Disrupt Church ©
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
August 13, 2023
At our UU General Assembly back in June, there was a lot of conversation about the future of church. We all know and acknowledge that church attendance is down everywhere. The pandemic accelerated that trend, but did not cause it. And so in workshops and in worship services, we confronted this, openly and thoughtfully.
In a sermon delivered at the annual Service of the Living Tradition the Reverend Chris Buice talked about how challenging it is to change the way church functions. “Churches are not always known for rapid change,” he commented. We hear this in other places as well, with remarks such as: “Life at the speed of church,” or “Church time,” typically said ruefully and accompanied by the shaking of heads.
Rev. Buice shared that at the church he served as a student minister in Ohio years ago, the church board chair had a saying that organizing UU’s was like herding turtles. The board had responded over the years with a well-practiced chant: “Go, turtles, go!”
Go, turtles, go.
I stand before you here this morning to bring to you some of the thinking that is more and more openly taking hold about how to prepare churches, how to find ways to survive and thrive in these years of uncertainty and very rapid change. I’ll offer you a spoiler alert: the turtles are in trouble.
The best-attended workshop at General Assembly was one led by the minister and staff of Community Church in Manhattan, and it was called, “Disrupt Church.” The workshop leaders shared what they have been confronting during and since the pandemic, and how they have taken steps to try to do church in different ways, to create new models and new norms. For anyone interested, they created a Facebook page, called Disrupt Church, to build community and offer a place to share ideas for helping church respond to these changing times. You are welcome to join.
We learned in the workshop that one aspect of contemporary culture that impacts church greatly is our orientation toward consumerism. The workshop leaders showed us a slide that shared three columns listing attributes of different categories of people. The first column was headed by the word: Subject. Subjects are dependent, dutiful, religious, obedient, and governed by hierarchy.
The second column was titled: Consumer. Consumers are independent, concerned with their rights, materialistic, demanding, expecting choice and to be served. Their form of governance is bureaucracy. Perhaps some of this might sound familiar.
The third list was titled: Citizen. Citizens are interdependent, and spiritual. They expect to participate, to create, facilitate, and to work with a shared purpose. Their form of governance would be deliberative.
Like much of our society, churches tend to reflect the culture of consumerism that is present all around us. It’s easy to begin to expect a beautiful building, the highest quality music, and meaningful programming for people of all ages. I first became aware of the unrealistic expectations for churches when colleagues began sharing, some years ago, that they were trying to offer programming for middle and high-school aged youth, programming that the parents requested, but that couldn’t get launched because there was never a time to meet that suited everyone.
I am sorry to appear to be picking on parents, whose lives are not easy. Families face unprecedented pressure and competition to provide constant enrichment for their children and are pulled in too many directions at once. But this is simply the clearest example of how without commitment, without a sense of purpose but with a consumer mentality, churches will struggle to thrive.
In reviewing the list of attributes for Citizens, I kept coming back to one word in particular, and that is Purpose. Unlike Consumers, Citizens are able to think more broadly, to consider the well-being and needs of other segments of society. They try to act with purpose.
The task for churches in the coming years is to help move society away from a Consumer focus, and toward a Citizenship focus. As the Reverend Robert Karnan wrote in our reading just now:
“The whole identity of a good church is that it speaks and acts for the transformation of our lives at all levels simultaneously: spiritual, emotional, intellectual, and moral…The task of the church is to make over our lives as they need it and our society as it requires it…
Our churches exist to speak for something and to something a great deal more compelling and significant and powerful than size or buildings and money. They exist, and have for these long years, to bring us together in kindness and honesty and to give us the gift of our deep and good friendships. They also invite us, if we need the invitation, to listen to the cries of injustice and of pain and to do something curative about them…” (“Inclusive Evangelism,” in Salted With Fire, Scott Alexander, ed., p. 144-45.)
For some years now, we religious professionals have been very aware that the churches that thrive are those who have a clear sense of purpose. We often use the word ‘mission.’ I have from time to time, especially before the pandemic, encouraged this congregation to look carefully at our mission, to be able to articulate it. Do you know why you are here? Do you know why we are here? Can you tell your friends why we are here?
The churches that thrive will be the ones who know their purpose, and are out sharing it with the wider community and the world.
“Our churches exist to speak for something and to something a great deal more compelling and significant and powerful than size or buildings or money.” (ibid.)
