Now What?

They climbed on sketchy ladders towards God,
With winch and pulley hoisted hewn rock into heaven,
Inhabited sky with hammers, defied gravity,
Deified stone, took up God’s house to meet Him,

And came down to their suppers and small beer;
Every night slept, lay with their smelly wives,
Quarrelled and cuffed the children, lied,
Spat, sang, were happy or unhappy,

And every day took to the ladders again;
Impeded the rights of way of another summer’s
Swallows, grew greyer, shakier, became less inclined
To fix a neighbour’s roof of a fine evening,

Saw naves sprout arches, clerestories soar,
Cursed the loud fancy glaziers for their luck,
somehow escaped the plague, got rheumatism,
Decided it was time to give it up,

To leave the spire to others, stood in the crowd
Well back from the vestments at the consecration,
Envied the fat bishop his warm boots,
Cocked up a squint eye and said, “I bloody did that.”

Sermon

Have you ever taken a long hike in the mountains, a hike on which you ascended two, three or four thousand feet? Living here in Colorado, probably most of us have.

I remember the first backpacking trip Phyllis and I took when we were in our early 20’s. It was in the Trinity Alps wilderness area of northern California. We started out at the trailhead. We followed a creek for a while, then started up switchbacks in dense forest. As we got higher the trail got steeper. It became rocky and narrow so you had to watch your step. The weight of the backpack made it slow going. While we would briefly admire the views along the way, mostly we had to stay focused on the trail.

At lunch time we stopped, set our backpacks down and loosened our boots. We looked back toward the valley from where we had started. We were amazed to see how far we had come and how high we had climbed. Hour after hour of slow steps added up. We felt this wonderful mixture of fatigue and satisfaction. We had bloody well climbed all that way.

For obvious reasons I thought about those long ascents last week as we celebrated the completion of our building expansion (and what a wonderful and joyous event that was last week). It felt much the same as stopping at a mountain pass after a long climb. It had been a long journey of meetings, planning, fund raising and building. We had dealt with portable toilets, a trailer for an office, holding religious education classes off site, parking at remote lots and frustrating delays. The path was rocky and steep. And we bloody well did it.

And while our new expanded facility is a major accomplishment, what is far more important is where we have come as a congregation. Numbers tell part of the story. Now, I get a lot of good natured teasing for my love of numbers and graphs. But just look at the graph on your order of service. It takes my breath away.

In the last six years we have grown by 230 members. Many of you in here today have joined during that time. This graph isn’t about numbers. This is about people; this is about us. This graph hints at a story of extraordinary human effort. Let me put our membership growth in the context of our movement. In the decade from 1993 and 2003 we only had 15 churches (out of more than a thousand) that grew by more than 200 members. Only one of our churches, the one in Madison, Wisconsin, grew by more than 300 members over ten years. If we grow by 70 members in the next four years we will do what only one church has accomplished in the last decade. We are now one of the 25 largest Unitarian Universalist congregations.

What accounts for our remarkable growth? Oh, there are a number of factors. But there is one central source of our growth that has made all the difference: you. The main reason people come, join and stay is that we have created a culture of religious hospitality. This is much deeper than offering a friendly greeting. Religious hospitality is a spiritual practice. At its core is an openness to others, an openness to relationship, a caring based on the profound realization that were are all connected, that to know each other is to know our selves.

Oh, we have not done a perfect job. But we have worked at letting the warmth, compassion and openness that is in our hearts express itself in our actions.
We worked to build upon what we loved most about our community. We began with a good youth religious education program and made it better. We became more intergenerational. We had a good music program and expanded it. We added positions like new member coordinator and volunteer coordinator to help integrate people. We had a long tradition of active involvement in our community. We expanded our social action efforts, adding things like housing the homeless as part of the Interfaith Hospitality Network and supporting the Interfaith Alliance’s work in public advocacy. We created new ways for people to connect, everything from fellowship dinners to the small groups we call Chalice Circles. Now that we have grown so much, it is especially important that we nurture opportunities to build the enduring and deep relationships that sustain our lives together. Our expanding Chalice Circles program is beginning a new round of sign ups today. Let me encourage you to participate in one of these groups. It will be a blessing in your life and might be the best thing you do for your spiritual growth.

We also realized that other people love what we love. Others in our community long for spiritual growth, for the joy of community, for belonging to a religious community committed to working for compassion, acceptance, peace and justice. We not only added space, but we added a second service and today we begin holding three services.

So, here we are. Like hikers who have reached a stopping place after a long climb, we take stock of where we have been. Last week we dedicated our new addition. Today we welcome nearly 50 new members who have joined in the past few months. We will enrich each other’s lives in the months and years ahead. We will care for each other. Together we will be able to do more to serve our community.
And, like hikers that stop for a brief rest, after gazing back at where we have been and after our respite, our attention turns to the next part of our journey.

Now what? What lies ahead for this extraordinary religious community?

I believe the coming years will be a journey more challenging and more exciting than the past six years. To extend the image of the mountain walk, we are like hikers in a little traveled wilderness area where the trail gradually disappears. We can see the direction we want to go, but there is no clear path before us.

