Phil's Little Blog on the Prairie

You’ve probably heard this story before: someone (a philosophy professor or a time management expert) places a large glass jar on a desk. She then takes a bag of fist-sized rocks and pours them into the jar until they reach the top. She asks the audience if they think the jar is full. They answer, “Yes.” Next she takes a bag of small pebbles and pours them into the jar. With a few shakes, all of the pebbles settle into the space between the larger rocks. Again she asks if the jar is full, and again the audience answers, “Yes.” Finally, she takes a bag of sand and pours it into the jar. The sand finds its way into all of the remaining space between the rocks and the pebbles. “Now,” she says, “the jar is full.”

At least, that’s the way I originally heard it. Thanks to the internet, however, the story has been augmented to include pouring some sort of liquid into the jar—coffee, Hershey’s chocolate syrup, or beer. After the presenter has explained that the large rocks represent the most important things in life, that the pebbles represent the next set of priorities, and that the sand represents the small stuff, one audience member asks, “What about the coffee/chocolate/beer?” To which the presenter replies, “There’s always room for…” whatever.

This story came to my mind this past weekend as I was visiting several congregations in the southern part of the Prairie Star District (Des Moines, Iowa; Topeka, Manhattan, & Lawrence, Kansas; and All Souls in Kansas City, Missouri). I was talking about lifespan faith development quite a bit, and I was struggling to come up with a way to explain that what's really going on here is a radical shift in priorities for our congregations. Then I remembered this little story.

I realized that the way we are currently doing religious education and faith development is to spend a lot of time pouring sand into the jar first. Our religious educators and RE committees are constantly worrying about getting enough teachers, making sure folks have copies of the appropriate curriculum, checking story books out of libraries, registering children and taking attendence, buying bagels and apple juice, arranging supply closests, and on and on and on. We've been asking religious educators to replicate the standard classroom experience one might find in a public school system (in fact, as I mention in my sermon "It's Just Like Regular Church, Except...," the UUA's website used to feature an ad that suggested our religious education programs were "like regular school, except nobody flunks").

Thing is, we're not a public school--or even a private one, for that matter. We are an association of congregations, a religious organization. And while we do need to teach some things in a classroom evironment, that should not be our first priority. Our first priority, I believe, should be building a beloved community, a multigenerational community of faith. Our second priority should be ministering to the needs of the families in our midsts--families of all formations. Our third priority should be offering religious education programs that help engender faith development in the individuals who make up our congregations--children, youth, and adults.

I believe our congregations need to radically shift the way we prioritize programming. First, we should make sure there are a variety of opportunities to build beloved, multigenerational communities of faith throughout the church year--intergenerational worship, holiday dinners, retreats, etc. Next, discern what programs are needed to address the spiritual needs of our families--classes on being a UU family, help for the sandwich generation, information on end-of-life issues, youth and young adult programs. Finally, we should address the faith development needs of everyone in our communities by offering classes on world religions, UU history and identity, ethics, spiritual development, etc.

Religious educators can't do this alone. The entire congregation needs to be involved--board, ministers, the chairs of social justice, worship, program, and membership committees. If we planned the big stuff first, the multigenerational experiences and the family ministry programs, we'd still have plenty of time and energy for age-appropriate Sunday school classes. Oh, and coffee. There's always room for coffee.

Here's a look at my upcoming column in our district newsletter, The Prairie Star:

In a article from the January/February 1998 issue of the UU World Magazine entitled “Surviving Toxic Media: How the Church Can Help,” psychologist and author Mary Pipher, a member of the Unitarian Church of Lincoln, Nebraska, makes the following observation: “…adulthood is vanishing, if by ‘adults’ we mean people who have special knowledge and accept special responsibilities. Many adults have no different information than their children have. They too watch MTV, Freddy Kruger, and the nightly news, and they play the same computer and video games.” She goes on to quote Joshua Meyrowitz, author of No Sense of Place, who says “we are becoming a nation of neither children nor adults. Rather we all exist in some age zone between childhood and adulthood. We’re a nation of adolescents—preoccupied with ourselves, sexualized, moody and impulsive, seeking freedom without responsibility.”

Not much has changed since this article was published. In fact, things have gotten worse. Market-driven media continue to flood our society with a storm surge of words and images that rely on what advertisers call the “five great motivators”: fear, exclusivity, guilt, greed, and ego gratification. What’s more, these messages are targeted to specific age groups—babies and toddlers, children, teenagers, young adults, and mature adults. Each group receives messages that are designed just for them, messages that, says Pipher, tell the individuals within a specific age cohort “that they are the most important person in the universe, that impulses should not be denied, that pain should not be tolerated, and that the cure for any kind of pain is a product.”

