PROFESSIONAL MINISTERS:
NECESSITY, LUXURY, OR SNARE?

A sermon by Robert M. Eddy, M.Div.
Delivered 26 March 2000 for the
UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST FELLOWSHIP OF THE EMERALD COAST

READING
"Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models,
even those which are sacred in the imagination of men [.] Dare to love God
without mediator or veil. ... Thank God for ... good men, but say, 'I also am
a man.' Imitation cannot go above its model. The imitator dooms himself to
hopeless mediocrity. ... [Be yourself a newborn bard of the Holy Ghost, -
cast behind you all conformity , and acquaint men at first hand with Deity.
Look to [Deity] first and only [so] that fashion, custom, authority,
pleasure, and money are nothing to you ... [.] ..[L]ive with the privilege of
the immeasurable mind.
... visit periodically all families and each family in your parish
connection ... be to them a divine man; be to them thought and virtue; let
their timid aspirations find in you a friend; let their trampled instincts be
genially tempted out in your atmosphere, let their doubts know that you have
doubted, and their wonder feel that you have wondered.
For all our penny-wisdom, for all our soul-destroying slavery to habit, it is
not be doubted, that all men have sublime thoughts; that all men value the
few real hours of life; they love to be heard; they love to be caught up in
the vision of principles. We mark with light in the memory the few interviews
we have had, in the dreary years of routine and of sin, with souls that made
our souls wiser; that spoke what we thought; that told us what we knew; that
gave us leave to be what we in[ward]ly were.
from The Divinity School Address by Ralph Waldo Emerson, 15 JULY 1838
SERMON
If I were a Baptist rather than a UU minister I would have chosen a biblical
text from which to preach. I'm not a Baptist, but if I were to choose a
text for this sermon it would be a brief statement from one of the great
Baptist ministers of all time: Harry Emerson Fosdick, minister for many years
of Riverside Church in N.Y. City. He said, "It is the job of the minister to
comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."
Before I attempt to answer the question you find printed in your program, I'd
like to make an important distinction between an interim minister and a
"settled minister." I am the Interim Minister of the Pensacola Congregation.
They hope to have a settled minister by next September.
On October 29th, 1995, I was in a pew in the Unitarian Church of Albany, N.Y.
They were observing Ministry Sunday. In the pulpit was a professor of
Sociology who also happened to be a "P. K.", a preacher's kid. His topic was
"Why I am not a minister." I'd like to share a couple paragraphs from his
talk:
"It is part of the minister's job to make us feel uncomfortable. Moreover,
that responsibility does not end if others respond to their discomfort with
criticism of the minister. "Afflicting the comfortable" is obviously a
difficult and risky business. My father always seemed to view it as expending
what we may call 'ministerial effectiveness credit." You challenge and dare
until you use up your credit allowance, and then you move on to another
challenge in another congregation. What this often meant for my father ...
was that the seeds of change or growth he helped plant did not blossom until
well after he had left the congregation."
David G. Wagger
One of the reasons the UUA recommends that congregations hire an interim
minister is so the settled minister when she is called will have a larger
"credit allowance." No settled minister would dare be as "uppity" and
"meddling" as an interim minister can be and should be. The minister who
questions the familiar way of doing things is, as Dr. Wagger said, using up
his "ministerial effectiveness credit." That's why we have interim ministers
- to shake things up and stimulate change, to consciously "afflict the
comfortable". Sadly, many ministers in the past, my self included, didn't
realize that in "afflicting the comfortable" too early in our ministries, we
were greatly reducing our ability to "comfort the afflicted" over the long
run. We were "interim ministers without knowing it."
For a settled minister to have a long and productive ministry he or she will
if she or he is wise focus on "comforting the afflicted." rather than
afflicting the comfortable.
Now, to answer the questions announced:
Is a settled, full time professional minister a necessity for a UU
congregation?
No.
Many of our 1,000 congregations have no minister. Many other congregations
manage with part time or visiting ministers. I sometimes think our movement
would be better served if we had no "professional" ministers. The Quakers
have survived for 350 years without ministers - in fact they made life very
difficult for those they called "Hireling Clergy" in their early days. Now I
know there are "Friends Churches" with ministers, but the very fact that most
of you have never heard of them, is, in itself, a pretty good indication of
the power of a group that forswears "hireling clergy." Of course it's not
accurate to say that Quakers have no ministers for in a sense every Quaker is
a minister. But we're not Quakers, we're Unitarian Universalists and we
have a long tradition of "Hireling Clergy" - mostly an honorable tradition.
