For many Unitarian Universalist congregations, the time of “In-Gathering,” or the first Sunday of the regular church year, is fast approaching. For many, this is a time of re-commitment to their faith community, of “getting back into the swing of things” and reconnections. Many congregations will begin their year with new faces in their pulpits, an added service, or other changes to the way they do things.

Rev. A. Powell Davies (1902-1957) preached the sermon from which this excerpt is taken on September 10, 1944. Even ninety-four years later, his message rings true. Why do we go to church? Because we can be more together than we are by ourselves.

from “On Going to Church”

by Rev. A. Powell Davies (1902-1957)

Let me tell you why I come to church.

I come to church—and would whether I was a preacher or not—because I fall below my own standards and need to be constantly brought back to them. It is not enough that I should think about the world and its problems at the level of a newspaper report or a magazine discussion. It could too soon become too low a level. I must have my conscience sharpened—sharpened until it goads me to the most thorough and responsible thinking of which I am capable. I must feel again the love I owe my fellow men (and women). I must not only hear about it but feel it. In church, I do.

I need to be reminded that there are things I must do in the world—unselfish things, things undertaken at the level of idealism. Workaday enthusiasms are not enough. They wear out too soon. I want to experience human nature at its best—and be reminded of its highest possibilities, and this happens to me in church. It may seem as though the same things could be found in solitude, but it does not easily happen so.

In a congregation we share each other’s spiritual needs and reinforce each other. In some ways, the soul is never lonelier than in a church service. That is certainly true of a pulpit, for a pulpit is the most intimately lonely place in the world—yet it is a loneliness that has strength in it. Perhaps this is because the innermost solitude of the human heart is in some paradoxical way a thing that can be shared—that must be shared—if the spirit of God is to find a full entrance into it.

We meet each other as friends and neighbors anywhere and everywhere, but we seldom do so in the consciousness of our souls’ deepest yearnings. But in church we do—in a way that protects us from all that is intrusive, yet leaves us knowing that we all have the same yearning, the same spiritual loneliness, the same need of assurance and faith and hope. We are brought together at the highest level possible. We are not merely an audience, we are a congregation.

I doubt whether I could stand the thought of the cruelty and misery of the present world unless I could know, through an experience that renewed itself over and over again, that at the heart of life there is assurance, that I can hold an ultimate belief that all is well. And this happens in church.

Life must have its sacred moments and its holy places. The soul will always seek its nurture. For religious experience—which is life at its most intense, life at its best—is something we cannot do without.

Source: from “On Going to Church” by Rev. A. Powell Davies, as reprinted in Without Apology: Collected Meditations on Liberal Religion by A. Powell Davies edited by Rev. Dr. Forrest Church.

In this time when most congregations hold their Annual Business Meetings, I think it’s important to reflect on what a congregation is for. Every congregation has a variety of stakeholders, people who feel a sense of ownership in their church community. And when times of change come around, often in the spring around that Annual Meeting, sometimes those stakeholders butt heads.

Rev. Dan Hotchkiss, a Unitarian Universalist minister and senior consultant at the Alban Institute, has some great insight on this question of ownership and priority. Is the minister in charge? The Board? The largest donors? Or is a congregation more than that?

Who Owns a Congregation?

by Dan Hotchkiss

Comparisons are useful but tricky. New Testament writers compare the church to a human body, a herd of sheep, a bride, and a vineyard. Synagogues are often likened to a house, a tent, or an extended family. None of these analogies is meant to be exact or literal—a church may act in some ways like a herd of sheep, but a wise leader doesn’t plan on it. Poets do exaggerate sometimes.

In the same spirit of poetic license, it may at times it may be useful to compare the clergy leader of a congregation to a corporate CEO, its members to customers or stockholders, or its staff to the employees of a charity. We can draw many useful analogies between congregations, other nonprofits, and businesses, but ultimately congregations need ideas and language of their own. It is easy to say that “the church should run more like a business,” without recognizing that in some respects the church should and does run very differently.

(Read on … )

This week I’m exploring the things that bind Unitarian Universalists together in religious community. Since our liberal faith does not rely upon a specific doctrine of religious belief or creed, each congregation has a different way of expressing the promises members make to one another in how they will be together as an organization.

Today we look at mission statements from several congregations around the country. I’ve chosen examples of those statements by congregations that express what it is they gather to do as a community, both within and outside the walls of the church.

For consideration: What does a mission statement say about a religious community? How are you, as an individual member of a congregation, part of the mission?

Mission Statements

We, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Catskills [Kingston, New York], have a mission to:

• Provide a supportive place for spiritual, philosophical and intellectual development
• Celebrate and affirm, through the democratic process, our commitments to social activism, cooperation, caring and love
• Seek ways, for both individuals and the congregation as a whole, of providing service to the community
• Invite and welcome persons in our geographic area to become part of our religious community.

We covenant with each other to:

• Accept the responsibility to maintain a congregation in which to develop the best possible relationships, to love ourselves and others and to encourage our children to realize their potential
• Provide a respectful place for people of diverse backgrounds, views, and religious beliefs and foster a sense of well being for everyone in our religious community
• Respect, recognize and appreciate each and every individual’s spiritual search and unique nature, and provide for alternatives to traditional forms of religious practice
• Affirm our special responsibility, and that of our members, to promote the full participation of persons in all of its activities and in the full range of human endeavor without regard to race, color, sex, disability, sexual orientation, age or national origin and without requiring adherence to any particular interpretation of religion or to any particular religious belief or creed.

We are a community built on interdependence.

(Read on … )