HOW WE DO CHURCH

I am so happy to be back in this pulpit, looking out at your dear faces. It’s my feeling, as a pagan-ish person, that one should get oriented at the beginning of a thing... Who are your ancestors? Where is the thing you are gathered to celebrate? Where is that star you steer by? What is your intention? If those things are clear then other things fall into place. I want to talk a little, here at the beginning of this part of the church year, about how we do church. Why do we do this? What are we hoping for? What do we expect? What do we fear? What should our stance be as we come to this place?

Our Unitarian and Universalist ancestors are the liberal Christians and heretics of the Reformation, during the 1500’s in Europe. The Unitarians and the Universalists were both Christian denominations until the 1800’s. Unitarians proclaimed that Jesus was a great rabbi, but not God. God was to be worshipped and that was it. The Transcendentalists joined the movement, declaring (influenced by Buddhist and Hindu teachings) that God was in everything. So the Unitarians have been a mix of Christianity and Eastern religions for the past 170 years. The Humanist influence on the Unitarians began in the 30’s, as Biblical scholarship began to pole holes in claims of inerrancy of the scriptures. Imagining a world without religious wars, without faith-based limits put on scientific endeavor, without the anti-intellectualism of some religious conservatives, Humanism holds tremendous appeal to Unitarians. In 1961 the Unitarians merged with the Universalists, who were a Christian denomination, a Jesus-worshipping denomination, whose main message was that no one gets sent to Hell for eternity. That’s till real good news around these parts! The Universalist strengths of community, spiritual inclusiveness and love made a good balance for the Unitarian strengths of reason, rationality, individuality and democratic process. That’s where we came from, and I believe we are called to honor our ancestors and to stay in touch with where we came from.

. Now here we are, and who are we? We are the voice of liberal religion in Spartanburg. Conservative religion has shaped the content of sex education in our schools, it is shaping the civil rights of gay people, and it is shaping the sense of so many in this community that they are in danger of eternal torment when they die. We must raise our liberal religious values to the forefront and take part in these conversations.

August 2, 2005

-Dear Rev. Meg B.,

-I feel compelled to tell you about a "witnessing" incident in Chesnee today at the Chesnee Fine Arts Center (CFAC).

-I was looking at the hand-made jewelry display near the cashier's counter while we three ladies were trying to establish an understanding of who we were and how we related to each other. The younger lady told me that her husband was the Baptist preacher at Cooley Springs and I said that when I lived in Chesnee I went to the Chesnee First Baptist Church. That's when the "watch-a-ma-callit" hit the fan. The preacher's lady asked me what church I went to in Spartanburg.

-Thoughts went through my head like lightning. The first one said, "It's none of your business where I go to church in Spartanburg." But, after all, I had volunteered my attendance at the Baptist Church in Chesnee so that thought was not valid. The next thought said, "Well, after all, I am an Episcopalian. I'll admit to Advent. That should be acceptable here." But I don't go to Advent.

-Therefore, I shall return to the original question. I looked up from my perusal of the hand-made jewelry this morning and said, "I go to the Unitarian-Universalist Church in Spartanburg." There were a few moments of silence while I continued to look at the jewelry. I had just about decided that the preacher lady was going to accept my statement as made, and I was ready to move on to the next exhibit when she said, "I don't know exactly what the Unitarian Church is." She said something else here but I don't remember what it was. I think she was trying to tell me she was sorry that she didn't know what my Church was. Now, it was up to me.

-I swallowed and said, "Well, in my church we don't have a creed that says we have to believe one thing." Immediately, she said, "Do you believe in God who died on the cross and rose from the dead so that we can all go to heaven who believe in Him?"

-I said, "I think you are talking about Jesus, not God."

-She said, "But Jesus as God in the Trinity." She didn't give me time to discuss this but said, "Do you believe in Heaven?" and I said, "I don't believe or disbelieve in Heaven. I don't know if there is a Heaven or Hell, and you don't either. You have faith that there is a Heaven and that's okay. But I don't. In my little Episcopal Sunday School in Whistler, Alabama, my Sunday School teacher taught me all about the streets of gold and the jewelled roofs in Heaven and that kind of dazzling and beautiful stuff, but I wasn't much older before I knew that she was spinning some lovely fairy tales." Fairy tales are okay, too, but I'm afraid I'm too old for them now - not that I'm saying the Bible is full of fairy tales, of course, but it does have a lot of myths in it. Good myths and probably all of them with a lot of truth in them - but, no, I don't believe in the heaven you probably live for.

-It was then that she said she was sorry for me.

-She also said to me, "Don't you want to know that you are going to Heaven?" And I said, "I don't think about it. I think that the teachings of Jesus are the best teachings of anyone I have ever known and I try to live my life in the way that Jesus taught us to live. I try to love and care for everyone even though I might not like them; I try to be compassionate; and I have tried to teach my children to be kind, compassionate and loving. I take great care of the little piece of earth I live on and the people who are a part of me, and I leave it to God to decide what is going to happen to my soul after it exits my body. And I leave it to God and other people to care for their souls.

