There is a joint publication of the Unitarian Universalist Association and the Ministers Association called Assessing Our Leadership. It spends a significant amount of time talking about why a minister is not like the CEO of a non-profit charitable institution. Although I found it persuasive, even compelling, for some it was perhaps too mystical, abstract, perhaps poetical for it to make much sense. I would argue that that's because that's what ministry is like. Whether it makes much sense as a career is moot. Whether it does as a calling is perhaps another question. However, the publication didn't say too much about the real, basic reason a minister's job isn't like that of the CEO of a non-profit, and that's because a church is not a non-profit charitable institution - whether it be a corporation or not. Even if incorporated, as we are for reasons that I'm sure someone knows having to do with state law or limitations of liability or whatever, we are and must be different in our very essence from what that usually means.
I need to apologize to those of you for whom the word church raises the hair on the backs of your necks, but I don't really know another word that comprises all that I mean by it. Congregation is the gathered community, the people who meet and work and play and serve together in fellowship, but the church is more than that. It is the building that we love and care for; it is our particular programs like religious education and social justice; it is our image in the community; it is all that makes up who and what we are. No other word or even phrase quite covers what that means. One needs a full paragraph.
Some years ago at General Assembly it was decided to put us through an evaluative process developed for non-profit corporations. It was all the rage at the time; the presenter had written a book that was widely admired, and you might even recognize it if I could remember the name. Anyway, we broke up into small groups by church size, and made an effort to begin the process. It soon became clear that it just didn't fit. We were bogged down by the very first question. We were asked to identify our customers/clients. We struggled with that for longer than would seem possible. Were they the marginalized people we made welcome? The townspeople or homeless on the brink of eviction or starvation who came to us for assistance? The people who made up our congregations? The people we wanted to make up our congregations? The people for or with whom we worked for justice? The people who used our facilities for meetings rent-free? They needed to be identified so that we could evaluate their satisfaction with our product or service in order to justify our continued existence, and we couldn't figure out how to identify them or even how to define our product or service. I finally said, "I've figured out the problem, anyway. The reality is that we have only one client - if any - and we have no way to ascertain God's satisfaction with what we are doing."
I know, that's another word that raises hackles, particularly nowadays that Dawkins and Harris have made it respectable, even fashionable, to be an atheist, but it's such a nice, short, convenient metaphor. I do not believe in the god that Dawkins and Harris don't believe in either, but for me the word can be used to mean the sum of all the highest values that we can discern - perhaps even higher than we can discern - that we are called to serve. It may be, as so many things are, greater than the sum of its parts, but we have no way of ascertaining that, either.
People are always trying to define religion. They do it in various ways, usually in the attempt to exclude some group, which then usually includes the Buddhists as well, but if you are trying to define it in the widest possible manner, to include every way of being that sincerely calls itself or is considered religious, there is a way. It is those institutional structures (beliefs, rituals, traditions, etc.) which have been established to help people ascertain the purpose of their existence, and therefore find or create meaning for their lives. You can believe that our purpose is a given, as do most people. My favorite formulation is in one of the catechisms that says that our human purpose is to serve God and enjoy him. I particularly like that part about enjoyment. What else is the ecstasy we feel in the incomparable beauties of nature or the glories of music than that?
There are those, however, who argue quite compellingly that human beings have no more inherent purpose than any other living thing on this planet, no more meaning than a butterfly or a blade of grass. The only purpose we seem to have in this formulation is to reproduce ourselves and then get out of the way of the next generation. For these the religious response is to create purpose and meaning rather than merely to discern it. The practice however, is the same. Whether we have created meaning or merely discover it, for all religions it is defined then in the same way, as service to our highest imaginable ideals, whether we call it God or the transcendent or simply the highest human ideals. The service is not to clients or even, ultimately, to ourselves (perhaps particularly not to ourselves) and there is no definable product, just a definable purpose, though even that is something that is harder to see than to define.
