Being a Professional Religous Professional in difficult economic times

A very wise colleague recently told me that she thought that at the core of what we do, is that we educate people on how to "do church." My work is not the same thing as my job description and commensurate task list.

I really like that as a hook upon which to hang my hat. Our work is that we provide leadership in how to live in a certain kind of community that doesn't exist elsewhere. We provide opportunities for people -- adults, youth, children -- to practice the skills necessary to be able to be in right relationship. It's relatively easy with people who think like us and laugh at the same jokes, but our religious community, when done right, includes people we don't particularly enjoy being with, people we don't understand, people we find challenging, angry, or obstructionist, and "doing church" with them takes a lot of work.

When we ask ourselves, "What is a congregation uniquely positioned to provide it's members," we come to that answer. We are a religous movement that affirms the worth and dignity of our most challenging people. We are a faith tradition that expects that people will be oriented toward right relationship, toward health and wholeness; toward, dare I say, liberation from that which limits and challenges us. We are a faith tradition where people covenant to stay at the table together and work things out, to practice and practice and practice again the skills to be able to work things out.

Religious Professionals whose work is in congregations are in a unique position relative to the members and congregations in which we serve. We spend 20 or 40 or 60 hours a week "working" on the doing of church. By the time we've been doing this work for several years, we have engaged in myriad collegial conversations and spent intense time in educational development opportunities at 15 and 25 and 40 hours a pop, learning from our colleagues and foreparents, from those who specialize in understanding particular aspects of our work. We may have spent 1 or 3 or 4 or 10 years in advanced studies in preparation for the work we do, learning how the early Christian church, liberationists in Latin America, marginalized populations and mainstream congregations in the US all have "done church." We've learned about congregational systems theory, and the impact of congregational size on the necessary administrative and program structures; we've worked to be a non-anxious presence.

And the people we serve, for the most part have not spent years and years in this endeavor. They attend worship once a week. They serve on a committee, or teach a class, maybe both. Some few immerse themselves in "being" Unitarian Universalist in an active, core sense. Maybe, after a number of years, they serve on the Board or on committees and boards of the larger association. Or they blog regularly about our Association and our lives together.

But church time is slow time.

C h u r c h T i m e i s S l o w Tiiiiiiiimmmmmmmmmmeeeeeeee.



I came out of Seminary great guns, intending to change the world, to start adult education programs that mimicked the kind of intense bonding and exploration I experienced in Seminary. I was going to start outreach ministries that met the felt needs of the poorest in the community from church basements, empowering the members of any congregation I served to imagine wildly the kinds of needs they, banded together as a congregation, could meet.

And here I am two decades later on a sunny Wednesday afternoon, talking with people, not about the next outreach activity, not about deep intense theological questions about the meaning of life, but about the importance of the Safe Congregation Policies. We explore why it isn't a good idea for a person who doesn't actually believe that the rules are necessary to be the actual person who teaches them to newcomers. Sometimes I practice, teach, and engage in right relationship with my community by saying "No."


Here I am, again, trying to find language for why the word Faith doesn't mean belief in what isn't provable. Or in a conversation about why, just because the word Covenant is printed on the side of big rigs and is claimed by reconstructionist Christians we still get to use it. That, in fact, we must use this language, for it is our language. The very deepest innermost truth of our faith is in our covenant one with another.

Here I am, again, asking a group of incredibly passionate and talented RE Volunteers to remember that they are working with a group that exists in the context of a larger RE Program, which is in the context of the larger congregation, which is uniquely qualified to offer it's membership a certain kind of being-in-relationship.

Here I am, again, (trying to be careful) asking questions about why a congregant who buys fair trade coffee and won't shop at Walmart would entertain the idea that when staff hours are cut, that staff member should just offer up volunteer time to fulfill their job description.

Here I am, not engaged in a deep discussion about multinational economic oppression, but explaining why I think that all staff will support another staff person's raise to the local Living Wage even though none of us are going to get a COLA this year; why it's a justice issue; why we are also bound together in right relation.

Under economic pressure, congregations need their religous professionals to be professional -- that is, to continue to help them learn how to "do church." If my hours or program budget were to be cut further, what would that mean to me as a professional? What would it mean to my family? These are my questions to answer, and they belong in conversation with my family and colleagues.

But, how would the congregation "own" the consequences of choices to cut? This, ultimately is my role as a religious professional under economic pressure -- how might I help the congregation understand that those consequences have to do with how they live their lives together, how they support their children and youth, how they walk together in justice and peace and right relation. Changes in my job description would mean modifications in how they support their own religious community, but it ought not be about whether or not I am hurt or angry. Their reaction to any cuts that are made ought not be to personally apologize to me. Because it's not about me.

My family life is about me, my economic realities are about me, and my solutions will be about me. But the congregation must learn through this as through everything else, how to "do church," how to be in right relation, how to make hard choices and then follow up with right action.

What I do as a religous educator is far more complicated, rich, and meaningful than the exciting work I'd once dreamed. Starting up community education programs to teach basic car repair to single mothers would have been much simpler.


PS. Late breaking news people, Literary License. It's a lovely thing. Remember, I never talk about my congregation on this blog, and so there are no exact literal conversations with exact identifiable congregants; just as I hope you understand that it could not possibly be true, in that literal factual sense, that I had all of the above conversations, literally, this Wednesday afternoon.