“What is a Minister?” A Sermon By Rev. Dick Weston-Jones, This morning I’m going to speak about ministerial identity and the needs of your future minister. How do you know what a minister is? I’m going to speak about ministerial rights and responsibilities. How do you establish the limits of a minister-layperson relationship and how you and the minister massage them—that is, how do you press against the limits, as Unitarians will do, and not go too far—make them work for you? I’m going to speak about the support you need to give your minister. How do you support your minister so that she (will she be a woman?) can do her work without being worn down all the time by the weight of finances, the lack of necessary resources, and difficult or impossible working conditions? I’m going to speak about forgiveness and freedom of the pulpit. How do you deal with your minister when you get angry at him (will he be a man?) for saying or doing the wrong thing? (In someone’s opinion.) I’m going to speak about how a minister gets you to do the things you have to do to have a healthy church when you don’t want to do the work and you think you don’t even know how to do the work. How can the minister perform miracles with such as you? That will be mostly next Sunday’s sermon. What is a minister? Lord George Brown, deputy leader of the Labour party in Great Britain about 30-40 years ago, had a problem identifying birds by their feathers. Known to be a heavy drinker, he once attended a diplomatic function that required formal attire. There was an orchestra playing in the ballroom. As the senior British minister present, he felt he should start the dancing. Spying a gorgeously robed figure, he said “Beautiful lady in scarlet, will you do me the honor of waltzing with me?” “Certainly not,” was the sharp response. “In the first place you are drunk; in the second this is not actually a waltz but the Venezuelan national anthem; and thirdly, I am not a beautiful lady in scarlet. I am, in fact the papal nuncio.” Unitarian ministers often get misidentified. The first and most common misidentification is that members of the churches they serve may think they are really just laypeople who are paid to do the work that they, the members don’t want to do. Not true. Ministers do different work from the members, and if they and the members don’t understand that, the church will not work right. It will bump and groan, clunk along like a car with two flat tires and a broken windshield. The first error is thinking that a minister is supposed to be your friend. Most ministers admit that they do not have friends in their own church. Why? Because they cannot be equals. Wise members give their minister the right to say and do things that they don’t give other people. If you don’t do that you won’t get your money’s worth because your minister won’t be able to do his work at all. Ministers are professionals just as surgeons are professionals. Look, if you need a serious operation, are you going to look for a friend to cut you open? Would you say “I won’t go to that surgeon even though I hear she’s the best and knows how to do it, because I got in on a conversation with her once and we didn’t get to be friends.” In minister-member relationships, the most profound value comes about when members admit the minister to a level of knowing about themselves that they may be reluctant to open to others. This happens when as a members they listen with their hearts to what the minister says about life and death and things between; and when in private confidential conversation they open up their personal quests to the minister. Ministers can be and better be friendly. That’s one of the tools they use to do their trade. But it’s a tool. They have to get their own personal needs met outside their minister-member relationships. That makes it a lonely profession that often appears jolly to others. You need to permit the minister to keep her professional distance even while she is being friendly with you and you with her. You can and should invite her to parties. You can and should let her into your life in casual as well as formal ways. But don’t expect her to admit you to intimacy, to share the secrets and vulnerabilities of her life in a close private friendship with you. That way lies ruin for her ministry to you and possibly for her ministry to the church. Some years ago Dr. Dorothy Spoerl, a great Unitarian minister and religious educator was asked to speak in King’s Chapel, the most formal UU church in America. (They still use a version of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer in their services.) There is (or was then) only one toilet in the church, and it was labeled “Men.” Dr. Spoerl did the appropriate thing and asked the head usher what she should do if she needed to use the toilet before the service, since she didn’t seem to qualify. The head usher, a very formal gentleman, drew himself up with great propriety and said “Dr. Spoerl, ministers have no sex.” I’m here to tell you that ministers, like everyone else, do have sex. Only not with members of their church. It shouldn’t matter to Unitarians whether the minister is gay or straight. Ministers do have sex but they shouldn’t have it with their parishioners, no matter how willing some members may be. Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini was a 15th century humanist scholar in Rome. Though he held a position in the papal curia and wore ecclesiastical garb, he was never ordained as a priest. A cardinal once reprimanded him for having children, which the cardinal said did not become a man “of the cloth,” and for having a mistress, which the cardinal thought unbecoming even for a layman. Poggio retorted “I have children, which is suitable for a layman, and I have a mistress, which is a time-honored custom of the clergy.” Just not in your congregation. Your minister must have a private life however he chooses, as long as it is ethical for him in his circumstances. It is separate from the church. Don’t put up with a minister who doesn’t understand that he needs a private life and that it must be outside the church—particularly its sexual aspects. Inside the church it destroys the ministry and can destroy a church by loading it with forbidden baggage for decades. I know. I once served a church that had struggled for 20 years to get over the dalliances of a former minister. UU ministers have the toughest code of ethics about sexuality (and some other things) of all professional clergy organizations. We ministers cannot sleep with a person and maintain a professional ministerial relationship with him or her—or with a congregation with enquiring minds. Back to “ministerial identity.” Ministers and interim ministers are not the same thing. Though I do ministry I am not your minister. I have been, and will be for a little longer, your interim minister. None of the visiting ministers you’ve had in recent years have been either your ministers or interim ministers. They were preachers, pure and simple, whatever they did. They were holiday visitors who came and went. Your minister will not do things the way I have been doing them. My job has been to identify and work with the issues that would interfere with the successful settlement of a permanent minister. I helped you decide to search for a permanent minister last October, and I have worked closely with your search committee to help them be successful. I have no idea who they will choose to recommend to you, or when. I am completely outside that part of their search, and have only helped with their process. I have done things here that many congregations would not permit a minister to do. If they did, the minister would probably be reluctant to do them. I’ve waded into issues, written papers for the Management Committee telling them what I thought they needed to do, launched projects with limited prior consultations, invited conflict and tried to deal with it openly and with respect for those who disagreed with me. Your minister will act quite different from me, both because she will be a different person and because we are doing different jobs. I’m here to identify issues and not let the church avoid them. If a minister does that, she may get into difficult interpersonal relationships with members who see the church differently. She might get fired for being pushy. It’s my job to be pushy. And to leave soon. I am determined to leave as few unaddressed problems as possible so that when your minister is settled you can get down to the regular life of the church and get on with being a healthy congregation. (You can even say “Thank god we can relax now.”) I have more to say about what a healthy congregation is next week, so I will stop there. Most important, don’t think I am a model of the ministry that your permanent minister should follow. My way would be disasterous for both you and her. Let her be herself and create her ministry out of her strengths. Don’t hold her up to me, or to Max Moss, or to Linda Landau, or to Scotty Meek, or to Melanie Sullivan or whoever. Certainly not to Richard Beal or David Rankin. As a noted rabbi said two thousand years ago, “let the dead bury the dead.” Even me. And don’t make her say that. Get on with your life as a congregation. Don’t compare her with your past ministers and I think she’ll be happy to have you as her congregation. David Hume, the 18th century Scottish philosopher who was a skeptic about many things theological, regularly attended church services conducted by a sternly orthodox minister. A friend once suggested to him that he was being inconsistent in going to listen to such a preacher. Hume answered “I don’t believe all he says, but he does, and once a week I like to hear a person who believes what he says.” If you don’t get angry once in a while for something your minister says or does, he’s not doing his job. He’s not supposed to please you, but to stimulate your thinking. There are so many different theologies and ideas about social issues represented in this congregation that the minister can’t help goring someone’s sacred cow almost every week. If he doesn’t, he needs to be encouraged to trust you, to speak about the real stuff that you get aroused about. You need to expect that, and learn to accept him and forgive him when it gets too tight for you. In the long run you will gain by letting him be real, even letting him offend you with his ideas so you can ask yourself “Why do I feel so deeply about that?” Be prepared to forgive a lot if you have strong opinions. Your new minister’s not likely to support them all. But expect respect for everyone. If there are people here who become a settled opposition, the rest of you need to find a way to get the oppositionals to grin and bear some of what they oppose. Or just bear it and grumble. They should not try to get the congregation to reflect their views. It only takes three or four disgruntled people in a church this size to make it an impossible place for the minister to work and for the congregation to be healthy. You need a good process to help