"Fulfilling Our Promise"

Over the last two weeks many of you have been involved in a creative process. Working in pairs and then in small groups you have been writing mission statements for our congregation. Your work is vital to the health of our church. Now a task force will synthesize the work of all the pairs and small groups and create a draft statement for us to read together next Sunday, the Sunday before Thanksgiving. Then we will all be given an opportunity to offer suggestions for improving our mission statement, and the task force will redraft the statement to be read again on December 6. Again, we will have a chance to give input, and the final draft will be read by us at our intergenerational service on December 20. A congregational meeting has been scheduled for January 17, at which we will have an opportunity to adopt formally our first ever mission statement.

I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge those of you who have participated in this process so far. If you have been part of this process will you please stand? You may be seated. If you hosted a CareRing, or neighborhood meeting will you please stand? You may be seated. If you facilitated a CareRing mission process will you please stand? If you made phone calls to get people out for this process will you please stand? If you serve on the Membership Committee, which created the CareRings will you please stand?

What a lot of effort has gone into the process so far! Will the following people please stand: Margaret Bailey, Jeff Blass, Julie Smith Dary, Joe Gallagher, Pat Hardee, Mark Lane, and Jay Matthews. These are the people who will be meeting to synthesize your work. They are the Mission task force.

We all have different associations with the word "mission." When I think about missions, I think first of all of the military. I have these old tapes running in my brain which go way back to World War II days when planes flew bombing missions. My step-father was in the ATC, Air Transport Command which had the mission of getting supplies delivered to the right place at the right time. I remember a lot of talk of planes flying over the Burma hump during those days, and some of them not making it back. Today the military still flies missions. For the military, Mission means "task."

Another association I have with the word "mission" is the old TV series "Mission Impossible." Just listening to the theme music can start my adrenaline running. On this program a mission is a dangerous, secret adventure. I recently watched the movie "Mission Impossible." The key ingredient is suspense. There is one moment where the star, Tom Cruise is suspended on a long cable which his cohort above belays. At one point, the cohort loses his grip, and Tom Cruise is forced to assume a very difficult splayed out posture for several minutes as he dangles inches above the floor, which is so sensitive, even a drop of his own sweat falling on the floor would set off an alarm. "Mission Impossible" brings the association of danger and suspense.

I also have a lot of associations that connect with Catholic missions. I grew up in California, and, like Florida, California has been deeply influenced by Spanish culture. In elementary school each child creates a prototype of a mission as part of the Social Studies curriculum. I was especially interested in the shape of the roof tiles - skinny if the thigh over which they were shaped was skinny, fat if the thigh over which they were shaped was fat. Each mission was a day's ride from the next. We did not learn anything about the Spaniards' exploitation of the indigenous population. That was back in the days when everything European was superior to everything else. Instead we learned about how the Spaniards educated the native people and taught them European agricultural techniques. For the Spanish Catholic missionaries, the missions were an important tool in colonizing an empire.

Today many of the old missions are museums, with no active congregations. One exception is Mission San Juan Capistrano in San Antonio, Texas. Of the seven missions in the area, San Juan is one of two which are active. Their priest, Rev. Jorge Baistra is from Mexico. Right now several members of his congregation are upset by the fact that the first Sunday of every month Native American dancers perform a sweat lodge near the mission and then dance native Aztec dances of purification on the mission grounds. Archbishop Patrick Flores seems to be listening to the dissidents who see the dancing as a pagan ritual, and has asked Father Jorge to resign his post. Father Jorge has asked for a three month sabbatical instead, indicating that after a time of reflection he would be willing to be reassigned to work with indigenous populations.

A mission, therefore, can be an assignment to complete a task having to do with warfare or it can be a dangerous, suspenseful adventure or it can be a place where one culture imposed its values and standards on another. A mission can also be a calling to do work for justice, which seems to me to be what Father Jorge is doing.

Mark Lipton is the director of The Leadership Center of the New School for Social Research. He has another idea about what a mission is. He says that an organization's mission is part of its overall vision. The organization's mission, strategy and culture together create the organization's vision. He defines vision as follows:

A vision must focus on the future and serve as a concrete foundation for the organization. Unlike goals and objectives, a vision does not fluctuate from year to year but serves as an enduring promise. A successful vision paints a vivid picture for the organization and, though future- based, is in the present tense, as if it were being realized now. It illustrates what the organization will do in the face of ambiguity and surprises. A vision must give people the feeling that their lives and work are intertwined and moving toward recognizable, legitimate goals.

For example, a vision statement for this congregation might say "Community Church is the voice of Unitarian Universalism in Southeast Volusia County." Whereas a statement of goals might say, "Community Unitarian Universalist Church intends to be a congregation of 250 adults and 125 children by the year 2003."

