SECTION 4
PARISH MINISTRY Section Contents Links: a. Ministry b. Leadership c. Worship and Preaching e. Teaching f. Programs, Committees, and Board g. Communications h. Growth and Membership i. Fund Raising and Finance j. Pastoral Concerns k. Social Action Ministry Traditionally ministry is thought of as what clergy do, but, more correctly and more in response to these times, ministry is what the church community does. The traditional and typical attitude is that clergy do the work of ministry, and the laity are passive consumers of the ministry. This clergy-centered attitude is known a clericalism and is one of the main problems confronting organized religion today. EPIC Churches. Leonard Sweet, Dean of the Theological School at Drew University, observed a similar phenomenon in the U.S. religious scene: "Church hierarchies and bureaucracies are catastrophically wrong about a remarkably high proportion of the most important issues with which they deal."[2] Sweet continues that the churches that will be most successful in the twenty-first century "are slicing the sharpest leading edges of creative thinking and deep spirituality. [These churches] are the places to find out how to do ministry in the postmodern world."[3] Sweet terms the successful church of the twenty-first century "the EPIC church" where "EPIC" stands for a church community that is experiential, participatory, interactive, and communal. The Post Modern Challenge to Religion. In understanding my approach to ministry, it is important to understand the postmodern context in which I view ministry and the postmodern challenge to religion. I emphasize postmodernism here because this broad trend in western culture will have long-lasting effects to the future of religion. I frame my view of my parish ministry on this understanding of the postmodern challenge to religion. Postmodernism is a way of viewing the world that finds expression in wide areas of contemporary life including art, literature, philosophy, politics, linguistics, and religion. Postmodernism views the world as profoundly relational and contingent. It doubts the validity of anything called the truth, especially if it is "The Truth." Truth according to postmodernism is related to one’s historical and cultural circumstances. Truth tends to be local, personal and culturally bound. In literature, "the truth of life" is revealed through story and narrative rather than exposition of abstract ideas. In its embrace of the contingent and local, postmodernism distrusts assertions of universal human values. It sees the world not as "either-or" but as "both-and." The profession that epitomizes postmodernism is the poet who calls on particular experiences to point to a particular, contingent truth—using the poet’s artistry with words. In contrast, the profession of modernism is the scientist who seeks to mediate human and non-human Truth through reasoning about universal principles from observation of particular events. Religion traditionally has tried to persuade people to believe certain ways through methods ranging from reason to coercion. Postmodernists call these attempts to find universal values that are vaild everywhere "meta-narratives." One might think that UU’s are excluded from the postmodern challenge because we don’t proscribe beliefs through dogmas or creeds. Postmodernism challenges UU’s, however, with the observation that in our embrace of reason, we have positioned reason as a universal value or method to find the truth. The postmodernist always asks first, "Whose reason?" when appeals to reason are made. In other words, from what historical and cultural contexts are reason defined? In many respects, the humanist-spirituality tension in UUism is another aspect of the modernism-postmodernism tension in western culture (and the world for that matter). Postmodernism’s answer is not that it is "either-or"; it is "both-and"– both humanist and spirituality, reason and intuition, head and heart, roots and wings. The Type of Ministry for the Times. No longer can the ministry be the work of the clergy, ministry must be the work of the entire church community. Shared ministry of clergy and laity is the path for achieving the EPIC church that will thrive by meeting the demands of the times. Loren Meade observes that the kind of professional ministerial leadership required for these times is similar to that provided by an interim minister. As a founder of the interim ministry movement, Meade reflected on the success of interim ministries in addressing the needs of church communities with these words: Within the interim period the psychological contract of both pastor and congregation changed [from clergy ownership of the ministry to the interim ministry helping church leaders form the church’s ministry]. The interim pastor was understood to be the religious leader, encouraging and strengthening local leadership. The responsibility for the life of ministry in that place did not belong to the interim pastor but to the laity.[4] The attitude that the clergy owns the ministry is a principal reason that the church has become irrelevant to half of the US population while over ninety percent have spiritual or religious beliefs. Old habits die hard, but they must die, or the church will become more and more irrelevant until all that is left is a facade. Meade, Sweet, and other astute investigators of the American religious scene observe that the spiritual seeker of today longs for authentic spiritual community. Meade views achieving authentic community as "the major challenge for the church." This major challenge to achieve authentic community, according to Meade, requires the church (1) "discover how to be and to support authentic community" and (2) "see that those hungry for community in our society find it."[5] I have learned how to facilitate the creation of this sense of ownership in community. Sometimes this means that I must actively lead; other times it means that I help others actively lead, and I become a coach to the leaders. The church community must decide what is best to accomplish its work of ministry. I can lead the community on a process to a vision of what is best, but I cannot decide on what the vision is. Finding that vision is part of ministry of all the church community. I am emphasizing what Meade calls the "interim mentality," in its most positive sense. Please do not think that I am considering short-term ministry. I love the work of the professional ministry, and I plan to continue working as a parish minister as long as I am effective and passionate about the work. My interim ministry experience provides me with tested approach to the transformative ministry that congregations of the twenty-first century need to be vital. In interim ministry, I have learned how If I come to your congregation as your minister, I will bring a passionate and exciting shared ministry with me and help you create an EPIC church that responds to the signs of the times with understanding, compassion, and joy. The scope of this ministry is explained in the following paragraphs as encompassing The result of this ministry well be to create and sustain a spiritual church community of compassion, understanding, and celebration, and to help others find this community. As a minister, I seek to be an empowering leader both to staff and members of the congregation. As an empowering and facilitative leader, I seek to develop a high degree of clarity about defining and articulating the purposes and objectives of the organization. To accomplish this, I inform myself about the gifts of the people in the organization and seek to create occasions where those people can contribute their gifts. My leadership style of facilitative leadership is particularly effective in a church where the predominate culture is participative, inclusive, and democratic. I have years of experience in developing these facilitative leadership skills in business, organizations of volunteers, and churches. Leadership Styles. Some explanation of leadership