Unitarian Universalist congregations offer unique examples of covenantal communities, where the authority over various aspects of the community is governed by agreements of relationship rather than brokering of power. In this sermon [PDF], the Rev. Dr. Michael Schuler, senior minister at the First Unitarian Society of Madison, Wisconsin, explores different types of authority in different models of religion, with great insight into how power structures in Unitarian Universalist congregations enable a richer spiritual life for our members through emphasis on individual freedom and responsibility.

On Whose Authority?

by Rev. Dr. Michael A. Schuler

Several weeks ago The Wall Street Journal reported on an emerging trend in certain conservative Christian congregations. As an example, the story pointed to the experience of a seventy-one year old woman, Karolyn Caskey, who had been expelled from the Allen Baptist Church in southwest Michigan.

Mrs. Caskey had been for many years a pillar of that small congregation. A member for half a century, she tithed 10% of her pension and had been a dedicated Sunday School teacher. “She’s one of the nicest, kindest people I know,” one of her neighbors observed. Nevertheless, one Sunday morning last June Mrs. Caskey was handcuffed and escorted from the small whitewashed Baptist church by a Michigan state trooper and a sheriff’s deputy. The charge was trespassing.

(Read on … )

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 … )