Finding Jewels

A Worship Service by the Reverend Mark W. Christian

Ministerial Settlement Representative

Presented to Pathways Church

Sunday Maay 27, 2007

Prayer and Meditation

I invite you to enter into a time of prayer and mediation—to put aside the business and busyness of the day and simply be.  Feel you breath rise and fall.  Connect with that inner source of being that some call the still small voice and be still within it.  Become aware of the feel of your body.  Feel the presence of others in this assembled congregation.  On this Memorial Day weekend connect not only with those who are are with us but let your thoughts turn to those whom you have known and loved who have died in recent years. Think of the look in their eye…the sound of their voice…the touch of their hand and know that they are never any farther from you than the sound and sight and touch you now know.

I am told that one of the traditions of this congregation is the opportunity to raise up those who we would hold with special care night now.  Our thoughts and prayers are with a friend of Glenda Gill's, Robert, who is in the hospital right now with a serious lung infection...I invite you to speak the names of others in this community and in your life that you would hold in special care with the gathered congregation.

As this time of prayer and mediation draws to a close—I offer you these words from Harry Meserve (SLT 496).

From arrogance, pompousness and from thinking ourselves more important than we are, may some saving sense of humor liberate us.  For allowing ourselves to ridicule the faith of others, may we be forgiven.  From making war and calling it peace, special privilege and calling it justice, indifference and calling it tolerance, pollution and calling it progress, may we be cured.  For telling ourselves and others that evil is inevitable while good is impossible, may we stand corrected.  God of our mixed up, tragic, aspiring, doubting and insurgent lives, help us to be as good as in our hearts we have always wanted to be.  AMEN

Reading

To Be of Use

Marge Piercy (In Good Poems)

The people I love the best jump into work head first without dallying in the shallows and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.  They seem to become natives of that element, the black sleek heads of seals bouncing like half-submerged balls.  I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart, who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience, who strain in the mud and much to move things forward, who do what has to be done, again and again.  I want to be with people who submerge in the task,  who go into the fields to harvest and work in a row and pas the bags along.  Who stand in the line and haul in their places, who are not parlor Generals and field deserters but move in a common rhythm when the food must come in or the fire must be put out.  The work of the world is common as mud.  Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.  But the thing worth doing well done has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.  Greek amphoras for wine or oil, Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums but you know they were meant to be used.  The pitcher cries for water to carry and a person for work that is real.

Finding Jewels

A Sermon by the Reverend Mark W. Christian

Ministerial Settlement Representative

Delivered to Pathways Church

Sunday May 27, 2007

Imagine walking down a street at night.  Light pools below street lamps.  The pavement shimmers.  Slivers of light cut through the darkness from beyond drawn drapes and closed doors.  A bit of movement catches your eye.  You approach a man.  He is crawling about on hands and knees.  He tells you he has lost something—a jewel of great value that he must find.  His life depends upon it.

“A jewel,” you think.  “Perhaps there’s a reward for someone who locates such a precious stone.”  The man is frantic.  His clothes are tattered—dirty from crawling on the dank street.  His fingers comb his hair in worry.  The look in his eye and the tremble in his voice convince you to put aside your busy-ness and take up the search.

After a few minutes you are convinced the gem is lost.  You try to tell him but he won’t hear it.  Remembering the possibility of reward, you again look in the same sidewalk cracks, in the same patch of grass just off the sidewalk.  No luck.  No jewel.  No reward. 

“A fools errand,” you mutter.  As you wander off, you overhear another who stops to help.  This passerby asks, “Are you certain you lost it here?  When did you last see the jewel?”  The man raises his hand and points in the darkness beyond the ring of light.  “Actually, I lost it ‘out there’ but this is where the light is good.”  “Well, I have a flashlight,” the new companion observes. 

All of that is my way of saying, “Welcome to ministerial search.”   Don’t presume that as a congregation you were necessarily the man looking for the jewel, the treasure hunter or the one with the right question and a flashlight.  Don’t presume as your Ministerial Settlement Representative that I am any of those characters in that story.  Don’t presume one of those characters, the light coming from the flashlight or the missing jewel, is the minister you will find at the end of this time of transition and search.

As the Ministerial Settlement Representative, I am here to assist you with the process for ministerial transition.  I am here to ask questions and to help you ask the right questions; to give advice and listen as you work out what form the next chapter of this church’s history will take.  I am not here to sell you a minister.  I am not here to broker a deal.  I am not even here to help you find the most talented or highest skilled minister you can get to come to Pathwasys.  My task is something a bit different.

My task is not to help you find a dynamic preacher, an ace fundraiser, a compassionate pastor, an administrative genius or an irresistibly prophetic voice for your community.  The minister you ultimately find may be one, some or all of these things…only time will tell.  That skill set, though, is not what I am here to help you find.  My jewel I am here to help you find the right “fit”—the minister who can be with you in authentic and deepening relationship.   Search is not easy—but rest assured that together we lots of flashlights, and several sets of spare batteries.