styles would help clarify the leadership I would bring to being your minister. I view leadership styles falling into three categories: The directive leader established goals and objectives, sometimes with consultation with others, but decides what goals and objectives are to be followed by the organization. The directive leader often uses persuasion. The directive leader establishes plans and milestones for achieving the goals and objectives and directs the implementation of the plan. Directive forms of leadership are particularly effective in times of crisis when decisions are needed quickly or for routine tasks. The disadvantage of directive leadership styles is they tend to dis-empower members of the organization with members not feeling invested in decisions and plans. The collaborative leader engages members of the organization in articulating the goals and objectives of the organization, developing plans, setting milestones, and implementing plans. The collaborative leader manages the group process for the purpose of developing ownership of group decisions. Collaborative forms of leadership are most effective in organizations that are operating in a cooperative manner without divisive conflict and where communications are open and direct. The disadvantage of collaborative forms of leadership is that the organization may become unaware of its problems and tend to repeat mistakes. The facilitative leader combines directive and collaborative styles to meet the demands of the situation. The facilitative leader, as with the collaborative leader, is concerned with ownership of goals, objectives, and plans by the members organization, but realizes that the groups are resistant to change and often seek to achieve status quo out of force of habit. In this case, a facilitative leader, given the authority to lead, may become more directive to lead the organization past blocks to creative change. As your minister, I would be a facilitative leader seeking to achieve a balance of directive and collaborative leadership in your congregation for the purpose of facilitating the type of community that the congregation seeks. Clarity in leadership is vital for an effective church. One of the discussions that I would like to have with your search committee, if we choose to continue these discussions beyond exchanging packets, will be to get a sense of how your congregation expects your settled minister to lead. And my goal of achieving clarity about leadership expectations wouldn’t stop with a discussion with the search committee. Visions of What My Leadership Would Be. More than anything, I seek to create and sustain a community where we live from our deeper principles and values with feelings of love and trust. As your minister, I would say over and over to you, in different ways, the basic message of our faith (in the words of my friend and colleague the late Rev. Dr. Kit Howell) "you are acceptable, you are loveable, and we can love each other. . . [And] when we touch each other with love, we bring about healing. And healing is what is divine about life." If I help create and maintain this type of religious community as your minister, I will have led you well. Strategic Planning. "If you don’t know where you are going, you probably won’t get there." If Yogi Berra didn’t say this, he should have said it. This Yogi-Berra-like statement is the reason organizations need strategic plans. In other words if you don’t have a plan about where you are going, you either won’t get to where your are going or you won’t recognize it when you do get there. That is why strategic plans are so crucial for any organization. Without a strategic plan, organizations often spend time and money going nowhere or moving backwards and, because these organizations, without plans, have not established metrics to measure where they are, they often don’t realize they are going nowhere or going backwards. Faith has been described as being able to live with the tension between what is and what can be. This tension is also the essential motivating factor for strategic planning. Congregations that live into that tension do so through engaging in, what Gil Rendle and Alice Mann call, "holy conversations." Holy conversations are discussions in religious community about this tension between what is and what can and as such these holy conversations are strategic planning. In fact, Gil Rendle and Alice Mann title their influential book Holy Conversations: Strategic Planning as a Spiritual Practice in Congregations." Rendle and Mann advise members of congregations to engage in "holy conversations" around three key strategic question: Answering these three questions has a profound influence on the vitality of a congregation. Visions, missions, strategies, and plans are element in these congregational narratives about the present and future of the congregation. Too often congregations are budget driven, but not mission and vision driven. John Kotter and Dan Cohen in The Heart of Change link financial planning, as carried out in the budget process, and the vision of the organization. The authors observe: A budget is the financial piece of a plan. A plan specifies step by step how to implement a strategy. A strategy shows how to achieve a vision. A vision shows an end state where all the plans and strategies will eventually take you (68). I have led and participated in several strategic planning processes in business and congregations. Most recently I worked with Dr. Larry Peers of the Alban Institute in creating a strategic plan for First Church in a six month process of having holy conversations. It was a wonderful process that I would like to share with others. Sunday Worship. For a church, the entire week builds to the Sunday worship service, and the centerpiece of the Sunday worship service is the sermon. Some would prefer not using the word "worship," but I prefer it because it communicates that there is something important and sacred that we do each Sunday. When we strip away the connotations of easy piety and idolatry that is so often associated with "worship," we find a deeper meaning that arises from the root derivations of "worship". It comes from the Middle English worthscipe meaning "worth" and "-ship." Thus the essence of worship is the condition of bringing worth to what we do. It is a way of expressing our deeper values. We come to church amid life's daily demands to affirm deeper and higher values like love, justice, and compassion. Values that too easily can become lost in the challenges of living our lives. Effective worship is a complete engagement of all facilities–intellect, intuition, and sensation. The mind is stimulated, the intuition nourished, and the senses engaged in worship. Out of worship arises the perception that something important and sublime was encountered–something lying at the root of life. Words, music, silence, sounds, colors, fragrances, textures, hues are the physical elements of worship that combine to suggest the presence of the sacred in our lives. Interfaith and Ecumenical Worship. The rituals of worship are particularly powerful in bringing together various faiths for common purposes. At First Church in Lancaster, Massachusetts, I promoted interfaith and ecumenical worship services. One of my references is Rev. Dr. Richard Trott, Professor of Religion, at Atlantic Union College--a Seventh Day Adventist school. Dr. Trott and I co-led a ecumenical Christmas Eve service for seven years at First Church–a traditional Christmas Eve service for the entire community. I planned and led, in conjunction with the synagogue in Clinton, Massachusetts, three annual Holocaust Remembrance services. I planned and led several interfaith peace vigils at First Church. These vigils included representatives from a wide range of faith communities--Hindu, Buddhist, Islam, neo-pagan, Judaism, fundamentalist Christian, liberal Christian, and Native American. I organized and led two Sunday worship services with the Nipmuc Indian Nation to bring peace and