Shared Ministry and Faith-in-Action

Transforming Individuals and Institutions

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Introduction

The term "shared ministry" can mean many different things. It can mean ecumenical cooperation, as when churches of different faith traditions share a social ministry. It can also mean mutual aid, as when small churches pool their resources to share in providing a level and quality of ministry that none of them could achieve alone. "Shared ministry" can mean co-ministry, as in a church with two or more ministers who share its professional ministry. Or "shared ministry" can mean the cooperation of ordained clergy and lay leaders in a church, working in partnership to create, sustain and evaluate its ministries. The first question to address in any discussion of shared ministry is: who is sharing what ministry? My concern here is the partnership of clergy and laity in carrying out the ministries of a church.

Philosophies of Shared Ministry

I first encountered a philosophy and practice of shared ministry when I became a member of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Huntington, New York (UUFH). Shared ministry is part of the history and culture of that congregation. UUFH began as a lay-led congregation in 1947, during the time when the American Unitarian Association's "Fellowship Movement" was encouraging start-ups of new lay-led congregations. By 1961, when the American Unitarian Association and the Universalist Church in America merged to form the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, UUFH was calling its first ordained minister. The decision to begin a search for a minister had followed a congregational vote that is now part of the lore by which UUFH defines its identity. The congregation was split 50-50 as to whether it wanted a professional religious leader. The disagreement was resolved in a compromise: UUFH would call a full-time minister who would have the pulpit for half the Sundays during the church year. On the other Sundays, worship would be lay-led. A standing committee, the Sunday Program Committee, was responsible for coordinating and evaluating those services. Until recently, UUFH continued this arrangement, alternating minister-led and lay-led services from week to week. Now with more than 300 members, the congregation is beginning to want the minister to lead services more often. In response, the Sunday Program Committee and the minister are working together more closely, and the minister and lay leaders now lead some services jointly.

Huntington's shared worship ministry is the seed from which its culture of shared leadership and shared ministry sprang. That culture was nourished in the fertile soil of strong and healthy lay leadership. It grew through experience and experimentation, a process that became the congregation's philosophy of shared ministry. As one long-time lay leader has described it:

The philosophical basis of shared leadership and/or shared ministry is similar to that of any other shared venture. Partnerships ... are built on compromise, communication, commitment to a common goal, and an appreciation of the special talents that each partner brings to the relationship. In a voluntary religious organization ... the minister and the congregation each bring valuable abilities to the partnership. The minister has special training .... The congregation possesses a collection of skills and energies that no one person could possibly provide .... Together the minister and congregation can create a dynamic ... that neither could generate alone. Ideas and plans may come from any source and after being tossed around and shaped by the group can be endorsed and implemented by the whole organization. The division of duties and responsibilities [between minister and congregation] may not be fifty-fifty, but may vary according to the task, the occasion, and the people involved.[1]

The partnership of minister and lay leaders to incorporate and encourage lay ministry is a key feature of Huntington's practice of shared ministry. The Fellowship's bylaws designate the board of trustees and the minister as spiritual co-leaders of the congregation. The board meets twice each month, once for a regular business meeting, and once for a "Spiritual Directions" meeting devoted to a single topic or issue in the congregation's life which the board and minister explore together in depth. In business meetings, the board addresses matters of institutional management and decision-making. In "Spiritual Directions" meetings, it addresses the quality of congregational life, examining and evaluating matters of values and process in the Fellowship's ministries and projects.

To incorporate the mutual ministry of laypeople into the life and work of committees, Huntington developed and implemented a concept called "Centers." A "center" is a committee that follows certain principles in going about its work: (1) that building caring relationships among committee members is as important as completing the projects of the committee; and (2) that any member of the congregation has an open invitation to participate in the work of the committee. Not every committee at UUFH operates as a center – a Nominating Committee or Personnel Committee, for example, could not open its meetings to any member – but most do. Most committees begin every meeting with a brief check-in that gives each member an opportunity to share how they are feeling as the meeting begins. And most committees and centers meet on the same night each month, sharing a potluck supper before breaking out into meetings. This practice facilitates communication between committees and a spirit of fellowship between committee members, as well as the open invitation to participate in a center (it permits members to "shop" for the participation they want). In such ways, Huntington's shared ministry culture has introduced changes in traditional organizational forms and practices.