You make a mistake if you think the task is to lure the minister to Pathways who gets the highest marks on a particular set of professional skills.  If you set out looking for the minister who gets the best grades in a set of tasks—preaching, pastoring, fund raising, teaching, administration, public presence—you make a fundamental mistake.  If this is your approach, you are akin to the man on his hands and knees searching under the street lamp because that's where the light is best.  That is how it has usually been done—I think you’ll find that there aren’t many jewels hiding conveniently in the light.

Your gem is more likely to be found by looking for what we call “a fit”—someone who fits in with you.  I am deeply convinced your companion is out there—but congregations rarely find that companion simply by looking where the light is brightest.  The thing I want you to understand is that ministry is not about skills—it’s about relationships.  It’s not the skills aren’t important—it’s more that ministerial skills are shaped by relationship and skills without relationship constitutes some shallow and hollow.  The ministry I want to help you find will be deep and solid.  You deserve this.

I have never been in your church before.  Pathways has loomed somewhat Oz-like in our UU movement though.  It was an experiment—intentioned—well thought out—well funded.  Well, that’s the myth.  Fortunately, I have had the opportunity to know the Anthony, Rob and Christine—the ministers who served you.  I had the chance to know Myloe—the administrator who first opened your doors.  I have had a chance to meet your DRE Lisa and  some of your youth at the rally and the Jr. High Social Justice Con that the church I serve in Oklahoma City hosts. 

I do not believe you are an experiment.  You are a community.  You are a church.  You are a vital and living network of human beings.  All of our congregations are miraculous and chaotic and planned and destined for something we don’t quite have enough light to make out.  I feel certain that none of our churches would welcome the scrutiny and pressure you have faced since your conception.

You may think your purpose, the Pathways DNA, will lead you to a particular kind of minister with a particular set of skills.  I want to dispell that kind of thinking.  Your vision and mission, your DNA, is essential.  Using it in your ministerial search will be essential.  But, please, don’t think this means you are looking for a set of skills or a particular kind of minister—what you are looking for is someone whose understanding of ministry resonates with you and can build honest and authentic relationships with you, your  congregation and wider community.

I have served First Unitarian in Oklahoma City for six years now.  I was called to that ministry—not because I was the best preacher or teacher or fundraiser or administrator.  I am certain there were other ministers the search committee considered who surpassed me on those accounts.  I was called to Oklahoma City, and have had a good six years (so far) because of relationship more than skill.

That’s easy for me to say about Oklahoma City.  Relationship is easy for me there.  I grew up in that church.  Their DNA is my DNA.  My mother was the DRE and Administrator, my father served on the Board the year I was born.  I was married in that church.  I was in search with that church (and that church only) because I felt called in particular way to minister to those people, in that place, at this time.  Authentic relationship and a good “fit” usually doesn’t take the form it did for us in Oklahoma City…but congregations find good matches every year.

The experience in my previous settlement is probably more to the point.  When I was called to serve the UU Church of Las Cruces, New Mexico, I was exactly what they said they didn’t want.  They didn’t want someone in their 40’s—I was 40.  They didn’t want someone just out of “Div School”—we had to reschedule my visit because the date they arranged fell on day of my seminary graduation.  They wanted someone with “West Coast” style and sensibilities—I am about as “Okie” as they come.  They didn’t want someone whose theological focus was Christian.  My name IS Christian—more than that I view Unitarian Universalism as the left edge of Protestantism.  I don’t think they really wanted a male minister—certainly not a straight man.  Oops.  I was none of those things and still there was a fit.

The search committee, though, felt a budding relationship between us.  Calling a minister is not about checking off certain traits on a preflight checklist.  The point of this extended, sometimes confusing; costly and occasionally frustrating time is to find the minister who you wish to have live among you.  You are looking for the minister to whom you will open your lives—and who will open their life to you.  You are looking for the minister who can love you when you feel less than lovable, challenge you when you are certain, comfort you when you are broken and be afraid with you when terror strikes.  More than that—you are looking for the minister who will let you into their fears and let you soothe some of their pain from their struggle. 

These things constitutue a good “fit” and I promise you it is out there—but there is a reason we call it “Search!”  You are searching for someone to live among you—to marry and bury you, to share the joy of your children and grandchildren, to celebrate the successes of your life, to mourn your losses.  The ability to do these things—to build authentic relationship—can’t be found from a survey or checklist.  Surveys and checklists are marvelous for looking in the pool of light pouring down from the street lamp—I am convinced that jewels rarely hide where it is conveniently bright.

Truth time.  There are forces at play that you can neither predict or control.  For the most part you can’t control which ministers will be looking when you are in search.  You can’t change someone’s initial response, their prejudice, about coming to Pathways.  Many of my colleagues have “heard” of Pathways.  Sadly, “what” they have heard bears little resemblence to what really happened.  I believe this creates a certain presumption that must be overcome by search committee.  I have no doubt that the right minister is out there.  There are ministers who can understand that you are a real and vital community not an experiment—most certainly not a “failed” experiment. 

