LOOKING FORWARD
by Forrest Church
January 21, 2007
I know it's two weeks early, but do you know what I feel like right now, having emerged from my den, blinking in the light, mounting again this good pulpit—that's right, I feel like the proverbial groundhog. Punxsutawny Phil has nothing on me. I've emerged from my hole. I can't see my shadow. And I'm here to tell you that Spring is right around the corner.
The groundhog festival is not without religious significance, by the way. That is to say, it's shot through with paradox. If the sun is shining when Phil pops out of his hole, watch out. There's trouble ahead. Good weather on February 2nd is like a storm advisory warning. Go back in the hole, Phil. You've come out too soon.
On the other hand, if the horizon is shrouded—as it will be later today, I promise—by dark, forbidding clouds, with no hint of Spring in sight, its time to celebrate. Things are not, it seems, as they appear. In fact—and this is very good theology indeed—things often turn out better for having gone bad than they do in a life without incident. Empty yourself and be filled, Jesus taught us. Lose your life and discover life's abundance. The Tao too is riddled with paradox. Bend yourself and become straight, the Chinese master says. Surrender your will and receive life's sweetest bequest.
Having had an excess of free time on my hands lately, I have about twenty sermons to deliver this morning. Not to worry. I'll only unpack one of them, my sermon about All Souls. But before I do, let me tell you something about me and then something about you.
About me, for all of you who so very kindly have been concerned about my health, it looks as if I'm going to be just fine. There's no call for chemo or radiation right now. My healing from the surgery is right on schedule. They caught the cancer incredibly early, removed the organ it was perched in, and tell me that the odds are I am cured. Having gone from an original prognosis of six months to live ten scarce weeks ago to the guarded but real optimism that I shall make a full recovery has been a fascinating, strangely rewarding journey. I should add that it would also have been a fascinating, rewarding journey if my tale had turned out differently and I were standing here this morning bidding you farewell. Still, I prefer happy endings to sad ones, even in the movies. So, without knowing how the story will turn out, but with well-founded hope that all will be turn out fine, let me close the book on me and open the epic story of All Souls, where we too are opening a new chapter.
But before I do, let me tell you something about yourselves. I truly hope you know how kind you are. Kindness is an underappreciated virtue. In fact, few if any virtues are so pure. You want to know something amazing? The members of this congregation, over the past two and a half months, have sent me over a thousand letters—loving, compassionate, poignant, kind letters wishing me well. Since I can't respond to everyone, let me take this opportunity to tell you how touching and inspiring your gifts to me have been. I walked through the valley of the shadow holding fifteen hundred hands. Never have I felt more privileged.
Why is kindness so pure a virtue? Precisely because kindness is a gift that demands no response. You are kind to a cab driver. Or kind to a sales clerk. For each such act of kindness, you get nothing tangible in return, save the feeling, the sacrament, of human sympathy. Kindness is by no means inferior to love. In fact it is a kind of love, agape, God's love, poured out upon the earth without a quid pro quo—a pure, unadulterated gift.
Do you remember "Love Story," when Erich Segal says, "Love is never having to say you're sorry." Well, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Love is having to say you're sorry over and over again, because love—eros, romantic or personal love—does demand a return on its investment. The kindness of agape is different. When I tell you I love you at the end of this sermon, I don't expect anything from you in return. When you took the time to write those notes and letters, you didn't demand anything of me. Here at All Souls, at our best, we dance in a circle of kindness, which extends beyond these doors to our neighbors and the world. That, in my book, is redemptive. In fact, it is the essence, the heart, of Universalism.
Now to my sermon proper, which is about both you and me. I've been preparing to give this sermon, by the way, for almost thirty years, but had to wait until the time was ripe. The time is now ripe.
Return with me for a moment to 1983. I had been your minister for five years. Emerging from a tiny congregation, the church was growing like topsy. So the board and I began to search for an associate minister who could help answer our expanding ministerial needs. What I did first may surprise you. I conducted a little research and identified the five largest churches in the denomination twenty-five years before, in the late 1950s. I had a hunch and I wanted to see if my hunch panned out. And sure enough, these five mighty churches, twenty-five years after being packed to the gills with congregants, were mere shells of their former selves. One had actually died. The other four had between 100 and 200 worshippers a Sunday.