In contrast, the First Unitarian Church of Oakland, California, has introduced changes in its organization hoping to nurture a shared ministry culture. Its Associates programs develop and support shared ministry through formal training and recognition. The philosophy of these programs is: "the work is worthy and so are the workers." Oakland has four distinct Associates programs. Worship Associates assist in developing and conducting worship services. Pastoral Associates, or paraministers, participate in the pastoral ministry of the church, giving one-to-one help and care to church members in need. Teaching Associates carry out the lifespan religious education ministry of the church. Justice Associates devote at least two years to a specific social ministry project.[2] Each program stresses intentional processes of training its lay ministers and recognizing their efforts and accomplishments. At Oakland, as at Huntington, traditional forms of organization are adapted to enrich both programs and participants through practices of shared ministry.

Jean Morris Trumbauer, a church consultant in Minneapolis, presents an excellent analysis and practical guide for developing shared ministry through traditional organizational forms in her book, Sharing the Ministry: A Practical Guide for Transforming Volunteers into Ministers. Her approach, like those of Huntington and Oakland, focuses on the processes at work within the organizational forms.

[T]he focal point of the system is a community of gifted persons. Each person has a unique gift package of interests, motivations, experiences, dreams, needs, talents, strengths and weaknesses, and much more. And each person has a name. ... If the gifts of the people are to be connected to the challenges and opportunities offered by the shared ministry of the faith community, leaders must carry out several important processes. ... Paid staff, together with lay volunteer leaders, often perform these functions .... The processes ... are: planning; discovering gifts; designing; recruiting; interviewing; matching; training; supervising; supporting; evaluating; managing data.[3]

In Trumbauer's view, these eleven processes are how church leaders connect the ministries of a church with the talents of its members. She depicts them graphically as a ring of linked circles. Inside the ring are the gifts and talents of church members. Outside the ring are the ministries of the church. Each circle in the ring – each process, and each leader – is like a door inviting individuals' participation in the institution.

Trumbauer's diagram might also be likened to a wagon train circled up for defense. Inside the ring are church members, hoping these wagons will carry them on their spiritual journeys. Outside the ring, the ministries of the church are where the wagon train's attackers would be. In his book, Transforming Liberal Congregations for the New Millennium, Roy D. Phillips, minister of Unity Church-Unitarian in St. Paul, Minnesota, writes as if he were perched behind a wagon with his shotgun aimed.

People come to our congregations looking for bread. We give them the stones of busyness and pseudo-power. They return the favor by holding onto that power for dear life, squeezing the stone for blood, in all the petty, power-driven ways so familiar in churches. They turn the attention and expend the resources of religious community on the wrong concerns, and they damage their own spirits in the process. All the while, by holding onto institutional power, they keep everything the same and burn out one another's spirits. Subtly and not so subtly they keep newcomers from really coming in, and they assure that the congregation will not be characterized by much light, clarity, vibrancy, or magnanimity. We should look for something better.[4]

Phillips questions what Trumbauer assumes: that a church's organization supports ministry. His congregation has made radical departures from traditional forms of church organization:

The St. Paul congregation's board of trustees has dispensed with both finance committee and office of the treasurer. ... Years ago we disbanded our building and grounds and ministerial advisory committees. For advice, we go to knowledgeable people; a few people can do well what all along we had been saying could only be done by a committee. Those committees' tasks ... were largely membership-retention busywork, set up, unconsciously, so some could have the feeling of power and so all could avoid noticing the poverty of what our religious community was offering laypeople in developing spiritually and in discerning and living their personal ministries.[5]

Phillips agrees with Trumbauer that the ministries of a church ought to be vehicles for church members' spiritual growth and expression. But he does not share her faith that traditional institutional structures and processes serve the needs of individuals. He writes:

People come to liberal congregations ... looking for a sense of individuality, a sense of community, a sense of meaning, and a sense of hope. ... To assume that people come to a religious community because they want to be part of running another organization is preposterous. ... The seekers ... come ... to find help with the life of the spirit – to deepen and live it.[6]

He argues that the church organization should be built to foster individual, not institutional, ministries.

