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I once was the mentor to very personable young man, a Taoist who had discovered Unitarian Universalism and wanted to be a minister. He didn't know much about the liberal Christian tradition which nurtured both Unitarianism and Universalism and what I found problematic, he didn't care. Anything that happened before he became a Unitarian Universalist was irrelevant to "his ministry."

He knew what kind of minister he wanted to be, and it had little or nothing to do with what Unitarian Universalists had been before he came among us. He was a new breed.

I offered my advice, and some tutoring. But I did not feel that this candidate was going to do as well as my mentee assumed. He went to Ministerial Fellowship Committee of the Unitarian Universalist Association (MFC) and he got a "3."

The MFC works hard to see the minister in all the candidates that it interviews. If it experiences a minister who it can recommend to serve Unitarian Universalist congregations it awards a "1" -which means "cleared for settlement." This is not a ringing endorsement, it simply says "we think this minister is ready for service to our congregations." If the minister who is interviewed is unprepared in one or more areas, but otherwise they experience the candidate as a minister, they award the candidate with a "2." This means do some work, document it, send it in, and we will clear you for settlement. No need for another interview.

The "3" means that we see the candidates potential, but find that candidate unprepared for ministry, come back when you are ready. A "4" means that the committee does not experience you as a minister in this interview, and we discourage you from trying again. But if you do the work, you can come back for another interview. If the committee awards the candidate a "5" then the committee is saying that they see no purpose in that candidate continuing to pursue ministry.

The committee told my student that they experienced a disconnect between his paper work and the person that they met in the interview. The paperwork constitutes the transcripts, recommendations, evaluations, and essays that the student submits, and the committee said that paperwork was impressive, but the person they met in the interview was disingenuous, and evasive. They told him that he did not connect to the members of the Committee in his interview, but seemed to think that he should perform for them.

He received a "3" which I took to be a yellow light, a warning that the committee experienced some of his relational arrogance and wanted the candidate to deal with this before they could recommend him for ministry. Ministers experience rejection all the time, and good ones learn from the experience and grow as a result.

But my student was livid. " They" had had their chance, "they" were guardians of the status quo, "they" lacked discernment, for he was a religious genius.

He didn't go back, nor is he among us contributing to Unitarian Universalism in any other way. Since most of whom feel called to Unitarian Universalist ministry will experience some kind of "rejection" along the way, I have concluded that the ones who actually become good ministers are those who experience these "rejections" as part of the discernment process. Those who reject anyone who gives them feedback, and who try to paint those who give hard feedback as their enemies have no ears to hear, and no eyes to see.

Yes, this story has been told again and again with the main character being a male Buddhist, female Humanist, Christian vegetarian, for both gay and straight candidates, and for white and candidates of Color and would be ministers who may even have gotten a "4." But we do have a lot of minister-want-to-be s who think ministry is something that is about them expressing their unique self, and don't think they need any evaluation or assessment to do that.

The Rev. William Sinkford, President of the Unitarian Universalist Association recently wrote about worship, the following is a selection:

In many congregations I visit, the sense of awe, the sense of reverence, are growing with the sense of celebration. And my sense of excitement is growing as our worshiping communities live out the promise of what our faith can be.
Sinkford refers to Unitarian Universalist communities as worshipping communities, and we often think of our congregations from that frame of reference. In this essay, he is arguing that there is a revival in the quality and excitement of the worship experience in many of our congregations, and change makes us stronger as worshipping communities.
Has religious community always been this way? Is this a permanent fact of religious community. Sinkford asserts:
Worship is the central act of the religious community-not committee meetings or coffee hour, despite jokes to the contrary. The root of the word worship is the Anglo Saxon for worth, and worship is the way we celebrate what we hold worthy. We UUs together hold many values worthy, so the emerging common elements in our worship may simply be the way we express our faith community's common ground.
Is our common worship actually the way we express our common ground? Is that why Sinkford asserts that it is the central act of our religious community? We are living in a time of unprecedented social and cultural change. Will worship continue to be the central act of religious community in the world that is emerging?
__________________________________________________
Organizing worship as an activity is not a universal characteristic of all human communities. Native American scholars agree that Eastern Woods indigenous peoples had no worship services before the conquest (before 1492.) The villages had rites of passages and celebrations, but no time was set aside to praise God, or celebrate that which is worthy. There are plenty of stories of Native people finding the notion of sitting down for an couple hours on a special day to relate the Holy absurd. "We live with the Holy," they replied, "every day and every activity is spirit filled."
Young men and young women were expected to have "original revelations of the divine" as part of becoming adults. The rite of passage that the conquerors culture has chosen to call "the vision quest" was not a search for a personal spirituality. It was a way of knowing essential for participation in the common life of the community. To be a wise woman or man was to be a spirit-filled person. Those who were not spirit-filled were not to be trusted--not trusted with the hunt, not trusted with care of the household, not trusted with community governance, not trusted with relations with other communities, not trusted in war.
Worship was the not the central act of the various communities of Eastern Woods indigenous peoples, but they were not less "religious" for their lack of worship ... at least not as we intuitively use the word €˜religion.'
However, the indigenous peoples of the Eastern Woods lived in societies that were not divided into rich elites and impoverished laborers, and which did not distinguish between sacred and profane. These societies knew no patriarchy. (All of these innovations the native peoples came to know after 1492, and it was then that they began to set aside time and places for worship.)
Let us think about the long history of the homo sapiens. I would suggest that for most of that history the spiritual life of human beings in community has had more in common with the indigenous peoples of this land than with peoples who organized "religious communities" separate and apart from the society as a whole.
Religious communities organized as voluntary organizations separate from society as a whole assume societies in which religion is contention with secularity, and/or with alternative ways of being religious.

The Rev. Mark Christian sent me a note.


Howdy,

Following the urging of a few folks--and my own curiousity--I have decided to add my name to the list of folks rearranging electrons into that post-modern info-formation called a blog.

I am trying to focus on issues around faith. What kind of faith do I/we possess? What does it demand? What are the paradoxes that faith creates. How do we sharpen and evolve our faith?

My goal is to keep entries very short--a few hundred words each. If you are interested feel free to pop in and leave me a note at http://freelyinfaith.blogspot.com/.

Mark Christian
First Unitarian Church
Oklahoma City, OK

Mark has a positive commitment to our Unitarian Universalist movement, he is able to see our faults and the strengths that we don't always use effectively. I look forward to a new colleague in the Blog-o-sphere. He already has a few postings.

Since the Divinity School was founded back before there was an American Unitarian Association, theological students have had a number of criticisms of their theological education. And sometimes they tell the school and sometimes something is done, but usually not.

In our time they bring their protest to the schools administration, or to the UUA's Director of Ministerial Credentials and for reasons having to do with power and priorities their good proposals become unheeded. Jess outlines some of the concerns of the current students at Meadville.

Who has the most interest in seeing that the students concerns are addressed? The Ministers who are currently serving are as a group very concerned with the quality of theological education, and with the future of the ministry. Most would agree with the list that Jess has put forward. Communicating with the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association that the candidate members are seeking positive program for change would be listened to, and there would be a response.

But change takes time, institutions need to make plans for 2009 right now, so students and ministers must be prepared for a programmatic approach to realize change. To make institutional change takes years of effort to build the consensus, to make the decision and implement the change. Most efforts at reform in the Unitarian Universalist movement go no where because the solutions require persistence. Students graduate and go off an become ministers, and new ministers have more than enough on their minds than to be concerned with the students back at the old school. The ministers who would be willing to work on the problems are a "out of touch" with the students and spend time trying to find ways to "get in touch." I had two interesting conversations at GA, the first with the UUMA Committee on Ministry for Anti Racism, Anti Oppression and Multiculturalism which was trying to figure out how to get in touch with students of color to offer mentoring. The other with some seminarians of color who were surprised that the UUMA was trying to offer mentoring, they had never heard of it. We made that decision three years ago I said, and then realized that is more than an eternity for the students.

But what about now? What about the present students who don't have the courses they need to prepare for ministry? There are some ad hoc solutions, grants for workshops, asking the local ministers chapter to help.

If one doesn't want to be forgotten in this Unitarian Universalist movement, one must speak up. Those of us who are working for better minister/student relations might be a little defensive that we didn't hear you when you were whispering to each other. But becoming aware of our own neglect and shortcomings is a common place in ministry, so bring it on.