forgiveness between two peoples--the descendants of Puritan English immigrants and of the indigenous peoples after over 330 years. Rites of Passage These rites of passage are held in the vessel of religious community that shapes, what might otherwise be, those formless events in our lives. These rites are both intensely personal and communal. These rites help us look into the abyss of being with courage and compassion. In my ministry, I have helped people find the rites of passage that have meaning for them. I have included the following ceremonies in Section 6 "Programs" a child dedication, a wedding, a memorial service, and a coming of age worship service. (Link: Section 6: Programs) The heart of teaching is transformation, and, as transformation, teaching is a ministry. When we teach someone something, we challenge the learner to move to new understandings and perspectives. If the teaching is done with a sense of ultimate concern for the learner, teaching becomes a spiritual endeavor and can lead to a deepening of understanding far beyond the subject matter. As a minister, I am both a learner and a teacher. Learning and teaching are intertwined. I have been a lifelong learner. As I learn, I teach. Some of my learning has been informal and some formal. I have been engaged in the study of spirituality for over thirty years. I hold divinity degrees from a liberal Christian seminary. I have informally and occasionally formally studied Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Native American spirituality, esoteric Judaism, Jungian psychology, and the intersections of science and religion. I am inspired by the traditions of Unitarianism and Universalism. I am intrigued by the shared wisdom and insights of our UU tradition with other religious traditions. Courses I Have Designed and Taught. My learning has naturally extended into teaching. I have taught UU orientation classes while at Lower Bucks Fellowship, Wilmington, State College, Germantown, and First Church I have led spirituality groups. I led a workshop on Evangelical Universalism. I was theme speaker at a Star Island conference. I have taught Zen meditation. I have led adult education classes in spiritual autobiography, "On the Path" (UU adult spiritual curriculum), and A Course in Miracles. I have created adult education curricula for spiritual focus groups. I developed the curricula and taught these courses: I have done workshops on conflict management and decision-making in churches. I have been a guest lecturer at Penn State University in philosophy classes. While at Pebble Hill Church, I sat on the church’s seminary board and teach in the seminary. At the First Unitarian Church in Wilmington, I taught seventy-five religious education teachers about how to teach through emphasizing religious imagination in their teaching. I have taught religious education classes at all levels–to children, youth, and adults. Mentoring. If the heart of teaching is transformation, then mentoring in ministry is a more intentional movement towards transformation. Teaching occurs over a prescribed period of time and covers a specific curriculum. Mentoring usually has an indefinite period of time with no curriculum other than our daily living. Mentoring is teaching and helping. Like teaching, mentoring empowers. Yet it is more than teaching; it is advocacy and spiritual eldering. It leads us to some sense that our lives are a ministry–a service to others. Ministry begins with an inner spiritual calling. It extends from there to engagement in the world to bring positive change through the influence of one's gifts. As a professional ordained minister, I seek to mentor people so that they will feel empowered to follow their inner callings to minister to the world with their gifts. This does not mean that all our members should be ordained ministers. Ordination, in our tradition, is bestowed on a few people from our congregations who are trained and called to serve our congregations as professional, ordained ministers. What this does mean, however, is that each person in a UU community can rightfully see themselves as a minister and that the professional minister becomes a minister to a community of ministers. Some clergy see this as giving away the professional ministry. I see it as empowering our Unitarian Universalist religion. If someone feels called to be a minister, I will mentor them so that they can find the best path to express that calling. As the members of the church own the ministry, one type of educational and mentoring program, that might be considered, is to establish a seminary in the church. I was a board member and teacher at the seminary started at Pebble Hill Church (called the School for Sacred Ministries) where I am currently serving as Interim Coordinating Minister. The purpose of the seminary is to give members and friends from the community the opportunity to articulate the current work of their lives as ministry or to help them find that ministry. The curricula, a two to three year course of study and taught mostly by adjunct faculty, has an enrollment of thirty, a waiting list of two years, and results in either a diploma or, with extra work, ordination. Several experts in innovative church growth have recommended that the seminaries need to be brought into the churches for training of both clergy and laity in ministry. In this way, the ministry of the church is enhanced and extended into the larger community. Church Programs. Programs form the substance of a church. I view programs of a church as
In keeping with these important aspects of effective committees, the task of the minister and other church leaders is
In my ministry, I have worked with committees and congregations at all in the aspects mentioned above. At Lower Bucks, Lower Delaware, and Pebble Hill, I helped the members of the congregation articulate their vision for the future through values clarification and goal setting. Particularly, at Wilmington, State College, Lower Delaware, Germantown and Lancaster, I organized several committees, recruited committee leaders, consulted with committee leaders, recruited committee members, assisted committees in articulating their purposes and tasks, attended committee meetings, monitored the work of the committees, and assisted in problem solving committee issues. Paul's comment on this cartoon is again" "Not under my watch will this happen! People's volunteer time is just too valuable to waste in meetings that don't fulfill an essential purpose of the congregation." During the last several decades, we have seen a revolution in communications as fundamental as the invention of movable type in 1440. The fact that I am presenting this information to you on an Internet web site is proof of this revolution. Churches need to take full advantage of this opportunity to reach others as well as maintain more conventional means of communication through newsletters, announcements, and telephone contacts. I have found that I do a significant amount of my ministry through email. I have two friends who do Internet broadcasts on spiritual topics from their homes–one in New York City and the other near Philadelphia–to reach specific constituencies. Typically communications in most congregations have been viewed as putting together regular newsletters, announcement during worship, and sign-up shttes. Certainly, these are important to maintain, but communications are much more. I have placed communications here as an important aspect of parish ministry and not in the above discussions of programs because effective communications are essential for the nurturing and growth of a congregation. Communications let other people know who we are and affirm who we are to ourselves. Both are essential for getting out our UU message. Unitarian Universalism has a message for the world. Communications is about getting that message to the most people. To do this, we need to utilize a wide variety of media–published articles, books, pamphlets, newspapers, radio, television, and computer