Unitarian Universalists value the inherent worth and dignity of every person, acceptance of one another and encouragement toward spiritual growth, and the use of democratic processes. These values underlie the philosophy and practice of shared ministry at Huntington, Oakland and St. Paul. All three congregations view their ministries as avenues for their members' spiritual growth. But how differently they view their institutions! UUFH develops its structures out of its shared ministry culture. First Unitarian cultivates shared ministry through its structures. Unity Church seeks to remove any institutional goal or structure that does not serve individuals' needs or ministries. UUFH emphasizes the ministry of its caring community. First Unitarian emphasizes training and development of lay ministry. Unity Church emphasizes the personal ministries of its members. UUFH and First Unitarian regard their institutions with trust, but Unity Church seems to regard its with suspicion.

We build institutions to serve our needs, and they develop needs of their own. How do we keep a healthy balance between the needs of individuals and those of institutions? Through our shared understanding of the mission and tasks for which our institutions were created. What is the institutional mission of a congregation? What are the dimensions of congregational life?

Shared Ministry in Congregational Life. A diagram known as "Gilbert's Wheel" was developed by the Reverend Richard Gilbert, minister of the First Unitarian Church of Rochester, New York. It depicts congregational life as having four dimensions: (1) the worship life of the church; (2) the mutual ministry of the church as a caring community; (3) the lifespan religious education ministry of the church; and (4) the ministry of faith-in-action – what Gilbert calls "moral discourse and action."[7] These are also four ways people pursue personal strivings toward spiritual growth and wholeness. They are categories of individual needs, but also of skills and talents needed in a congregation's institutional ministry.

No one would disagree that a congregation's ministries should meet real needs, and be of consistent and good quality. The purpose of familiar congregational structures – committees, councils, programs, and so on – is to address the tasks of (1) identifying needs in the congregation or in society, (2) developing and implementing ministries to meet those needs, and (3) evaluating the effectiveness and usefulness of those ministries. When members become involved in their church's committees and programs, they become agents of its ministries. They take on responsibility for the quality and integrity of the ministries they serve. They may desire and pursue training to improve their skills for their chosen ministries. The Associates programs of the Oakland church are designed to help members become better agents of institutional ministries.

At the same time, each member is a free agent with a personal interest and stake in her or his chosen ministry. They choose their involvement in the church by asking themselves questions like: What do I enjoy doing? What am I good at? What do I want to learn to do? The St. Paul church encourages its members to deepen their process of choosing by asking them four questions for reflection: (1) What draws you into community with others? (2) In what ways do you consider yourself and others as unique, gifted, and powerful? (3) Have you listened inwardly today? (4) How has the way you've lived your life today enriched the lives of others? These questions guide church members toward involvement in the church that also fulfills their personal needs for spiritual growth. At St. Paul, the church is likened to a field in which ministries grow. The talents and abilities of members are the seeds of ministries. By striking deep roots that nourish and sustain them, those seeds grow to bear fruit in the form of healthy ministries that enrich the lives of others.[8]

Oakland's focus on institutions and St. Paul's focus on individuals both serve to deepen our understanding of Gilbert's wheel. Each of Oakland's Associates programs, and each of St. Paul's reflection questions for personal ministry, corresponds to one of the four dimensions of congregational life depicted in the wheel. Together they help us see how personal ministries and institutional ministries may cooperate. A congregation's institutions support its ministries by lending them structure, stability and longevity. Members support ministry through their imagination, energy, vitality and passion.

A congregation's institutions and membership must also support each other. Each needs the other, and each ministers to the other. How are we to understand theologically this mutual ministry between individuals and institutions?

A Theology of Shared Ministry

Is a church's institution friend or foe? If it pursues its own interests instead of ministering to its members' spiritual needs, then it betrays its mission and is a foe. But how do we keep it friendly?

To ask these questions is to personify the church institution. Personification is one of the best tools in the repertoire of human imagination for discerning truth and finding meaning in our lives and experience. In fact, it plays a role in our ideas about the nature of institutions. Churches are religious corporations. In American law, a corporation is regarded for certain purposes as a person.

