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Tuesday, July 27, 2004
Obstacles to UU Family Ministry
Now that I've gone through all seven shifts in perspective congregations need to make in order to become more family
friendly, I'd like to take a look at a few of the things that may be holding us back. The very first is the word "family"
itself. According to Penny Edgell, associate professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota, "around 20 percent of
the pastors [surveyed], almost all liberal Protestant, said they do not use the term 'family ministry' at all because it is
exclusionary" ( "Boundaries and Silences in a Post-Feminist Sociology"). Edgell specifically mentions Unitarians among those liberal Protestant pastors, noting their concerns "about the public
implications of organizing a church's ministry around a two-parent, heterosexual family, of giving a religious imprimatur
to norms of family practice that seem increasingly out of place in what...has [been] called the era of the post-modern family."
Of course most Unitarian Universalist congregations wouldn't limit the word "family" to "a two-parent, heterosexual"
household. The testimony of the Rev. David S. Blanchard, minister of the First Unitarian Universalist Church in Syracuse, before a New York State Senate hearing on civil marriage
for same-sex couples is a poignant example of the pain caused by a too-narrow definition of "family." But we may not be doing
enough to expand that definition to include those "who commit themselves to attempt to be family for one another," to use
Diana Garland's language, or "a network of sustaining relationships that meet member’s needs for belonging and attachment; meaning and
purpose; care, help and resources," to use the language of the UUA's Family Matters Task Force. While many Unitarian Universalist congregations do occasionally mention programming for "children, youth, and families"
in their publications, few actually call what they do "Family Ministry." (For a good example of what "Family Ministry" in
a Unitarian Universalist congregation might look like, see the position overview for the Family Ministries Pastor/Director at the Pathways Church in Texas.)
If we, as a liberal religious people, are going to continue to reclaim our right to words like "family" and "values,"
we must begin to use them more often in our publications, on our websites, and in our conversations amongst ourselves and
with others. As Unitarian Universalist Christopher Reeve said during his speech at the 1996 Democratic Convention, “The last few years we have heard a lot about something called ‘family values,’ And like many of you, I have struggled to
figure out what that means, and since my accident, I have found a definition that seems to make sense. I think it means that
we are all family. And that we all have value.” Let’s join UUA president Bill Sinkford in making “family values and family
matters central to [our] public witness” (“ Family values for diverse families”).
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
UU Families & the Language of Faith
The last of Diana Garland's seven shifts in focus congregations must go through in order to become more family friendly speaks directly to the current
state of Unitarian Universalism. Her call for a "shift from assessing families using 'clinical' language (e.g., functional
vs. dysfunctional) to assessing families using theological concepts that make room for both sin and redemption, blessing and
curse, grandeur and mystery" is an invitation for Unitarian Universalists to expand the current conversation about " Reclaiming a Vocabulary of Reverence" to include not only individuals, but families as well. Indeed, the ability to use such language is crucial for developing
what the UUA's Family Matters Task Force calls Family Faith, "the shared beliefs and values that provide the family with a common understanding of what their
experience means and what they are to do in response."
In his sermon Watch Your Language, Unitarian Universalist minister Fredric J. Muir points out that, "Unitarian Universalists are about one-tenth of one percent
of the population.... We are already isolated because we are so small. But then when we use the language of science or psychology
or politics to describe what traditionally has been faith and religious issues, people look at us like we’re from another
world: What on earth are these UUs talking about?" This is especially true, I believe, when we talk about families. We will
never be able to fully enter into the conversation about families and family values on any level--locally or nationally--until
we begin to use the same kind of language other religious groups use as a matter of course.
What we must do, according to Muir, is "learn to translate." He says, "we can use the word idolatry and understand
that it can mean addictions. We can speak the word sin without gasping for air after saying it, and know it
means brokenness and alienation. We can speak of salvation and understand that the word means transformation.