networks. With the advent of desktop publishing with laser printers and scanners, the church can become a small publishing company. Publishing books and pamphlets of professional quality is not out of reach of even a modest church budget. Cable television networks have expanded to hundreds of channels and Internet broadcasts are available. As with most new technologies, entry into this new communication space will occur through the so-called open technology window. These technology windows are characterized as being only open for a certain (often brief) period of time. If a church wants to reach the widest possible number of people, it needs to be ready to move through that technology window when it is opened. Opportunities exist on conventional broadcast channels. I appeared on a CBS television affiliate in Central Pennsylvania during rating sweeps. The station’s consultant advised the station to have a provocative program on religion to increase viewers during ratings sweeps. I appeared on a feature program called Is There a God? One Media Window: Cable Technology. Church leadership can begin now to prepare for this opportunity by making digitized video recordings of worship services available to local cable networks as well as on the Internet. At the Wilmington UU church, all Sunday morning services and some special events, such as speaker forums, were video taped. These video tapes were made available to members for a nominal fee. At the relatively low cost of video equipment, video taping worship services and special church events can become part of the work of every UU church. These tapes can be played on cable networks. Another Media Window: The Internet. With the ability to access information through the Internet and as more people get onto high speed Internet service, more and more communication is accomplished through the computer. These can range from looking for a church or seeking religious inspiration or counsel. Video Internet broadcasts of worship services can be made with modest investment. The church that gets information about itself on the Internet will be able to contact more people and provide another important outreach ministry. Media Is Not the Message Nor the Substance. There is a Zen Buddhist saying that painted cakes do not satisfy. The same is true for video cakes and Internet cakes. (Or is it cookies?) Humans need human contact. We need to interact face-to-face. We need to touch each other–to shake hands, get a pat on the back, and a hug. We need the kind of contact where we are with each other in the immediacy of the moment. There is also something intangible about people being together–subtle clues like body language, voice inflection, and those intangible connections of shared experiences. These shared experiences often are felt as a shared consciousness that is most intensely felt during communal worship or meditation. Aspects of touch and shared consciousness will never be communicated in their fullness except through direct interaction. Our initial contact may first come through these newer media for an increasing number of people. We will then invite them into our midst to feel the love of our religious community. Interpersonal Communications in Groups. Communities thrive on effective communications within and between groups in the community. Ineffective communications is often cited as one of the principle causes of problems in church communities. In my ministry, I continually am aware of ways to improve communications. When I find communications to be ineffective, I observe the communications behavior to identify possible problems. I then work with groups or individuals to develop awareness of communication behaviors and teach communication skills (both speaking and listening). Further I consider the ways group practices and norms or interpersonal relationship issues might suppress effective communications. The purpose of effective communications, both outside and inside the church, is to connect people with each other and to build beloved community. When church leaders speak of growth, they usually mean increase in membership. Membership growth, however, is only one aspect of growth in a church. Growth can mean growth in programs and growth in visibility within the community as a force for justice. Growth can mean growth in diversity, spiritual growth, growth in caring and compassion, growth in financial stewardship, and many other forms of growth for a church. Spiritual Growth. For my ministry, spiritual growth is central. Spiritual growth is a natural consequence of open engagement with life. I believe that every human being has a natural proclivity to move towards spiritual and psychological wholeness. We are never complete. Each of us always has experiences to be integrated, dark corners to light. To be human is to grow. Growth is part of our evolutionary heritage. Change, adaptation, and an increasing consciousness of the universe are the elements of spiritual growth, the movement of humanity. We are Homo Religiosus–the religious human. Spiritual growth is essential for the vitality of every person and spiritual community. We are either increasing in vitality (growing) or decreasing in vitality (dying). Yet I have been blessed to see people even on their death beds grow spiritually. Growth in Diversity. Growth in diversity is also essential to a vital spiritual community. If communities lack diversity, whether these are communities of forest ecosystems or UU churches, they will inevitably die. Diversity gives the community flexibility to respond to stress and change. For UU churches, we need to achieve diversity in race, ethnicity, gender-orientation, political views, social and economic class, and theological orientation. If UU churches are to grow spiritually, we need to consciously welcome people of wider diversities in all these areas. Growth in Membership. Growth in membership means that we have reached more people with our message of love and hope. We have a message for the world. Our UU values and traditions are about living from higher human values–similar to what Abraham Maslow called meta-values or B-values ("being values"). These higher values include a search for truth and meaning, justice, peace, a sense of unity and interdependency within the diversity of life, affirmations of the inherent goodness of humans and life in general. Imagine a world lived from these values! So our responsibility, as a religious people, who hold these values so crucial to human survival and happiness, is to create communities of depth, right action, and compassion. When we welcome people to become part of these communities, we move, in small ways, all of humanity closer to a fuller realization of our potential. Our challenge as members of UU churches is to see that everything we do communicates our meta-values. Everything–from signs in the parking lot, to welcoming people at the door, to the music and artwork in our worship services–communicates our values. Finally when people consider becoming members, we need to help them find ways to become fully involved in our church, to find a spiritual practice that nurtures their deeper selves, and to be assured that their lives are deeply touched by this spiritual community of depth, right action, and compassion. At State College, Germantown, and Lancaster, I taught New UU courses for new and prospective members. I designed and conducted, for two years, a spiritual journey course, called "Journey in Meaning," to help members, especially new members, articulate their spiritual journeys in light of their Unitarian Universalist faith. I used regular "Conversations about Unitarian Universalism" following the service. At every congregation I have served, I facilitated strong programs for greeting and membership. At Lancaster, I established a greeters group, established greeting procedures, and did greeter training. Inviting the Visitor. As minister, I work with the membership committee and board to evaluate ways that we welcome and invite new members into