A corporation is a person within the provision in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Federal constitution that no "person" shall be "deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law"; and the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment that no State shall "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." On the other hand, a corporation is not considered to be a person within the clause of the Fifth Amendment which protects a "person" against self-incrimination.[9]

A corporate "person" is not immune to self-incrimination because it is not a human person. It has no will of its own. Its will derives from human will, through agreed-upon structures of authority and responsibility among people. We require that corporations' activities are legal. We forbid each other to create corporations for illegal purposes. We permit a corporation to incriminate itself because we recognize that its words and deeds are ultimately the responsibility not of the institution, but of the people who operate it.

Christian scriptures also personify the churches, most famously in First Corinthians 12:1-14:4.

Now concerning spiritual gifts, ... one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually just as He wills. For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ. ... Now you are Christ's body, and individually members of it. ... Pursue love, yet desire earnestly spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy. ... One who speaks in a tongue edifies himself; but one who prophesies edifies the church. [NASB]

In this passage, the Apostle Paul personifies the church as the body of Christ. Members serve the church in specialized ways as organs serve a body. The church nourishes its members as a body nourishes its organs. Like the body's organs, members can also fail to serve the church by overfunctioning or lack of functioning. The culture of the church, that ineffable spark of life that animates both the body and its organs, is personified as the Holy Spirit. Guided by the Spirit, the institution is a friend to its members and the members are friends to the institution. They are in right relationship. Individuals and institutions cooperate so that each is fulfilled.

The church institution is in right relation to its members when it respects and serves their spiritual needs. But right relationship is mutual. The members must also respect and serve the legitimate needs of the institution. In some ways the institution itself is like a person. It has certain legal rights. It has a personality, expressed in its traditions and culture. It has a life of its own and a mission for that life. And above all, it has presence. Its members feel its presence in the spirit it embodies, in its role in their lives, in its traditions, in the cloud of witnesses that populate its heritage, and in the caring gestures and services made in its name.

When I hear Unitarian Universalism described as a living tradition, I am reminded of how I experience it as a presence in my life. I meet this living tradition through its institutions. I have relationships with those institutions, as well as with the people who are part of them. Unitarian Universalist institutions have roles in my life. They minister to some of my needs. In these ways, they are like persons to me. And I do find myself treating them like persons, trying to discern whether they are friends or foes, hoping that they will be friends.

Why do we hope for friends? Because in friendship we are comforted. And in friendship we are changed. The Unitarian Universalist theologian, Henry Nelson Wieman, built his theology upon this human spiritual longing.

For Wieman, intimate communication reflects one of the highest forms of mystical experience: "Consider an ... example of this kind of mystical experience .... Tom and Dick are out for a walk. They are old friends. They do not talk. They understand one another and so there is nothing to talk about. But they are deeply and richly conscious of the fact that they are together. Their togetherness is the thing that is happening to them in the immediate present and of which they are appreciatively conscious. It fills them with a deep feeling of contentment. Such experience of friendship not only integrates each personality in itself, but involves discernment of an organic unity which includes both the individuals as well as the autumn leaves, the haze that hangs over the trees, the trees themselves, the sky, and unfathomed depths of experience. Is the integrating movement of the universe excluded from such an experience? We do not see how it can be. ... In the mystic experience we now have before us, the integration of the personality of the subject is incidental to ... discernment of a much wider integration, far exceeding the bounds ... of personality, but to which one can unite oneself as one organic member."[10]

This intimate, mystical dimension of human presence – this communion of one with another that witnesses to the mystery and the infinite height and depth of our being – is where Wieman finds what I would call the saving grace of God, and what he calls "creativity."

Creativity occurs when individuals engage in a kind of interchange with one another which is distinguished from every other interpersonal and social process by two features: (1) This kind of interchange creates appreciative understanding of the unique individuality of the other; (2) each individual who attains this appreciative understanding integrates into his [her] own individuality what he [she] thus acquires from others. ... One who attains appreciative understanding of the errors and wrong valuings of the other has gained as much wisdom, strength, and resourcefulness for dealing with the exigencies of life as when he [she] learns the truth and right valuings activating the lives of others. Right valuings are those which do not obstruct creative transformation.[11]

What Wieman calls "creative transformation" I would call salvation. Why do people join churches if not for salvation? That is the question I think Roy Phillips is asking.

