Rev. Tom Disrud

First Unitarian Church
Portland, Oregon

April 19, 1998

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You are the future, the immense morning sky
turning red over the prairies of eternity.
You are the rooster-crow after the night of time,
the dew, the early devotions, and the Daughter,
the Guest, the Ancient Mother, and Death.
You are the shape that changes its own shape,
that climbs out of fate, towering,
that which is never shouted for, and never mourned for,
and no more explored than a savage wood.
You are the meaning deepest inside things,
that never reveals the secret of its owner.
And how you look depends on where you are:
from a boat you are shore, from a shore a boat.
-- Rilke

Last Sunday I attended what has been called the church of the future. I was in Chicago and a friend and I decided we should check out the Willow Creek Community Church.

You may have heard of Willow Creek. It is located in South Barrington, Illinois, a wealthy suburb northwest of Chicago. It is probably the best know mega-church in the country. Mega churches typically are non-denominational Christian churches that draw huge crowds. They appeal to both churched and unchurched—people who have either fallen away from organized religion or have never been a part of organized religion.

Part of their appeal is that they don’t look or feel like churches in the usual sense. They often have rock music—and usually don’t have organ music. They meet in huge auditoriums designed more for function than for beauty. And they use theatrical effects that you would not find in more traditional churches.

When it was founded in 1975, Willow Creek met in a movie theater. It had 125 people at its first service. Today it is located on 155 acres of land and has between 16,000 and 17,000 people on a weekend, in addition to about 3,000 children. During the week, they have services on Wednesday and Thursday evenings that draw between 6,000 and 7,000 people.

Clearly they are doing something right.

Driving up to Willow Creek, it looked as I imagined it would. A long winding road lead up to lots and lots of parking lots. People are there to direct you where to park. As you enter the building, you see a video monitor listing the days events. There are lots of sign directing you (though I have to say at least twice the signs for the bookstore led us to large, empty rooms on the lower level of the complex).

The place is feels like a large student union of a college campus. There’s a large bookstore, with both titles from the Willow Creek publishing arm, and many others. The subjects range from salvation to personal finance. Dozens of copies of tapes of the day’s sermon are also available. There’s a cafeteria that serves a Sunday brunch or just about anything else you might want. The children’s program is called Promiseland. Last Sunday’s program was a special 4th of July presentation.

The facilities and layout are all very welcoming. They say come join us. I have to say I was a little surprised that the greeting was not more aggressive. Indeed, it was friendly, but not as in your face as I’d expected. I thought people would be coming up to me with literature encouraging me to join a small group. The information was there, but the initiative was mine to take. They make it clear that if you are there to seek, you are welcome to do so. Their program is designed for seekers. When you come in you get to know the steps, but the sell is a soft one.

The first part of the worship service featured a Christian rock band with two electric guitars. Electric guitars and church are still a bit of a stretch for me, but the experts say it is the wave of the future. We’ll see.

The music in the service was all done for us—not with us. There were no songs we sang as a whole. In fact, leaving the service I was struck that the whole experience would not have been that different if I had experienced it on television. I don’t know how typical this is, but last Sunday was a very passive experience.

The last part of the service was the sermon. It was part of a month-long series on “Building a Heroic Faith,” and last Sunday’s installment was “Being a Hero of Action.” It was a call to stand up to the forces of evil in the world and to live a moral, christian life.

In the sermon I came to see that Willow Creek is a new way of doing church, but the theology is not at all different from evangelical Christianity. When the minister made reference to the cultural infection of homosexuality, he lost this gay man. This felt like much of evangelical Christianity.

As this reality was brought home, some of my curiousity was starting to wear off. I realized that it wasn’t the place for me.

Being with hundreds of evangelicals was a contrast to the Sunday before, when I was in Rochester, New York, at out UUA General Assembly.

One of the exciting things about GA, particularly for people from the smallest churches, is to have the experience of being with hundreds of other Unitarian Universalists. It is a time for celebration in worship and other events, honoring the ministry of our association, doing the business of our denomination, outlining the goals and justice work we will do, presenting workshops on a wide range of topics and a time to visit with old and new friends.

Now, General Assembly this is not necessarily my version of paradise, mind you. As a religious people, we have a lot of opinions, and we like to voice those opinions. Get 4,000 of us in one place, and you have a lot a talking going on. In fact, I like to call General Assembly an introvert’s nightmare.

