Dreaming, Being, and Becoming
a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the Second Congregational Meeting House
on Nantucket Island, Sunday May 18, 2003
READING: from *Entertaining Angels* by F. Forrester Church
“...[Angels] are ideas of God, and every one of God’s ideas is expressed in God’s creation. Angels are sweet and sour and salty, wet and dry, hard and soft, sharp and smooth. They fly, yes, but in flights of their own fancy. To awaken their presence, we too must learn to fly, let our imaginations soar, waken from dreams of yesterday and tomorrow where death and perfection abide, to the living dream that is ours today.”
***
[extemporaneous introduction]
I want to talk a little bit about church attendance this morning. Some years ago now there was an extremely influential Alban Institute study on the relationship between church attendance and denominational affiliation, which was eventually published in 1988 under the title *The Inviting Church: a study of new member assimilation.* The researchers found that, nationwide, approximately 46 per cent of Americans indicate that they are "regular" church attenders. which is to say that they attend church services virtually every week. Another 21% were described as "occasional" attenders; 34% attend less than once or twice a year. When you look at the figures by denomination, however, some interesting patterns emerge.
The number of Methodists and Episcopalians, for example, who attend church weekly are 38% and 33% respectively. For Southern Baptists, on the other hand, a full 52% of their members can be considered "regular" attenders. For Roman Catholics the figure was 55% (a number I suspect has dropped considerably as a result of their on-going sexual abuse scandal); while for so-called “high-commitment” churches like the Mormons, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and self-identified “Evangelical Fundamentalist” denominations such as the Assemblies of God, the figures ranged from 62% to 77%.
When we get down to the Unitarian Universalists however, we discover that only 22% -- or about one in five of us -- attend church just about every Sunday. Another 14% of UUs are "moderate" attenders; while a full 64% indicated that they attend church only a few times a year. I'm always a little embarrassed by these statistics; and after reading them out loud like this I sure feel grateful to see all your smiling faces here this morning. But, being an incorrigible optimist, I also perceive a silver lining to these numbers, which is the good news that such a large percentage of people still consider themselves Unitarian Universalists even though quite possibly they haven't actually been to church in years; that their sense of religious identity and denominational loyalty still endures long after most other folks would have lapsed into the category of "no religious preference."
I also take some comfort in thinking that for every one of you I see here Sunday after Sunday, there are another four self-identified UUs lurking out there somewhere who will wake up some Sunday morning and say to themselves: “today I feel inspired to go to church.” Because I sincerely believe that this church exists to serve them too. Indeed, it's our responsibility as "regulars" to make sure that the doors are open and the coffee hot when they finally make up their minds that this is the day that they are going to show up. It's a sacred trust, which I hope you all will take seriously. Because you are the active caretakers of our liberal faith here in this community. So never forget that you also serve a rarely-seen constituency four times your number.
Now I admit it's a little silly to talk about church attendance on a Sunday morning: because after all, the only ones here to listen are folks who don't need to hear the message in the first place. But I hope you all are feeling justifiably proud of yourselves. There are a lot of differences between a "voluntary" church such as ours, which understands itself as just one of several different significant commitments which its members have made in their lives; and your typical "high commitment" churches like the Mormons or the Jehovah’s Witnesses, which endeavor to create the expectation that church will be the one, single, exclusive commitment their members make beyond their jobs and their families.
And my message for this morning is this: that even in a voluntary church such as ours, what you get out of it is pretty much dependent upon what you put into it, so if you really want to feel like you're getting your money's worth and not just wasting your time, you need to be around to take advantage of the resources that are available. Regular attendance at Sunday worship is obviously a big part of it all. But underlying that is the sense of what it truly means to be a member of a religious "community of shared memory and hope," to really know that you belong, that you are a Unitarian Universalist.
Churches such as ours exist to change people: to support them as best we can in times of crisis, to help them find their way in life, to foster and nurture their personal religious growth and learning. We do this in a variety of ways: through our worship, through our educational programs and our public outreach, by our efforts to work together to create a viable institutional witness to the values and beliefs embodied in our religious tradition in the larger community that we serve. Sometimes we don't always do as well as we'd like; while at other times, quite frankly, I think we surprise ourselves by how well we do. But change is our business: the progress of humankind "onward and upward forever." We are a religion of transformation; our faith is one of hope and possibility.
