Ministry after RME
A Sermon By Rev. Bob Eddy
Delivered 12 October, 2004
One of the first Sermons I delivered from this pulpit was titled, “Professional Ministers: Necessity, Luxury, or Snare.” The answers I would give to those questions today are these: Necessity? No. Luxury? Perhaps. Snare? Possibly.
Let’s take them this morning in reverse order:
Is a professional minister be a snare for a UU congregation? She can be. She will be if you expect from a professional minister the impossible. If, for example, you expect what one congregation wanted: a minister who:
… always preaches 20 minutes and then sits down.
who condemns sin, but never hurts anyone's feelings.
who works from 8 am to l0 PM and does every type of work in the church from preaching to custodial service.
Who makes $60 a week, wears good clothes, buys the best books regularly, has a nice family, drives a good car and gives $100 a week to the church.
Who also stands ready to contribute every good work that comes along in the community.
Who is 26 years old and has been preaching for 30 years.
Who is tall and short, thin and heavyset.
has one brown eye, and one blue; hair parted down the middle, left side dark and straight and the right side brown and wavy.
Who loves to work energetically with the teenagers but spends most of his time with the old folks.
Who smiles all the time and is always serious
Who makes 15 calls a day on church members, .. and is never out of the office.
Modified from an email from Steve Evans
First Parish UU, Stow & Acton, MA
The contradictions between expectations in that example are obvious. Sometimes they’re more subtle.
In my first months with you as an interim minister, I conducted an “expectations workshop.” Several of you were present for that workshop and you’ll remember that we first compiled a list of all the things anyone present could think of as desirable in a minister. What we got was not dissimilar to the list you just heard. We then pared down that list to a shorter list of what seemed reasonable finally then pared it down to a list of what we could reasonably expect of a half time interim minister - me. I think it helped clear the air of unreasonable expectations.
If this congregation decides to call a professional minister “after bob” we’ll need to go through a similar process as a congregation. It’s my feeling we should go through that process before we elect a search committee – even before we decide whether to elect a search committee. Otherwise, the process of calling a minister may lead us into a quagmire of contradictory expectations.
If? Did I say if? Yes I did. “If you decide to call another settled professional minister.”
Now there are some who will say, “Bob, we decided all that in the year you were away!” Perhaps. In the program year 2000-2001 while Gerry and I were RVng in Alaska to Mexico the congregation pursued an excellent goal setting exercise in which every member of the congregation was given an opportunity to participate in the formulation of a 2001-2006 action plan. It began:
By 2006 the Unitarian Universalist Church of Pensacola will be a vibrant congregation that has a full time settled minister sharing with an active lay ministry in uniting the church and in reaching out to the wider community.
The plan then goes on to list seven actions that flesh out what the participants thought it was reasonable to expect of this full time minister.
He should be experienced, full time, and accountable to the Board and Congregation.
He will deliver an average of 3 high quality sermons a month “during the program year”
He will “be hands on with committees, religious education, music, church management, pastoral duties, etc.
It is particularly important that the minister play an active role in the larger community, both religious and civic.
The minister shall make a concerted effort to serve those at UWF, PJC, NAS and other similar facilities.
The Committee on Ministry will provide consultation with the minister and congregation will provide consultation to the minister and congregation.
The congregation, through appropriate committees, will provide lay ministry in support of the minister, particularly in the area of pastoral care.
Another section of the Action Plan deals with administration and organization. The vision statement is
By 2006 the Unitarian Universalist Church of Pensacola [will have] an organizational designed to efficiently achieve its mission, vision, and action plan.
Under the actions that will implement that vision is another paragraph relating to the role of the minister.
“The board will be a broad, policy setting body with the minister serving as “chief of staff. The minister will carry out policy and administer the church, including direction of paid staff that ultimately includes an administrative assistant, a director of religious education, and a director of music. A sexton/groundskeeper will report to the administrative assistant.”
So it’s all been decided. Right? Wrong. As one of our most popular hymns says, “New Occasions teach new dutires.” “Oh, no” say some, “does that mean we must continually reinvent the wheel?” “No”, I say, “but neither must you consider plans made earlier, to be like ten commandments carved in stone.”
It seems to me that you as a congregation must decide before you decide what kind of minister you want, whether you want a professional minister at all. Then if you decide you do want a professional minister, before you start any search process you need to revisit the question of whether you want your minister to be primarily a pastor or primarily a C.E.O.
And are you all convinced that you want a professional minister – whether Pastor or C.E.O. I think not.