But it is a time to come together as a movement and to see ourselves as a part of a movement. This is exciting. We don’t always have this experience.

As Unitarian Universalists, it is easy to feel like we are out of the mainstream.

Many of us have had this experience. We’re talking with someone and our church comes up. You say you’re a Unitarian Universalist, and they ask, “Well what exactly is it that Unitarian Universalists believe, anyway? Is that the church where you can believe anything you want?”

All of a sudden you think of that joke about what you get when you cross a Unitarian Universalist with a Jehovah’s Witness. Someone standing at your door holding a question mark.”

You may see yourself in that joke.

Its hard to define Unitarian Universalism in 10 words or less.

You might say it is a way of being in the world.

That we live by a set of principles and purposes that guide our lives, but we are not asked to profess a creed of beliefs.

You might talk about how we don’t believe in the Trinity, hence the name Unitarian, meaning one God.

These are all statements are true, but sometimes you end the conversation not feeling quite satisfied. It is a feeling that you haven’t quite gotten the message across. You want to say to the person, We’ll you had to be there.

This faith is not always easy.

In the vast configuration of religious life, it sometimes feels like we’re the odd person out. We seem to have a different system of beliefs. We feel good about them, they sustain us, but it is not always so easy to relate that to another person.

Part of why it’s tricky for us is that belief is not a fixed thing, it is an evolving, moving thing.

In our tradition, revelation is not sealed. It is constantly in flux, growing and changing. We are asked to be open to the lessons life may bring us and to be open to changing the way we see the world, and the beliefs we have. At any given time, however, this makes it difficult to pin down.

I remember the time some years ago when I was heading off to seminary. I was working as a newspaper journalist at the time and when I announced that I was going to become a minister my skeptical colleagues wanted some firm answers about what this was all about. When I described God as something I experienced around me, in my interactions with people and the larger world, they got a little quiet. I don’t think they quite knew what to make of it. It didn’t quite fit into their picture. I gave them an answer, but I don’t think it was quite concrete enough.

This experience is not new for our generation. This is part of our heritage. Throughout the generations, we have been asked to look at things in new ways. Throughout history we have been heretics. The word heretic means choice—we are able to choose. We have asked and engaged the questions that brought us to new understandings of our world.

Forrester Church, in his book A Chosen Faith tells the story of the writer D.H. Lawrence and his correspondence with the Rev. Robert Reid, his mother’s minister. It seems that Lawrence’s mother was concerned about the state of her son’s soul and asked the minister to send Lawrence some copies of his sermons.

One sermon called for a conversion in order to receive salvation. Lawrence responded:

“I believe that one is converted when first one hears the low, vast murmur of life, of human life, troubling one’s hitherto unconscious self. I believe one born first unto oneself—for the happy developing of oneself, while the world is a nursery, and the pretty things are to be snatched for. But more are born again on entering maturity when they are born to humanity, to a consciousness of all the laughing, and the never ceasing murmur of pain and sorrow that comes from the terrible multitude of brothers and sisters. As it appears to me, one gradually formulates one’s religion, be it what it may. A person has no religion who has not slowly and painfully gathered one together, adding to it, shaping it; and one’s religion is never complete and final, it seems but must always be undergoing modification.”

Lawrence was not a Unitarian, but the exchange is a contrast in how different faith systems work. For the pastor, conversion meant casting off parts of our old selves and putting on the new. It meant embracing a specific set of beliefs and practices and adhering to that belief. For the young Lawrence, conversion was a sense of awakening. It was a process of opening his eyes and seeing things in new ways, and becoming more fully himself. It was an evolutionary process.

Religion has been called our response to the dual reality that we are born and that we will die. Unitarian Universalism has been called a life affirming system. This means living life fully, and as we do that, we must also face death, and struggle to understand what life and death mean.

In our living, we come to see that our perspective on life and death and many other things will probably not be the same in 10 years as they are now.

So what holds us together as a people? It is a common search for truth and the shared experience of awakening. It is being part of a community where we grow and change together. It is having faith that amid the changes, the beloved community will remain.

