By the sixth or seventh decade of its life, a church enters into a time in which no member of the founding generation is still around. Are we still that church founded in 1943? What does it mean, then, to be a “church”? As Theodore Parker once noted of Christianity itself, some parts of an institution that once seemed necessarily permanent, turn out to be acceptably transient.
We’ve been looking at the history of our congregation for the last few weeks, and the longer history of our faith for a few weeks before that. As we turn now to the most recent history of our church, the history that many of us actually lived through, we come to an interesting moment in the life of a congregation, or of any organization.
Everyone here at church today, or joining us on Zoom, if you’re a member here, joined this church, when the church was already here.
That’s not remarkable when you think about churches generally. Religious communities can last for centuries. Generation after generation. But just as there is something unique about being the founding generation of a new religious community, there is also something remarkable about the first generation after the founding of a new religious community. In fact, for the continuing life of an institution, the generation that comes immediately after the founding might even be the more important generation.
Several years ago, a viral video made its way around YouTube.
The video was of an outdoor music festival. A grassy lawn, young people lounging on blankets, enjoying the sun and a picnic, and listening to music.
The band, whoever it was, was way out of the camera frame. Instead, the video was focused on this one particular guy dancing to the music in a particularly exuberant and idiosyncratic way in the midst of all these people sitting on their blankets. He looked silly.
This guy all alone, totally unself-conscious, doing his own thing, not understanding the proper way to enjoy the music, was the joke of this video. If you must dance, when no one else is dancing, at least you should dance in a more socially-acceptable way.
And then, a second guy walks into the camera frame from the left, with a goofy grin on his face, headed toward the dancing guy. I remember at this point in the video starting to feel a little anxious. Is he going to make fun of the dancer? Is he going to try and stop him? What will happen?
But, when the second guy got close to the first, the second guy started dancing, too. Not mocking the first dancer, but, dancing in his own style, just as enthusiastically. The first dancer had shown the way. And now a second dancer had joined him. And the second guy dancing made it safe for a third and then a fourth, celebrating. Having fun
Soon everyone is standing up from their blankets and dancing, wildly, ecstatically, and the first guy, the founder of this dance party, melts into the crowd. If no one had danced with him, the party would have ended when he gave up. But a second guy began to dance with him.
For the life of a movement, the first follower is even more important than the founder. The founder has a crazy new idea. The first follower is the one who turns it into a thing.
After Herb Schneider ended his ministry, the first ministry of our church, 21 years from 1943 to 1964, the church called a minister named George Whitney. He served 4 years, from ‘64 to ‘68. And then for a year, the church had no minister.
In 1969, our church was served by Rev. Dennis Kuby. He’s the minister that buried the internal combustion engine in our front yard. Steffi Prather told that story a few weeks ago.
Environmental issues were Rev. Kuby’s passion, that’s part of our history. He only served our church for two years, after serving a church in Cleveland for five years. After he left our church, he created a specialized Ministry of Ecology and served as the Executive Director for the next four decades. He performed ecological worship services at various churches in the Bay Area and his sermons urged development of more public transportation, replacing cars with bicycles and following ecologically sound values and lifestyles.
He died in Berkeley in 2019.
Rev. Kuby left our church in 1971 and was followed by another minister who served only two years, Rev. Thomas McMullen. Rev. McMullen had a music background, prior to entering the ministry, just like me. After McMullen left Studio City, he served UU churches in Plandome, NY and Orlando FL. He died in Florida in 2008.
And then again, we had no minister for a year.
So after the first 21 years of our church with one minister, Rev. Herb Schneider, we then had three ministers in 10 years, including two years with no minister. That’s also part of our history.
And then, in 1974 we called Jon Dobrer, who would stay with us for 17 years, until 1991.
Rev. Dobrer was charming, charismatic, intelligent, gregarious. The church especially enjoyed his preaching. I understand he was a bit of a showman. After a decade of very short ministries and no ministers, I’m sure it was satisfying and healthful for the church to enjoy another long ministry.
Dobrer’s ministry ended in 1991 when it became public that Dobrer had been involved in sexual relationships with women in the congregation.
I don’t know the details. I’ve never felt it important to know. And even if I did, I wouldn’t spend my sermon time telling that story now. Ask an older member of the congregation if you really want to know.