We can speak about the Kingdom of God and know it means the Beloved Community. When you can separate the words
from creed and dogma, the language can have new meaning for us, and we can still use the language of faith."
Not only do families hear these words from conservative churches, they hear them from our liberal religious kindred as
well. Fortunately, it is also the kind of language we hear in the vision statement of the UUA's Lifespan Faith Development Staff Group, where words like soul, religious heritage, community
of faith, spiritual practice, hope, joy, mystery, and healing are used without apology.
This is good news, indeed. Unitarian Universalism is growing out of its adolescence into a family faith and speaking the language
of faith is a mark of our newfound maturity.
Tuesday, July 13, 2004
Family & Congregational Support for Lifespan Development
In my most recent column for The Prairie Star (our district newsletter), I listed several traits healthy families have in common. I suggested that if you used the word
"congregation" instead of "family" when reading the list, you could get a pretty good idea of what the traits of a healthy
congregation are as well. The same is true when looking at the sixth of Diana Garland's shifts in focus congregations must make to become more family-oriented, a "shift from envisioning human development as
a process in which one leaves family in the process of maturing to envisioning families as significant contexts for individual
maturation, with potential for supporting members’ growth spiritually and ethically over the lifespan."
There's been a lot of talk over the years about Unitarian Universalism's inability to retain the youth and young adults
who were brought up in our faith. One of the ways we're trying to do better is to provide programming that helps congregations
become "significant contexts for individual maturation, with potential for supporting member's growth...over the lifespan."
Indeed, that's exactly what Lifespan Faith Development is all about. But we haven't gotten to the point where we are consistently broadening our programs to include families as
well.
In her introduction to the latest issue of UU Faith Works, Judith Frediani, director of the UUA's Lifespan Faith Development Staff Group, suggests that "we need
to look outside the classroom for viable, lifelong faith development practices for all ages." I believe the first place we
should be looking is in our families. Fortunately, as Judith notes, "there are adult religious education
resources, home worship resources, and family resources available from the UUA to support our ministry to families." Just
check out the Unitarian Universalist Family Network page.
The resourses are there...we just don't offer them consistently. So where do we start? Once good place might
be the Family Ministry Survey Report prepared by the UUA's Family Matters Task Force. The survey was the task force's attempt to find answers to the following questions: How do we define family? What are our
UU family values? How are we doing ministry with families? If we can come to some agreement about the answers to those questions,
it may help us begin to see our "families as significant contexts for individual maturation, with potential for supporting
members’ growth spiritually and ethically over the lifespan." Wednesday, July 7, 2004
UU Families & Faith Development
Getting Unitarian Universalists to "shift from conceptualizing individual ego development as the underlying process of
'faith development' to conceptualizing faith as a dimension of family life as well as of individual experience" is going to
be tough. This, the fifth of seven shifts congregations need to go through in order to create a context for family ministry
(according to Diana Garland), goes against the grain of a faith that, as Unitarian Universalist minister David Parke writes, believes its "greatest strength lies in its conviction that the journey of the human spirit
is one that each person must make for her--or himself." Indeed, you've probably heard that Thomas
Jefferson once said that he was content to be a Unitarian by himself.
But as Barry Andrews has observed, "If we all felt that way, Unitarian Universalism would be a one-generation phenomenon."
The good news is that more and more of us are working to make our faith more of a "family religion," one that looks to both
the home and the congregation for forming lifelong UUs (see Joel Miller's letter " Living in Exile" in the current issue of the UUWorld and Kate Tweedie Erslev's new book Full Circle).
The vision statement of the UUA's Lifespan Faith Development Staff Group certainly reflects this when it "affirm[s] that [we] are part of a Unitarian
Universalist religious heritage and community of faith that has value and provides resources for living," and when it "recognize[s]
the need for community, [and] affirm[s] the importance of families, relationships and connections between and among the generations."