the community. We need to build bridges into our congregations, but too offen we unwittingly create barriers. As your minister, I would encourage the church’s leadership to ask the questions: Why are people coming here? Who is not coming here who might want to? What do they value? And how do we reach them? Then I would encourage the development of programs that address the answers. I would ask, "Do the programs that we offer new members fulfill the promise we hold out when they walk through the church doors?" Small group minister is a particularly effective method to make and nurture connections into the church community. Small group ministry, however, requires broad church leadership commitment. Growth will happen if we are clear about who we are as a religious people. We do have a religion of great value. When we let people know about our values, all we need do is be welcoming and inviting, consistently reach out to others, invite them into the church, and people will arrive to enrich the life of our church community. Fund Raising Support and Finance A church continues because of its ability to raise money for its programs, physical facilities, and staff. With an increasing ability to fund programs, the church can extend its appeal to more people. Further, with increasing funds, the quality of the church experience can be enriched for many. Fund Raising Support. People are willing to give money for what they value. As minister, I would help make the connections between what the members value about the community and supporting what one values. One common way for the minister to make this connection is through sermons. Yet a sermon now and then on fund-raising and supporting the community does not address the long term issue in most churches. Certainly, I would do those sermons and do them with inspiration. Nevertheless, the connections between what we value and what we give needs to be built into the church culture. As minister, I would help create a linkage between the purposes and objectives of the church and its fund rasing and budgeting. I have been involved with churches (as a volunteer and as a minister) where the fund-raising and budgeting processes goes as follows: Solutions to Fund-Raising Problems. The problems with this common approach to fund-raising are that first it confirms the perception that there is never enough and second church programming becomes budget driven. The solution to these problems reside in an observation about how Unitarian Universalists give. As a denomination, UU’s have one of the highest income levels and one of the lowest rates of giving; however, when capital campaigns are included in the statistics on giving (lumping together both operating budgets and capital campaigns), UU’s rank among the higher givers for denominations. In other words, UU’s give if there is something to give for. To give to balance an operating budget is not exciting, but to give to build a beautiful building or to fund a Religious Education wing is. There is something tangible to envision. So when fund-raising is most successful, there is a linkage between a tangible vision and funding the vision. When vision and funding are linked, the budget becomes, what it should be, a tool for achieving organizational goals and objectives. One point of clarification needs to be made. Usually "fund-rasing" refers to fund-raising events. When I refer to "fund-raising," I mean the broader work of raising funds to support the work of the church–the most important of which is pledging. Too often, over reliance on fund-raising events diverts the time and talents of the members of the congregation away from doing ministry–the work of the congregation. As your minister, I will evaluate the fund-raising and budgeting process to determine if it is driven by the visions, goal, and objectives of your church. If there are areas for improvement needed, I will work with the various finance and fund-raising committees to link the vision with funding the vision. This might mean working with the congregation and leaders to articulate a vision or re-affirm a vision. Then working with the finance and fund-raising committees to assure that linkages exist between vision, goal, objectives, milestones, and funding all along the way. This might mean encouraging the canvass and finance committees to see their work as the work of making the vision happen. Frequently, canvass committees are not year-around committees. Making the canvass committee an important committee to articulate the church’s vision, goals, and objectives would mean that the canvass committee members might contact new members about pledging, might identify people who object to pledging but who will contribute if asked and then ask them. As your minister, I would articulate that giving and raising funds are religious and spiritual practices for each member of the church. Giving and fund-raising are tangible ways to promote and to live our Unitarian Universalist values. As your minister, I am willing to be a fund raiser contacting various members of the congregation for whom giving is a sensitive issue for various reasons. The minister also should be capable of instructing and advising members and finance committees on the most effective ways of fund-raising. As a fund raiser, I have served on several all-member canvasses, I have conducted canvass training workshops for an all-member canvass, and I have worked closely with canvass committees. One of the best methods of fund-raising is to find sources of income that pay for a form of ministry that church community does. I always am looking for grant opportunities to fund the ministry of the church. At First Church in Lancaster, one of our ministeries was ministry to elders. I negotiated with the town to start a senior center in the church with a noontime meal program for people over sixty. I procured a grant from the UU Funding Program to start the senior center. It has been operating in the church for four years and generating rental income paid by the town for use of the church kitchen and hall. Endowments. I have served as minister with several congregations with endowments. Endowments were troubling to these congregations. Disagreement was common about the purpose of endowments. Some wanted to use the endowment for special projects such as building needs, some wanted to preserve it for future generations or for a rainy day, and some viewed it as a source of funding to fulfil the mission of the congregation. Because of the troublesome nature of the endowment, I selected as the topic for my doctoral research and dissertation a study of UU congregations with endowments. I found that endowments This meant that endowments were managed mostly for the own purposes and not used to help advance the purposes of the congregations other than keeping the doors open. The Sacred Money of Church Endowments for Church Growth and Revitalization from a Postmodern Economic Perspective, A Dissertation, by Paul G. Hull, February 2007, 454 pages. If the next congregation that I serve as minister has an endowment, I will work closely to with the financial committees to assure that good endowment management policies are used. A skillful minister can help us with our losses. A skillful minister can help us explore the underlying feelings and issues, understand what has happened from a different, more helpful perspective, and finally can help us develop plans to get on with our lives. A minister needs to be available in times of crisis to help us get through the situation and reestablish our coping skills. And a minister also needs to be available to offer support for longer term spiritual and emotional problems. My Pastoral Caring Skills. I bring a competent level of skill in pastoral caring. I have taken several seminary courses in pastoral counseling (Crisis Counseling, Ministry with the Bereaved, and Marriage and Family Counseling). I won a seminary award for my skills in applying the principles of pastoral counseling in the parish setting. And I have