So what had happened? Sadly, what happened is what often happens in Unitarian churches after what might, I guess, be called a charismatic pastorate. When it ends, sometimes slowly, but often precipitously, the church falls apart. Where the old minister could do no wrong, the new minister can do no right. People divide into factions. Where kindness, health, and great good feeling once reigned, there is enmity and retribution.
There's nothing new about this, by the way. One of my great ministerial mentors is Henry Whitney Bellows, minister of this congregation for 43 years in the mid-19th century. If a young minister has big dreams for him or herself, Bellows is the perfect model to follow. He turned All Souls from a tiny urban backwater to a thriving religious community and left a large footprint in the nation as well, founding the American Sanitary Commission, which nursed the wounded on both sides during the Civil War. Bellows was just as active in the civic life of this great city, working with All Souls members Peter Cooper on city planning and William Cullen Bryant in the campaign to secure and then protect the land that now is Central Park.
More than for anything else, however, Bellows is remembered by historians as a model institutionalist. For instance, almost single handedly, he saved the Unitarian Ministers Association by extending his wide arms to embrace both the Western Unitarian radicals and the New England Conservatives. But Henry Whitney Bellows made one great mistake—the mistake almost every successful occupant of a long large church ministry makes. For more than four decades, he was in the pulpit almost every Sunday. When he was travelling he sent his wife his sermons and she preached them! Pulpit Prima Donna's don't like to share their perch. They can't sacrifice the adrenaline rush it gives them. And then, one day, these immortal figures die. Bellows died and, true to pattern, All Souls almost died with him. For the better part of a century following his triumphant ministry, excepting a brief uptick in the late -50s and early 60s, these pews were all but empty.
Back in 1983, looking forward to what I hoped would be a long, significant pastorate and pondering this evidence I had culled from the past, I decided to change the model. Some of you will remember that John Buehrens joined me then. He was officially associate minister, but I called him my co-minister. In our search for a new minister, with one exception we only looked at pastors serving one of the top ten churches in the denomination. They weren't on any ministerial call lists. They had no hunger to move. But the board and I convinced John that we could build a different kind of ministry here at All Souls, one that would create a stronger, more lasting institution, through shared ministerial leadership.
John and I split the pulpit duties. From that day forward I have been the only tall steeple senior minister in New York City who preached only twice a month. John, as you know, went on to serve the Unitarian Universalist Association as our president for eight years. The experiment was working.
When John left, I sensed that trying to work the same magic a second time would be to tempt fate, so the Board and I came up with a new plan. We would find the strongest young minister in the denomination to join me, again, not in the traditional way, as an occasional preacher who does all the unglamorous work while the Senior pulpiteer hogs the spotlight, but as a full partner in the ministerial leadership of the church. We were remarkably fortunate to land a minister who was able to do just that at a very young age. Almost from the moment of his arrival here thirteen years ago, Galen Guengerich has preached fully as often as I have. And over the years, I slowly ceded to him administrative authority as well, first for communications and then for Annual Giving. As co-minister, Galen has done even more than John did before him to direct the life of the church.
Five other all-important pastors helped me to fulfill this unfolding ministerial vision, each of whom, by sharing leadership and performing essential roles, takes away some of what I firmly believe is the unhealthy focus on the senior minister that exists in most large churches. Dick Leonard has been with me almost since the beginning, running our wedding ministry and providing critical counseling along the way. David Robb is now with us to direct our adult programming. Melanie Mashburn is building a thriving and burgeoning Church School, looking out for the next generation. And Cheryl Walker is ever so much more than your typical assistant minister. Most assistants preach twice a year and try to stay out of the Senior Minister's way the other fifty weeks. Cheryl runs our Church Council, graces the pulpit regularly, has her own worship service, and is a stunningly good pastoral counselor. And then, brilliantly, a few years ago we made Walter Klauss our minister of music, recognizing the central role he plays in giving ballast to our deep hold.
