If we were to write a mission statement for this church… Well, we have one, and it’s long, not particularly memorable, and therefore not particularly useful in guiding the work of the church. What if, instead of a statement, we could set out just three words that truly define the values of who we are and what we want to make manifest in the world?
We are talking in the church this month about mission.
“What should we do?” is always an appropriate question for a spiritual community because the issue of purpose is a core spiritual issue.
Churches, like this one, in the process of searching for a minister who will lead them into a new ministry especially need to have a good answer to the question because your new spiritual leader will certainly ask, “Well, where do you want to go?”
And last week this church also kicked off our annual Stewardship Campaign. The Stewardship Campaign is all about dreaming our future. Affirming what we love about the church. and planning together what we will accomplish in the coming year. In short, to ask ourselves, the question of mission: “What should we do?”
A year ago, when the Board set its goals for this church year, we set a goal of working through a process which would have started in January of examining, evaluating, and perhaps re-writing our church’s mission statement. That process would have ended about now and I set aside this Sunday in my worship-planning calendar to talk about it.
It turned out, as we got into the year and we began to think a little more about our work for this year, and then some unplanned work presented itself in the form of a water leak and flood in the church office, that we didn’t have the capacity this year for a mission-review process. Perhaps we will get to that next year.
The process I imagined was not really about re-writing our mission statement. Instead, I proposed that we have a church-wide conversation, speaking one-to-one, about what people like about our church. What attracted you to the church when you first arrived? What keeps you involved now? What do you hope we do more of in the future?
Those conversations would result in each of us articulating for ourselves something like what Ginny Quinn spoke about this morning in her Stewardship Testimonial.
From those conversations, some themes would emerge. From those themes a few key words could be identified. Maybe three key words. Our core values. The three elements we really love about the church. What we’re really here to do and do well. Three little words.
Three little words that would in themselves be a kind of mission statement for the church. Here’s what we do. Here’s what we do well. Here’s what we think is powerful and purposeful and valuable about our church. A mission statement without the statement.
Let me guess what those three words might have been:
Justice
Spirituality
Community
Now the church already has a mission statement, of course. You know that. It’s published on our website. You know our mission statement. Let’s all recite it together, shall we?
No. You can’t, of course. Because it’s a statement. As church mission statements go it’s fairly short, actually. But it’s still too much to remember, and thus, not very useful in actually guiding our decisions as we’re making them.
Here’s our mission statement:
We, the congregation of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Long Beach, affirm our mission:
To create a welcoming and diverse community rooted in love, trust and freedom
To lead by creating a multi-cultural, anti-racist, anti-oppressive congregation and denomination
To take these ideals to the wider community in action and in service
To share our values with the next generation and empower them to create a better world
To inspire and encourage each other in our spiritual journeys
That statement was adopted by this congregation in 2004, and was then reviewed and re-affirmed several years later. And what’s not to like? Except for being too long to remember it’s a good statement and a sound mission for a church.
But here’s the problem I have with church mission statements.
Church’s know what their mission is intuitively and word-smithing a careful crafted statement that then gets forgotten is not a productive exercise. Church mission isn’t that complicated. Our statement could pretty much be the mission statement for any Unitarian Universalist church. That’s not a fault with our statement. It’s a just an observation that we don’t need a statement to know what our mission is.
The second mistake I see when churches work on mission statements is that they get distracted by the word “mission” to then have a too-heavy emphasis on the outward expressions of our faith. We take for granted that churches are about community and spirituality, and that therefore “mission” only refers to those parts of church life active outside the church walls. In fact, that’s what “mission” means in a lot of churches. Mission work, or mission trips, means going out from the church to work in the world. Thus, a lot of church “mission” statements over emphasize the work outside the church and de-value the important goals for the people inside the church.
In fact. I see that churches need to give their members three things. I’ve already said them.
Nurturing Community
Spiritual Growth
An opportunity to make a real difference in the world.
Frankie Price taught me those three phrases that she heard from Harlan Limpert who was the former vice-President of the UUA.