known loss too–the death of my partner and fiancee from an aggressive cancer and going through divorce. Despite training in pastoral care and my ministerial and life experience, I am not a trained therapist. I can help people through crises and help people resolve conflicts if those conflicts are not caused by conditions needing a professional therapist. If however someone needs more than three sessions with me as a pastoral counselor about an emotional or relationship problem, I refer that person to a counseling professional. This caveat does not apply to two areas of pastoral counseling: (1) to those in the congregation needing continuing pastoral support and encouragement as occurs during long-term health problems, short-term personal crises, or the support needed by the more mature members as they confront the challenges of aging and (2) spiritual counseling and direction. Concerning spiritual counseling and direction, I have a great deal of theological education and experience in spiritual practice that I bring to spiritual counseling and direction. I would be willing to engage in an extended period of spiritual counseling with members of the congregation that I serve as minister. I also am experienced with being a chaplain in a hospital. I was a chaplain intern and associate chaplain at Reading Hospital and Medical Center, a large regional medical center in Reading, Pennsylvania. I worked in a wide variety of medical situations–emergency room, intensive care, oncology, extended care, neo-natal intensive care, pediatrics, surgery, emergency resuscitation, decisions around do- not-resuscitate orders, and psychiatry. Pastoral Care Teams and Caring Committees. At the Unitarian Society of Germantown, I facilitated the formation of the Caring Committee to take advantage of the informal caring network of the congregation and to emphasize this important aspect of shared ministry. I helped congregants identify the caring needs of the congregation and planned a Caring Committee to address those needs. The Caring Committee consisted of two programs: (1) the Caring Services Program and (2) the Lay Pastoral Care Team. The Caring Services program was designed to involve everyone in the congregation in some way in caring work through writing notes, providing food in times of crisis, or giving someone a ride. The Lay Pastoral Care Team was established to provide trained pastoral visitors to the hospitalized and homebound members of the congregation. Information about the Lay Pastoral Care Team and the Caring Committee is included in Section 6. (Link to Lay Pastoral Care Team and Program) Congregations do not live in a social vacuum for their own sake. If they do, they become clubs. A significant part of all religions is the articulation of a vision of the world that is not yet but that is coming into being. Christianity articulates that vision as the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, Judaism as God’s covenant of peace and justice with Israel, Buddhism as the end of suffering through practice of four noble truths and the eight-fold path, Islam’s vision of righteous living through the Four Pillars of Islam, including almsgiving to make a better world, and Hinduism seeing though the veil of maya through pursuit of three Da’s or virtues–damyata (self control), datta (giving), and dayadhvam (compassion). Religious social action occurs when these visions are directed to bring justice and healing to our social systems. My Social Action Commitments. Most recently I have been involved in social action to address global warming. I have used my environmental engineering background to help promote wind energy. (I currently promoting a wind energy and biomass fuels project in my homestate of Kansas which has included my preliminary feasibility design of a wind generation facility and biomass energy crops.) I am a member of UU Ministry for Earth and organized the local effort for climate change action of 350.org in the fall of 2009. I was Minister of the Week at the Natural History Conference for the second time in 2009, and preached on religious environmentalism and climate change action. I currently am preparing a college level course in religious environmentalism. I have been active in advocating and demonstrating for heath care reform, and two years ago lobbied UUA officials about taking a more proactive stand on health care reform. I collaborated with the Town of Lancaster to establish a senior center and noontime meals program in First Church for seniors. While in Delaware, I lobbied for a bill in the State of Delaware to prevent discrimination of gay and lesbian employees in state contracts and agencies. I have marched for peace, been on the board and an officer of Reading Urban Ministry (an interfaith organization in Reading, Pennsylvania that established or facilitated the establishment of an emergency center, an AID’s hospice center, a Hispanic center, a food pantry, a clothing center, a summer youth program, a friendly visitor program for home bound people), served as an officer of the Pennsylvania Chapter of the Sierra Club, testified on environmental issues before a state committee on environmental issues, prepared an evaluation of U.S. EPA’s water pollution regulations that became the technical basis for a landmark case environmental law of Natural Resources Defense Council vs. EPA, founded the Reading chapter of Amnesty International, and was a volunteer counselor in a county prison. Social Action Praxis. The pitfall of social action occurs when action is taken without taking time for reflection about values and faith. To avoid this, one of the most effective responses is first to reflect on action based on values and faith, then act, followed by reflection about the results of the action in light of our values and faith, and then act again based on the reflection. This action-reflection model takes the reactivity out of social action and substitutes conscious, compassionate action in its place. Administration is the ability to coordinate the people and resources of an organization to accomplish tasks that lead to the desired objectives. This definition of administration applies in all types of organizations–corporations, non-profit agencies, and churches. The type of people, resources, and objectives change from organization to organization. In a church, most of the people are volunteers with a staff ranging from a minister and a part-time director of religious education to a staff of ten or more. I have administrative experience in churches covering a wide range of size, staffing and resources. At Lower Bucks Fellowship, I was the only paid (part-time) staff person. At the UU church in Reading, Pennsylvania where I served on the board and in various other volunteer positions, there was a full-time minister, a part-time secretary, and a part-time religious education coordinator. At the First Unitarian Church of Wilmington, where I served as Interim Assistant Minister, there was a full-time staff of six (including two ministers, a program coordinator, music director, church administrator, and a program secretary), a part-time staff of two (including a religious education administrative assistant and a secretary), five regular unpaid office volunteers, and an unpaid student minister–fourteen people in all. At First Church in Lancaster, Massachusetts, I was the only full-time staff person. I supervised, however, part-time staff of Office Administrator, Director of Religious Education, Sexton, Director of Music (who in turn supervised an organist and paid soloists). My approach to staff administration is to establish a staff team that develops a covenant for working together. I have made it a practice to take the staff team offsite and develop a staff covenant. This staff covenant then is a model for similar covenants in the congregation. During weekly staff meetings, a time is devoted to how we are doing in fulfilling the staff covenant. Staff Covenanting Retreat at Unitarian Society of Germantown in Philadelphia. As