First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis

New Visions

I want to begin with thanks to my several vicarious voices this morning; as some of you know, this week I've been struggling through a bout of the nasty bronchitis that has been going around, and although I'm feeling much better, my voice is still somewhat undependable. I trust I'll be fine through the sermon, but pardon me if I need to pause and regroup the vocal chords every now and then.

I thank Diana particularly for sharing the excerpt from a much longer article by Jonathan Mahler in the New York Times Magazine, in which he offers a portrait of the developing exurban community of Surprise, Arizona, 45 minutes northwest of Phoenix, and its exploding mega-church, known as Radiant. When Radiant congregation was founded, in 1996, the community of Surprise was, according to Mahler, "radically un-churched." Lee McFarland, a mail-order minister loosely affiliated with the Assemblies of God, found that when he approached local residents about starting a new congregation, their responses were barely civil - and that was before they had heard anything about his or the proposed church's beliefs. Finding this direct approach to be a dead end, McFarland went out and bought a clip-board, dressed in a tee-shirt and jeans, and started asking the people whose doors he knocked on two seemingly unrelated questions: "What's your favorite radio station?" and "Why do you think people don't go to church?" These questions evoked the conversations he was hoping to have. As Mahler reports, "People in Surprise listened to rock music. And they didn't go to church because they didn't have any fancy clothes, didn't like being asked for money, and didn't see how any of the sermons they had heard in the past related to their lives."

Several months later, McFarland was ready to test the waters with what he had learned. He sent fliers to every English-speaking household in Surprise, inviting them to experience a different kind of church. "At Radiant you'll hear a rockin' band and a positive, relevant message," it promised. "Come as you are. We won't beg for your money. Your kids will love it!" 147 people responded by attending the first service, and more than 100 returned the following week. Two years later, when attendance hit 350, they stopped advertising altogether, but the growth continued, and total attendance at several Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning services now averages about 5,000, with no reason to believe that the increase will not continue. As the congregation designs its next building, McFarland insists that there will be no traditional stained glass or steeples, no crosses or portraits of Jesus or other religious images. "We've tried to bring down those visual cues that scare people off," he says. "We want the church to look like a mall. We want you to come in here and say, 'Dude, where's the cinema?'"

Well, okay; so what? Demographically, Surprise, Arizona is growing like a weed; especially at the time that Radiant was founded, there may not have been a lot else to do out there in the desert. Opinion polls can be useful, if what you want is to get a sense of what consumers are looking for; and if you can give it to them, you are likely to build a successful enterprise. Not exactly rocket science. What does this story - which, by the way, is being replicated with minor variations all around the country - have to do with us as humanists, and with the future of FUS?

On the one hand, nothing. There are almost zero parallels in the situations of Radiant and our Society; we are a century-plus old urban congregation with a stable membership and an adequate building. We are not surrounded by a burgeoning community of young families, and above all, we are not trying to reach anybody for Jesus Christ. We can, if we choose, regard the existence and success of churches like Radiant - or our own local Wooddale Community Church - as oddities of current culture and demographics, amusing or irritating as your attitude may determine.

Or, on the other hand, it could be argued that the story of Radiant has everything to do with how we are going to go about envisioning the purpose and future of our own congregation. I think that Thomas Bandy is correct when he observes that "People of the church today... find themselves disturbed by religious movements within their own community that are thriving. Such groups seem to attract all ages, all races, all cultures. They grow in participation and membership; their financial resources seem inexhaustible and they take incredible risks; their presence seems to be felt in the coffee shop next door, and their missions seem to extend to other countries. It is easy, too easy, to accuse them of pandering to the public with a "soft gospel". It is too easy to retreat into self-righteous identity primarily defined as opposition to others. There is something profound happening in the religious world today, if only [we] could grasp it."

