Something's Happening Here

some unsettling truths

I’ve been sitting for a while with two quotations from unnamed colleagues that are both troubling and related.

The first is a colleague quoted in a survey of ministers conducted in winter 2023 by the UUA Transitions office, talking about the ‘demoralizing nature’ of antagonists who are known by leadership as such but are not addressed. The second was a comment made to me a few weeks ago, when I asked about challenges colleagues are facing.

“I understand helping people live into covenant. I just didn’t think I was the only who would be doing it.”

“Sabotage isn’t always obvious, and it can come from unexpected places. Sometimes the people who seem to be championing a cause the loudest are undermining in the background.”

Yeah.

So … leaders. What is happening here?

Your ministers are hungry to share the ministry. They’re starving for support in building a strong, covenantal community. They’re anxious and eager to be in partnership with you to do good, healing, generative, compassionate work inside and outside our walls. They don’t want to do this alone, but more often than not, they feel like a lone salmon swimming upstream.

It’s almost as though you like the idea of growth, of covenant, of ‘progress upward and forever’… as long as someone else does the work.

It’s almost as though you like doing the work that calls you outside the congregation … and can’t be bothered to do the same work inside the congregation.

It’s almost as though you like the idea of being in a covenanted community…as long as it doesn’t inconvenience you.

My question is this: why? What is stopping you?

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One more quotation, this time from our UUA president. In a forum a few days before her election, Rev. Dr. Betancourt was asked about the ministerial shortage that means there aren’t as many ministers seeking congregational positions as there are openings in congregations for ministers.

“We don’t have a ministerial shortage; we have a parish crisis.”

Yeah.

Let’s sit with that for a while.