I’ve told you the story before about the old quaker lady who was asked by a young admirer why she had never married. She had obviously been a beautiful young woman. “Had no proposed?” the young man asked. “Oh yes, many”, she replied. “o yes, I was asked, often, but none seemed suitable. Finally I decided that sometimes no man is better than any man.” Some of our members feel that way. They are in a minority but those of you who disagree need to hear their reasons for thinking this way.
Some of those who think you should not call a settled minister like me personally and liked some previous ministers but think on balance the congregation would better accomplish its mission if no one were designated, “minister.” Others feel that we would be better off electing one of our own members to perform the traditional ministerial functions as the Mobile congregation has done. I recently learned of a UUA program that prepares people for just that role in small congregations. Yesterday I received a letter from one of these “Certified Lay Leaders,” a former Pensacolian, MaryAnn Caudill-LoGuidece, who is serving the UU Fellowship of DeBuke, Iowa. She’ll be sending me a copy of a program developed by the Praire Star district. Our Canadian congregations have a similar program for small congregations as does the UUA. I AM NOT RECOMMENDING you choose that option but I do think before you as a congregation make a decision you need to look at ALL the options you have to improve the chances of UUCP being an even more “vibrant congregation.” Alternative options include, but, of course are not limited to:
1. Another “part time” Professional Minister, either “called” “forever” as I am now or a
2. “part time contract minister” as Rev. Phillips was. The contract is for one year with the option of indefinite renewal Or
3. A Ministerial Consultant who visits for a few days each month or
4. A shared minister or
5. (the proposal in the Action Plan), a full time, settled, professional minister like Rod Debs who is settling in as the minister of the Valparaiso congregation.
There may be other options – I’m sure there are - but they should all be on the table at the beginning of the process
I announced my intent to retire far in advance in order to give you plenty of time to consider alternatives so that if you do choose the , “full time, settled, professional minister” option, you will be able to meet the timetable set up by the UUA for securing one.
Let me be specific: If you want to go Full Time, Settled, Professional minister - route the board will need shortly after Christmas to invite the District executive and the Ministerial Settlement Representative and the District Compensation Consultant to explain the whole process to the congregation. If you choose that option, the board needs to prepare and the congregation will need to adopt an 04-05 budget that includes the costs of the search. The board will need to decide on a search committee selection process and schedule a congregational meeting to elect the search committee. If we’re going to follow the UUA recommended process, the cost of the search needs to be included in next year’s goal budget which needs to be adopted by the board by April, 2004 which may seem a long way off but it is not! If you want to have a good chance of getting the best possible ministerial candidate by April 2005 you need to elect a search committee no later than April 30, 2004. That’s only six months from now.
So, why did I made myself a lame duck by announcing my retirement so early? It was to give you the maximum amount of time to be in the best possible position to get the best possible minister. I never made it beyond tenderfoot when I was a boy scout, but I did learn that one should always, insofar as possible , BE PREPARED.
Which brings us back to the first question. Is a professional minister a necessity? Obviously not. Of the 36 congregations in the Mid South District 15 have no minister according to the district directory. As best I can figure only ten of the 36 congregations have full time ministers. The others either share ministers with other congregations or have a so called “part time” minister. Some congregations that could afford a full time settled minister elect to meet their needs for ministry in other ways. Some are actually hostile to ministers. Most congregations, however, when they reach a certain size, about 100 members, automatically start looking for a settled professional minister.
This congregation made the decision to do just that the year before I first came to Pensacola as your interim minister. When I arrived in September, a search committee had been elected. They hoped to have a candidate for the congregation to vote on before I left at the end of April. Even though they worked diligently and followed all the recommended procedures, at the end the search the committee was unable to find any minister who was willing to candidate for the position at the compensation offered. It looked as though UUCP would be returning to a totally lay led congregation for the next year. I was asked to stay for another year but Gerry and I “had other roads to travel. I recommended that the search committee see if the Emerald Coast Fellowship was willing to join Pensacola to share an interim minister. They were and Rev. Roy Phillips signed a contract to serve both congregations for at least one year with a one year extension possible. In March of 2001 Roy was invited to be the candidate for our Tucson congregation and announced that he would not be returning here for a second year. That’s when your governing board and the Valparaiso congregation invited me to serve you both for at least a year – with year to year renewal an option. It didn’t take me long to realize that serving two congregations sixty miles apart was not for me. It wasn’t so much the driving, or even having to be in the pulpit every Sunday – and missing the great programs you and ValP members and guests put on the alternate Sundays. All those factors played a role but the clinching factor was having to go to two sets of board and committee meetings. I’m a little ashamed to admit it, because it’s in the committees that the real work of the church gets done, but I do hate committee meetings – like most of you! But that’ was part of my job description. I was and am able to do it for one congregation, but not for two. Besides, it quickly became evident that the Valparaiso congregation already had the financial resources to call a full time professional minister. So I urged them on that course and they are celebrating the happy result now. I hope that all of you will have a chance to meet Rev. Rod Debs in the near future. I share the enthusiasm of the Valparaiso congregation. He will be their first, full time “settled” minister.