minister, I also expect staff loyalty to my ministry as I provide similar loyalty and support to any staff team member. I assure staff members that I am there to help them do the jobs, to help them resolves conflicts that might arise, to see that they have the resources to do their jobs, and to support them. I use appreciative inquiry in dealing with staff issues. I seek to find what is going well and build on that rather than focus just on the problems. In many UU churches, a minister serves as the professional responsible for the administration of the church. Working with staff and church members, the minister as an administrator must be able In addition to my general church administrative experience, I managed my own consulting business for eleven years. Every administrative task listed in the above paragraph, with the exception of work with volunteers, I did successfully in my business. Concerning my experience with volunteers, I gained my initial experience with church volunteers during this time through my participation in the UU church in Reading, Pennsylvania as a board member and chairing several committees. I have extensive experience in being a leader in other volunteer organizations. I founded a local chapter of Amnesty International, and served as Vice President of the Pennsylvania Chapter of the Sierra Club and Vice President of Reading Urban Ministry. Then I have had the experience throughout my ministry working successfully with volunteers. As your minister, I would evaluate your existing administrative procedures and structures to see that they are providing needed services in a quality work environment. I would ask the following questions: Is there clarity of tasks among staff? Are staff empowered to make routine decisions? Are expectations for office tasks matched with resources to accomplish those tasks? Is there direct communication (1) among staff and (2) between staff and leaders? How are office tasks prioritized? Does the prioritization correspond to the vision, goals, and objectives of the church? If problem areas are identified, I would work with the staff, appropriate committees and board to find and implement solutions. As minister, I am committed to establishing a team approach to working with staff, both paid and volunteer. To implement this approach, I would lead, at least, a yearly staff retreat to develop and review a staff covenant and to establish objectives for the year. During the program year, I would meet weekly with the staff team to implement the objectives, to assure smooth church operations, and to make work a fun and meaningful experience. -------------- [1] Meade, Loren B. Five Challenges for the Once and Future Church. Bethesda, MD: Alban Institute. 1996, 14. [2] Sweet, Leonard. SoulTsunami: Sink or Swim in New Millennium Culture. Grand Rapids, Michigan: ZondervanPublishing House, 1999. 23. [3] Ibid. [4] Meade. [5] Ibid, 53.
(1) EPIC Churches
(2) The Post Modern Challenge to Religion
(3) The Type of Ministry for the Times
(4) The Ministry I Will Bring
(1) Leadership Styles
(2) Ministerial Authority &Your Congregation
(3) Visions of What My Leadership Would Be
(4) Strategic Planning
(1) Sunday Worship
(2) Interfaith and Ecumenical Worship
(1) Courses I Have Taught
(2) Mentoring
(1) Church Programs
(2) Committee Functioning and Support
(3) Board Policy Governance
(1) One Media Window: Cable Technology
(2) Another Media Window: The Internet
(3) Media Is Not the Message Nor the Substance
(4) Interpersonal Communications
(1) Spiritual Growth
(2) Growth in Diversity
(3) Growth in Membership
(4) Inviting the Visitor
(1) Fund Raising Support
(2) Solutions to Fund-Raising Problems
(3) Endowments
(1) My Pastoral Caring Skills
(2) Pastoral Care Teams and Caring Committees
(1) My Social Action Commitments
(2) Social Action Praxis
Loren Meade, one of the most astute observers of American religious institutions and founder of the Alban Institute, states "churches cannot be fully and effectively in ministry in the twenty-first century by continuing patterns [of clericalism] inherited from the twentieth."[1] (My emphasis) Meade observes that fifty percent of American churches are failing financially, church membership is falling, and religion generally is becoming more irrelevant to the times.
Religion tells people how to be religious. It creates passive consumers of products called beliefs which religion asserts are universal. Postmodernism, in its assertion that there are no universal values, challenges religion to create environments were spiritual experiences occur rather than where beliefs are proscribed. Postmodernism observes that institutional religion is becoming irrelevant in today’s world because religion proscribes belief rather than creates communities where religion can be experienced.
To meet the challenge of postmodernism, churches would do well if they stopped talking about spirituality and created communities that help people have experiences of spirituality, that help people participate actively in religion, that are interactive and innovative, that are communal — EPIC congregations. Studies show that a significant majority of people have had mystical or spiritual experiences, yet only a small minority of those people feel comfortable sharing those experiences in church. How can we create a church community where people feel free to share the depth of their spiritual experiences? During my ministry with your congregation, we would engage that question and live into its answer.
The Ministry I Will Bring. The kind of ministry that I seek to bring to your congregation is an EPIC ministry where we experience, in community, what it means to be spiritual in its most diverse sense; where we participate in envisioning, creating, and doing the work of ministry; where we learn from the interaction with each other and the world about us–all bringing our gifts to share; and where we create a community of connection, love and caring.
My experience, in both settled and interim ministry positions, informs me to help church leadership create this kind of EPIC ministry. Often in my ministry, I have put forward an idea, created a space where dialogue could occur, and then listened as the church members dialogue about their visions for a church community. This does not mean that I am not passionately involved in the decisions of the church. What it means is that I don’t own the decisions the church community makes; the church community owns their decisions.
from churchcartoon.com [6]
Cartoon sign reads: "INFLUENTIAL EMERGING CHURCH BLOGGERS MEETING."
Leadership
One of the reasons I decided to become a minister was that I found the leadership of my church community so satisfying for me that I wanted to do it full time. My style of leadership is facilitative. I seek always to empower others. I find a great deal of satisfaction in helping others exceed their own often self-imposed limitations and to envision other ways of being and doing for themselves. Further, I seek to remove blocks that dis-empower organizations and people. One of my big successes in business was being able to empower my employees to act according to the purposes and objectives of my business. It was not uncommon for me to hear from my employees that my company was the best place that they had ever worked, and I have heard the same comment from staff members of churches that I have served as minister.
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Ministerial Authority and Your Congregation. Authority can be used to control or to empower. My leadership style is to empower staff and church members and not to use authority for control unless an unusual situation demands it. My way of being empowering is to be participative and collaborative. A minister, however, cannot effectively empower without a clear agreement between the congregation and the minister about the extent and duration of the minister's authority. Institutional responsibilities and power must be understood clearly and agreed upon for effective leadership.