How does creative transformation happen in a congregation? In 1977, the Reverend Ralph Stutzman, then minister of UUFH, gave a series of four sermons collectively titled "Religion as Adventure." Each sermon elaborated one of the four components of creative transformation that Wieman identified:

- Increasing the capacity of the individual to integrate into the uniqueness of his [her] own individuality a greater diversity of experiences so that more of all that he [she] encounters becomes a source of enrichment and strength rather than impoverishing and weakening him [her].

- Increasing ... one's ability to absorb any cause acting on oneself in such a way that the consequences ... express [one's] character and fulfill [one's] purposes.

- Increasing of [one's] ability to understand appreciatively other persons and peoples across greater barriers of estrangement and hostility.

- Expanding the range and diversity of what the individual can know, evaluate, and control.[12]

I see these as theological goals within Gilbert's four dimensions of congregational life. The first is a goal for the caring community, the second for religious education, the third for faith-in-action, and the fourth for worship. Of course, any or all of these goals may be explored in any of the dimensions of congregational life. I have tried to match each goal to the part of Gilbert's wheel with the most power to pursue it. To make these goals part of a congregation's ministries is to make an institutional commitment to individual salvation. It declares the church's intention to be in right relationship with its members.

In keeping with Huntington's experimental philosophy of shared ministry, Stutzman applied Wieman's ideas of commitment and creative transformation to congregational life this way:

I wish for us and for the Unitarian Universalist movement a deeper commitment to religious experimentation. I do not mean experimentation in worship or experimentation in organizational structure, though that may follow. I do mean experimenting in our lives with religious principles like the four points Wieman has suggested ... Our religious community ... will move deeper into genuine fellowship as each of us experiments in some way with opening his or her life to the adventure of religion. Our individual lives and our Fellowship community life will become more significant as we tune ourselves into some specific religious striving. In doing so we will find that, though we differ in belief from the orthodox Christian and the practicing Jew, there is a oneness with all seekers who take life seriously enough to live by religious courage, a bond of unity among all pilgrims who seek a sense of the holy in their everyday secular living.[13]

Phillips applies Wieman's ideas at the St. Paul church through a way of interpersonal relating that he calls a "Method of Mutuality." He outlines its key premises as follows:

- Each person orders events in his or her life by interpreting them. For each of us, the overall picture of how life works, which each puts together continuously through interpretation, can be called the assumptive world.

- The assumptive world makes possible and limits any particular interpretation, and any particular interpretation affects the assumptive world.

- If we want to be with another person creatively, we must acknowledge and connect with that person's assumptive world.

- I may or may not agree with your assumptive world; I do need to understand what your assumptive world is and give you your right to hold that outlook.

- Coming in touch with your assumptive world may cause me to change my assumptive world or it may strengthen my original assumptive world. Either way, my assumptive world has been affected.

- Mutuality cannot coexist with control, manipulation, isolation, or alienation. (Isolation refers to that polite avoidance of authentic interaction that is associated with tolerance.* )

- Mutuality demands concrete, behavioral learnable skills (naming feelings, paraphrasing what others say, giving specific feedback). And it requires an attitude of respect and reverence for the life stories of oneself and others. Mutuality is not merely a technique or an attitude. It is an interpersonal, spiritual discipline that requires self-restraint, openness, honesty, gentleness, courage, expectancy, and trust.[14]

Phillips has known this method to produce profound effects – caring, intimacy, insights, affectionate understanding of others, and a sense that every person is precious and powerful – in the individuals who practice it. As for institutions, he writes:

To fulfill the mission of bringing into being its vision of a possible better world, a liberal congregation can shape itself into an environment in which the divine seed in everyone can be acknowledged, can be nourished, and can be challenged so that it will flower in glorious self-expression and bear nurturing fruit in its way of being in relation to others and to the world.[15]

