Ihave heard that dying people experience their lives flashing before them. If so, my past couple of weeks qualify as a near death experience. This past week I went through the files in my office, throwing away things I no longer need—you know, things like preliminary budgets from two years ago. I packed up several boxes of files I want to keep and took them home. The office will be used by Tracey Wilkinson while I am gone, so I needed to make room. As you know, I will be on “sabbatical” until the first of June. I will preach again June 7. In the meantime, I would really appreciate it if you did not speak of me in the past tense.
Most of you know what it is like to go through old files. It’s flashback city.
I want to share a few of these flashbacks with you this morning. After all, these are not just my memories, they are our memories. A couple of weeks ago I preached about how important stories are, how the stories we tell shape our lives. This morning I want to tell a part of our story. Like all storytellers, I will tell it from my point of view. I will select things I think are significant and leave out hundreds of other things. And, as you will no doubt be shocked to hear, I think our story has a moral to it. I also want to talk about the next chapter, the chapter we have yet to write.
It was a cold and stormy night. Actually, it was a cold and stormy day. On Friday, April 16, 1999, I got up before dawn and got on a 7:00 a.m. flight out of Oakland. I landed at the new Denver International Airport at 10:30. This was back in the days when you could go out to the gate and meet someone. Jim Matera and Wyley Eaton met the plane. I had arrived for what is known in the trade as a “pre-candidating weekend.” Jim and Wyley were two of the members of the ministerial search committee that also included Katie Wheeler, Pat Emery, Susie Streng and Barb Bailey.
All of this was highly unlikely, mind you. Two and a half weeks before I had been interviewed by telephone. I was in my last semester of seminary and was looking for a job, but it was late in the search cycle. I never imagined that I would be seriously considered by a church with 400 members. The interview seemed to go well, especially considering how weird it is to be interviewed over the phone by a committee.
Shortly after the interview I was invited out for the precandidating weekend two weeks later. This was very short notice. I, of course, was excited. My good friends warned me not to get my hopes up, that the church probably had someone else in mind and just needed to interview a third applicant. I even received a telephone call from a senior official at our Boston headquarters warning me that JUC was a conflicted church and would be a dangerous place.
Jim and Wyley took me to the baggage claim and then we walked out to the car. It started to snow on the way into town. I did not know Denver, so they took me through downtown on the way in. It was snowing hard by then.
What happened next was a blur of meetings. At 6:30, after the office was closed, I got a secret tour of JUC. You see, no one is supposed to know who the precandidates are. Saturday was filled with interviews and a tour of the area. Sunday morning I preached at First Unitarian downtown. This is what is known in the business as a “neutral pulpit.” Neutral pulpit. Now there’s an oxymoron! It is an audition. Members of the search committee come in separately and sit in different parts of the congregation so as not to call attention to themselves. People at the service are not supposed to know that this is a precandidating sermon.
After the service the search committee and I had lunch and a long chat. I caught a 3:30 flight back to the Bay Area. That evening Susie Streng, chair of the committee, called and told me that I had been selected as “the candidate.”
Now, time does not permit me to talk about candidating week. That is just as well, for candidating week is just a fog. It is kind of like the 1960’s. If you can remember it you weren’t really there. For those of you who don’t know the drill, candidating week begins on a Saturday and includes two Sundays of preaching and several hundred meetings in between. I preached my first sermon on May 2 to an overflow crowd. My vague memory is that I was so nervous that I preached in a voice a full octave higher than my normal speaking voice. The following Sunday I preached again and then drove my rental car down to Starbucks to wait for the results of the vote. Someone loaned me their cell phone; I didn’t own one then. As I was sipping my cappuccino the phone rang. I was going to be your new minister.
What the search committee and the congregation had just done was pretty risky. I had zero experience as a minister. Now, I can’t say what Susie, Pat, Wyley, Katie, Barb and Jim thought they saw. (Maybe I am better off not knowing!)
But let me tell you what I saw.
I saw a congregation with so much potential that it made me dizzy. I felt a passion here. I sensed how much you loved one another and how much you cared about this congregation. I listened to ambitious dreams. The truth be told, a few of your dreams seemed a little crazy—which I found charming. I sensed a group of people who appreciated what they had, but who wanted to create something better. I heard so many tell me that they wanted to make a difference in the wider world. I saw talent that was breathtaking. There was a healthy dissatisfaction with the way things were. There was an impatience to get moving. I saw passionate, talented, dedicated dreamers.
I was blown away. And I fell head over heals in love.
What an experience it has been!
I love to tell my ministerial colleagues a story about the board of trustees planning retreat we had in August, just a couple of weeks after I arrived. One of the topics was about moving to two services. I knew that the church had been thinking about adding a second service. Now, you have to understand that churches often struggle months or even years with whether to add a second service and then spend a year planning the change. The board was unanimous that this was something we should do. So I asked, “Why don’t we just go ahead and do it?” We all looked at each other. We decided right there to begin a second worship service in three weeks, beginning the Sunday after the Labor Day holiday.
I love that story because of what it says about the culture of JUC. A change was needed. We were capable of doing it. So why wait a year? That can-do attitude is such a basic part of JUC’s culture.
Today, without smugness or arrogance, I would have us celebrate what we have accomplished together. And I believe we need to tell the family story now and then. So many of us were not here then.
The adding of a second service became part of an ongoing metaphor for our spiritual community. We are a church that strives to make room for people who are not here yet. Making room begins as a spiritual practice. It begins with not being self centered and inwardly focused. It requires a genuine empathy for others who are seeking, as our sign says, “a religious home for the liberal spirit.” Not only did we add a second service, but we started paying attention to creating a culture of warmth and hospitality.