-The preacher's lady kept trying. She talked about Jesus and his teachings and I enthusiastically agreed with her. She talked about Jesus dying on the cross and I agreed with her. And then she talked about him being resurrected and rising into Heaven, and I disagreed with her. I said, "I'm sorry. I would truly like to believe that Jesus walked out of that tomb and rose to Heaven but I don't. I always - even when I was a little girl - stopped talking when the Creed said, 'and on the third day, He rose again from the dead.' I just don't believe it and I don't think it's necessary to believe it in order to go to Heaven if there is a Heaven. And I don't think that I will go to Hell just because I don't believe Jesus' rose from the grave and ascended, bodily, into the sky. In fact, I don't believe there is a Hell after death." ……

-When I tried to describe the Unitarian Church to this lady, I said that it was a community of people who come together to worship in their own individual ways and connect with others who share their wish to be a part of God and His/Her universe. I said that the community is composed of some Episcopalians, lots of Baptists, a few born Unitarians, some atheists and agnostics, and even a few pagans, but it is a Church in that we are all searching for something bigger and better than any of us can be. We are searching for God. …….However, spiritually, my place is in the UU community and, of course, my "widow's mite" will continue to work toward developing a strong liberal voice in our larger community. The Good Lord knows we need it!

Meg E.

Our mission statement says: “The Unitarian Universalist Church of Spartanburg is a liberal religious congregation. Celebrating our diversity, we covenant with one another to search, to serve, to grow, and to love. By living these ideals, we are changed, we empower our children, and we transform the world. We invite all seekers to explore our compassionate and vital faith.”

What do we celebrate? A loving God, the God of every religion who has many holy names, and whom no one understands and no one can describe. We celebrate the Spirit of Love, the Spirit of Truth, we celebrate the democratic process, with a goal of valuing each person, letting each person be heard, with a goal of having respectful conversation which is one of our unofficial sacraments--along with coffee.

One of the books I read over the summer, “The Almost Church,” said UUs need to have the power to change people for the better, to send them out into the world with good news and a healing hand. We need to be less afraid of offending people, stake an unembarrassed claim on church members to fund the mission of the church with their time, their passion, and their money. As many as two-thirds of members in most churches, he says, can be defined as observers rather than participants in the ministry and mission of the church. Churches see members as consumers of services rather than as co-owners of the church, supporters and ministers of the mission of the church. I think this congregation is doing lots better than that. I am hard pressed to think of more than a handful of members who are not holding up at least a little part of the sky for everyone else. I need you to help me look at that this year, to think how we can continue to invite people to lend this community their passion so both they and the community can prosper. In the ten o’clock hour, many of the church’s working groups will be offering donughts to you as you look around to see, if you are wanting to be part of what this church is, what kinds of things they need your help to accomplish. If you are a member, and you are not helping much, I call you to explore where your skills and passions and the needs of your community might intersect.

“The Almost Church” says churches are going to shrivel without funding in coming years because people in my generation are unskilled financially, addicted to consumer culture, living on credit, amassing debt and hoping that the value of our homes and investments will cover the slack. Eventually. We are living without financial power, so our churches will be without the power to fund their mission and their voice as the older members pass the torch to the younger ones. I need you to help me think about how to keep this from happening to our congregation. This has always been a financially sturdy congregation, and I would like us to continue to grow in strength.

We are doing so much right. Next Sunday we are breaking ground on our new sanctuary. It’s going to be beautiful. We need to think together about what color it will be, and that decision will be made Wednesday. night, so take a look at the “photo” and see if you like it or if you’d like something else, then either take a drawing and color it or come to the meeting here at 6:30 or 7?

Here’s something else we are doing right. I had a chance to talk to Keith Kron, head of GLBT ministries in Boston. I told him our congregation was maybe 25-30% GLBT, and how did that compare to other UU churches across the country. His jaw was slack. 5%, he said. Most churches would be really happy with 5%. You are doing something right. Your congregation must feel pretty safe. I was glad. I knew you all were something special.

My friends, this church is necessary in Spartanburg. We need people to talk to. We need not to feel alone in our questions, alone in our thoughts. This is the place where I can preach that I believe in God, and that what I name God is the spirit of love, order, creativity and flow that runs through the Universe. I think it got here because love never is destroyed, that every act of love that ever was, between a man and a woman, between a father and a child, a grandmother and a baby, a gorilla mother and her baby, wherever love serves and promotes and protects and listens and soothes, that love that rises up from the heart never leaves the world. It joins with the Great Love and it loves in the Universe, and it loves us and the earth and the rest of it all, even though we don’t know what that is. I want to be tuned in to it, swimming in it and filled with it and I want that for you too.

by Meg Barnhouse

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