Shared ministry is about our way of being religious, our processes for living our faith. In our relationships with other persons – human and corporate – we have companions for our journey through life. We have witnesses to our struggles and our successes, our brokenness and our integrity. We have mentors and guides, students and followers. We find help and give help for the problems of human living. Shared leadership and shared ministry mean that the problems of human living are faced and talked about in the dailiness of congregational life, that their urgency and ubiquity are recognized and appreciated, and that responsibility for dealing with them is accepted by and distributed among the members of the community. As Unitarian Universalists, we covenant together to seek truth and meaning in a caring community, promising acceptance and encouragement for each person's spiritual growth. To me, the flaming chalice, symbol of our faith, represents such a community as a vessel which contains and sustains the holy spirit of love. We trust that in the process of sharing our ministry, more of the light of truth and the warmth of love will break forth in our institutions and in our world.

Shared Ministry and Community Organizing

Just as loving personal relationships are the bedrock of shared ministry, they are the foundations for community organizing. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., based his community organizing activities on the Christian concept of agape love, which he defined as "understanding redeeming goodwill for all [people]."[16] He strove first to build relationships with people. People he liked, and didn't like. People he agreed with, and didn't agree with. People who were like him, and who were different from him. He tried to understand every person and to see good in them. Through his personal relationships, he organized people for non-violent resistance, and forced powerful decision-makers to listen and relate directly to the people affected by their decisions. By building relationships that, in Wieman's terms, increased his ability to understand others appreciatively across greater barriers of estrangement and hostility, Dr. King made a difference. The difference he made could be measured in the expanded range and diversity of what those who worked with him could know, evaluate and control. No doubt they also increased their ability to absorb the events and circumstances of their lives in ways that expressed their own character and fulfilled their purposes. And surely they had occasion to integrate into their own unique individuality a greater diversity of experiences so that more of their life encounters were sources of enrichment and strength rather than causes of impoverishment and weakness. Dr. King's pursuit of faith-based community organizing provides concrete examples of how creative transformation – salvation – can come about through a ministry of faith-in-action.**

The Ministry of Faith-in-Action. A fully developed faith-in-action ministry (or social justice program) in a congregation includes five types of activities: (1) direct service to people in need; (2) educating people about social issues; (3) social witness; (4) advocacy to change or shape public policy; and (5) community organizing. Each type of activity has a particular focus, and its own strengths and weaknesses:

Together, these five types of activity provide a balanced program of social ministries and afford a balanced menu of opportunities for church members to develop and express their faith.[17] West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church has several committees engaged in faith-in-action. Our Social Concerns Committee oversees activities related to education, direct service, and advocacy. The Network for Social Justice, an umbrella committee embracing both our Social Concerns Committee and our newly-formed United WE-CAN Core Team, concentrates on funding specific faith-in-action projects. The Core Team will focus on community organizing and social witness, completing West Shore's institutional framework for its faith-in-action ministries.

Community Organizing at West Shore. This year West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church joined United WE-CAN (Westside/Eastside Congregations Acting Now), a regional network of churches involved in faith-based community organizing. WE-CAN provided a consultant who conducted one-on-one interviews with 19 potential members of our church's Core Team. The Core Team will investigate the need for organizing in our own community of Rocky River and develop our church's ministry for community organizing, as well as lead our church's support of community organizing by other churches in the WE-CAN network.

The challenges of community organizing emerged early in our experience with WE-CAN. Our consultant had the mistaken impression that we wanted to move quickly into action. But we were still sorting out what community organizing meant to us, and how it fit into the mission of the church. We began to feel uneasy about the project. Church members who were not part of the Core Team worried that United WE-CAN was a juggernaut threatening our ability to know, evaluate and control our faith-in-action ministry. One member asked me, "why should we let this outside organization tell us how to run our church?" Even members of the Core Team wondered what we were getting into. Our consultant reported that all 19 interviewees had expressed concern about racism in Rocky River, and encouraged us to take the next step of identifying a concrete, achievable goal that would address that concern. As we tried to do that, it became clear to us that we were moving too fast. We began to feel that we were inventing an issue rather than addressing one.

