me to a specific place:a
fellowship hall, pastor's study, etc.I
remained for coffee if served.I
used a scale to rate the reception I received.I
awarded points on the following basis:
On
this scale, 11 of the 18 churches earned fewer than 100 points.Five
actually received less than 20.
I
sure hope if this fellow showed up here, we'd get at least 200 points since
we do offer visitors a free cup of coffee in a white coffee mug.But
how many of you make a point to talk to people with white coffee mugs?How
many of you introduce a visitor to someone you think they might want to
get to know?How many make sure they
meet me?Or do you think that is
somebody else's job?Remember-- next
Sunday is bring-a-friend Sunday!
Small
groups are vital to the quality of our religious community as are social
events like our yearly karaoke nights or the fabulous UU Weekend at Silver
Bay.But on a week-to-week basis,
we are all responsible to help create what we dearly desire, a warm and
loving religious community.
While
I like larger congregations, I also like and value small congregational
life and I like the size we are at right now.There
are currently about a thousand Unitarian Universalists active in our congregations
around the Capital Region.I believe
there could easily be two or three thousand and still that would mean 99.7%
of the population would remain non Unitarian Universalists!What
is missing is the space for them.We
are the ones who can make the room.
Japanese
Carp or Koi are curious fish.These
fish will proportionately grow to accommodate their surroundings.In
a fish bowl they grow to a length of only two or three inches. In a pond
they may grow to a length of three or four feet.This
fishbowl you're sitting in right now comfortably holds a congregation of
about 250 members.We're outgrowing
it.We've been outgrowing for 40
years.I'm confident that if we expand
our space, like the koi, we will grow to fill it.
Ultimately,
all church growth is about hospitality.It
is about sharing the meaning and value, the good news, if you will, we
have found here with others.We can
grow bigger and grow smaller at the same time.
Keep
your forks - the best is yet to come.
Copyright
© 2002 by the Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore.
All rights reserved.