Making Room, Making a Difference

Brent Winans, a former member of our congregation who now lives in Florida, tells a wonderful story about his first visit to JUC. Brent came to JUC during a terrible time in his life. He had been a preacher in a fundamentalist church. However, like so many of us in this sanctuary, he found that he could no longer accept the faith in which he had been raised. His falling away from his faith meant a change in vocation. On top of it, his departure from his former faith led to personal and family conflict. His life was in shambles. Somehow, he found his way here.
Brent, who is a marvelous speaker, delights in retelling this story. He sat down next to a one of our members that first Sunday morning, feeling alone, lost and desperate. The JUC member did not think he had seen Brent before and asked him if this was his first visit. Brent replied that yes, this was his first visit. Our member, bless his heart, then asked, “So, is it a life crisis or the kids?” A life crisis or the kids. In Brent’s case, it was both.

Brent’s experience underscores an important truth: nobody just walks into a church for no reason. No one decides to join a congregation out of thin air. People come because of some need, some hunger. People come because something is missing in their lives. I remember when my wife and I first decided to try out our first UU church in Oregon. Luckily, for us there was no life crisis. Yet something was missing in our lives and had been missing for years. We were hungry for community, hungry for depth, hungry to be with people who shared our values and who worked together for understanding and compassion. We came, as most of us here today came, seeking to connect with something that transcends pettiness, narrowness and banality. We came looking for relationships that were honest and authentic. We came because we wanted more out of life than shallowness and financial security.

Fortunately, when Brent came, JUC was here. He found a place where he did not have to pretend to believe things he no longer believed. He found good people who became lifelong friends. He found a healing and liberating message. He found a place where he could grow and where, as he got his life back together, he could give something back. JUC made room for him.

When my family began to attend a church in Eugene, Oregon, that church made room for us.

To make room sounds simple enough. It isn’t.

Our spiritual lives are all about connection. Our spirituality is, I believe, essentially about our connections. We connect with the deepest longings of our being. We break the prison of the self by connecting with one another in community. We connect with our most profound sense of the sacred, of the holy, of the universe. Spiritual pain is all about broken connections. Spiritual healing is about building connections.

If we are to connect with one another, we begin by making room.

Making room is absolutely central to a religious community. Making room isn’t primarily about having physical space. Making room is a spiritual discipline. Making room is ultimately about you and I making room in our hearts and room in our lives. Making room means making the effort to engage someone you or I do not know. Making room involves being open and listening with attention and empathy. Making room means creating space for another person to participate fully, whether it is in the choir, in a chalice circle, or on a committee. Making room means having enough love in our hearts to respond to the spiritual hunger of another person.

Our congregation today is one of the fastest growing churches in our association. In the last seven years we have grown from a congregation of 400 adult members to a congregation of 730. In the last three years, our growth rate has been the second highest in our association. As you can imagine, our membership growth has drawn a lot of attention. Others wonder what we have done. We get invited to do workshops on membership. Annie Hedberg, our membership coordinator, Dea Brayden, our volunteer coordinator, and I were asked to present a day and a half workshop at our General Assembly. Chris and Steve Sealy produced a wonderful training video for the workshop. This video (which we still need to show to JUC!) is being sent to all Unitarian Universalist congregations this fall.

Now, I won’t lie to you. I am proud of the fact that our membership has grown. And I feel pride that some of our sister congregations look at us as leaders. What I am most proud of, though, is why we have grown. I believe we have grown for two main reasons: first, we dared to dream and, second, we made room.

First, we dared to dream. Seven years ago, in conversations that lasted most of a year, we sat with each other and asked ourselves what we wanted to create together. We called it the “JUC Futures” project. Slowly, a picture emerged of a congregation that affected its members more deeply and that was engaged in society. That meant quality worship, youth religious education, adult classes, pastoral care and music. We wanted to be more open to sharing our faith with others. We wanted to be a greater force for peace, understanding and kindness in our community. We dared to dream. And we dared to create ambitious plans. And then we made room. We believed there was a great need for progressive religious community. We began by adding a second worship service. We raised money among ourselves to expand our programming. We created a position for a minister whose portfolio included lifespan religious education and pastoral care. We expanded the position of music director gradually until it became full time. We paid more attention to how we welcomed newcomers. We wanted to make sure that the love in our hearts showed itself. And we grew.

As we grew, we made more room. We created a position of volunteer coordinator and membership coordinator. We also confronted the fact that sometimes making room means just that: creating more space. We challenged ourselves to remodel and expand so that we would have room to do the things we dreamed of doing. We raised money to build our new religious education wing, to completely remodel the Mills Building and to renovate this sanctuary.

Once our building was finished less than two years ago, we really hit a growth spurt. More and more of our neighbors found the religious home they had always sought. Our beautiful new youth religious education addition was a visible expression of our commitment to teach our children our core religious values of love, peace, respect, and understanding.