The crisis came when several of our Core Team members attended a free training session sponsored by United WE-CAN. The trainers were provided by the Gamaliel Foundation in Chicago, an established national network for faith-based community organizing. Their style was confrontative, "in your face," almost adversarial. Some Core Team members came back feeling that they had been subjected to an attempt at indoctrination, as if WE-CAN were a cult or a fascist plot. We began to lose faith in the project.

At this point we were assigned a new consultant. She listened to our concerns, and helped us make a new start. She led a training for our Core Team on how to do one-on-one interviews like the ones our first consultant had done for us. She told us about Dr. King's philosophy of community organizing. She encouraged us to take control of the process of discerning how community organizing fits into the mission of West Shore. Now our Core Team members are confidently conducting one-on-one interviews with members of the congregation, asking them: how they became the people they are; what dreams they have for themselves, our church and our community; what difference they want to make in the world. They understand their task as one of building deeper relationships within the congregation. They understand the one-on-one interview process as a vehicle of creative transformation – of redemptive human interaction. They know that through these interviews they are living their faith, and helping others in the congregation to do the same.

One remarkable moment of creative transformation came during our training. Our consultant had just explained Dr. King's concept of agape love. She asked if we had questions or comments. One member of the team, a quiet, gentle, rather distant young man, unexpectedly said, "Yes, I have a comment." She nodded. He said, "I'm schizophrenic, and I know that the times when I've felt most in need of love are when I've been depressed." The others nodded and affirmed his statement. Since then, we have noticed people relating to him more warmly. He has smiled more. He has initiated conversations, which he has almost never done before. He seems more at ease, and more a part of things. And he has conducted one-on-one interviews, making a valuable contribution to the Core Team's work. That moment in the training session when he felt comfortable enough to open up and offer his authentic self to the group was transformative for him and for everyone who was there. We have changed. More light and warmth has broken forth in our community.

Future Directions for West Shore. West Shore was founded as a large church. The feeling of closeness and belonging, care and mutual support among its founders was expressed largely through building its facilities. Indeed, the church building is the congregation's most powerful symbol of its history and traditions. Throughout the building, rooms are named for important people in its history. The architect of the sanctuary wing, the newest and most distinctive and prominent part of the facility, was one of West Shore's founding members. The tasks of maintaining and furnishing the building frequently preoccupy the congregation and its leadership. Because the building is a symbol of the heart and soul of West Shore, problems with the physical plant threaten the congregation's sense of institutional identity.

West Shore's largest and most successful outreach to the community is its Child Care Center, one of very few accredited child care services in the area. It is significant that West Shore gives the use its building to this program. It is a gift of the congregation's heart and soul. Future directions in all of West Shore's ministries, will be shaped by the unfolding of its relationship to its building. And West Shore's sense of identity will be shaped by how and whether its ministries make use of the building.

Conclusion

Shared ministry – the partnership of clergy and laity in carrying out the ministries of a church – is rooted in loving relationships between individuals. A spirit of respect and care for all persons – human and corporate – is its hallmark. Faith-based community organizing can extend that spirit of love to the church's relationship with its neighbors in the wider community. Like shared ministry, community organizing seeks to bring individuals and institutions into right relationship. Forms and practices of shared ministry in a given congregation are shaped by its history, traditions, and culture. Different congregations will do things differently. And they will relate differently to their neighbors. The measure of success in shared ministry and community organizing is whether they bear fruit in experiences of creative transformation. If they do, then we know that the spirit moving through them – and among us – is of God.

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Notes

*      "Freedom, reason and tolerance" is the classic statement of liberal religious principles supplied by Earl Morse Wilbur in his A History of Unitarianism (Volume I, p. 4-5). In Man's Ultimate Commitment, Wieman writes of "freedom, reason and faith" as "indispensable to the conduct of human living." (p. 135) Though many Unitarian Universalists are dissatisfied with the term "tolerance," Wilbur has stamped it into our movement's sense of identity. Perhaps Wieman's terms can help us transcend Wilbur's and creatively transform our collective sense of identity.

**     It is interesting to me that Dr. King's dissertation compared the theologies of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman. (See Clayborne Carson, ed., The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Volume III, p. 306, footnote 22.)

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