You'll note that Lipton uses the phrase "lives and work". In the article I read, he applied his analysis to the business world. Yet his analysis works just as well for a non-profit corporation, especially a church. Witness the number of people standing a while back - there is a lot of volunteer work that goes on in a church, and I believe that what he says applies to the volunteer ministry of our church, too. "A vision must give people the feeling that their lives and their work [as volunteers] are intertwined and moving toward recognizable, legitimate goals."

According to Lipton, creating a mission statement is the first step to creating a vision. He frames the basic mission questions this way: "What is the organization's purpose? For whose benefit are all its efforts?" He says that these two questions are analogous to the existential questions we bring with us to church, "Why am I alive? What is my purpose?"

He goes on to talk about stake holders and says that "a mission must appeal to the broadest stake holder constituency possible and rise above the interests of any single stake holder group." He discourages companies from including anything about profit in their mission or vision. He cites an organization which is struggling because while "partners and outside investors (two stake holder groups) were comfortable with defining the mission as 'maximizing investor return,' the other 350 people in the organization (a third but no less important stake holder group) had difficulty rationalizing their fourteen-hours days and six-day weeks with the mission of 'making gobs of money.'"

This church started with a goal, the one stated above, by the year 2003 to be a congregation of 250 adult members and 125 children. According to Lipton's analysis, this goal was helpful in letting the Unitarian Universalist Association know our intent - to grow a church which would be self-sufficient in five years. On the strength of this goal and other qualities, the Unitarian Universalist Association is providing funds to this church to help it get started. These monies are being used to help pay the expense of having a full time minister. In addition, this church received funds from the district Chalice Lighters program to help start its religious education program. However, this goal alone is no longer sufficient for us. We need to create a vision in terms all stake holders can support, rather than to justify meetings, telephone calls, contributions, and other activity at the church on the basis of someday having a church with "gobs of people." Lest I be skewered on my on petard, let me say I think a mid-sized congregation is a fine goal - it's specific, achievable, and measurable. It belongs somewhere, but not as the vision or mission of our church. It was appropriate at the time the church was in its embryo stage. It let folks who were interested in joining up know that the steering committee was not forming some tight knit little club for itself. It sent a clear message that this was to be a full service congregation with all the trimmings and an open door. The vision statement and mission statement we need today comes out of our 17 month experience of "doing church".

I have an exercise I'd like you all to try. It's both fun and creative. As a warm up, if I say the word "dance" what comes to your mind?

If we were going to describe our church as a dance, what "dance" words would you use to describe us.

Each of these words is a metaphor for this congregation.

Now, I want each of you to give me three metaphors, all of them some kind of a community. I want you to write down on the insert in your order of service three ideas. First, I want you to write down what kind of a community you think this church used to be. In choosing your metaphor, think about what the purpose of this church used to be and for whose benefit it existed. If this church were a community, it used to be a [fill in the blank]. Now if you're new to the church, you might want to say, "When I first came to the church, or when I first heard about this church, I thought it was a [fill in the blank]." Those of you who have a longer history can think back to how it was when you first came.

Now, I want you to describe our church as it is now. Think about what's the purpose of this church and who benefits from it. If this church were a community, right now I'd have to describe it as a [fill in the blank].

Now, think into the future and write your third description. Again, thing about the purpose of this church and for whose benefit it exists. If this church were a community what I'd like it to be is a [fill in the blank].

I want to thank you for being good sports and playing this game. Your participation is very important. Your metaphors will give the task force good grist as they draft our mission.

I want to end my sermon today by giving you a snapshot of what this church is like today. I figure we have close to 200 people in our universe at this point - that includes about 50 kids and about 142 adults, of which 106 are members. I'm going to focus on the adults. Of the 142, about 11% are inactive, meaning we don't see them around very often. Some of them live a distance away. Some of them are spouses or partners who just aren't interested, but show up sometimes. Of the 142, about 62% or 88 adults are active. That means in addition to attending church they are coming to rehearsals and singing in the choir or serving on a committee or ushering or teaching yoga or tending to our building or teaching children or serving on the board. I think of these people as sharing in the ministry of the church. Of the 142, the remainder, about 27% attend church regularly and are beginning to be woven into the fabric of our church life by coming to a class or workshop, by bringing goodies to church for coffee hour, by participating in the social life of our congregation, by drumming and chanting during the full moon healing ritual, and by offering to participate. In time, they, too will be part of our shared ministry. I think it's healthy that we have almost 90% of our congregation taking an active part in the life of the church.

I believe our congregation is strong. We have a significant majority active and a rich quarter of our total population wanting to be involved, waiting for us to prepare them for shared ministry roles. Even the 15 people who are inactive surprise us by showing up now and again and assuring us that they're still with us. There are a variety of activities in which to participate and soon we will have a mission to guide us. I feel proud of this church. It's hard to believe you're just a toddler!

Let's celebrate by singing our closing hymn, number 121 "We'll Build a Land."