TheLivelyTradition, Unity, The UUEnforcer and Chalice Chick have shared some thoughts about the proposed merger between Starr King School for the Ministry and the Meadville Lombard Theological School. I thought I would add a few observations.


1. Most students for the Unitarian Universalist ministry are enrolled in schools that are not "Unitarian Universalist theological schools." This has been true since the early 1990s, in those days Starr King and Meadville had small enrollments and were not generous in scholarship aid, and Harvard was becoming increasingly oriented toward training academics and less toward forming practicing ministers. Harvard in the 1990s had more students than either Starr King, or Meadville. But Harvard's enrollment of UUs has been declining, while Andover Newton has increased its enrollment of UUs. (It was substantial in the 1990s.)

It is a fact that we would not have been able to provide enough ministers to the congregations of our Association if we relied on Meadville and Starr King. The number of students has increased since the 1980s, and while Meadville and Starr King have increased enrollment their growth has not kept up with the increase in total aspirants. So since about 1991, their market share has gone from a plurality to a minority of all aspirants.

2. All theological schools whether UU or non UU are having financial difficulties. Denominational support has not been generous as it was in the middle of the last century. To overcome their financial problems they have increased enrollment to get more tuition, some of the schools have doubled in the last two decades.

The theological schools, UU and non UU, have admitted students who wanted to take some interesting courses to inform the students own spiritual seeking. Many of these students were affluent, "spiritual seekers" who had no vocation orientation. I was told by a faculty member at one the schools that has large numbers of UUs enrolled that most of the students had no interest in becoming ministers, not community ministers, not academic ministers, not parish ministers. Most of these students can pay their tuition out of disposable income. Some of these students will create some kind of non ordained, non fellowshipped ministry with no accountability to a religious faith community: they will be "spiritual directors," or "therapists." Many of these "not in the ordination track" students are Unitarian Universalists. The non UU schools who have admitted UUs for tuition have admitted UUs who were serious about ministry, and UUs who weren't.

3. The proposal to merge the two schools placed the administrative headquarters in Chicago. The proposal was prepared by a consultant and was not based on extensive interviews with UU ministers about the questions that really matter: what are we doing about the formation of ministers for this century? What is the role of the schools? What is the role of the ministers who are presently serving Unitarian Universalism, and finally what would like the UUA administration to do to enable theological education?

Those questions are not asked in the report, the report is narrowly focused on the assumption that Meadville and Starr King have a monopoly on quality theological education and that they would be better merged than remaining independent. That conclusion is not compelling, I have seen too many reports by consultants that were accepted at face value, so I want more examination and more discussion. I would like to see more involvement by thoughtful people who are not partisans of either of these two schools.

4. People who are advocating for a vision have an amazing ability to find statistics to support their conclusions. There is a study that says that Andover Newton graduates are the "most" successful parish ministers, but if we include community ministers then Starr King produces the most success. In both cases success is measured by survival in ministry over a number of years. But the merger consultant and Lee Barker have another statistic, they take a limited number of our largest churches and based on who is serving these churches observe that they served by graduates of Harvard, Starr King, and Meadville. They forget to tell us of course that more than half of our ministers with ten years in the ministry attended one of these three schools. We should add that even today that the graduates of these three schools have more ongoing connections (they are more likely to insiders) than all the graduates of other schools combined. I love statistics, but I am not gullible.

5. The rumor that the merger talks are on hold, because Rebecca Parker and Lee Barker have personality differences is gossip, gossip contradicted by the facts. I was in a meeting with Parker and Barker in which the two Presidents were more than cordial, where they both listened to some probing questions, and where they knew each other well enough to be able to say "that is a question that Lee has some insights on" and "that is one of Rebecca's main concerns in these conversations."

Parker and Barker are religious professionals pursuing different agendas and engaging in high stake negotiations. That they are "in conflict" goes without saying, that they have personalized the conflict was not borne out in their conduct. What was clear is that the two Presidents represented two different institutions and two different boards of trustees. The board of Meadville voted for merger. The board of Starr King voted for programmatic cooperation. Starr King wasn't interested in submerging themselves into Meadville, they have more students, and have restructured their internal organization to become "leaner and meaner."

As I see it the differences between Starr King and Meadville are strategic, not a personal conflict between Parker and Barker.

