The New Generations: August 2006 Archives

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.