For the past year, since returning from sabbatical, I have spent a great deal of time thinking about the future of church: of churches in general, and of this church. What I know now from attending our General Assembly is that all of our religious professionals are engaged in this process of discernment as well. And I will share some of my thoughts and vision for us to move boldly toward an uncertain future; a future in which we act as Citizens, and not Consumers.
The truth is, it’s not going to be enough to simply be here, welcoming everyone who comes to our Sunday services. Years ago, when I first arrived, I shared with you my goal of us becoming an anti-racist congregation. To do that, I told you, it was not enough for us to simply welcome anyone who found their way to us. We had to be active outside these walls, in the community, living our values for people to see in public, not here behind our beautiful stained glass windows.
No, it is not enough to be anti-racist here in the sanctuary. And it is not enough for us to gather each Sunday for an hour and share our values, cloistered here with each other. To thrive, we need to name and embrace a more active role in our city, first, by looking closely at all the ways in which we contribute outside our walls, and then by deliberately and intentionally looking for ways to be ever more involved in community life.
We play an important role in Gloucester, and that is one of a community church. Think about all we say ‘yes’ to over the years to serve the wider community. We provided space to neighboring congregations after their buildings burned down. We provided a home for the Grace Center. We participate in community activities: most recently as a host for the city-wide Gloucester Reads book discussion groups. We contribute Socks and Underwear to partner organizations who serve those in need. We participate in expanding the work of the Cape Ann Slavery and Abolition Project. We even created an art gallery!
I am also increasingly aware of the extent to which we serve the wider community as a resource for celebrations of life honoring a wide range of community members; we should be proud that people come to us when they need the support we can provide during challenging times in their lives.
These are all really good and positive things, but we should be looking at them all as a beginning, as simply the beginning of a major culture shift. We need to see them as all connected, as part of our mission, and very intentional.
If churches, including this church, are going to thrive, we will need to shift, to adapt, in more than one way. First of all, we must shift from thinking like Consumers to thinking like Citizens. To think interdependently, to think about the greater purpose, not the small issues of whether or not we liked the hymns, or prefer the organ to the piano. What the religious professionals like to refer to as ‘fake fights’.
(For those not familiar with that term, a fake fight is one where people spend their time and energy on small matters, such as the choice of theological language, and manage to avoid tackling the broader issues facing our society.)
So, first of all, we require an intentional shift from Consumers to Citizens. And second of all, we will need to flip our priorities. As a consumer-driven church, we emphasize our one hour of worship on Sunday morning, with a few other activities scattered during the week. As a citizen-driven church, we will serve as a community resource, active in social justice issues and in community partnerships, with an hour of worship on Sunday. In other words, I invite you to think about church in a new way, that decenters worship, and centers purpose.
It’s time, in other words, to Disrupt Church. To outrun the turtles, to think intentionally about what we do and when and how we do it.
The good news is that this church has been laying the groundwork for this sort of a shift, with the relationships we are creating. We are connected to the Meetinghouse Foundation, to TownGreen 2025, to the Racial Justice Team, to the Sargent House, the Grace Center. But we tend to be somewhat silent partners, connected by individuals, and not by our intentional outreach and leadership.
Just this past week, I reached out to a local group, Better Together for Cape Ann, to let them know we can help with their Christmas toy drive. And we were contacted by a new group, the Cape Ann Pride Coalition, about possibly using our space for activities and events for LGBTQ+ youth. The need, and the possibilities, are there.
We are poised to be leaders, to be citizens. Robert Karnan wrote, “Our task is not be make more UU’s or to make bigger congregations, or to raise great gobs of money. It is to heal and to inspire, to open and to remake, and thus change what is sorry to what is a joy.” (Ibid., p. 145.)
Go, citizens, go!
I’ll end this morning with the words of the Reverend Julian Soto:
“Can we develop the skill of remembering the future?
Can we commit to build the community that will extend into a time that we only know by memory because it will outlast us?
Memorize the compass points of the day yet to come: the love, the fire, the endless yes of the horizon.
Shake the scales from your imagination:
Reach. Stretch. Rise. There is no more time for pretending that everything can be all right without your care, without your attention.” (“Remembering the Future,” by Julian Jamaica Soto, in Spilling the Light, p. 58.)
Blessed Be.
Amen.