It’s a generic mission statement that applies to every Unitarian Universalist church. We are here to do three things:
Justice. Spirituality. Community
Those three goals are at the core of the mission statement of this church.
“To create a welcoming and diverse community rooted in love, trust and freedom”. That’s nurturing community, right?
“To inspire and encourage each other in our spiritual journeys”. That’s grow spiritually, right?
And “an opportunity to make a real difference in the world” is the essence of the other phrases in our mission statement about being an anti-oppressive congregation and taking that value into the wider community in action and in service and empowering the next generation to create a better world. That’s justice work, broadly, right?
Justice, spirituality, and community.
That why you come to church. That’s what we offer.
You come because you love these people. These are your best friends. The people you laugh with and cry with and were there for you and will be there for you. You come for community.
You come because you’re curious about spiritual questions and you want some prompting and encouragement to work out your answers. You want to talk about right and wrong, and values, and meaning, and interpret the news of the world in terms of the ultimates of existence. You come for spirituality.
And you come for justice. You’re here because you want to be part of a community that has a vision for a better world and is actively doing something about it.
Nurturing Community
Spiritual Growth
Making a real difference in the world.
So I imagined, nearly a year ago, when we planned to go through a mission review process, that we would end the process with three little words, our core values, and that I could share them with you during this sermon.
When we decided not to do the mission-review process this year, I kept this sermon on my worship planning calendar, because I figured I could come up with three generic words. Justice, Spirituality and Community are probably pretty close.
But thinking about what those three words might be, I remembered a little phrase that I learned in seminary. It’s an old phrase, attributed to Plato, but adjusted and evolving through the hands of many philosophers and theologians over the centuries. It’s three words. Three little words that are supposed to express the transcendent values, the best of existence, the supreme prinicples, not just for this church but for all people everywhere, the ends that we are all striving toward, the ultimate.
Are you ready?
The good. The true. The beautiful.
For Plato, the good, meant the ideal forms of the world. To me, “the good” means the right, the just, the kind. The morally good. That’s one ultimate we seek in a church. “Justice,” you might say. That’s part of our mission. To seek the good.
The true, to me, means an accurate description of reality. We want to know what really is. The true is wisdom, knowledge, scientific exploration of those parts of reality available to science but more broadly a complete description. Logic and reason that go beyond science, and compassionate opening of our hearts and minds to the personal experiences of others. “Spirituality,” you might say. In a Unitarian Universalist church we seek the true.
And we seek the beautiful. To Aristotle, beauty meant order out of chaos. Beauty is the attractive element that draws the disparate individual elements of creation into harmony. “Community” you might say.
In our UU seven principles “the good” comes up several times. Our second principle: “Justice, equity and compassion in human relations” is an expression of the good. So is our sixth principle: “world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.”
The true is in our fourth principle, “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” And in our third principle’s, “encouragement to spiritual growth.”
Aristotle would call “the interdependent web of all existence” from our seventh principle an expression of “the beautiful.” The “worth and dignity of every individual” but also “world community.” As an artist myself I love that beauty is named as a transcendent value for its own sake. We seek the beautiful because beauty lifts our spirits, inspires us, pleases us. In this church we strive for beauty in the art in this room, in our music program, in the beauty of our grounds, the beauty of the wildflower garden, the choices we’re making in the re-design of our church office to be not merely functional but also beautiful.
The phrase, “the good, the true, and the beautiful” comes up often in our hymnal.
In hymn, #113, “Where is Our Holy Church?” The first verse asks, “Where is our holy church?” and the answer is, “Where race and class unite as equal persons in the search for beauty, truth, and right.” “Right” being another word for good that fits the rhyme scheme.
The little doxology in hymn #380 incorporates the three like this:
Rejoice in love we know and share,
in love and beauty everywhere;
rejoice in truth that makes us free,
and in the good that yet shall be.
So three little words
Good, true, beautiful in their transcendent form
Justice, spirituality, community in the form those three take in the mission of a church.
Maybe Nurturing Commuity, Spiritual growth, and the chance to make a real difference in the world, in Harlan Limpert’s language.
Justice, Spirituality, Community
The good.
The true.
The beautiful.
May it be so.