So, I want to share with you what I believe are some of the tasks of a
"settled" professional minister. Perhaps you haven't heard that term before.
Think about it: for it's embedded deeply in our tradition. The Methodists
tradition, in which I was raised and ordained, had an "itinerant" ministry.
When I was a Methodist minister, I expected the Bishop to move me every four
years sometimes sooner. When I became a UU minister thirty seven years ago,
I expected to stay put for twenty years or more. It didn't work out that way.
It seldom works out that way today but it is our ideal.
The settled, professional, UU minister is part of the congregation he or
she serves. His or her first loyalty is to that congregation - not to the
denomination - nor to his or her fellow professional ministers. Professional
UU ministers have more training, special skills, more responsibility than
other members of the congregation but they are in essence co-ministers with
every member of the congregation. Every member of a Unitarian Universalist
Congregation is a minister. You, those of you who are members here have a
ministry: The Pensacola Church defines that every Sunday. They say, "This
is our covenant: To dwell together in peace, to seek the truth in love, to
help one another". Pensacola UU ministers recite their ordination vows every
Sunday. Their settled Minister will share that ministry but unlike all of
you part time ministers, he or she will devote full time to that ministry so
the term I'm going to use hereafter is not just minister, not "professional
minister" but "full time professional minister". I'm going to describe three
of those special responsibilities that a full time professional minister
performs in a UU congregation. They are: Preacher, Speaker for the Dead, and
finally , Alpha Baboon. You'll have to stay awake to hear what I mean by the
last.
THE PREACHER
The full time professional UU minister is not a preacher in the popular
sense of that term. He doesn't harangue, accuse, demean, belabor or otherwise
verbally abuse his congregation. Nor is he, as an old Scotsman once said,
"Invisible six days of the week and incomprehensible on the seventh".
As I said earlier, I was raised in the American Methodist tradition which
grew out the 18th century belief that it was necessary to convince people of
their sin before you could them to "accept salvation". A full time
professional UU minister doesn't do that. He or she may hold up a higher
ideal than is the practice of the congregation but a full time UU minister's
attitude to sinning congregants, if I may use Theistic language, poetically
of course, should be "there but for the grace of God go I."
It's been my experience that most people are all too aware that they are
sinners. That they fall short of their ideals. They don't need to be
reminded of that: that they're sinners. What they need most is to be
reminded is 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.
One of the most common and most dangerous tendencies of full time
Professional UU ministers is to speak of the congregations they serve as
"them". There might be some justification for that in the Episcopal
traditions, but certainly not in ours. For us full time professional ministry
is an office, a role, not some kind of sanctification that gives one the
right to "sit in the scorner's seat" as the Hebrew Scriptures say.
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.
Now, the UU minister must also be a Pastor.
Harry Emerson Fosdick wrote a book, long ago, called Preaching as Counseling.
A Professional Settled UU minister should always keep in mind that on every
Sunday morning there is 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. I happen to believe that perhaps the
most important role of a full time professional settled UU minister is the
pastoral role, but that is a role he shares with the other minister/members
of the congregation - you too are ordained to "help one another." There are
unique ways in which "the" minister can be a pastor, but even those can be
learned by other minister/members.
A second important special responsibility of the full time minister is to
be a SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD.
Someone has said UU's are not "people of a book", that we have a loose leaf
'Bible' The nearest thing we have to a Bible or Torah or Koran is this - our
Hymnal: "Singing the Living Tradition" It saddens me that our UU Hymnal is
bound for we are unbound! "Revelation is not sealed"! was an affirmation
popular in UU congregations two generations ago. We still believe it, don't
we? Our ancestors followed "truth, known and to be known!." Some of our
congregations stress new truth. Others stress older truth. The covenant you
recite each Sunday commits each of you to "seek the truth in love." I like
that.
