We are now past the halfway point of this interim ministry.  I can feel a shift in the congregation toward the future.  We are looking forward.  We are in the part of the summer where folks are making plans for the coming church year.  We are casting our vision, setting our goals, calendaring our dates.  

Your Ministerial Search Committee is in place.  They have had their initial organizing meeting and are starting their work.  That committee and all the other church committees and teams are mapping out the route our church will take through next year from September through May and June.  At the end of that journey is the Search Committee’s presentation of a candidate to be your next settled minister, and the vote of the membership.

There are two kinds of shapes that define a religious community:  a circle and a line.

The church year is a kind of circle.  We go from Ingathering, through Dia de los muertos, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.  In this church we have a service auction and then start planning for the St. Patirck’s Day party and the kick-off to our Stewardship Campaign.  Then there’s the budget process, and the annual meeting, the pride parade, Music Sunday, RE Sunday, the outgoing energy of July and August and then Ingathering again on the second Sunday in September.

In the form of a circle, the church goes round and round.  We have a rhythm, a tradition.  We have new folks ever joining our community who always need to start at the beginning.  And we never run out of the work of passing on our Unitarian Universalism.

But spirituality must be a line, too.  Personally, we should feel our spiritual lives moving forward, not circling around.  We need to progress, not tread water.  It’s called a spiritual journey, after all, from where you are to somewhere beyond.  The rolling motion of the church should move each of us on to something farther or deeper than where we are.

The occasion of the calling of a new settled minister is one of those times when the circle motion of the church reveals itself to be a line, also.  The arrival of a new settled minister isn’t a going back it’s a going on.  The circle has spun forward.  Not just around, but also away.

Combining a circling motion with a forward motion creates a third shape:  a spiral.  Now we have a summer again, but this August is not last August.  And next year will be a year in the church both like and not at all alike other years.