During my first year Linda Ropes and Bill Belew led a year long process of going from group to group asking each one what it wanted to see. It was all compiled as a report that didn’t go on the shelf. That report became a blueprint for the next several years.
We saw that we were overcrowded and that our lack of space was a barrier to creating the activities we wanted. We began planning an expansion and remodeling.
As more people joined, we took the risk of adding staff in order to serve the people who were coming. Why, back then, Keith Arnold was a part time choir director who had a work space next to the copy machine. We have added staff in the areas of religious education, social responsibility, membership, volunteer coordination, and, most recently, pastoral care. During my first year the board took the risk of giving up rental income from a small school so that we would have full use of our own facility.
Time after time there were opportunities to hold back, to play it safe, to be cautious. We would hesitate a moment, think about it, and say to each other, “Let’s do it!” It was like the decision to add a second service, but reenacted dozens of times in dozens of different venues. “Yes, let’s do it.” Our confidence grew. That attitude became embodied in the humorous, caped “Yes We Can” man during our capital campaign drive.
And here we are. We have almost doubled in size. When we add together our adult members, children and friends we are now the religious home to well over a thousand people. We have ministries of music, social action, and pastoral care that are regional and even national models. We have remodeled our entire church and added the religious education wing and the Joe Willis Chapel. Our practices of welcoming and including new people are known all over the movement. We are regarded as leaders.
Now, I don’t want to suggest that we haven’t had our bumps along the way. We haven’t always agreed. We are far from perfect; there are still things that need improvement. Overall, however, we can be proud of what we have accomplished in the last nine and a half years.
And now we face new challenges and new uncertainty.
I am about to leave for what may be the least restful ministerial sabbatical in history. Although I will return briefly in June, the future is uncertain. If, at the end of June, I am elected president of our association, my term will begin on July 1.
First, let me say two words about the the next five months. Fear not! We have outstanding staff and lay leadership. Every single service between now and the end of June has been planned. We have a series of four guest ministers coming that are among the most distinguished in our movement. Don’t miss them. Nathan will preach more and will be acting head of staff.
If I win the election, we have an outstanding, experienced and highly respected minister “in the wings.” I am delighted to announce that David Sammons has agreed to serve here for a year if I win. I have known David for a number of years. He has recently retired after 31 years in parish ministry, the last 22 years in Walnut Creek, California. He has taught at Starr King School for the Ministry and was its acting president for a year.
There is no reason whatsoever to worry regarding continuity of capable ministerial leadership.
The critical challenge before us is not getting through this transition time. The real challenge isn’t making it through a bad recession.
The real challenge before us is to be faithful to ourselves and faithful to our mission.
My greatest fear for us is that we become complacent. It is a real temptation. It would be very easy to say to ourselves, “We have come a long way. Let’s maintain what we have.” We are close to capacity. Simply maintaining what we have is hard work.
For JUC to go into maintenance mode would be a tragic mistake. It would be tragic because it would mean that what is most precious, what is truly wonderful, about this congregation would die. If we settle for maintenance, we will betray what is best in ourselves. Why? Because in order to settle for the status quo we would have to harden our hearts. We would have to become indifferent to the need for spiritual community that is all around us. We would have to harden our hearts to people seeking community and spiritual depth. We would become like the callous men in the parable of the Good Samaritan, who ignore the beaten man lying beside the road. We would have to avert our eyes from the suffering, hatred, violence and injustice all around us.
For us to settle for maintaining what we have would be spiritual death. We are visionaries. We are passionate and compassionate. We are dreamers who bring our dreams to life. And our work is not done. Not by a long shot.
The great challenge for us in the coming years—whether I return as your senior minister or whether it is someone else—is to imagine together what being faithful will look like in five or ten years. What might it look like to nurture our spiritual community, grow our faith, and help heal the world a decade from now?
One of the things I have realized as I have looked back on the last decade is, despite all the changes, some things feel very familiar. When I came we were near capacity. We are near capacity now. We were too crowded then. We had run out of office space for staff. Scheduling all our activities was a challenge. We have come full circle. When I came, JUC was a congregation on the threshold of creating something ambitious and beautiful. I believe we still are.
We have been on a wonderful journey. I depart on this sabbatical (this crazy un-sabbatical!) with a deep sense of gratitude. What a privilege and blessing it is to serve as your minister. I fell in love with this congregation ten years ago. That love has only grown.
I want to leave you with a great challenge today.
We still have work to do. We have more untapped potential now than we had ten years ago. Our greatest achievements lie before us.
Now is not the time to make a decision about our future. Now is not the time to embark on some ambitious initiative. Now is a fallow time, a time to gather our energy, a time to reflect, a time for deep conversations.
I don’t know what JUC’s next chapter will hold. I really don’t. I do know that we need to think beyond this place. Does it mean new partnerships with other congregations? Does it mean helping start a new congregation, or maybe creating a satellite location?
I do know this: together we can do amazing things. When we open our hearts, when we dream together, the potential is breathtaking.
I said at the outset that our story has a moral. The moral is this: when we are faithful to the best that is in us, when we are faithful to what we truly love, when we trust one another, we do wonderful things.
When I arrived ten years ago I saw a congregation of “passionate, talented, dedicated dreamers.” I still do; I still do.
Let us dream together once again. Let us dream about what we shall create. I can’t wait to see those dreams come true.
Amen.