6. There is another player in these discussions that must be included, we need to hear the considered voice of the Unitarian Universalist ministry. The UUA President and Board can hire a consultant that comes to conclusions that help articulate the position of the UUA President and Board. The Boards of Starr King and Meadville have a responsibility to think about their institutions, and they may disagree about what is best way forward. But ministers have some idea of what works and what doesn't, and the only way that wisdom is tapped by the schools is through their alumni networks.

We need a way for experienced UU ministers to begin to think about what the future of UU ministry will be and what role theological education will play in that future. They might come up with a vision that goes beyond how to increase the market share of Starr King and Meadville among all those potential tuition payers.

7. Is it possible that UU schools might provide a better theological education for our future ministry if these schools were transformed and restructured? I think so. Is the present system of free enterprise theological education producing confident, entrepreneurial ministers who can lead pluralistic congregations from a position of theological depth and shared vision. I think not.

But the answer isn't necessarily institutional merger.

Chutney writes of the gifts and graces of ministers,  and relates that he was brought up in "a crossfire between free range charismatics" and Methodists so that "[o]ne half of my church life taught me that anyone with the gifts and graces for ministry was a ministry and that we are all called to be ministers. The other half taught me that ministry was something conferred by graduate professional degrees and power hungry old men with black robes."

Ministry flows from the mission of a religious community, it is giving concrete expression of the mission of that religious community.  All members of the religious community are called to give expression to the ministry of that congregation, but most religious communities have found that functionaries aid the community in giving expression to its ministry.  In most healthy congregations many members are doing the ministry of the congregation, but the congregation has authorized one or more individuals to lead the community, and to aid the members of the congregation in doing the ministry.  Let us call these functionaries clergy.  Clergy do ministry, and may have the title Minister.  All committed members of a religious community may be called to do ministry, but traditionally clergy have been authorized to teach and to lead the ministry.

The ministry of the clergy does not flow from individual feelings of being gifted and graced, but rather from a community recognizing those "gifts and graces" and authorizing that person for ministry (as clergy.)  If a religious community of charismatics authorizes someone with the gifts and graces as their clergy, presumably that community has some standard for recognizing those gifts and graces.  I think that it is goes without saying that different communities may designate different "gifts and graces" as essential to their clergy.

The tradition from which the Unitarian Universalists emerged created an association wide process for the formation, education and authorization of ordained and fellowshipped clergy.  That tradition has included seminary education for more than a century.  While many Unitarian Universalist lay members perform ministries as an expression of their congregation's mission, most Unitarian Universalists find that their ordained and fellowshipped clergy help focus the congregation on its mission and give leadership both to the prophetic and pastoral dimensions of ministry.  In our tradition we call these clergy Unitarian Universalist Ministers.

Before the founding of seminaries and before seminary education became required liberal congregationalists (the tradition that most influenced the Unitarians and the Universalists) looked for college educated young men to become their clergy. Most men graduated from college at 19 or 20,  todays institutionalized secondary education followed by university undergraduate education was not the norm.

These young men would then teach (elementary level) school, the pastor of the church was also in charge of education of the town and while both the boys and girls schools were fee for service they were approved by the town's Pastor who also had the title Teacher.  (Some towns had a ordained minister as Teacher and another as Pastor.)  The Teacher would invite promising young scholars to teach (and thus to make a living) and read divinity under his direction.  If we read the biographies of clergy before the founding of Andover Theological School (the first graduate level seminary in the United States, founded with an evangelical orientation) and Harvard Divinity School (the Unitarian response to Andover) we find that the clergy were formed from college educated young adults who had spent a few years reading under an ordained pastor of a congregational church, and teaching, preaching, and pastoring under this mentoring supervision.  (The internship was combined with the advanced study.)  The ordained ministers selected from among the promising candidates who they thought had "gifts and graces" and sent them out to do some supply preaching and teaching in congregations looking for a Minister.  If the congregation found the candidate gifted and graceful, they ordained and settled the young man who was expected to grow old with that congregation.

What do we learn from this social history?*  While ministry was done by the congregations, they sought someone to be their Minister.  The primary function of the Minister was to be the Teacher of the congregation (and the wider community as well.)  Since Teaching was the primary function of Ministers, education was assumed and scholarship was desired.  The dairies of both Universalists and Unitarians show that pastoral skills of these teacher preacher clerics was not always what the congregation expected.  There are articles in the religious magazines about how to turn a shy young scholar into a pastor. (Usually involving mentoring by wise lay leaders, thus the birth of the Ministerial Relation Committees.)