Which brings us to the present. In two weeks, at our Annual Meeting, I shall officially step down, not as your minister, but as your senior minister. The change, perceptively, will be modest. I'll preach but once a month, occupy a smaller office, and drop one slot on the org chart. Other than that, almost nothing will change.
I've been preparing for this day, psychologically and practically, for more than twenty five years, since shortly after I arrived at All Souls. Aware of the tendency of high profile preachers to bequeath unintentional heartache to the churches they so successfully built and so deeply loved, I've quietly been letting go of my power now for years with this very moment in mind, endeavoring throughout to build the All Souls ministries up to such a high level that my departure from overall leadership would not cause a crisis in the ongoing trajectory of the church.
There is always a twist, of course, this one falling in the category, "it's better to be lucky than good." My sabbatical year gave you all a living sense of what I had known all along, that Galen is a gifted leader in every aspect of the congregation's life. What I knew he was doing before—carrying certainly more than half the ministerial load—you needed to see for yourself. And then I got cancer. I took this illness as a sign that it was time to live more deliberately, to do some triage with my life, to bring whatever strength I may still have to bear—and it appears, knock on wood, that this strength may not fail me soon—to complete my life's work as a public theologian. So I asked the board to begin arranging for what I hoped would be a seamless transition. These are words you almost never hear mentioned at the end of a long, successful ministry. Rather than a fully predictable train wreck, we could, while running down the track at full speed, effect a change of conductors without a hitch. In resigning my post, I could serve this congregation—we ministers are not free of vainglory by the way—in a manner that my otherwise permanently more illustrious predecessor, Henry Whitney Bellows, didn't. In giving up my power, I could ensure that All Souls would be even more healthy an institution after I was gone, than it was during my three decades of service as your senior minister.
Some of you may have read my book, Life Lines: Holding on and Letting Go. So much of life consists in holding on to what we must and letting go for dear life when holding on would be grasping. In this proposed transition I hope to do both—at once to hold on and to let go, each in precisely the way I should.
You, you should know, are my lifeline. You are my teachers. From you I have learned all I know about courage, and how well it has served me these past twelve weeks. And your quest for an abiding, sustaining faith powers my own. I look forward not only to preaching on a regular basis, but also to spending evenings with you—like in our Lifelines series—in ongoing conversation about how, in our journey together, we can discover new means by which to live in such a way that our lives will prove worth dying for. As your minister of public theology, I will carry your voices with me out into the world. Never has the mission of All Souls and universalism been more pressing. I look forward to advancing it in your boon company.
So I'm not stepping down, I'm stepping forward. Stepping forward and looking forward. Looking forward to learning more from my teachers. Looking forward to translating our conversations into proclamation. Looking forward to walking with you down this strange, enchanted path, around its next mysterious bend.
This plan—another innovation from the norm— will work, I think, largely because Galen and I have worked together so well and for so long. My preaching once a month will also help preserve All Souls's horizontal, democratic pulpit, with contrapuntal voices carrying on the great conversation that you and I first entered into almost thirty years ago.
That said, I do have to warn you—I may live for a long time. By the time I've preached those 20 sermons I was telling you about, believe me, I'll have 20 more in the bag. More seriously, I feel privileged to continue, should you affirm my doing so, the almost unique All Souls tradition of a shared pulpit, a co-ministry as it were, with Galen and Cheryl, with Wally and David and Melaney and Dick. More than anything else, having so many committed co-ministers protects the congregation from the dangers inherent in overweening dependence on one leader. What happens to many large churches, and once happened here at All Souls, should not, for now at least, be our unhappy fate. Because of steps I and the Board began taking long ago, we are inoculated against experiencing a sudden leadership vacuum, which all to often knocks the strongest church off its moorings. For that we can and should be grateful.
I have only one more thing to say to you this morning. I know that ministerial transitions, however carefully thought through by the Board and however nondisruptive, are cause for some anxiety. Change is difficult, however promising it may prove. So this afternoon, at the congregational dialogue, I ask you to treat one another the way you have always treated me. Be ever so gentle and kind. And, as I have been privileged to remember every day over these rich three months even when my cancer seemed least tractable, please remember how fortunate we all are, each and every one.
Amen. I love you. And may God bless us all.