April 2006 Archives

Some pics from final candidating Sunday at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of San Diego.

The rain was heavy last night, and my early morning walk was washed out. The sun came out just before lunch.

This evening, I walked up Bourbon Street with its many t-shirt shops, bars, strip joints, bars, rib joints, bistros, bars, creole bistros, bars, oyster houses, bars, jazz venues, and hotels. It was noisy and crowded. It is a great place for people watching.

I walked away from Bourbon Street up quite streets such as rue St. Louis, and the noise and crowds were behind me. I found the contrast between the hustle of Bourbon Street and the tranquility of the neighborhood educative. I circled back and came around to a part of Bourbon Street several blocks from my hotel.

The meetings were intense, today was budgeting and event planning. Yesterday's meetings were big questions, struggling with how the Unitarian Universalist ministry will respond to the future of the UUA.

Before the decade is over the UUA will begin changing the way we govern ourselves, and what we expect of our leadership. Policy governance is coming to our Association of Congregations. That will mean that the Board assumes more of a role than has been true since the merger, and the executive will become more accountable for clearly articulated goals.

I predict that some of our venerable institutions will be shaken to the foundations. Are twenty districts the best way to deliver services to the local congregations? Does proximity give rise to lateral relationships? Are solo ministries the best way to grown small churches? Change is coming to a denomination near and dear. Don't be afraid of some change.

Marjorie Bowens -Wheatley preaching her first candidate sermon at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of San Diego, California.

We are staying in the French Quarter. In between meeting we walk around this old city turned tourist trap, the hotels, eating establishments, local groceries, bars, strip joints, jazz bars are all up and running.

Stopped and talked to a tea shirt vendor, he said that folks got to come to New Orleans. His rent for the tiny, stall like store front is $12000 a month. Without more tourists he won't sell enough t-shirts and won't be able to pay his rent. Not the place to rent a storefront for a new start ministry.

Outside of the French Quarter there are many blue tarp roofs, and demolished blocks where houses used to stand. FEMA temporary housing is very visible. Maybe Thursday I will be able to get on a trolley and see some of the residential areas. We are meeing with the local congregational leaders, but being in meetings means we stay in the French Quarter.

I have been here before, but having just come from San Diego, I was struck by how old this city looks. Old and congested and dirty is what I thought. And then I remembered New York, Boston and Montreal. Not older, or more congested or dirtier than them, it just that I have been in new cities, with sprawl and managed zoning and tough cops that arrest litters.
The jazz festival is Friday, and I will be back in San Diego as Marjorie completes her candidating week.

Today we will fly to San Diego, California. My partner and spouse. Marjorie Bowens-Wheatley, is the candidate for Settled Associate Minister at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of San Diego. She is excited about this new opportunity for ministry.

On Sunday she will preach her first candidating sermon, and there will be a question and answer forum after the two services. She will be exhausted.
On Monday I will fly to New Orleans for the Unitarian Universalist Minister's Executive Committee meeting. We will be meeting with C.E.N.T.E.R. the minister's continuing education program, We will to review and establish priorities for the next three year period. The Executive meets with C.E.N.T.E.R every three years, so there is lot to cover.
On Friday I will fly back to San Diego, and I will be with Marjorie as she finishes of her week. I have every expectation that it will be successful, so we have been planning to move to San Diego for the last month.
My plan is to return to interim ministry, especially serving congregations in the Southwest. Congregations in transition are especially open to looking at their visions and missions and re-covenanting to define membership responsibilities and behavior. It is very concentrated way of doing ministry, and I am always learning new skills when I am engaged in managing transitions.
I don't know if I will have much time to post until May. I will try to post from New Orleans at least once.