Change is also a major component of the practice of Interim Ministry. And not just change for the sake of change; rather, interim ministry provides an opportunity for congregations to experiment and explore new ways of doing things. Much of this change is incremental. You try something different, either out of necessity or through boredom, you find that you like the results, and so you change. But change can also be planned. Intentional change might be thought of as a three-fold process: a process of dreaming, of being, and of becoming.
This may sound a little strange to those of you more familiar with the traditional process of setting goals, making a plan, carrying it out, and formally evaluating the results. But think about this for a moment: what is a goal but a dream of a better alternative? What is a plan but a blueprint for a new way of being? And how do we implement our plans, other than by becoming the thing we dream of being -- changing ourselves as well as our circumstances as we work to make our dreams a reality?
Before there are goals, there are invariably dreams. Change is the vehicle by which dreams come true. Through dreaming we harness the power of our imaginations, learn to see things that are not, but might easily be. Theology, in many ways, is the science of imagination: a confident faith in ideals, values, abstract principles not ordinarily visible to the naked eye, but understood intuitively, perhaps glimpsed in our reflection upon some significant experience, and then pondered systematically, through the power of logic and reason, until a coherent pattern of meaning emerges. Our images of God, however inadequate they may be, are merely imaginative dreams of a perfect "being" -- our noblest hopes and aspirations projected to infinity. We imagine ourselves created in the image of God, inspired by our vision of things not seen, and thus we begin the process of change: tapping the power of our better selves, the power of the divinity within us and among us, in order to transform our lives to the good, and to share in the creation of the Kingdom of God here on earth.
It's easy to dream. Resolving to "be" is a far more difficult challenge; and it is here that the community represented by the church becomes so important. The problem with goals and plans is that they are always "out there;" just as the problem with dreaming is that it's all "up here." The discipline of "being," in the context that I'm using the word here this morning, is the means by which we bring the two together: we resolve and endeavor to live our lives in a manner representative of our theological values, our "dreams;" -- and our participation in a church community helps provide the support, the encouragement, the "laboratory" if you will, which makes this discipline possible.
This is the power of our covenant: our mutual obligations and responsibilities to one another, as members of a church community, to strive for religious authenticity, to "walk humbly together in all the ways of faith made known to us," to be slow to anger and quick to forgive, to struggle, really struggle, to be faithful stewards of this free religious heritage with which we have chosen to identify ourselves, to become truly worthy of the names Unitarian and Universalist, and all that they have historically entailed.
This language of theological commitment may sound a little silly to us today, but in centuries past this was not only the sort of commitment that people were willing to live by, it was also a commitment that people were willing to die for, or, at the very least, risk death by leaving their safe and comfortable homes and crossing a stormy ocean to establish a new community in the wilderness of New England. It's a commitment both to God, and to one another: a way of being in the world which does not accept the limits of what we are, but rather strives to fulfill the potential of what we yet may become.
Now all of us know that no one is perfect. We all fall short of the promise of our dreams; and churches, too, have their failings and shortcomings, moments in which they are simply incapable of living up to the high ideals to which they aspire. But this isn’t really as important as you might think. Because the real power of change lies in the process of becoming: of moving toward the vision we see so vividly in our imaginations, through our sincere efforts to live in a manner worthy of them. Our aspiration is to "be," but our destiny is to "become" more and better than we are -- and it is here that change truly becomes transformative. In the words of William De Witt Hyde's familiar hymn of a century ago: "Since what we choose is what we are, And what we love we yet shall be; The goal may ever shine afar, the will to win it makes us free." Our dreams and our aspirations provide the guidance, but it is only through that willingness to "carry on," to stick with the process as it gradually changes us, that our religion reveals the fullness of its possibilities, and we are transformed through the power of our liberal faith.
I've seen a lot of changes take place in this congregation over the past 21 months; and I'm sure that those of you who have been here with me, Sunday after Sunday, have noticed them as well. These changes have happened through the process our being together, and through the power of a dream which we all share: the dream of a strong, healthy, dynamic Unitarian Universalist Church here on Nantucket: a church which can guide us wisely on our own religious journeys, a church which has the power to transform peoples' lives.