If I were to be called as your minister, I would seek to achieve clarity with the congregation concerning such leadership questions as:
I firmly believe that we are all ministers and empowered by our connections with the sacred. Empowerment by connection to the sacred gives each of us legitimate authority that is deeply personal and that transcends institutional authority. As an ordained, professional minister, I share the ministry with the congregation as ministers too. I am a spiritual leader–preaching, teaching, counseling, mentoring, and challenging. I have expertise in management backed with a knowledge of church life that I will draw on to facilitate, advise, plan, and implement the visions of the congregation. I engage the members of the congregation, with full participation of everyone, in envisioning the congregation's present and future. I am a visionary leader who engages others in creating the future and establishing long range plans for the future to make today’s plans into tomorrow’s realities.
Coming from a business background, I have been surprised frequently by congregational leaders’ reluctance to establish and follow strategic plans. "This is a church, and we shouldn’t have to do that" is a common attitude--sometimes spoken sometimes unspoken. Yet a strategic plan is a definite idea of where the organization is going and what it will take to get there.
Paul leading worship at Star Island's
Natural History Conference 2009
Humans are meaning-makers. To give something meaning is to give it worth in our lives. Worship takes the everyday events in our lives and recasts them with deeper meaning. Worship assumes that there are hidden meanings beneath the surfaces of life–beneath the facile explanations of conventional wisdoms. These meanings emerge in many ways but most vitally as a deep and reverent feeling of the sacred in life. All the elements in worship must combine to create the feeling of a coherent whole–a work of art that stands by itself. To create this experience of wholeness, my style is to collaborate with all involved in the worship service by meeting weekly with the music director and presenters in the service. I am continually amazed how much more knowledgeable most groups are than any one individual. To assure continuing vital worship, I would establish a worship associates program to train and facilitate active participation of a few members in worship planning and presentation.
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Paul's comment about this cartoon: "Not on my watch would this happen!"
In our UU tradition, the centerpiece of the worship service is the sermon. The sermon must be intellectually stimulating without being dry. It must stimulate the emotions without being sentimental. It must make the intangible into the tangible. This happens when verbal images and stories connect us to the deeper meanings in our lives. Sermons remind us of values that we hold. They present perspectives. They make connections that we may not have suspected. They challenge. They proclaim and inspire. They speak deeply to who we are. And, well done, they are an art in themselves–a literature, a poetry–both lyrical and epic.
The worship services were the first times that the Nipmuc Nation had been invited to an event in Lancaster since before the King Philip War in 1675. We planted a peace pole one year, and, the next year, a red oak to honor the elders of both communities.
When a firefighter died in Lancaster fighting a housefire, I helped plan and lead at First Church an ecumenical memorial service for the firefighter that included the communities of Lancaster and Clinton.
We mark the seasons of our lives. We need to take the time to say goodbye to old ways of being and to engage new ways.
Teaching a Religious Education Class
Programs, Committees, and the Board
Committee Functioning and Support. These programs are administered by members serving on program committees. The minister works with these committees to help them get organized, to set priorities, and to work through snags. The three most important aspects for effective committees are assuring that
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Board Policy Governance. As your minister, I would work closely with the board to help define its work in relation to the vision, goals, and objectives of the congregation. I encourage boards to be policy-making bodies and to delegate detailed tasks to committees and staff. I would expect to meet regularly with the officers of the board to problem solve and articulate and implement policy. 
Leading a Board Retreat
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Also, there is a difference between being welcoming and inviting. Welcoming is being cordial and friendly. Inviting is to ask people to become involved in the life of the community. Welcoming is to say hello and to see to the comfort of the visitor. Inviting is what happens after we say hello.
My vision of my ministerial membership responsibilities is
The church was able to develop a ministry to the elderly in town because of these efforts.
When I was at the UUs of Southern Delaware, one of the members of the congregation was able to procure a environmental education grant from the US Environmental Protection Agency for a summer environmental school for disadvantaged youth. The grant included reimbursement of a portion of church office overhead as well as developing resources for an environmental curriculum for the church's religious education program.
While at First Church in Lancaster, Ma, I designed a bequests program to encourage contributions and planned giving to the endowment.
Pastoral Concerns
Life is not easy. Accidents happen. Conflicts arise. Something troubles us that blocks our joy. We lose what once gave us comfort. People leave. We get sick. Someone close dies. And we need someone to hold onto–someone to speak the words of hope, someone to tell us that we can make it through this.
A vital and healthy-functioning congregation needs to articulate its values and work to extend those values into the world. A minister serves as a leader in social action for the congregation. I am one of the initial signatories of the Religious Declaration on Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing. I have been involved with anti-racism work with the Unitarian Society of Germantown. I helped start the Ending Racism Taskforce at the Unitarian Society of Germantown in Philadelphia. I helped the taskforce define their mission, vision, objectives, and goals, and then deal with some difficult problems from a sense of integrity about a less than ideal past for the church community. I encouraged the committee to exhibit compassion for former church leaders who were caught up by social forces of their times (1930s through early 1960s) and who showed less courage then they could have in confronting racism.
At the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Centre County, I was responsible for the overall operation of the church office, supervising of the Office Administrator, and coordination of staff activities (including a three-quarter time Director of Religious Education and an unpaid Director of Music.) At the Unitarian Universalists of Southern Delaware, I supervised a part-time director of religious education and administered church functioning from a rented office in an office complex. At the Unitarian Society of Germantown, I supervised a staff of five–an administrative assistant, director of religious education, director of music, religious education assistant, and sexton. At Pebble Hill Church, where I am the Interim Coordinating Minister, I coordinate the activities of paid part-time staff of four church members (children and youth education coordinator, office manager, Sunday celebration coordinator, and volunteer coordinator) plus numerous volunteers. 
[6] This CartoonChurch.com cartoon originally appeared in the Church Times and is taken from ‘My Pew: Things I have seen from it’, published by Canterbury Press. Used according to required conditons of use.
[7] reprinted per license agreement 71326, cartoonstock.com
[8] reprinted with permission.