We have had a fairly clear path to follow up to now. Back in 1999 it was clear we needed to add space. It was clear we needed a second minister to guide religious education. Along the way it was pretty clear that we wanted to expand the music program; growing the music ministry to full time was a classic no-brainer. As we grew it was clear we needed staff to support membership and volunteers and that we needed a caretaker.

But now what? Things are not so obvious now. Can we continue to grow at anything like the pace we have been growing? And what happens if we do?
This morning I want to share some initial thoughts with you about our future. I offer these reflections in the spirit of beginning a conversation. What I will share with you is not a formal proposal. It is not a detailed plan. It is, rather, my sketchy vision of what is possible for us now.
There are many unknowns. Yet I do know some things for certain and my sense of what lies ahead is built on convictions about which I have no doubt whatsoever.

I have no doubt that there is an immense hunger for the kind of religious community we offer. We call ourselves a “religious home for the liberal spirit.” We are surrounded by hundreds and thousands of people who are religiously homeless and spiritually hungry. They come to us week after week seeking shelter from the banality of consumer culture and the terrifying prospect of a culture that, out of ignorance and fear, too often turns to the false certainty of fundamentalism in religion and extreme nationalism and militarism in public life. I greet newcomers week after week. Anyone who has helped welcome newcomers knows that we have not begun to meet the need for liberal religious community. We serve only a tiny fraction of the people who need a religious home like ours. The need is simply enormous. We have grown by 65 percent in six years without doing any outreach.

I also know this, that religious hospitality is at the center of who we are as a congregation. Everything that we hold sacred – the worth of every human being, the value of love, the acceptance of one another – calls us to reach out to those who come to us seeking a religious home. If we stop being warmly hospitable we will lose the best of ourselves. Hospitality is not something we do, it is who we are. If we stop being welcoming, we will turn cold. Something precious in us will die.

Here is the central challenge we face. On the one hand the need around us is huge. On the other hand you and I are called to welcome those who come seeking a religious home. Growth occurs naturally when we create the kind of congregation we want for ourselves.

The trouble is that we are likely to hit a limit on what we can do here. We really cannot expand this facility. I hope that adding a third service will help us accommodate the growth in Sunday attendance. But if we continue to attract people at anything like the rate we have been, a third service only buys us a little time.

One obvious alternative is for us to help start a new church. The trouble with that idea is that it rarely works. Most of the time in metropolitan areas such efforts are disappointing. Here in the greater Denver area the two newest churches, Columbine in Littleton and Prairie in Parker, have struggled to grow. Each of them has around 75 members. Their experience is fairly typical. It is very hard to start a new small congregation in an metropolitan area and have it grow to be a church of several hundred. Too many people want the quality and choice of programs that a larger church can offer. Small startup churches just don’t have the staff and financial resources. And without intending to, a large church like ours ends up competing with a small church and making it harder for the small one to grow.

Our association is trying a different approach in the Dallas area. It is trying to build a church that will start out at several hundred members and quickly become a large church of a thousand. We are attempting this by beginning with a full time minister, a full time religious educator and a full time administrator before there is a congregation. However, this approach costs a million dollars and has not been proven to work. The sketchy reports I have heard are disappointing.

We need to blaze a new trail. I believe it would be a grave mistake to try to start a small congregation in some under-served area. The chances are too great of creating a little church that is doomed to struggle.

But what if we established another campus of JUC? What if we started holding Sunday services, religious education classes and all our other activities at an additional location? Imagine adding another minister who can share preaching duties. I could preach at one location one Sunday and the other campus the following Sunday. So could the new minister. The music at the new campus would be an extension of our music program, directed by Keith Arnold. The new campus would start with a religious education program that Todd Strickland directs. Our office could serve both campuses. We would have one newsletter that showed the activities at each campus. Our web site would serve both campuses.
If we can have three Sunday services at one location, why can’t we have services at more than one location? Adding a campus is a lot like adding an additional service.

I believe we need to rethink what it means to be a congregation. It need not mean one location. It might mean two or three campuses served by one staff.

I do not know if this idea of serving more people by adding a campus is our best option. However, I do believe this congregation has a unique opportunity and a calling to provide a religious home for people seeking a religious community. We have the energy and the talent and the commitment to do extraordinary things. Just look at what we have done already. We need to be creative. We need to be bold.

As we set out again on the next stage of our journey together, we need to remind ourselves what it is we love about this community and what we love about this faith. We need to remember that love, faithfulness and commitment have sustained us. We have been guided by our determination to pass on to our children our sense of what is sacred in life. We have been guided by our commitment to be there for each other. We have been guided by our empathy for others, an empathy that leads us to seek peace and justice and to care for the most vulnerable. And we have been sustained by a dream of living joyously and deeply in community.

The way ahead is not clear. Yet as long as we follow our hearts and dream together, we will find our way. We are on an extraordinary adventure together.
Now what?

I can’t wait to find out. I can’t wait to see what is over the next rise. Let’s be on our way together.

Amen.