At General Assembly, the results of a survey done last fall were presented. The survey was filled out by 10,000 Unitarian Universalists, including members of this church. It asked questions of theology, dreams, and demographic questions. It shows an amazing coherence of responses to the religious questions which cross over all the survey’s demographic categories.

This does not mean that the responses were the same, but across demographic lines of age, length of time as a UU, theological perspective, geographical location, sex, cultural identity, responses were similar.

The commonality of the responses was heartening. Said one person:

“The results confirm that I am not alone in my deepest spiritual longings: that we are a community whose aspirations are more in concert than I even imagined. I find affirmation…of my being in this community, and that we are on a journey together.”

When asked “How does being a Unitarian Universalist sustain you in times of crisis, tragedy or pain? The top answer for all categories of people was “It provides a community of love, support and renewal.”

When asked “What factors in your life influenced your decision to join a UU congregation? Sixty two percent said: “Search for belief system and faith community that made sense to me.”

When asked about the call for greater racial/cultural diversity in our congregations, the top response was “It’s about time. This is central to my faith and theology.” The survey results are intended to be a starting point for a process of exploring these questions and to be a time for deepening spiritually as individuals, as congregations and as an association of congregations. It is part of a process that asks us to renew our covenant as a people, to examine our relationships, and how it is we relate to one another, to our congregations and among congregations.

The UC Berkeley sociologist Robert Bellah, author of Habits of the Heart, spoke to the General Assembly and attempted to put Unitarian Universalism into the context of the our larger culture.

He said that our long tradition of individualism and dissent put us squarely in the middle of American culture. He said that we are a nation of dissenters, and so most all of religion in our country carried a strong tradition of dissent. What this means for us—a people who see ourselves as being more on the outside than in the middle—will take some time to discern.

He called us to look to something deeper than individualism and develop a deeper sense of connection and community. The community, he said, is a common link that has the potential to sustain our movement and be a force in our larger culture.

As we are able to discern our commonalities, the things we share, we will be better able to address the issues of injustice around us.

As we articulate a common purpose and identity, we can break down barriers that separate us from others. When asked in the survey what are your dreams for the Unitarian Universalist movement, an overwhelming number said “to become a visible and influential force for good in the world.”

Is that dream becoming a reality in our congregations? I think it is. I see it in this community on a number of ways. In our church I know it when I feel the power of our voices joining to sing “Spirit of Life” on Sundays. I see it in our clear sense of mission and purpose in this city, in the larger Northwest and in our Association. And I see it in the lives of individuals in the church. I see people growing spiritually and working for the larger good.

One of the things analysts note when they talk about mega-churches is that they have a strong sense of tribe—people feel connected to a large group and they see themselves as part of a forward looking and moving people.

All to often in history, of course, tribes see themselves in relation to others—or against others. As a gay man in the audience at Willow Creek, I was very aware of the latter.

One of the challenges of our liberal faith is discerning how big the tent can be.

As a movement we are taking seriously our call to address issues of systemic oppression. This work is fundamental to who we are. We must ask who is in and who is out and what this means for us as a religious people. In this process we can take hope from our history. In calling forth women into leadership roles, we have done much great work. For sexual minorities, our congregations have become safer places to be. Issues of race and class are difficult ones, but I believe our history can give us courage to stay with them.

My hope is that we can be leaders in this process. If we can bring down barriers of oppression in our churches, it may make it more possible in other parts of our culture. In Rochester, I was picked up at the airport by a dear friend from college. She is a Roman Catholic and didn’t know much about Unitarian Universalism. She had been reading coverage of the General Assembly and asked why it was that a denomination that was 99 percent white was making anti-racist work one of its top priorities. For her, this seemed like something someone else should deal with.

The reason is it need to start somewhere, and we are it. If we are to truly become multi-cultural, we must come together and struggle as a community. Out of this, we grow as individuals and as a community.

What is our place in the world?

I don’t know if there will someday be a Unitarian Universalist mega-church. Our challenge is not to be focused on size as much as mission and call. If it is our mission to be a voice for liberal religion, then that includes letting people know who we are and welcoming them into our community. All too often we hide our light under a bushel basket.

We are called to be leaders. The church of the future, I believe, is right here. It is all of us, working together.

May this be so.

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Copyright © 2000, Reverend Thomas Disrud. All rights reserved.