One of my tasks as Lifespan Program Director is to help congregations become places of refuge from the forces that divide us along generational lines and divert our attention from the things that matter most in our lives; the very things which are, according to, Unitarian theologian James Luther Adams, the reason why “people come to our religious communities in the first place,” namely, “ultimacy and intimacy.” As Adams explains it, people “come to wrestle with (and from time to time to actually find answers to) life's ultimate questions. Who am I? In what or in whom do I trust? In what community do I belong? And they come for a sense of intimacy, a safe place in which they can be accepted while making connections with others.”

I truly believe that our congregations must be multigenerational communities of faith if they are to function as safe places where people can find acceptance. The connections we make in our congregations must include a full range of cross-generational experiences. Otherwise we cannot effectively oppose the influence of toxic media in our culture. My hope is that through lifespan programming our fellowships, churches, and societies will become places where: instead of fear, we proclaim the transforming power of love; instead of exclusivity, we seek to be more inclusive; instead of guilt, we practice forgiveness; instead of greed, we show gratitude; and instead of ego gratification, we strive to open our hearts to a hurting world so desperately in need of our healing message.

As I've been writing about family ministry over the last few months, one thing has become increasingly clear to me--community service is essential for both faith development and strengthening families. Diana Garland lists it as one of the seven shifts congregations must make to become more family-oriented (see my post UU Families in the Larger World) and Roland Martinson of the Luther Seminary in St. Paul lists "Three or more months service" for youth as one of the Eight Faith Factors essential for developing lifelong people of faith. Add to this Bill Sinkford's statement that he's "making family values and family matters central to [his] public witness work over the next three years," and you've got a call for family-oriented community service across the association.

I'd like to share two articles on the subject. One is from Family Ministry: Empowering Through Faith. Entitled "Engaging Families in Service: Rationale and Resources for Congregations," it is Eugene C. Roehlkepartain's take on the importance of families community service in congregations. Here's the abstract:

Family service provides countless opportunities to grow in faith and to cultivate lifelong commitments to service and justice in children, youth, and families. Yet many churches overlook this vital accent in family ministry, and most family ministry resources do not address it. This article examines the scope, value, and challenges of family service in congregations, then identifies key questions for congregations to consider in developing a family service emphasis. It concludes by highlighting key resources that congregations and families can use to instill a commitment to service into the heart of family life.

The other resource is a much briefer article from the United Jewish Federation's website called "The Family that Volunteers Together...." It's a quick guide to family service from Ilene Springer that lays out the family-strengthening benefits of family-oriented community service:

"What do you gain by volunteering as a family?" writes Susan Ellis of Energize, Inc. "First of all, you assure that elusive but much-sought goal of 'quality time' with each other. You share a common bond while doing something worthwhile for others. You get to know your children in new ways, and visa versa." And, she says, it gives you something to talk about at dinner.

But perhaps the best reason to get our families involved in serving our communities can be found in the words of Ernesto Cortes, who spoke to our professional leaders last June at General Assembly. What do families in our communities need? Cortes says

What these families need is someone to help them gain "standing" in the community. Standing, in the legal sense, means that you have a claim to be heard, and to be involved in the deliberations and decisions about the process. Today's poor and disenfranchised people do not have standing--they cannot have their voices heard and counted as important in the day-to-day decisions important to their lives, and the organizations that currently exist were designed in such a way as to deny families this standing.

All of our families, both within our congregations' walls and without, need the kind of "standing" Cortes speaks of, and our congregations are the perfect place for folks to get involved in supporting families and proclaiming the liberal religious family values of justice, equity, and compassion in human relations. Let's join President Sinkford and make family issues central to both our public witness and the community service of our congregations.

Last week I offered Eight Key Factors for faith development in youth, and number one on the list was "Faith integrated into family identity and practice." One way some mainline Protestant congregations are doing this is through something called "Family-Based Youth Ministry." Of course this is a far cry from out current form of youth ministry, which is build on the notion of "youth empowerment" (defined as "a youth/adult partnership based in youth leadership and decision making with adult support"). Jesse Jaeger, director of the Youth Office at the UUA put it this way, "Youth groups succeed because of youth empowerment. Good adult advisors don't try to plan everything. They work with the youth, support them, and help them learn from their mistakes."

This makes a lot of sense as far as ministy with youth is concerned on a congregational level, but congregations also have a responsibility to the families of youth as well. And that's where Family-Based Youth Ministry comes it. It doesn't replace existing youth ministries, be they local, regional, or continental. Rather, it augments them by recognizing that the family is a key component in everyone's faith development--children, youth, and adults. (Remember, "recognizing the need for community, affirming the importance of families, relationships and connections between and among the generations" is one of the visions the UUA's Lifespan Faith Development Staff Group has for the future.)

Unfortunately, the language used by many groups promoting Family-Based Youth Ministry is rather Christian and often exclusive of the variety of family forms we Unitarian Universalists celebrate in our congregations. Still, some of the basic concepts are worth noting, such as: informing parents, assisting parents, involving parents, and encouraging parents. The point is that youth ministry means ministering to the entire family. I know we already are in some ways, but if we are going to really develop lifelong Unitarian Universalists, we must involve families in all faith development activities, including ministry with youth.