The issue of full time verses “part time is largely a matter of money. The issues of “settled” and “professional” are not. In the sermon I preached in 1999 I concluded that professional ministry was not a necessity but that it was more than a luxury. I felt then and I feel now that Professional ministry adds a great deal to what a congregation can do without a professional minister. I suggested three “added value” items a congregation gets when it calls a professional minister. They get a:
1. A Preacher/Pastor.
2. A “speaker for the dead” and
3. An Alpha Baboon
If I were to evaluate my ministry so far I would give me a C plus on the third item. I’m not a very good alpha baboon. One of you commented the other day that I never miss an opportunity to mention my age. I agreed and further confessed that it was probably because I do enjoy being told that I don’t look my age. But the fact is I don’t have the b..l s - testosterone – to get out in front and say, “This we should do!” That indefinable quality called “Leadership” is not my strong point. Never was. So I’m satisfied with the C plus. And, whether a rationalization or not, we are a democratic organization. I have bully pulpit to persuade but I won’t push or play politics and sometimes that is necessary to get things done. Sometimes the sledge hammer must be used to get a quick result.
On the second “added value” that a professional can add I give myself an A plus. I’m a darn good “speaker for the dead.” That may be because history is my passion. And I love sharing my discoveries of our wonderful past. It’s been especially gratifying in 2003 the 200th anniversary of Emerson’s birth, the 200th anniversary of Tom Paine’s return to the United States that he did so much to create and the 450th anniversary of the first Unitarian Martyr, Michael Servetus. It’s also incidentally the 500th anniversary of the invention of Vodka but I don’t think a Unitarian invented that.
I hope you enjoy my excursions into our common past as much as I do but I’m not apologizing if you don’t. I think any liberal religious minister and especially a Unitarian Universalist one must speak for the dead. Why? To help us overcome the “new is always better” syndrome. To help us avoid perpetuating the mistakes of the past and to encourage us to emulate the courageous acts of our ancestors and to remind us that like our ancestors we too can be wrong.
And finally I would give myself a B plus on the first unique function of the professional settled minister, that of the Preacher/Pastor. I wrote back in 1999 that,
….
It's been my experience that most people are all too aware that they are sinners -that they fall short of their ideals. … What they need most is to be reminded that that they are also potential saints. The UU minister encourages, inspires, affirms, celebrates, rejoices, commiserates, comforts, yes and also challenges. He or she stands among the congregation as one of them, one authorized by them to "Preach" for them, not at them but with them, not against them but for them.”
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When I entered the UU ministry in 1963, I wrote that I wanted to be a Lippman rather than a Winchel. I meant I wanted to be a thoughtful evaluator rather than a scandal monger. I hope I am. I love trying to be an intellectual swamp drainer: to clarify, to suggest new ways of looking at something, to challenge unconscious assumptions, to propose off the wall solutions, to simplify, to evaluate, to categorize, to prioritize. All these are benign and sometimes useful skills. But they are not preaching. Any number of you can be "swamp drainers" in some area of intellectual confusion. But you cannot be "Preachers." Just like Baptist Preaching, UU Preaching aims for change in the listener. Not change by coercion or shaming, but change by rational persuasion and moving challenge. That is what "freedom of the pulpit" is for.
You give that privilege to no one but your professional minister. You won't take Preaching from a "mere layman." Only from one whom you have elevated to the office of preacher.
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Harry Emerson Fosdick wrote a book, long ago, called Preaching as Counseling. A Professional … UU minister should always keep in mind that on every Sunday morning there is at least one person in the congregation fighting despair, another harboring hatred, a third twisted by guilt, a fourth ridden with envy , and a fifth and sixth and seventh suffering some form of pain and looking for surcease. No preacher can sense or meet those needs every Sunday, but he or she must somehow comfort and communicate from the pulpit that there is help available. The preacher must never send a hurting soul out in greater anguish.”
As you begin the process of deciding what UUCP will do “After Bob” I hope you will keep these words in mind. They represent what I have tried and will continue to do from this pulpit. I hope my successor will do the same.
Fini