As we grew, we made a difference. First, we have made a difference in the lives of the hundreds of people who have joined us. That’s where it all starts. As more people joined, we gained strength. Part of our dream was always to make a difference in our wider community. Using the extraordinary generosity of Jim and Til Taguchi, we challenged ourselves to take our social action programs to a new level. The Taguchi Social Action Fund made it possible for us to add a consulting ministry in social responsibility. We have just made that ministry a full part of our staff. We are involved in housing homeless families, working with Jeffco Action Center and Family Tree to help poor families, working with our UUSC service committee on disaster relief and human rights, working with Habitat for Humanity on affordable housing, working on environmental issues. Our social action ministry has new energy, new focus, and more volunteers than ever before. We really are making a difference.

We have so much to celebrate! We began with a dream. We created a plan. We put the plan into action. We touched more lives.

How many of you in here today joined JUC in the last seven years?

We made room for you. Someone made room for every single one of us in here today—even if this morning is your first visit.
And we continue to make room. Today is the second Sunday of three services with full youth religious education classes. Let me let you in on a secret. No one on our staff or on the board of trustees is in love with the idea of three Sunday services. It is a lot of extra work. We need more teachers for our religious education program, more ushers, more people to make coffee, more volunteers in the nursery. It’s a hassle. Three services complicates our music program.

But we are committed to making room. Many Sundays we were crowded with two services. We believe that there are still hundreds and even thousands of people in our area looking for a progressive religious home. This isn’t about numbers; it’s about people, people just like us. We cannot, we must not, turn away people who are hungry.

Seven years ago we dared to dream together. We stretched ourselves to make our dreams come true. Our dreams came true not because we were clever. We did not grow because we created this position or changed that part of our organization. We did not bring in people because we pandered to their fears or because we brought theatrical gimmicks into our worship. I believe we grew because we got religion. We have prospered because we were faithful to our vision, faithful to a dream of a richer life together and a dream of greater service.

So, here we are. We have a lot to be proud of, a lot to celebrate. Those of us who were here five or seven years ago should take a moment to feel deep satisfaction.
Time’s up.

Our work is far, far from over. The spiritual hunger around us is still huge. If anything, we underestimated it seven years ago. I know that I did. Here I was, fresh out of seminary (well, as fresh as a 52 year old can be). It seemed arrogant to think we would become one of the fastest growing churches in the movement. When we dreamed of what we could become, we thought growing to a church of 600 was an ambitious target. We hit that two years ago, before we even moved into our new space. People continue to find us and join us. That is wonderful. Every new member is a blessing to our community.
Yet the truth is we are getting stretched thin again. There is no reason to believe our growth will stop. The need all around us staggering. We do no outreach, yet visitors continue to pour in. They come because, just like you and me, they need religious community. They want to raise their kids with religion but without terrifying dogma. They want to help change the world. They want to explore spiritual questions with others. None of this is going to stop.

Friends, we need to talk. Just like we did seven years ago, we need to have an honest, thoughtful, conversation about what we are a willing to dream together now. We need to reflect long and hard, each one of us, about just how committed we are to making room. For once again, it will not be enough to make room in our hearts. Making room in our hearts is where we begin, of course. But the tough questions before us in the coming months are whether we can dream a new dream and whether we will commit ourselves to it.

I don’t want to minimize the challenge before us. Any option we choose will require an unprecedented level of financial support. This is not a stewardship sermon today. I am not going to ask you for any money. (Continue to breathe normally.) In order to make room for the spiritually hungry in five or ten years we will have to do something ambitious. In order to make a difference in people’s lives and in our community, we need to dream big.

Today after the service Rich Sider, president of our board of trustees, will present a brief outline of options before us. No decisions are going to be made for a while. Today is the beginning of a conversation, a sacred conversation. I hope you will all stay for 20 minutes or so. More importantly, I hope our members will think quietly about your dreams for our community. Talk candidly among yourselves. We are entering one of those watershed times in the life of our congregation. We need everyone’s participation.

I know that it will be a temptation to dive into evaluating specific alternatives and advocating one. Resist that temptation. Get some information. Reflect. Discuss. Stay open.

I don’t know where the future is going to take us.

I do know this. Making room for the seeker is at the core of who we are as a people. We must not choose to harden our hearts and turn people away. If we do that we will lose our souls, we will lose the most precious part of who we are.

We must not choose to limit our role in the wider world. We are in a world filled with violence, hatred, and ignorance. We live in a world threatened by environmental disaster. We must continue to look for ways to join with others to make more of a difference.

We are a people united by our dreams. Ours is a vision of making room in our hearts and making a difference in the world. We must be faithful to this vision, for it is sacred.

Come, let us dream together once more. Let us celebrate all we have done. Let us move into the future confident that together we can create something extraordinary and wonderful.

Let’s make room. Let’s make a difference, you and I.

I can’t wait to see what we shall dream up next.

Amen.