I spent the last few days at the Interim Minister's Annual Seminar.  It was held just North of Sarasota, Florida so it just drove down to the retreat center.  Like many UUA events it was meetings from morning through the evening, so it wasn't exactly a retreat, despite the setting. 
On Tuesday, we had a seminar on personal management,  which I found very useful.  I wished I had such a seminar in theological school,  Supervising staff is one of the most difficult things a minister does.  I have supervised administrators, music directors, music staff, and religious education directors and religious education assistants.  If a member of the staff is not performing, I have been expected to somehow change their performance.  If the religious educator is discouraging the religious education teachers, it is the minister who must fix the religious educator.  Sometimes that has meant termination, sometimes the staff member can be instructed in a way to change their performance.  We were taught how to be proactive in communicating expectations and how to be clear about goals.  I found it very useful. 
Why are interim ministers taught this, and not settled ministers?  The training of the interim ministers is much more direct,  these are the problems that will occur in the year that you are with a congregation.  Making changes in the staff is often left to the interim year.  Settled ministers are more conflict averse, disciplining a popular but incompetent staff member might cause waves in the congregation.  The interim minister has a short term contract, so the interim is already fired. 
The Wednesday, we had a training on the use of appreciative inquiry in managing transitions.  I had heard of appreciative inquiry, and it seemed like a useful tool, but I had no deep training in the AI prior to this.  Now I understand that this a first cousin to narrative therapy,  Both assume that we mediate our understanding of the world through social constructions, and that some social constructions are limiting, while others are empowering.  We help people tell a new story,  a story that allows them to see themselves as capable people.  We are trying to prompt people to adopt a new way of understanding their world, that will lead to constructive change. 
I am very interested in learning more about appreciate inquiry.  I believe it has tremendous potential for helping congregations that are trying to make positive changes. 

I continue to ponder these words.  Violence is the act of violating some other creature.  It is a purposeful act to humiliate, subdue, and assert domination over another creature.  Seeking non violent solutions to situations of conflict ought to be a principle of human conduct.

I make a distinction between violence and the use of force.  If I seek to arrest, restain, or deter a violent person, a criminal, but have no intent to destroy that person, that is necessary force, but it is not violent.  To be non violent is not to advocate no defense against violators,  it simply argues that one must seek non violent means.  I have seen non violent police (in Canada.)  They were able to use necessary force, but that force was limited and intended to deter and stop violence not to contribute to it. 

Is it a matter of definition?  Or is it a matter of difference in understanding of Unitarian Universalist principles?  How can violence be compatible with Unitarian Universalism?

Still, I find the phrase "in any form" problematic.  If I lose my temper while defending myself against a predator, ethically I am using force, but in my heart I may be engaged in violence.  My spouse and partner said she is categorically opposed to the death penalty, but she confess that she has felt "exceptions"  when confronted with vicious criminals.  She is for non violence, but experiences the urge to revenge emotionally.  I have as well.  Shouldn't we be urging Unitarian Universalists to strive to use non violent means, rather rejecting violence in any form? 

We are emotional creatures.  We are capable of ethical action as well.  We strive to be ethical, and to cherish those emotions that contribute to human betterment.  We minister to those emotions that are destructive to ourselves and others, they are part of who we are, but they do not justify vile conduct.

At our most recent Florida District Annual Assembly the theme speaker, Rev. Kim Crawford Harvie, and the programming were dedicated to spiritual practices. We spoke about mediation, prayer, and other disciples that develop habits of the heart that open us to transformation and the spirit. The delegates were open and curious, and engaged in the various workshops with enthusiasm.

How we have changed. It wasn't that long ago when the idea of the spiritual was controversial among us. At this meeting delegates talked about humanist spirituality as one way of being spiritual among many. How we have changed. This is Florida. Florida Unitarian Univeralism has had it virtues, but it has not been known for its openness to theological language and spirituality.

Our congregations have been listening and struggling over the last decade, not everyone is comfortable with the "language of reverence" but the discussion has liberated so many Unitarian Universalists to talk about their spiritual lives and use those words that were once "banned" as being too religious for Unitarian Universalist. We can now say at a District Assembly let us pray, and Amen. How we have changed.

Thank God Almighty free at last!

Not to long ago I posted on search committees. Why do search committee's have so much work? One reason is the turnover of ministers. Average all the ministers, long term and not so long term and we have an average of 8 year settlement.