This minister is out there—but this piece of your birth narrative and history can become the elephant in the living room, an unaddressed barrier to Pathways finding the right ministerial relationship, if you don’t tend to it.  What you can do is be honest about the kind of relationship you want to enter into with a minister.  Good ministers are hungry for this.  This is not so much about “selling yourself” as it is about openly and accurately portraying who you are and the kind of relationship you imagine with your next minister.  A compelling vision of authentic ministry will attract authentic ministers.  I see it all the time.  An inauthentic portrayal, even if well designed and well intended, tends to result in matches that are pragmatic rather than authentic.  I urge you to be authentic—even romantic.  Settling for what “we can make work” can be damaging to congregation, minister and movement.

The way to find this fit, the way to find the minister who will create honest, open and affirming, relationships depends on the quality of the search committee you form.  There is no more important task in the life of your church right now than identifying the right people to be on your search committee.

There are some “Do’s” but lets start with some “Don’t’s”

Don’t put someone on the search committee because they had a conflict with the previous minister—even if they were right.  That doesn’t mean to only put people on the committee who got along with Anthony—it means don’t put someone on the committee because they had a conflict with your previous minister.  This is a remarkably common mistake.

Don’t put someone on the search committee who is passionate for only one aspect of church life.  Don’t put someone on the committee just to be the advocate for RE, Social Justice, Music, Worship Technology or any one program.  Put people on the committee who have a passion for part of the church—but don’t put someone on the committee who considers that Social Justice, RE, Pastoral Care—or any other aspect of congregational life—to be more important than the “whole.”  Pick people who are passionate about Pathways Church—members whose passion for the whole church takes the form of a commitment to RE, Worship, Public Advocacy…  Don’t pick people who come to church just because of any one aspect of the church’s life.

Don’t put people on the committee who can’t, don’t or won’t, follow through with difficult tasks.  Ego draws some to want to be on search committees.  Some want to control the process.  Some want to be “in the know.”  Some want to make sure “the picking” gets done right but once in place do little to further the process.  Some are seeking the prestige and power but are not  equipped to take on the awesome responsibility of search.  My experience is that most of you know, even if you don’t care to admit it, who among you are, in the words of Marge Piercy—“Parlor generals and field deserters.”  Sometimes these people can be very persuasive—even coercive—in their desire to be on a search committee.  Don’t buy into it.

Now for some “Do’s.”

Do seek a representative sample of the church.  Put some folks on the committee who have been around since your inception.  Put some of your newer leaders on the committee, too.  Put some on the committee who have been around U.U,’s for decades—but don’t make being a long term UU a requirement.  Put both “Come In’ers” and “Come Out’ers”—those who come to this faith from other traditions and those who come from the Unchurched Culture—on your committee. Put some of your wise elders on the committee.

The representative sample is about more than about tenure and church experience, though.  Seek gender, age, sexual, class and racial representation as well.  That doesn’t mean setting quotas—or even categories.  It means being as representative of the community as you can be.  To the extent that it’s possible, make the search committee look like the church.

Do appoint generous people to your search committee.  Notice I said generous—not wealthy…but don’t exclude them either!  Anyone who goes on a search committee needs to feel (and be perceived as) financially generous with the church.  A member’s authority on that committee will be undermined if they are perceived as weak in their financial support of the church.  Generosity lends an authenticity to search committee members that candidates have a way of sensing.  Generosity, here, is not measured in dollars.  I suggest that when it comes time to choose the search committee that each nominee be asked to figure out what percentage of their income they use to support the church.  In most cases financial support of 3% of their adjusted income or more is an indication of the kind of generosity that will garner the real confidence of the congregation, other committee members and candidates. 

One last “Do” for this list.  Do appoint your best members to this search committee even though it means them putting aside other tasks for a while.  Being on a search committee will take 5-10 hours per week—sometimes more—for close to a year.  Plan to have members of your search committee resign from all their other leadership roles.  This means other members will have to pick up the slack for some of your most motivated and able leaders.  Believe it or not this is a good thing—more people can lead than do—opportunity enters doors opened by necessity. 

Let me open another door, while I am at it.  I want to talk candidly to the church’s “retired” leaders.  I don’t mean those who have retired from their employment—I mean those of you who feel you have done your share of church work and its time to sit back and let someone else do it.  It’s not.  Getting Pathways to this point was difficult but now is precisely when your church needs your experience, insight and expertise.  This is no time for mothballs.  Consider serving on the Search Committee—at least come out of church retirement to take on the work of someone who is going to be on the Search Committee.  Finding that ministerial fit means no one—no one—gets to rest on their laurels.

Pick the best people to serve on your committee.  Challenge them to find the best relational “fit” for your church.  Don’t pester them—much of the search process by necessity operates out of sight of the larger congregation.  Appoint good people and trust them—they will serve you well.  Trust them even if at the end of a year’s search they say, “We didn’t find what we were looking for.”  It is far better to go another year in search than to call someone who these leaders don’t see as an authentic fit.  It is far better to go another year in search than to settle for what you can find just because the light was good there.

The soul of your church is searching for true relationship.  It is a time for boldness and a time to explore.  The difficulty of this time comes in trusting the dawning future more than anything that has brought you to this place in the life of your community.  My prayer is that you find your jewel—even if it hiding beyond the light.  Bring your flashlights—and remember the spare batteries.  AMEN