The reason I’m not interested in the details of the story is that once the fact is known that a minister has had sexual relationships with members of his congregation, the ethical violation is clear. Everything else is beside the point. It doesn’t matter how many, or who, or how it turned out. Dobrer’s actions weren’t illegal, but he violated the office of the minister.
It is unethical for a minister to be involved in a romantic relationship with a member of the congregation they serve. It is a violation of the minister’s role. Ministers are called to serve congregations, to be the minister of the church. To be a congregant’s minister and their romantic partner creates a dual relationship that destroys the minister’s ability to serve as minister for that person and by having special relationships with some members, destroys the minister’s ability to serve everyone generally. It doesn’t matter if the church member is a willing partner or if the relationship turns out happily, the violation is that the minister failed to do the job the congregation called the minister to do.
It’s the same ethical violation that occurs when a therapist has a romantic relationship with a patient, or a politician trades their votes for personal favors, or a corporate Board member uses insider information to sell stock.
The definition of misconduct is that a person uses the power that accrues to them from their office to serve their personal needs, instead of the needs of the institution that granted them their office. The power of the office is for the benefit of the institution, not for the office holder. Whether it’s financial needs, or emotional needs, or spiritual needs, or sexual needs, when a minister uses the power of their office to satisfy their personal needs; it’s misconduct.
So Rev. Dobrer was accused of sexual misconduct, and in 1992 was removed from Fellowship with the UUA. He appealed, but he refused to do the restorative work the UUA asked of him and his removal from fellowship was confirmed in 1993.
The individual women involved may or may not think of themselves as victims; that’s their story. But what was clear to me, when I came to this church as a student minister in 1996 to do my internship, is that the church was a victim of Rev. Dobrer’s sexual misconduct.
The church was torn. His actions forced the church to have difficult conversations that threatened our unity and drained energy from our proper work. There were those who saw the misconduct for what it was. There were others who loved their former minister and excused him. Many remembered his long years of good ministry and his personal charm. They blamed his accusers, or the UUA, for ending a good thing. Others saw the violation keenly and felt let-down by a man they had admired and betrayed by a minister they had trusted.
After a two-year interim, with Bob Kaufman, from 1991 to 1993, the church called Rev. Suzanne Spencer.
Jon Dobrer’s legacy cast a shadow over Sue Spencer’s ministry she never emerged from. She had to deal with the fallout of a divided church. She had to deal with unflattering comparisons between her ministry style, which was quiet and contemplative, and Jon’s, which had been energetic and outgoing. She was also the first woman to serve this church after 50 years of men.
Jon continued to be popular among some members of the congregation. He continued to live in the area. Despite being removed from ministerial fellowship he found another UU church to serve, in Fullerton, and served there for 20 years. Semi-retired now, he is currently working with the small UU Fellowship of the South Bay.
I struggled, as you can imagine, with how to tell the story of Rev. Dobrer.
He’s a part of our history, and in a series of sermons devoted to telling our story, I couldn’t not talk about him. But it’s a little like airing our dirty laundry. Some of you who were here experienced that time as a wound. I certainly don’t want to open an old wound, or re-ignite a controversy that we have mostly resolved. And for some of you, today might be the first time you’re hearing the name Jon Dobrer, and maybe this is more information about the church than you cared to know.
I am also, in my work as an interim minister, less and less convinced that there is much value in dredging up old stories of pain from a congregation’s past.
The theory that I was taught in seminary in how to best serve congregations with a troubled history is that pain from the past can get embedded in a congregation’s DNA, and those DNA strands get passed down, unconsciously from generation to generation, showing up in repeated patterns of mysterious unhealth. The past is never over, but must be repeatedly re-told and wrestled with. Sometimes, in churches with histories a lot longer than ours, interim ministers are told they should go back to the very beginning and talk about the time 200 years ago when the congregation fought over some issue and point out how the UU congregation across town is made up of the dissidents that split from that long ago pain.
And I thought. Who cares? OK, it’s an interesting story from our history, but is the conflict in the church today really related to that long-ago episode? I don’t think so. What meaningful impact can that story possibly have on the church today?