So congregations are constantly searching for ministers, interim ministers work to help the congregation identify the problems that might cause turnover. But some of those problems are endemic to our culture. The following are statistics for ministers across denominations, but many Unitarian Universalists would say "me too!"

90% of pastors work more than 46 hours a week.

· 80% believe that ministry has affected their families negatively.

· 75% report a significant stress-related crisis at least once in their ministry.

· 90% feel they were inadequately trained to cope with ministry demands.

· 70% say they have a lower self-image now than when they started.

· In 1995, the profession of "Pastor" was near the bottom of a survey of the

most-respected professions, just above "Car Salesman."

· 50% of ordained clergy have considered leaving the ministry in the last three months.

· 50% of those who go into fulltime ministry drop out within five years.

http://www.eugenevdebs.com/

He was sent to prison for opposing World War I, and while he was in prison he ran for President.

I wonder.  If I examine my own feelings over time.  I have reacted with anger toward the pacifist position.  Why?  Because pacifists are arrogant?  No.  Because they demand that I be peaceful?  No.  Most pacifists are quite benign.  I wonder.

I pick it up in comments about the proposed Study Action on Peacemaking.  The pacifists are going to make us debate this thing.  One wise minister expresses the feeling that putting the question in such with such clarity is manipulative!  It will make us go to plenary and discuss this idea, an idea which most of us already reject.  We would not otherwise go to the plenary.  Thus we are manipulated. 

Only some of the questions in the Study Action Initiative pose a pacifist challenge.  Pacifists are a minority, does that mean that they should shut up?  Does it mean we should not discuss a pacific option because most of us want to keep our options open?  Many of us think that we might find something to fight for or against some day.  Not now, but some day.

If I examine my feelings I think that part of my anger with pacifism is my own inner pacifism.    I find my principled just war reasoning to be more comfortable,  but when I put on that just war theological hat and look at real wars in real history I conclude that there never has been a just war.  No war in history has ever been "just"  given an honest application of the religious communities criteria for "Just War."

I ask another wise minister for her opinion, she was instrumental in bring the Study/Action Initiative to us this year.  She believes that many of us are anxious about this proposed study action proposal because it challenges us to self examination.  Most of our Statements of Conscience have been about "them."  This is about us.  We are asked to study a question that will ask us to look at our own propensity for violence, and what is a principled rational for just war.

I suspect those who think that the U.S. Civil War, or World War II or the American Revolution were just wars will be challenged to do some more reading in their history.  Did they miss what many others have found unjust about these wars, or do they dismiss fire bombing of Dresdan, the slaughter of Cherokee villagers to remove their potential threat (on orders of G.W. Washington) or the war of starvation ordered by Lincoln against the civilian's in the Confederate states.  All those are on the list of "do not do" for just wars.  Just war theory doesn't say "have just motives,"  it commands us to fight with just means.  No attacks on civilians.  Limited means to achieve clear ends.

What that has left me with is a just war theology looking for a just state power to implement it.  Why am I angry with my inner pacifism?  Because it judges me absurd.

John Buehren's wrote in response to the September 11, 2001 attack on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.  This is what he wrote:

Progressive communities, including Unitarian Universalist congregations, are prone to painful rifts between pacifists and pragmatists. During World War I, pacifists felt ostracized among Unitarians. Former U.S. President William Howard Taft, as moderator of the American Unitarian Association from 1917 to 1918, persuaded the General Assembly that all ministers and churches receiving aid from the AUA be required to support the "crusade for democracy." Pacifist ministers lost their posts in some places, and the distinguished New York Unitarian minister Dr. John Haynes Holmes actually left the AUA with his church.

During the Vietnam era, virtually the reverse occurred in some congregations. Pragmatists sometimes felt morally condemned by pacifist UUs. The current response to terrorism must not be allowed to have that effect. Let those UUs who would witness for consistent nonviolence do so as a matter of conscience. But let us also recognize that pragmatic reasoning about reducing the threat of terrorism can be conscientious as well.