I also like the covenant that the UU Fellowship of Boulder recited each
Sunday. Let me read the whole of it so you can get the context:
"We, the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Boulder unite to uplift the
spirit, to nurture the intellect and to enhance the common good.
To these ends we affirm our Unitarian Universalist Faith:
in freedom tempered with responsibility,
in truth seeking tempered with tolerance,
in justice tempered with compassion and
in tradition tempered with new understanding"
That seems to me an excellent expression of "our Unitarian Universalist Faith
especially the last line. "Tradition tempered by new Understanding". Not just
tradition and not just New Understanding, but "Tradition tempered by new
understanding. "
What is tradition? Tradition is the voice of the dead. It is our link with
our past - glorious and inglorious it may be but it is ours nonetheless. We
may have roots like a banyan tree, as I said to the children but we have
roots nonetheless. It is the function of the full time UU minister to draw
nourishment through all those roots for the congregation.
Our hymnal is filled with voices from the past. Part of the role of the
professional minister is to let those voices speak again, loud and clear. And
it is not only because their words are often the most cogent and powerful
expressions of eternal truth. They also remind us that "there's very little
new under the sun", an antidote to a modern form of "hubris": the notion that
whatever is new is automatically better. In many ways the typical American
has become de-cultured. I don't mean he or she is vulgar. I mean that many
modern Americans have to "reinvent the universe every morning".1 Without a
sense of being rooted in time, we, as individuals and as a culture become
victimized by the latest pretense to profundity. That's what much of so
called new age religion is: not new age religion but age old scam .
People who have a sense of rootedness are not taken in by charlatans. They
know the difference between an authentic exponent of - say the Buddhist
tradition - and a charlatan. BEWARE OF FALSE PROPHETS. The first special
responsibility of the professional UU minister is to be a Preacher/Pastor.
The second of the functions of the professional UU minister is to be a
speaker for the dead.
And finally: a third major responsibility of a professional UU minister is
to be
THE ALPHA BABOON.
Now, please don't accuse me of calling you Baboons. You're not, and neither
am I, but like Baboons we are social primates. I could simply have said that
the the full time minister must be a leader but that would hardly have kept
your attention all this time. And leadership has many diffuse meanings. I
wanted stress one special aspect of leadership.
Like the baboons we humans in groups tend to choose a leader, an "alpha" who
gives focus to the group's intent. A UU Church's "alpha baboon" is not the
President of the Congregation. It is "the" minister. The professional
minister, like the alpha baboon, stands up and by virtue of his colorful -
personality - lets the group know it's time to get up and do something.
I use the Baboon analogy for another reason. It helps me counter "Pernicious
Professionalism". We Alpha Baboons- I mean - we professional UU ministers -
tend to think that we keep our leadership role by virtue of superior mental
or spiritual qualities. It's not true. It's simply that we have been chosen
by our fellow UU's in a congregation to be "the alpha baboon" and when we
cease to lead appropriately or become too old or impaired to fulfill that
responsibility, we will be replaced by another "alpha baboon".
CONCLUSION
There are many more special responsibilities UU congregations give their
professional ministers but time requires I stop here.
You are just beginning the process of choosing a new professional minister.
It's a long process and although the end result is very much like a marriage,
it's an arranged marriage. You will elect a marriage broker - a search
committee- and tell them what you would like in a professional minister. The
broker doesn't bring you a bevy of beauties - or hulks - from which you
choose. The Search committee examines the field of persons trained and
available, narrows the list down to three, meets with and hears those three
speak and then invites one of them to spend two Sundays and the week in
between getting to know you. At the end of that visit, you vote whether or
not to call that person to be your minister. The search committee does not
choose. The entire congregation chooses. It's not "'til death do us part",
though that's the ideal in our tradition. And it is more than hiring a
Preacher, a Speaker for the Dead and an Alpha Baboon.Calling a professional
minister involves entering into a relationship with a person who will do his
or her best to fulfill the special responsibilities you have given him, but
who will remain - like each of you a perfectly imperfect human being.
Like a married couple, your relationship with your professional minister will
ebb and flow. You will sometimes love one another passionately. You will
sometimes hate each other with equal passion. But you will choose. You co
ministers of the Unitarian Universalist fellowship of the Emerald Coast will
choose a new professional minister.
May your days together be long and good.