I was convinced that there’s a limited usefulness to re-telling stories of past pain when I read the work of Marshall Rosenberg on non-violent communication. He realized in his work around conflict, whether it was couples’ therapy or political conflict, that sitting down and telling the old story of hurt didn’t lead to healing. The stories inflamed the old emotions, but didn’t help to resolve them. Instead, he urged the folks in conflict to focus on the question, “What’s alive in you at this moment?” His process is simple. Help the folks in present conflict to identify the present un-met need that’s causing pain today. Name something specific the other party could do to help you meet your need. And then ask the other party if they would be willing to do this specific thing for you.
The idea isn’t to ignore or bury the past, but instead to focus on the present, and to tell the story from the past not as “here’s a hurt that’s become part of me” but “here’s something I learned when I went through a challenging time.” The idea is leave the pain in the past and carry forward the lesson.
I think of this also, in considering the more recent conflict and pain this congregation has gone through. I’m happy to hear the story of your hurt from the last few years, if you want to tell it. It’s good for me to have deeper understanding. It might be good for you to say it to your minister and know that I’ve heard and I sympathize.
And then, the way to congregational healing is to let it go. To ask, “What is alive for us at this moment?” And to draw from the past hurt a lesson that will help us avoid hurting ourselves again in the future. Let’s learn the lessons, not re-animate the conflicts.
Sue Spencer resigned in 1997, at the end of my first year of internship. I did my second year of internship with an interim minister, Nancy Rhoemheld.
The congregation searched for and called Jay Atkinson. A long ministry of 12 years. He started in 1999 and retired in 2011.
And then came another period of short ministries. A one-year interim. A three-year ministry with Darrel Richey. A one-year consulting ministry with Nica Eaton-Guinn, and then a five-year ministry with Hannah Petrie. No minister for nearly a year between Hannah and me, and now I’ll be with you for three years. I hope I’m setting you up for another long successful ministry with whomever you call after me.
So there is our history. Long ministries separated by periods of several short ministries. Environmental justice. A minister with a music background. Contemplative ministers and gregarious ministers. Ministers who served successfully and left happily. Troubled ministries that ended badly.
I don’t think any of that is too unusual. I don’t think any of the history is predictive of where you might go next. What’s alive in you at the moment?
In 1985, the American Composer John Cage wrote a piano piece with the tempo marking “as slow as possible.”
Think about how slow it would be possible to play a piece of music. Not just very slow, but as slow as possible.
Later, Cage re-wrote the piece for organ instead of piano. Unlike a piano where notes die out after you’ve hit the key, on an organ a note continues to sound until you stop pressing the key, conceivably forever.
After Cage died in 1992, a group of musicians and philosophers, some of whom had worked with Cage, met at a conference in 1998, and thought about that instruction for an organ piece performed “as slow as possible”
The first modern organ had been built in Halberstadt, Germany in 1361, 639 years before the turn of the twenty-first century. So, as a tribute to Cage and that first organ, they conceived of a performance of Cage’s piece, on a specially built organ in Halberstadt, that would last for 639 years.
The performance began on September 5, 2001, Cage’s birthday. It’s been playing ever since. By 2020 a total of 14 notes of the piece had sounded. The next note change is scheduled for February 5, 2024.
The score is eight pages long. The performance will end on Cage’s birthday, September 5, in the year 2640.
Nobody alive today will hear the end of the piece. In a few decades, nobody alive will have heard the beginning of the piece. Any predictions about what Halberstadt will look like 600 years from now, or what music will sound like, or whether anybody will be around to lift the last sandbag off of the keyboard that’s been depressing the key that’s been playing the last note for years of a piece that started 639 years earlier, well, you’d be foolish to try.
The long history of churches fascinates me. We are a link in a chain of generations that has lasted 80 years and that might last 80 more or 800 hundred more. The thought thrills me, and humbles me. We are dancing Sarah’s circle. One continuous piece of music
“One hands down and another takes up the heritage of mind and heart, laughter and tears, musings and deeds. Love, like a carefully loaded ship, crosses the gulf between the generations.”
There’s so much story to tell. So many people. The folks who were with us for decades. The visitor who came only once. The lives that were changed. The lives that were saved. The love. The care. The lessons learned. The lessons forgotten and learned again. The gift of a church. The responsibility of a church. So awesome to be a part of that, and to remember a little of it. And to discern what’s important to retell and pass on to the next in line.
What note is it our generation’s turn to play?
What do we remember?
What do we hope?