Friends, I am persuaded that the success of Radiant, and Wooddale, and my old neighbor mega church, Willow Creek Community in Barrington, Illinois, has nothing to do with Jesus or the New Testament. Indeed, from what I have seen and read about these congregations, it appears to me that in most cases, the people who fill them to overflowing on Sunday mornings are there in spite of the evangelical version of the Christian gospel, not because of it; these churches are using their institutional competence to lend credibility to a set of propositions about salvation and damnation that most people would not otherwise take seriously. Now listen carefully to what I am about to say, because it is easy to confuse these two things, and I want to be clear. I don't believe that these churches are thriving because of their Christianity; I don't think that god is "blessing" them because they are right and everyone else is wrong. But I do think that their appeal is based on an important theological understanding of what the church is about, and what it is for, and the kind of presence it ought to have in the world. That understanding has three key components, and it is my conviction that if we took those three concepts as seriously and as skillfully as they do, we too would find something profound and unprecedented happening in the life of our Society. Now whether or not we actually want that to happen is a separate question, and a collective decision that will need to be made over time. But let me show you what I understand those three key components to be, and then we will be in a position to have a conversation about whether, in fact, all of this has anything to do with us.

The first key theological proposition that animates the thriving mega-churches, as well as smaller congregations that are also moving in the direction of health and growth, is the clear certainty that they have an urgent message of hope to offer their community and the world. As one mission focus question puts it, "What is it about your relationship with Jesus Christ that this city can't live without?" Now, this is a good example of a place where you want to try not to get all flustered by Jesus. The real theology lies in the format of the question, not its specific content. Rephrased for our purposes, it might go like this: What is the message about the way to be human that has been entrusted to this Society, that people around us are suffering because they haven't heard? Lee McFarland claims that "Churches that have stopped growing have stopped hearing the screams of people being sent to hell." From my own point of view, that's nonsense; there is no such place as hell, and no one is being sent there. And yet it seems to me that the screams of abused women, neglected children, exploited teens, dying soldiers, drug addicts, drive-by shooting victims, kids crippled by land mines, starving refugees, tortured prisoners, and all the other victims of both natural disaster and human cruelty in the world are quite compelling enough. We don't need hell to make the screams of suffering real. And the church that isn't, somewhere in its collective consciousness, always hearing those screams, is not only not growing - it has lost its integrity, and its soul. There is something that people need to hear from us; something that we are uniquely in a position to tell; something that the world is a desperately poorer place if we aren't saying. For my own part, I think that message is about the irreducible dignity and potential for goodness in every person; about the inescapable connections that weave us into the natural process of life, and the sacred promises that create human community; about the primary necessity for freedom of individual conscience and for personal responsibility. But this is not an answer that I can just hand you; if it is going to effectively shape the work and future of this congregation, it has to emerge out of our on-going conversation about what it is that brings us here, and what it is that urgently calls us to action in the world. In the silent spaces between your own comforts, distractions, and worries, whose screams do you hear? And what, if anything, does that have to do with your participation in this congregation? What is the crucial message that we want take out into the world on behalf of this community and heritage of faith?

The second theological principle that I think the mega-churches have right in substance is a sense of allegiance to the future rather than the past. Because so many of them have been founded within the last decade or two at most, they see themselves not as conserving a noble past, but as anticipating an exciting destiny yet to come. Placing their confidence in what they would identify as the will or blessing of God, they are able to take risks and invest in possibilities; it is not primarily security that they are after. The question that is constantly before them, as leaders and visionaries, is not "How can we avoid making mistakes or looking foolish?' Instead, they are always asking, "If we really mean what we say about our values, about the most important work we have to do, and the message that needs to be heard, what can we do to put that even more concretely and meaningfully into practice than we already have?" And they understand that the answer to that question is pretty much never about making themselves comfortable; in fact, it usually calls them into some sort of discomfort. It may be about finding more money to bring some new service or ministry into being; it may be about making changes to the building, or the music, or the culture of the congregation, so that people who don't presently find it inviting can be made welcome, and can hear the message. It may be about reaching out to people unlike themselves; it is always about giving more, doing more, being more than they originally thought they could.

Once again, I don't believe in a god who reaches down out of the sky and rewards those who manage to decipher his coded instructions. Rather, I think that communities, like people, achieve great things, and grow, when they are willing to risk failure and looking foolish, and when they are willing to experience discomfort. I think that we can almost always do more than we suppose we can, if we believe that doing it truly matters, as long as we are willing to accept setbacks with forgiveness, encouragement, and renewed determination. Thriving congregations operate on the conviction that great things are in store for them, although they don't know in advance exactly what forms that greatness will take. They receive the opportunities that come along with gratitude and enthusiasm, even when these are not the exact opportunities they originally had in mind. Like Radiant, such congregations always understand themselves to be engaged in a dialogue with their environment, addressing the specific needs and possibilities of that city, that region, that population, that moment in history, that culture, those neighbors. In this regard, a distinguished institutional history can be a millstone around a congregation's neck, if it becomes more important to preserve and honor that history than to address today's needs and prospects. Tradition, as thriving churches know, should be a nurturing soil for the plantings that will feed people here and now, not a dead hand forever replicating the past. You don't have to embrace the notion of god's will in order to sense the excitement, courage, and commitment of a congregation that looks to the unfolding future with confident expectation.