We should also note that the primary formation of the future pastors was done by the clergy who acting as office holders and as colleagues one with another work to assure the future of a learned clergy.  Seminaries were founded to help educate a learned clergy, who in our tradition continue to have the function of teachers.  It has always been the assumption that the development of "gifts and graces" of any particular candidate would be overseen by the collegial community of ministers who continue to play a major role in the formation of new ministers through supervision, mentorship and teaching courses in seminaries.  The recognition of "gifts and graces" is given over the lay members of our congregations in three forms: each candidate for Unitarian Universalist Ministry must have sponsorship by a congregation; each candidate must complete a internship (not in their home congregation) in which they learn the arts of ministry but also in which their "gifts and graces" are discerned by a lay teaching committee and finally by the congregation that ordains the candidate into the Unitarian Universalist Ministry.

Unitarian Universalist Ministers are not the only ones who do ministry among Unitarian Universalists.  It is a good thing that Chutney experiences most of those who minister to him to be among the laity.  I believe that the growth of Unitarian Universalism requires more and more lay ministers.  But I also believe that to assure that those lay ministers serve Unitarian Universalist congregations and not themselves we must increase the number and quality of Unitarian Universalist Ministry (the clergy.)

In the age of on-line classes, and week long seminars that allow people working in churches and agencies a way to access theological education, we may find that graduate theological schools are not the best way of providing the education necessary for Unitarian Universalist Ministry.  When they were founded the theological schools were a reflection that the"gifts and graces" that our tradition required in its clergy was not the same as the gifts and graces of  that Catholic parishes, Hindu temples, or free range charismatics sought in their clergy.  We believed in the priesthood of all believers, we did not look for our clergy to have a monopoly on priestcraft.  We believed in the prophethood of all believers we did not look for our clergy to have a monopoly on leadership.  But our spiritual ancestors believed and we continue to believe that it is wise to authorize some among us to be teachers of the arts and skills of ministry, and such a body of clergy would help us all become ministers as well.

I recognize the justice of Chutney's charge that the present system reflects classism and elitism.  But the labor movement has some experience in opposing classism and that movement evolved a mature way of dealing with the classism of the education system.  Primitive radicalism recognized that schooling bestowed privilege and schooling was difficult for those lacking privilege.  The populist response was to rage against learning and the intellegensia.  American anti intellectualism has deep populist roots.  But early in its history the labor movement recognized that anti intellectualism simply perpetuated the monopoly on learning by the elite, and they joined the fight for a free and universal public education system.  I would argue that we can learn from this example, rather than become theological levellers, we need to find ways to open access to theological education for everyone who seeks to grow as a minister.

*Besides the obvious - our system of fellowshipping ministers evolved from a patriarchial "old boys club" - so true- but so did our the systems of training lawyers, professors, and physicians.  Transformation sometimes takes the form of renewing institutions that reflected oppressive systems and have proved useful for advancing inclusion and equality when under new management.

Beverly Tatum has offered a contrasting view of racial identity development between "Blacks" and "Whites."  She does not offer such models for Native Americans, Japanese Americans, Americans of Palestinean descent,  the many ways  of being Latino/Latina/Hispanic. for the many, many experiences of racial development that I can not enumerate without running our of space on my hard drive, nor does she tell us about the subtle differences between "Whites" raised in anti racist contexts, and "Whites" raised in contexts which either assume the dominant culture (most suburbanites) or active bigot homes.  In otherwords like most generalizations, this is overlooks everyones particular experience.  Nevertheless I publish it for your information. One more tool in understanding the dynamics of race in the United states.  Racial identity does not necessarily imply racism, or racial oppression.  Racism assumes that power is used either by individuals or by how individuals habitually relate to one another (institutions) to privilege one group and oppress another.

In Tatum's idea of racial development,both "Blacks" and "Whites"  learn to overcome the behavior patterns that result in perpetuating racism.  They learn to overcome, but they don't do it the same way.

http://www1.umn.edu/ohr/teachlearn/tatum.html

Categorization drawn from Beverly Daniel Tatum's two articles:

"Talking about Race, Learning about Racism:  The Application of Racial Identity Development Theory in the College Classroom."