I was a Unitarian Universalist during the Vietnam war.  The debate within our movement wasn't between pacifists and pragmatists.  It was between those who supported the U.S. attempt to use military force to affect its own preferred political solution, and those who saw such an effort as both immoral, and incapable of success.  The anti war UUs were just as pragmatic, as the pro war UUs.  The Johnson and Nixon administrations positions were critiqued not on pacifist grounds, but on their lack of pragmatism and principle.

What the then President of the UUA was doing in this editorial was "reframing"  history in order to argue that we should avoid a divisive struggle in our ranks over the right way to respond to Ben Laden's terrorist network.  But in 2002 we were afraid to discuss what was the appropriate and pragmatic response, and we continue to have a weak response to this day.  John Buehren's pastoral advice missed its mark,  our divisions post Sept 11, have not been pragmatists versus pacifists.

Let us study the response by Dana Greeley,  and the Unitarian Universalist leadership in 1967 and 1968 as they struggled with their response to Vietnam.  It was not a pacifist versus pragmatist debate.  It was a break with nationalism, it was the first time that our religious movement clearly stated that the state power was wrong.  We never had made that judgement before, and many of our members resisted.  The idea of supporting the President was pitted against "the President is wrong, and this war is a disaster."  That has nothing to do with pragmatism versus pacifism.  The question of a religious communities relationship to the state was being raised and it was a shock to our whole self understanding.

I recall when I realized that the government of the United States was pursuing policies totally in variance with my UU values.  I cried.  But my response was not pacifism.  It was furry.  And my logic wasn't pacific at all,  I realized that Vietnam was a  stupid, immoral, counterproductive war in practice. It failed the test of "just war."

Let us not frame our discussions about war and peace around false dichotomies.  Pragmatists can and do oppose particular wars.  But it is hard for many people to recognize that the United States government may pursue an unjust war.  Calling the critics pacifists and therefore "absolutists" who do not appreciate "real politics" only goes so far.  Someday some one will expose the author of such remarks as a bad pragmatist.  After all the pragmatic test is "it works."  And in both Vietnam and post Sept 11 the war that was fought hasn't worked and fails the just war test.

The Commission on Social Witness has brought forth one study action proposal this year.  It is entitled Peacemaking.

It is important that people read the proposed study/action.  Discussion can not go forward based on responding to  misquotes and snippets taken out of context.

The proposal asks us to discuss what may be the central ethical question for Unitarian Universalists (at this time at least.)  How do we as a religious community respond to war, to violence?  Reading the study action proposal makes it clear that there is no attempt to dictate a predetermined position, it does not proscribe a creed.

This discussion will deepen the theological understanding of our faith community,  and congregations that engage the questions will be encouraging spiritual growth, and enabling us to really work toward that world of peace and justice that we proclaim as a foundation principle.

Some of the reactions to this proposed resolution  I find puzzling.  If we have differences on a fundamental question, do we avoid talking about those differences?  Is it divisive to study and discuss?  Some of the same objections have been raised before.  When we began to tackle our own Unitarian Universalist institutionalized racism, some objected that the discussion will be divisive.  When we began to talk about our own practice of homophobia we were warned that the discussion would be divisive.  The same objection was raised when we began to look at institutionalized sexism.  Some of us are threatened by conversations that challenge our pet prejudices., but more of us are conflict adverse.  We avoid discussions about subjects on which there is disagreement because we are afraid the discussion might get out of hand.

Are there irresponsible people on all sides of this question that might inject moral posturing, jingoism, uncharitable comments about those who disagree with them, and factional organizing into our discussion?  Yes.  How do we handle disrupters?  Vote them down.  Rule them out of order.  The Unitarian Universalists have avoided discussions of theology and ethics because we are afraid of divisiveness, and then we refuse to make and enforce rules of civil conduct.