When asked why they come to church, people offer all kinds of reasons. I get to look at a lot of different churches' lists of reasons that they give on their surveys when they're looking for a new minister. In Florida, at least, the one that usually is at the top of the list is intellectual stimulation. When I ask members of this congregation, they usually say it's for the fellowship - they really like the people. Or they say it's a haven from the almost monolithic conservatism of the rest of Collier County, though when they say that I always remind them that liberal religion is by no means the same thing as liberal politics. We have more political conservatives among us than you may realize. Some of the younger people say that it's for religious education for their children. Some people like a time of reflection among others who share their values. Some people even come for the music. There are as many reasons as there are personality types and as there are ways to practice a liberal faith.
I would argue that all of those reasons people come are ways that they serve their highest values and find a purpose or perhaps create a purpose for their lives. We don't, after all, do any of those things better than anybody else. If it is the exercise of your mind that you are after, you can take classes of take advantage of the many offerings of the library. If it is relationships - well, people can be found in neighborhoods, in country clubs, in bars, all over the place, in fact. There is some other reason that the particular kind of people whom we like so much are gathered here. The organizations set up for particular kinds of social action do it better than we do, too. For one thing, they're a lot more focussed. Even religious education can be found in other places. I was excellently homeschooled in that myself. If it's music you want, there's always the Phil. No, the reason, like it or not, that this place is different is that it is about religion. It is about something more than any of the particular reasons we may come. It is about why we are alive, why we are here, not just in this place but on this beautiful and dangerous earth, what we are to do with the life that we are given beyond our own material needs and desires. It is even about what it means to die and ultimately be forgotten.
All religions are about that, but not all religions are alike, though the religious romantics among us like to believe that we all really teach the same thing. We don't. Though there are often some overlaps as is only to be expected when people are thinking about the same thing for the same reasons. Ours has its unique gift - one so important that I think it is worthy of all our commitment. Unlike any other our faith is about religious freedom. Whatever our theologies or our priorities or the ways we have of practicing our faith or serving the highest however we may define it, we agree in this that it can only be done in freedom. We have sacred authorities, but none that may not be questioned. Instead we argue that the questioning itself is the only thing that can enable belief. We believe that truth must be accepted whatever its source - when we are convinced after testing that it be truth. That freedom to doubt, to question, to think and to feel for ourselves, before acceptance or rejection of differing ideas is more sacred to us than any belief. It is this, the freedom of our faith that makes it the focus of our loyalty and our support.
There is a downside about having nothing to sell, no customers and no clients, to being the end rather than the means as non-profits are. They are the conduit for charitable dollars and in fundraising can point to the good that they intend to do with them. They are going to find a cure for breast cancer, cervical cancer, lung cancer, Alzheimer's, muscular dystrophy, heart disease. They are going to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless. They are going to rescue the abused, provide sex education for teenagers, or succor for those for whom it is too late. They are going to defend the oppressed or stop war in our time. For us, when we raise money it stops right here. It supports this institution, no outside cause, no needy stranger. We cannot use that as our hook for fundraising.
Of course, we give, too. We split the plate for various causes; we have special collections for emergency needs; we have the minister's discretionary fund set aside for such matters; we make space available for meetings for organizations we support. That's part of living religiously and part, therefore, of what we do, but it's not the sort of thing that you can send out a general appeal to a wide populace to pay the utility bill for, not to mention the minister's salary. It's up to us.
As you are surely aware by now this is the kick-off for our annual canvass. Although there are the auction and minor fundraisers throughout the year, we try not to nickel and dime you to death but just once a year to tell you of our needs and ask you to pledge enough to keep the institution active and acting. Most of the money goes to really boring stuff like staff salaries, building maintenance, utility bills, insurance, all the nitty-gritty of our daily existence. For most of us just reading the financial statements is enough to cure any incipient insomnia. And it is particularly difficult, it seems to me, to ask for money without offering the sort of profitable exchange that we are used to, without describing a product or offering a service to our clientele. In fact, just the opposite, I've even told you where else you can get what we usually think of as the benefits of belonging to a congregation. We don't even have a good cause with a stated goal of helping others. We have merely the institution of free religion, a religion which without you would not exist, and which is, I am convinced, the hope of the world, the one way of being religious in this day that can make a real difference. A religion of freedom, tested by doubt and reflection, based on evidence rather than ancient authority, self-correcting, can lead us to a new way of being in which perhaps the goal of our mission statement may someday be obtained: a world of beauty, justice, peace and love. We, right here, are the only people who can make it happen.