Harvard Educational Review  62.1 (Spring 1992): 1-24.
"Teaching White Students about Racism:  The Search for White Allies and the Restoration of Hope."  Teachers College Record 95.4 (Summer 1994):  462-475.

Black Racial Identity Development

Pre-encounter:  de-emphasis on racial group membership that likely includes an internalization of stereotypes about the group
Encounter:  faced with event or events through which individuals are targets of racial slurs or social rejection by individuals and/or groups an the basis of race.
Immersion/Emersion:  (re)building of positive racial identity by seeking out history, culture and peer support within racial background; white-focused anger rises and dissipates.
Internalization:  individuals establish meaningful cross racial relationships via friendships & coalitions/
Internalization/Commitment:  translate personal sense of racial identity into a sense of commitment that sparks the discovery of a universe of ideas, cultures and experiences

White Racial Identity Development

Contact:  Limited awareness of cultural and institutional racism; personal responses to race include curiosity and fear based on images from others and on absence of real images.
Disintegration:  increased interaction and information may lead to an understanding of white privilege and advantage of being invisible as a race; guilt and anger and denial accompany discomfort at this point of understanding.
Reintegration:  may redirect the dissonance of disintegration so that people of color are blamed as source of that discomfort and will then avoid continued reflection OR may seek more information in order to understand how race/racism are constructed in society.
Pseudo-Independent:  to move ahead, may disavow whiteness and/or feel alienation from white peers as this person works to replace racially related myths with accurate information.
Immersion/Emersion:  continued building of anti-racism practices and understandings via social activism within groups, classes, family, public arenas  as well as learning history of such movements; work ranges from involvement within white anti-racism groups to multiracial coalition building across.
Autonomy:  a new sense of self as a person open to new information and ways of thinking about how culture and history and economics might work; alliances crossing race are forged daily.

Collect all the probing, revealing, and insightful remarks and reflections that have been made about God, the Lord, the language of reverence on UU blogs in the last days and ponder it.  There is a thesis to be written.

Also share your links with the UU universe,  it would be a resource.  This part should be done ASAP

(As suggested by a crafty old minister who has learned to delegate by invitation.

a.k.a. Clyde Grubbs

An adult UU shares with me his impressions of GA and asks me what I think about the GA.

I tell him that it is apparent to me that we still have much work to do about racism, that again this year there was insensitivity and arrogance on the part of white Unitarian Universalists toward people of color. I share that adult people of color tend to be more accustomed to this kind of behavior on the part of well meaning, but clueless white folk, but that the youth of color are outraged that Unitarian Universalist adults could come across as arrogant, imperious, culturally incompetent, and/or oblivious jerks.

He opines that the problem with racism at General Assembly has been overblown.

I assure him that the problem is real and experienced, and results in pain among people of color and youth of color that undermines their confidence in Unitarian Universalism. In that we are a faith that proclaims "deeds not creeds" that proclamation creates an expectation that we might try to walk our talk. (I know it did for me as a Unitarian youth, but I soon came to realize that the vast majority of pew sitters were not faithful Unitarians, they came for intellectual stimulation not transformation.)

He offers the observation that the youth of color at General Assembly dress like they were in a street gang. I am taken aback by his characterization of our youth's dress. I know many of the youth by name, I have know several of them since they were children. I know their parents. The parents include UU ministers, Trustees, Congregational leaders, and the youth appear to me to be dressed like middle class youth dress when they are being hip, which is not at all like street gangsters. I reply that I know the youth and I disagree with his judgment of their attire, but perhaps making the distinction between youthful attire and street gangs requires some discernment and recognition of distinctions. (I am trying to be persuasive and not come across as dismissive.) He concedes that I might be right, and shares that Black youth make him nervous.

I am reminded that five centuries ago when the Europeans first encountered the Africans and the Native Americans they concluded that these "strange" people were promiscuous because they didn't wear clothing ("save for their privies") in the summer time.

Youth and the culturally marginalized must learn to dress "right" or they won't get any respect!

Some youth and young adults of color from the DRUUM YAYA website. (If you see the gang colors please email me and help me out.)