HUU Community Cafe

Seeking Our Center: A Vision for Service
Presented by the Shared Ministry Task Force.
April 6, 2008

READINGS:

The first reading this morning, about the Fellowship movement within UUA, is taken from the most recent UU World magazine and a new book, The Fellowship Movement: A growth strategy and its legacy.

The story of the growth of Unitarian Universalism in the last sixty years is largely the story of the fellowship movement and its aftermath. Between 1948 and 1967 the main growth strategy . . . was to plant small, autonomous, lay-led congregation just about everywhere ten or more religious liberals could be brought together. (For those of you who wonder, HUU was founded in 1991.) 30% of the UUA’s current congregations started as fellowships during those two decades. Some are still small and lay-led, (such as ours). Others have evolved into full-service congregations.

Judgments about the success of the fellowship movement run the spectrum from wildly positive to extremely negative. The positive views are that along with growing the denomination, fellowships brought innovation, vitality and lay leadership into a religious community greatly in need of fresh air. At the other end of the spectrum is the view that the fellowship movement spawned small, introverted . . . groups that did not want to grow or welcome newcomers and did not identify with the larger denomination.

Fellowships brought freedom. The shadow side of this freedom is anarchy-a lack of order and structure, and the inability to create and sustain a center. When each person is free to create his or her own religion, there is no grounding, no common core.

The second readings are quotes from the Unitarian Universalist Association’s website about shared ministry:

Unitarian Universalism, as a democratic faith, affirms the “priesthood of all believers;” we are all lay ministers, whether or not we choose to be professional religious leaders. This belief in the “priesthood of all believers” is central to who we are as a religious movement.

The task before us is to foster and develop a ministering congregation. A ministering congregation … has an intentional and ongoing “shared ministry program,” a process for helping lay people discover their gifts and live out their ministries in the church and in their daily lives.

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EASTER SURPISES, 2008
by Rev. Bob Hughes
March 23, 2008

For many years, as a Lutheran pastor, on Easter Sunday, the first words I would say were, “Christ has risen!” The congregation would answer in reply, “he is risen, indeed!” After nearly 25 years of Lutheran ministry I discovered Unitarian Universalism and eventually transferred my ordination. Now, as a UU minister, I wonder what I can say on Easter Sunday!

I know that, if I were to say, “Christ has risen!” you wouldn’t know what to say in reply! Not only would you not know the proper response, you would probably be rather taken aback that, in a UU Congregation I would say “Christ has risen!” Those of you who grew up UU and haven’t visited many Christian congregations on Easter Sunday haven’t heard those words year after year.

I wonder what words Unitarian Universalists might use! About the best I can come up with is, “Spring is here!” and your reply would be, “Spring is here, indeed!” But, compared with “Christ has risen!” sayings about the return of spring and the blooming of daffodils just doesn’t seem all that powerful. Continue Reading »

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