Ministry

November 8, 2009

To Do or To Be Reverend Don Vaughn-Foerster

Some years back an article in the Houston Post religion and ethics page reported that the corner druggist ranked higher than the minister in polls of "most respected occupations."  At the time that was a sharp drop over past years - perhaps because of the increasing secularization of our society.  Or because people then may just have come to prefer hard drugs to "opiates of the spirit."  

The article went on to refer to the "sordid sagas" of fallen preachers, such as the Jim Bakkers and Jimmy Swaggarts of the day - to which we may add innumerable moral failures avidly reported in the media over the past decade.  And don't forget the charges of sexual harassment that have been brought against increasing numbers of parish ministers (including the accusations of child molestation by Roman Catholic priests) that have played a large part in "the slide of the clergy" in public estimation.  The writer complained that this slide is not just because of an inherent desire on the part of laity that the clergy be pulled down from their pedestal.  It is also because many of the clergy have stepped down willingly and happily - to demonstrate that they, too, are human.  But, said the writer, we can rise above the brute side of our nature through reason and self-control and the clergy is supposed to set the example of how this is done.  In fact, ministers, he said, are hired to be this way - to be special, to be better than the rest of us are likely to be.  "Reverend," he said, "get back on your pedestal!"  Do your job!  

This "do your job" admonition is a theme that, in another way, such luminaries as Nietsche, Kant, and Frank Sinatra have dealt with.  Nietsche said, "To do is to be."  Kant said "To be is to do."  Sinatra may have put it all in perspective when he said, "Do be do be do."  

This article brings to mind a story told at one of my own installations. It's about a fellow who didn't want to get out of bed one fine Sunday Morning.  "Come on, George," said his mother.  "It's time for church."  "I don't want to go," said George, pulling up the covers.  "Why not?" asked his mother.  "I don't like church," came the reply. "What don't you like?"  "I don't like the hymns.  I don't like the sermons; they're boring.  And I don't like the people; they're not friendly.  They don't like me and I don't like them."  "Well, George," said the mother, "I can't argue with you.  Sometimes the hymns aren't very good.  The sermons are sometimes boring.  And the people sometimes aren't very friendly.  And it's clear - some of them don't like you and you don't like them.  But you are going to have to get up, get dressed, and go to church anyhow."  "Oh, why?" complained George.  "Because," said the mother, "you're forty years old; they expect you to be there; they pay your salary; and you are their minister."  

I have to admit that there are days that, sometimes, make me want to pull the covers over my head.  Over the years, when it seemed that other people's expectations of me as a minister were more rigorous than their expectations of themselves as persons, this whole enterprise took on an air of unreality and impossibility.  For, unless a minister is truly grounded in his or her own sense of humanity, ministry is not an authentic enterprise.  Rather, I have no doubt that it easily becomes a self-righteous ploy to mislead people into thinking that the minister is a special human being who has a special access to the divine or a special spiritual access to the cosmos that they do not have.  Gross moral misconduct is not to be accepted in ministers, of course; but neither is it to be accepted in teachers or engineers or politicians or day laborers - or average church-goers.  In such an approach by laity to ministers and ministry, the true importance of ministry as a collective enterprise between the minister and the congregation is lost.  

Today I want to consider what ministry is in our Unitarian religious setting. I say in our setting because what we aim for in religion is not the same as that for which most of the larger society aims.  Possibly, Roman Catholic and fundamentalist clergy should aim for some kind of "priestly edge" over the average believer - "priests" being persons thought to have the power to mediate between human beings and God because of the special-ness of their ordination or the saved-ness of their souls.  But this is not so with Unitarians.  We approach the matter from a down-to-earth and more cooperative stance.  Most of us believe that ministry is a human, not a divine, enterprise.  The reality, however, is that we much too easily allow some of our old learned attitudes toward church and clergy to insinuate themselves into our thinking and behavior and a little bit of magic often gets inserted where authenticity should be.  

That is why we need, from time to time, to take a serious look at what we really are trying to accomplish together.  Certainly, during a period of transition between settled ministers this is useful.  For, you see, when we talk of ministers and ministry we are also talking about the primary reasons we gather as a religious organization.  We are talking, also, about the purposes and functions of the congregations that call ministers.  We are talking, also, about individual purposes and individual goals of the members of those congregations.  

I assume that most other ministers are like me.  I went into the ministry to pursue certain goals of my own; goals that can only be accomplished in conjunction with a congregation.  And so it is likely to be for the other ministers whom you may call after my interim period is over.  That means that your goals and the minister's goals must overlap significantly.  These goals cannot be identical because that would mean ministers and members would have to conform to each other at the risk of compromising their own minds and consciences.  But much must be shared in order to do anything significant.   There must be an appropriate covenantal relationship between minister and congregation, i.e. a relationship in which both parties are formally committed to be mutually supportive in matters of identified common concern.  There needs to be a sense of standing shoulder to shoulder in solidarity of purpose if not in personal desire.  "Rank by rank", as the hymn says.   

Actually, this usually occurs at least informally when the congregation is healthy and growing and the minister feels supported.  But this is a relationship that must be cultivated and kept clear by both parties, or else the goals of congregation and minister can diverge too significantly for mutual comfort and cooperation.  Both parties need to be in basic agreement about what the elements of ministry are - and who is to do them.    

