Ministry in these times.
My inclination here is to invite you to breathe with me... Inviting the breath and embodied experience is how I practice and hold ministry in these times. In the past several years I have found that any theology of ministry I articulate must include embodied experience - a felt sense of who and whose we are, what gives us meaning and how we live that. In these times - not necessarily a euphemism for living through pandemic, social, political, and environmental upheaval, but a short hand descriptor - these times. Unprecedented. Indeed. The are the questions that I am exploring in my life and ministries in these times are: Who have we been? Who are we now? Who are we called to be? This goes for us as individuals, families, congregations, denomination, activists, organizations. Also, what grounds us? Calls us? Inspires and empowers us? Ministry is about love. Ministry is about answering the call of love as it uniquely manifests in our lives – clergy and laity alike. It is about answering that call in ways large and small in whatever ways we are able. Ministry asks, “What would love do?” In every situation. In pastoral care and at bedside of the dying, love asks, “How can I be most present?” In board, committee, and congregational meetings love asks, “What most advances the flourishing and well-being of the congregation and the wider world?” In the pulpit and in the classroom love asks, “What are the needs spoken and unspoken? Where is the hunger? What word is most needed?” At coffee hour love asks, “Who is standing alone hoping to be seen?” In policy decisions, in the streets, and in the corridors of power love asks, “Whose voice is silenced? Whose bodies are broken? Who are the disenfranchised? Where am I needed?” This ministry of love is about action. It is about putting our bodies where we are needed. It is the hand that soothes, the words that heal, and the words that speak truth to power. It is about the willingness to risk and, for those of us with privilege it is about putting our bodies on the line. |
+Ministry is about relationships of presence, compassion and justice-love.
We all bring various spiritual understandings and experiences to our congregational life and folks in our congregations get to learn and be encouraged in, their own spiritual development. I am taken by the simple yet profound idea, advanced by Rev Dr Thandeka, of "Love Beyond Belief," which calls us to think and reach beyond our individual beliefs. Those three words – Love Beyond Belief – say so much about where I believe we need to be as Unitarian Universalist congregations in our self-understanding and our practice.
It is about putting our bodies where we are needed.
I value our theological diversity. It is a good and saving thing to find a place where each person can be nurtured, healed, and held in the particularity of whom they are and encouraged to spiritual growth. I love that about us. And we are more than a collection of individuals who believe different things. We can celebrate, engage, and be changed by our different beliefs and move beyond that into a deepening love that transcends our individual beliefs, while calling us to a transforming love beyond our wildest imaginings. Let’s do that. The world needs us to be that now.
And let’s do so as a covenanted community. My theology/philosophy of Unitarian Universalist ministry leads me to foster healthy, productive relationships within our congregations in the service of the building the Beloved Community - the not yet, but coming into being community of justice and love, both within and beyond our institutional doors. It entails a commitment to act with the poor, the disenfranchised, the prisoner, the immigrant, the refugee, our LGBTQIA+ siblings, all who are oppressed. It is a call to dismantle white supremacy culture within ourselves, our congregations, and beyond our congregations. It leads me to care deeply for the earth and all those with whom I share this home. Spiritually-grounded, transformational social justice work is at the core of my ministry. It is based on the fact that everything is connected – all issues of oppression and domination are linked, and everything is at stake. And everything we do matters.
We gather in communities to support one another in our search for truth and meaning and to challenge ourselves to live the radical implications of our relationality. In our covenantal relationships we can create “alternate socialities,” as UU theologian Sharon Welch describes “communities of resistance and solidarity.”[1] Through such communities we are able to offer resistance to the existential threats of our times, to provide a place in which to deepen spiritually, to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with the Holy.
I take as one of the charges for my ministry these words by Charles Birch and John B. Cobb, Jr.:
Therefore the religious person must be disciplined and equipped in body and mind for the task, he or she must have more calmness and mastery in the midst of peril and turmoil, more sensitivity and deeper insight into the bonds of interdependence that hold people together in rich community, a more passionate and richly integrating life purpose which can transmute the common things of daily life.[2]
[1] Sharon D. Welch, Communities of Resistance and Solidarity (Orbis: Maryknoll, 1985)
[2] Charles Birch and John B. Cobb, Jr. The Liberation of Life (Environmental Ethics Books: Denton, 1990), 192
We all bring various spiritual understandings and experiences to our congregational life and folks in our congregations get to learn and be encouraged in, their own spiritual development. I am taken by the simple yet profound idea, advanced by Rev Dr Thandeka, of "Love Beyond Belief," which calls us to think and reach beyond our individual beliefs. Those three words – Love Beyond Belief – say so much about where I believe we need to be as Unitarian Universalist congregations in our self-understanding and our practice.
It is about putting our bodies where we are needed.
I value our theological diversity. It is a good and saving thing to find a place where each person can be nurtured, healed, and held in the particularity of whom they are and encouraged to spiritual growth. I love that about us. And we are more than a collection of individuals who believe different things. We can celebrate, engage, and be changed by our different beliefs and move beyond that into a deepening love that transcends our individual beliefs, while calling us to a transforming love beyond our wildest imaginings. Let’s do that. The world needs us to be that now.
And let’s do so as a covenanted community. My theology/philosophy of Unitarian Universalist ministry leads me to foster healthy, productive relationships within our congregations in the service of the building the Beloved Community - the not yet, but coming into being community of justice and love, both within and beyond our institutional doors. It entails a commitment to act with the poor, the disenfranchised, the prisoner, the immigrant, the refugee, our LGBTQIA+ siblings, all who are oppressed. It is a call to dismantle white supremacy culture within ourselves, our congregations, and beyond our congregations. It leads me to care deeply for the earth and all those with whom I share this home. Spiritually-grounded, transformational social justice work is at the core of my ministry. It is based on the fact that everything is connected – all issues of oppression and domination are linked, and everything is at stake. And everything we do matters.
We gather in communities to support one another in our search for truth and meaning and to challenge ourselves to live the radical implications of our relationality. In our covenantal relationships we can create “alternate socialities,” as UU theologian Sharon Welch describes “communities of resistance and solidarity.”[1] Through such communities we are able to offer resistance to the existential threats of our times, to provide a place in which to deepen spiritually, to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with the Holy.
I take as one of the charges for my ministry these words by Charles Birch and John B. Cobb, Jr.:
Therefore the religious person must be disciplined and equipped in body and mind for the task, he or she must have more calmness and mastery in the midst of peril and turmoil, more sensitivity and deeper insight into the bonds of interdependence that hold people together in rich community, a more passionate and richly integrating life purpose which can transmute the common things of daily life.[2]
[1] Sharon D. Welch, Communities of Resistance and Solidarity (Orbis: Maryknoll, 1985)
[2] Charles Birch and John B. Cobb, Jr. The Liberation of Life (Environmental Ethics Books: Denton, 1990), 192