Intentional change is not always easy, and of course not all change is always for the best. But through the collective wisdom of your ability to dream together, and through your commitment to being here with one another, Sunday after Sunday, you create together both the ability and the commitment to become the Church you dream of being. And through this power to create, you become as well one of “God’s good ideas” in physical form; you become, like angels, messengers of the Good News that Unitarian Universalism is alive and thriving on this faraway island, and that the doors are always open for those who wish to join us here.
at the Second Congregational Meeting House
on Nantucket Island, Sunday May 18, 2003
READING: from *Entertaining Angels* by F. Forrester Church
“...[Angels] are ideas of God, and every one of God’s ideas is expressed in God’s creation. Angels are sweet and sour and salty, wet and dry, hard and soft, sharp and smooth. They fly, yes, but in flights of their own fancy. To awaken their presence, we too must learn to fly, let our imaginations soar, waken from dreams of yesterday and tomorrow where death and perfection abide, to the living dream that is ours today.”
***
[extemporaneous introduction]
I want to talk a little bit about church attendance this morning. Some years ago now there was an extremely influential Alban Institute study on the relationship between church attendance and denominational affiliation, which was eventually published in 1988 under the title *The Inviting Church: a study of new member assimilation.* The researchers found that, nationwide, approximately 46 per cent of Americans indicate that they are "regular" church attenders. which is to say that they attend church services virtually every week. Another 21% were described as "occasional" attenders; 34% attend less than once or twice a year. When you look at the figures by denomination, however, some interesting patterns emerge.
The number of Methodists and Episcopalians, for example, who attend church weekly are 38% and 33% respectively. For Southern Baptists, on the other hand, a full 52% of their members can be considered "regular" attenders. For Roman Catholics the figure was 55% (a number I suspect has dropped considerably as a result of their on-going sexual abuse scandal); while for so-called “high-commitment” churches like the Mormons, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and self-identified “Evangelical Fundamentalist” denominations such as the Assemblies of God, the figures ranged from 62% to 77%.
When we get down to the Unitarian Universalists however, we discover that only 22% -- or about one in five of us -- attend church just about every Sunday. Another 14% of UUs are "moderate" attenders; while a full 64% indicated that they attend church only a few times a year. I'm always a little embarrassed by these statistics; and after reading them out loud like this I sure feel grateful to see all your smiling faces here this morning. But, being an incorrigible optimist, I also perceive a silver lining to these numbers, which is the good news that such a large percentage of people still consider themselves Unitarian Universalists even though quite possibly they haven't actually been to church in years; that their sense of religious identity and denominational loyalty still endures long after most other folks would have lapsed into the category of "no religious preference."
I also take some comfort in thinking that for every one of you I see here Sunday after Sunday, there are another four self-identified UUs lurking out there somewhere who will wake up some Sunday morning and say to themselves: “today I feel inspired to go to church.” Because I sincerely believe that this church exists to serve them too. Indeed, it's our responsibility as "regulars" to make sure that the doors are open and the coffee hot when they finally make up their minds that this is the day that they are going to show up. It's a sacred trust, which I hope you all will take seriously. Because you are the active caretakers of our liberal faith here in this community. So never forget that you also serve a rarely-seen constituency four times your number.
Now I admit it's a little silly to talk about church attendance on a Sunday morning: because after all, the only ones here to listen are folks who don't need to hear the message in the first place. But I hope you all are feeling justifiably proud of yourselves. There are a lot of differences between a "voluntary" church such as ours, which understands itself as just one of several different significant commitments which its members have made in their lives; and your typical "high commitment" churches like the Mormons or the Jehovah’s Witnesses, which endeavor to create the expectation that church will be the one, single, exclusive commitment their members make beyond their jobs and their families.
And my message for this morning is this: that even in a voluntary church such as ours, what you get out of it is pretty much dependent upon what you put into it, so if you really want to feel like you're getting your money's worth and not just wasting your time, you need to be around to take advantage of the resources that are available. Regular attendance at Sunday worship is obviously a big part of it all. But underlying that is the sense of what it truly means to be a member of a religious "community of shared memory and hope," to really know that you belong, that you are a Unitarian Universalist.
Churches such as ours exist to change people: to support them as best we can in times of crisis, to help them find their way in life, to foster and nurture their personal religious growth and learning. We do this in a variety of ways: through our worship, through our educational programs and our public outreach, by our efforts to work together to create a viable institutional witness to the values and beliefs embodied in our religious tradition in the larger community that we serve. Sometimes we don't always do as well as we'd like; while at other times, quite frankly, I think we surprise ourselves by how well we do. But change is our business: the progress of humankind "onward and upward forever." We are a religion of transformation; our faith is one of hope and possibility.