Finally, what the mega-churches and thriving congregations have clearly understood is that they are only effective to the extent that they are actually changing people's lives. Lee McFarland expects that people who come to Radiant for recovery groups, or aerobics classes with child care, or on Sunday morning for rock music and espresso and Krispy Kremes, will become immersed in the congregation's network of programs, from financial planning to parenthood support, from marriage enrichment to career counseling, until they find its Christian values permeating every aspect of their lives. Dave Travis, of Leadership Network, a consulting firm specializing in mega churches, says that "The larger church expects a much higher level of commitment. It expects you to be a more passionate follower of Christ, not just within the church, but in your community, your workplace, and your home." Now here again, don't let Jesus get in the way. The point is that vital religious communities are those that make a felt and visible difference in the whole lives of their members - and this does not, and cannot, happen just on Sunday morning. So here's the bottom line question: What is it that you do differently - in the way you live, work, raise your children, treat your neighbors, shop, entertain, spend your spare time - because of being a member at FUS? If someone who was considering membership in this Society were to say to you, "What is likely to change in my life, if I join? What changed for you?" what would you tell that person? Now consider for a moment what you think the answer ought to be - what is it that should be altered by a church commitment?

Over and over again, I hear stories from people about religious commitments that they made at various moments in their lives, and one of the most significant factors is often what they perceived at the time about the other members of the community. "They seemed spiritual," I'm told; "They were the happiest people I'd ever met; they were totally committed to their work with the poor; they were always so warm and kind; they had a feeling of peace about them." The qualities vary, but the response is always the same; "I wanted to be like them." Sometimes those stories end in disillusionment - it turns out that the way the other members appeared wasn't entirely real. Sometimes they end in personal disappointment - "I tried to be like them, but I couldn't." Either way, the point remains that when we proclaim the message of our faith, and offer our community to others, we are in effect inviting them to become like us. We are offering ourselves as examples of what that faith looks like in practice, and how it might change somebody else's life. We are also pointing to the way people treat each other, as well as guests, within this community, as a demonstration of what the world might be like if our message were widely heard and embraced. I'll never forget the report of one person at a newcomer's orientation group - at another congregation, not here - who said, "I just had to come once, to see what this place was all about, because of how happy everyone looked when they came out in the parking lot after the service." Thriving congregations know that what they offer people must ultimately make a discernible difference in those people; must be powerful enough to change the way they live, for it will be that difference, more than anything else, that will attract others seeking to emulate it and to change their own lives in the same ways. Whatever salvation or conversion we may think we have to offer, no matter what we may say about it, it is always primarily through individual example and the quality of community we demonstrate that others will understand it.

These are the questions posed to us by the success of congregations like Radiant, and all the other mega churches that are growing while the main line denominations hemorrhage members year by year:

What crucial message does the world need to hear from us?

If we really mean what we say about our values, how can we ever more creatively and courageously put them into practice in the world?

What opportunities lie before us in this particular place at this particular moment?

What difference does being a member of this Society make in your life?

What does our personal and collective example communicate about our purpose in this congregation?

This congregation has come through a series of difficult transitions in the course of the past decade, and together we have turned some important corners, you and I. I suggest that it is time now for a new conversation about a new vision of our future. It is time, and more than time, to dispense with what Bandy calls the easy retreat into self-righteous identity primarily defined as opposition to others. It is time to claim, and proclaim, the essential message of humanism, and to take some creative risks in service to the moment and the place in which we find ourselves located. It is time for each of us to consider how this faith community has changed our own lives, and how we can make it available to change the lives of others in powerful, positive, practical ways.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that Wooddale Church or any other mega congregation is doing that lies outside the realm of possibility for us. We have a lot to learn, both from the example of others and from our own experiments and discoveries. We have work to do, and that is just as it should be. The most amazing days of this congregation's life together lie ahead of us, and that's a marvelous place to be.