There are several elements usually taken to be part of ministry.  In our liberal religious context all of these elements are aspects of the responsibility that members of our congregations bear to one another.  But, too often these elements become specific areas of activity assigned mostly (if not only) to professional clergy.  The traditional words used to symbolize these areas of activity are preacher, prophet, priest, and pastor.   When I was in theology school the term administrator was added.  We know these labels because professionals have made their living doing what they stand for:  the preacher, as the advocate of ideas and courses of action; the prophet, as the person either foretelling some event or (and I like this better) calling the community to creative moral responsibility;  the priest, as mediator between the community and the transcendent or as purveyor of the holy; the pastor, as a spiritual and emotional overseer in members' lives ("pastor" by the way, is Latin for "herdsman"); and the administrator, as the day-to-day manager of the church or parish.  Frankly, I have some theological difficulty with the word "pastor" because I don't think I am a shepherd "herding" anybody.  UUs are certainly not sheep.  Goats, at times chewing on every idea in sight, maybe, but not sheep.  

In our setting, lay people among us sometimes become practitioners of one or more of these ministerial responsibilities.  In this way, any one of us can deliver a sermon, call the rest of us to a morally responsible cause, light candles or, in some other way, point to the special-ness of spiritual reality, or take on administrative and policy-making responsibilities, as well as interpersonal caring and concern for the rest of us.  In our democratic congregational system, the congregation can grant either its formal or tacit support to those who take on these functions.  These are not the exclusive province of any professional minister in any of our congregations.  In fact, the ability of lay persons to function in these capacities is why the Fellowship movement succeeded so well for so long.  The principle that we are all ministers to one another is fundamental to our system.  

But the reason Fellowships tend to become churches is because there is more depth to every one of these functions than most lay persons have the time or the energy to master.  It may not look like that through the usual lay person's eyes.  I can attest to that.  I was a deeply involved lay leader in a Unitarian fellowship myself for eight years before I entered a school of theology.  It seemed to me that I was as competent in all these ministerial categories as many of the ministers I met in those days.  That is, I felt that way until I found myself in graduate school reexamining everything I thought I knew about religion from a deeper, more systematic perspective.  Theology school did not make me a superior person, but it did make me more critical of what I thought I knew and more humble about what I didn't know.  It did confirm the importance to any congregation of the presence of professionally educated leadership that has been systematically exposed to the full range of issues - religious and ethical, personal and organizational - that confront a congregation every day.  

The roles of preacher, prophet, priest, pastor, and administrator describe what generally is expected of our professional Unitarian clergy - with some strong qualifications on the "priestly" business.  The "priestly" role is symbolic for most Unitarians, although an increase of literalism in this role seems to have accompanied the rise of recent movements within our ranks because of a resurgent desire on the part of many to be a mainstream liturgical religion more than a prophetic one.  But, as I said, these areas of activity describe what Unitarian ministers (like ministers of many other denominations) are assigned to do.  

Ordinarily, a congregation's bylaws identify how the minister is to relate to other congregational leadership.  Especially, in our congregational system (where laity ultimately is king) this is important to identify.  If the minister is not to be CEO in charge of virtually everything or figurehead in charge of nothing, most of the bylaws I have worked with over the years define the minister as the "spiritual head" of the congregation and the Board of Trustees as in charge of the material welfare of the congregation - its finances and policies.  

Actually, the bylaws here have only a general description of ministerial duties which ends with the reminder that the Board of Trustees and the general meeting of the congregation have the final decision in matters of policy and procedure.  In practical terms, this leaves the ministerial role to be defined in a letter of agreement generated by the Ministerial Search Committee and the Board and approved by the congregation.  This approach has the advantage of possibly creating a relationship acceptable to both the minister and the church.  It has the disadvantage of falling into a trap - the trap of creating a list of things that may or may not be done so that "doing the job" becomes the main concern rather than calling on the minister to be the primary "spiritual leader" of the congregation.  Such documents, rather than clearly asserting that the minister is to be the spiritual leader, often turn out to be job descriptions, sometimes quite detailed, which have an administrative, accountability-oriented, thrust rather than a preaching, prophetic, pastoral, or even priestly empowerment.  

This, however, is a perfectly justifiable thing to expect, if a minister feels he or she is only here to fulfill a job description; that is, to administer even the spiritual and interpersonal aspects of ministry.    And if that's what is meant, that's the kind of minister you should get.  However, some of us ministers feel we are not in this vocation only to do a "job"; we feel that we are persons for whom ministry is our life.  If we are here only to do a job, the Sunday morning is likely to come when the day-to-dayness of it all overcomes us and we simply pull the covers over our head and not show up.  If, on the other hand, we feel ministry is our life, we truly aim for creative outcomes that only drawing a paycheck does not encourage.  Rather, we aim for creative outcomes that advance the common good because desire for the common good is what makes us tick.  

Perhaps this is something to be kept in mind as you choose your next minister.  Do you want someone who does the work of ministry or someone who is a minister?  Do you want leadership defined by contract or do you want religious, spiritual leadership?  What ordinarily happens is that congregations get what they want.  

After having said all this about professional clergy, I would like to end with a personal statement that, I hope, will stimulate you to think more deeply on what you perceive UU ministry to be.   

I, personally, chose the ministry as a calling because religion has always been of deep concern to me.  I chose the UU ministry because it is the one religious profession free enough of dogmatic strictures truly to permit honest dealing with persons in all aspects of their lives.  I see the UU ministry - and the ministry of this congregation - as having a unique mandate to use all of the skills I have as minister and you have as practicing UUs to help make concrete a thoughtful, hopeful, and mature response to the profound issues of human existence.  Also, there is a strenuous challenge for neither laity nor clergy to lapse into superficial enthusiasms or professionalisms but to be persons who can express the human values they venerate.  After all, to be authentic is not to be on a pedestal; it is to be human.  In our setting, a minister who truly leads spiritually enables others to pursue the callings of their spirit authentically.  This, I believe, is why we ultimately come together: to be who we are and, from our being, to do what we can.  This is an enterprise of the spirit that our material resources and affairs can either facilitate or hinder.