Change is also a major component of the practice of Interim Ministry. And not just change for the sake of change; rather, interim ministry provides an opportunity for congregations to experiment and explore new ways of doing things. Much of this change is incremental. You try something different, either out of necessity or through boredom, you find that you like the results, and so you change. But change can also be planned. Intentional change might be thought of as a three-fold process: a process of dreaming, of being, and of becoming.
This may sound a little strange to those of you more familiar with the traditional process of setting goals, making a plan, carrying it out, and formally evaluating the results. But think about this for a moment: what is a goal but a dream of a better alternative? What is a plan but a blueprint for a new way of being? And how do we implement our plans, other than by becoming the thing we dream of being -- changing ourselves as well as our circumstances as we work to make our dreams a reality?
Before there are goals, there are invariably dreams. Change is the vehicle by which dreams come true. Through dreaming we harness the power of our imaginations, learn to see things that are not, but might easily be. Theology, in many ways, is the science of imagination: a confident faith in ideals, values, abstract principles not ordinarily visible to the naked eye, but understood intuitively, perhaps glimpsed in our reflection upon some significant experience, and then pondered systematically, through the power of logic and reason, until a coherent pattern of meaning emerges. Our images of God, however inadequate they may be, are merely imaginative dreams of a perfect "being" -- our noblest hopes and aspirations projected to infinity. We imagine ourselves created in the image of God, inspired by our vision of things not seen, and thus we begin the process of change: tapping the power of our better selves, the power of the divinity within us and among us, in order to transform our lives to the good, and to share in the creation of the Kingdom of God here on earth.
It's easy to dream. Resolving to "be" is a far more difficult challenge; and it is here that the community represented by the church becomes so important. The problem with goals and plans is that they are always "out there;" just as the problem with dreaming is that it's all "up here." The discipline of "being," in the context that I'm using the word here this morning, is the means by which we bring the two together: we resolve and endeavor to live our lives in a manner representative of our theological values, our "dreams;" -- and our participation in a church community helps provide the support, the encouragement, the "laboratory" if you will, which makes this discipline possible.
This is the power of our covenant: our mutual obligations and responsibilities to one another, as members of a church community, to strive for religious authenticity, to "walk humbly together in all the ways of faith made known to us," to be slow to anger and quick to forgive, to struggle, really struggle, to be faithful stewards of this free religious heritage with which we have chosen to identify ourselves, to become truly worthy of the names Unitarian and Universalist, and all that they have historically entailed.
This language of theological commitment may sound a little silly to us today, but in centuries past this was not only the sort of commitment that people were willing to live by, it was also a commitment that people were willing to die for, or, at the very least, risk death by leaving their safe and comfortable homes and crossing a stormy ocean to establish a new community in the wilderness of New England. It's a commitment both to God, and to one another: a way of being in the world which does not accept the limits of what we are, but rather strives to fulfill the potential of what we yet may become.
Now all of us know that no one is perfect. We all fall short of the promise of our dreams; and churches, too, have their failings and shortcomings, moments in which they are simply incapable of living up to the high ideals to which they aspire. But this isn’t really as important as you might think. Because the real power of change lies in the process of becoming: of moving toward the vision we see so vividly in our imaginations, through our sincere efforts to live in a manner worthy of them. Our aspiration is to "be," but our destiny is to "become" more and better than we are -- and it is here that change truly becomes transformative. In the words of William De Witt Hyde's familiar hymn of a century ago: "Since what we choose is what we are, And what we love we yet shall be; The goal may ever shine afar, the will to win it makes us free." Our dreams and our aspirations provide the guidance, but it is only through that willingness to "carry on," to stick with the process as it gradually changes us, that our religion reveals the fullness of its possibilities, and we are transformed through the power of our liberal faith.
I've seen a lot of changes take place in this congregation over the past 21 months; and I'm sure that those of you who have been here with me, Sunday after Sunday, have noticed them as well. These changes have happened through the process our being together, and through the power of a dream which we all share: the dream of a strong, healthy, dynamic Unitarian Universalist Church here on Nantucket: a church which can guide us wisely on our own religious journeys, a church which has the power to transform peoples' lives.
Intentional change is not always easy, and of course not all change is always for the best. But through the collective wisdom of your ability to dream together, and through your commitment to being here with one another, Sunday after Sunday, you create together both the ability and the commitment to become the Church you dream of being. And through this power to create, you become as well one of “God’s good ideas” in physical form; you become, like angels, messengers of the Good News that Unitarian Universalism is alive and thriving on this faraway island, and that the doors are always open for those who wish to join us here.
posted by The Eclectic Cleric at 6:25 PM
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