you deal with conflict and be strengthened—not weakened by it. I’ll talk about that next week. You’ve had some tough times in the recent past that weakened you. I think you’re healthy now. Don’t make your minister beg or starve. You need to agree with her on what remuneration she needs to start, and don’t be cheap. This is an expensive city. You need to keep your minister comfortable. And every year you need to give her a raise. Every year, sometimes to keep up and sometimes just to tell her you love her. Every year. Even if it’s a small raise. Do you know that you have not raised your salary package for 6 years? If it was right for an experienced minister when you gave it to David Rankin, it’s too low now. And don’t compare it with the “average Auckland income.” Your minister is not as average as a store clerk. She will be highly educated, has spent years to be prepared to be with you, and will never get wealthy doing your ministry. Pay her adequately. I don’t pretend to know what that means, but you need to think about it and do what your minister needs you to do. Be generous and stay generous. Your minister needs a private, confidential office that is attractive and comfortable to work in and for you to come to. Entering it needs to be at her invitation, not at your whim. It cannot be a public space. When the minister is talking with another person, you need to stay out. Recently someone came to see me, and another member of the church came in and stood there. “It’s all right,” the person said. “I won’t get in your way,” and he just stayed there. Afterwards the person who just stayed there said to me “I knew she didn’t have anything private to say.” How? I sure didn’t know. The study must be private. The person who had come to see me came back later and did share private things that she probably would not have chosen to share with someone else there. Your minister should not have to enforce the privacy of her office. I have used the library as my office. The administrative assistant, her copier, equipment and files are in the Newland office. The minister and the administrative assistant cannot share a room. Your next minister may prefer the Newland office behind the pulpit, but it has serious problems. The minister needs access to his office whenever he needs it, especially if someone wants to see him. There are times of the week that you can get to the Newland office only by walking through a church service of another church renting the sanctuary, or some other outside group meeting there. It is not appropriate to intrude on those renters. The decision about what room to use as a minister’s office should be up to your new minister. If he wants to use the Newland office you’ll need to put a new side door into it so he can enter through the church’s back door. If your minister decides that he wants to use the library (which traditionally was the minister’s office) you need to move the key box there to another place, probably the Newland office. The hymn book storage needs to be in a lockable cabinet in the new room near the church entrance that has the name tags. A sign needs to be on the study door that says “Private. Please knock.” Or “Minister’s Study. Please knock.” It’s all right to keep the library books with materials you want to have access to in the minister’s study—though I think most of the old books there should be moved into storage in the loft. I don’t believe that any of you will be wanting to read Jesus—Lord or Leader, The Ascent Through Christ or Bible or Babel or any of the several hundred books with similar titles that are there. They are of small historic value, and they are all duplicates of better copies that were moved to the Unitarian historical collection in the War Memorial Museum, according to Barbara Holt. She and John Maindonald moved them there a dozen years ago. Your new minister may need the space for his own books that he uses, and he may loan those to you as I loaned books from my minister’s study for decades. Make the space usable for your minister. Get some decent office furniture. Let your minister and members really enjoy the study and this wonderful building. Finally, your minister has to have a working structure of members operating the church. There was almost nothing going on when I got here in August, except Lini Nyenkamp working overtime holding the church office together, and Barbara Thomborson getting you services and pushing for potlucks. When I first arrived last March it felt like a cluttered tomb. To be a healthy congregation everyone need to be doing something. It cannot be healthy unless at least two-thirds of members are active on committees. You are all needed in some role. If you don’t do your work your minister may try to do it alone, and burn out. Why do you come to church, anyway? I know there are lots of reasons, and it’s not all to hear the minister. Brilliant as I am, I suspect that you have other important reasons for being here. Frederich Schliermacher, a nineteenth century German theologian preached enormously popular sermons. When complimented on the large congregations he drew, Schliermacher said “My audiences comprise mainly students, women and officers. The students come to hear me preach, the women come to look at the students, and the officers come to look at the women.” Maybe, just maybe you have some other reasons to come. A healthy congregation has many more reasons. Blessings on you all, whatever your reasons! Dick Weston-Jones 9 February, 2003 For the Auckland Unitarian Church, New Zealand