Discussions among Unitarian Universalists can be transformative, we may be in a different place relative to war and peace after this discussion than we are now.  Still, I can't imagine how we could become pacifists after a year of congregational study.  I have been working on becoming non violent for decades and I still have a long way to go.  Becoming a committed peacemaker is hard work,  this discussion will only clarify the issues.  Yet we fear transformative discussions.

Often those who fear discussion attack those who make the proposal for a transformative discussion by pretending to divine motives.  When Unitarian Universalists have raised questions of racism, sexism, and homophobia, the proposers were accused of wanting to make people feel guilty!  Such was not the motivation, rather Unitarian Universalists were seeking to promote activity toward overcoming institutional oppression.  This proposal for study/action does not and can not impose a creed, it asks us to discuss just war and non violence, it asks us to tackle means and ends.  It asks us to be a little bit more clear about a moral and ethical question.

I have coached students who were about to interview with the Ministerial Fellowship Committee.  When the prospect appeared anxious, they often began to project negative assessments onto the MFC:  things like "they won't like me cause I'm a Christian,"  or "they won't like me cause I'm a Humanist."  or "they won't like me cause I'm so young."  It went on, and on, self doubt, and coupled with a resulting negative assessment of the committee:  "they try to keep people like me out of the ministry."  I have found that logic doesn't convince the worried aspirant whose self involvement is preventing empathetic anticipation of the committee's generous reception.  I advise these students to pray for the committee, pray for each of the members by name.  A minister who prays for those with whom (s)he relates is less likely to be defensive (or the flip side of the defense, antagonistic) in relation with the committee.  Aspirants must learn to love the Ministerial Fellowship Committee. (There are non theist ways of praying,  aspirants know that, but other readers may not know that yet.)

Ministers who serve congregations must learn to love search committees, ministers should be in a prayerful relationship to these committees.  It is understandable that a minister who desires a position "to advance their career" might find this challenging, and begin to view the search committee as a "problem."    In a post and subsequent comments on the UU Enforcer we read that search committees want to protect the status quo and choose to call "safe" older ministers who will not make the power structure in the congregation look old.  The remark indicates a lack of empathetic experience with the dedicated Unitarian Universalists who serve on our search committees.  In my experience search committees want their congregation to grow, and they look to the pre-candidates to talk convincingly about that growth.

As a sometime interim minister, and sometime settled minister,  I have worked with six search committees as a consultant, and interfaced with over a dozen as an aspirant.  Search committees feel responsible to bring the best possible candidates to their congregations, and they are consider documents, references, and personal impressions.  They look for qualities in the prospect: wisdom, experience working with diverse and conflicted communities, proven good judgement, composure in the face of opposition, optimism in relation to congregation's prospects, initiative in getting things done, and their sense of the ministers personal energy.    In some of these qualities older ministers may have an advantage, it is harder for a young minister to be perceived as wise, and their paper work may show scant evidence of experience.  At the same time the older minister may have too much experience to fain optimism about the prospects of changing some of our congregations, and their aging bodies may cause the search committee to wonder about the minister's "energy."

I was speaking to a lay person in another congregation the other day.  She was on a search committee four years before and the young minister that they had chosen had proven to be a disaster.  The minister that they called was bright, energetic, and attractive.  She was a young married professional,  ideal for this congregation.  The town was filling up with young affluent professionals.  She would bring them in!  She had never had a successful congregational ministry before, but had glowing references from non congregational, institutional ministries.  The experience with that minister demoralized the congregation, and has left them with negative impressions  of the younger generations of ministers.  This is the third problem settlement in that congregation, all were young and full of potential.  (And she tells me that all their older interims have been wise. loving and devoted.)  I pray they will try again, a 30 something minister would be right for that community,  but I pray as well they look closer at the human being beneath all that optimism and energy.

Search committees have a stake in the success of the minister they call, (and interim search committees have a stake in the success of the interim.)  They make a choice, and that choice involves a risk.  What our movement needs are ministers both younger and older who think more of the good and welfare of the congregations and are less competitive towards their colleagues.  We do do ministry together.

Pray for the search committees.

This was preached in early March for a Sunday with an International Women's Day emphasis.