The most exciting example of this shift toward "conceptualizing faith as a dimension of family life" that I know of is
happening at the First Universalist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where Bill Doherty and others are working with families within the congregation to develop UUs
who are literate and articulate about their faith. A wonderful summary of their work can be found in the most recent UU Family
Network Clearinghouse Packet under Family Chalice: Explaining Unitarian Universalism. I especially like the way they see the family fitting into the layers of unity and diversity within Unitarian Universalism. Thursday, July 1, 2004
Multigenerational Communities of Faith II
I presented a workshop on Multigenerational Communities of Faith again at the UUA's 43rd General Assembly held in Long Beach, California. The content was pretty much the same as the workshop I did at the Prairie Star District's
Annual Meeting and Conference in April, but I have refined things a bit. So here's a update of the resources I've found valuable
regarding multigenerational communities of faith.
Next, I talked about the benefits of multigenerational relationships in general, using the Generations in Partnership Fact Sheet from Kansas State University as a reference. The benefits, by the way, are:
- Fostering cooperation and sharing
- Improving social skills
- Building friendships and social networks
- Enhancing self-esteem and morale
- Reducing stereotypes Improving attitudes about the aging process
(There's also a Leader's Guide available on intergenerational activities.)
I then talked a little about how I use the word faith, referring to the article Barry Andrews wrote for the Essex Conversations,
specifically his take on Wilfred Cantwell Smith, who called faith "an orientation of the personality, to oneself, to one’s neighbor, to the universe; a total response; a
way of seeing whatever one sees and of handling whatever one handles; a capacity to live at more than a mundane level; to
see, to feel, to act in terms of, a transcendental dimension." I appreciate this definition of faith because, while it's grounded
in the personal, it does leave room for religious traditions and communities to form and transform a person's faith.
We also took a look at the vision statement of the UUA's Lifespan Faith Development Staff Group, which "recognize[s] the need for community," and "affirm[s] the importance
of families, relationships and connections between and among the generations."
We then took a quick look at James Fowler's stages of faith, which are summed up nicely in a entry on Faith Development found in the Encyclopedia of Religion and Society, edited by William H. Swatos, Jr.
Next, we moved onto the notion of community. I shared some of Diana Garland's thoughts on the subject, especially those
in her article Community: The Goal of Family Ministry. I especially appreciate Garland's belief that community "consists of people, organizations, and physical environment that
keep us from depending solely on the persons within our family to meet all our personal, social, physical, and spiritual needs,
and who communicate, 'This is your place; you belong here.'"
I also mentioned two examples of Unitarian Universalist visions of the beloved community: the Covenant of Beloved Community (click on the "Our Covenant" button on the left their homepage to read it), from All Souls UU Church in Colorado Spring,
Colorado; and Tom Owen-Towle's Growing a Beloved Community: Twelve Hallmarks of a Healthy Congregation.
I then talked about my sense of what the word "multigenerational" means and why it's important for us to make distinctions between intra-, inter-, and multi- generational programs and activites
in congregations. I also mentioned the work various people have done concerning the various generations we find in our congregations. I
recently found an excellent overview of the generational discoveries of Neil Howe and William Strauss, authors of Generations:
The History of America's Future, 1584-2069. It's called Generational Understandings for UU Congregations, by Rev. Dr. Ken Brown, Executive Director, UUA Pacific Southwest District.
I closed the workshop with the same questions I asked in April:
Suppose a family came into your congregation comprised of the following members: two parents, an older teen from one of
the parent’s first marriage, an adopted adolescent, a toddler, and a grandparent who had recently lost his or her life partner.
What programs do you already have in your congregation to attend to this family’s need for community? What programs do you
have in your congregation to address the individual faith development needs of the members in this family? What programs could
you add to what your congregation currently offers to attend to this family’s need for community? What programs could you
add to what your congregation currently offers to address the individual faith development needs of the members in this family?
I hope these resources will help you begin a conversation in your congregation about what, exactly, it means for Unitarian
Universalists to be members of multigenerational communities of faith.
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