Comments
by the Rev. Susan Manker-Seale
October 26, 2003
We opened our service today
with a quote from the Dalai Lama, part of which I want to repeat:
“…love and compassion bring the greatest happiness…”
He also said that “the need for love…results from the profound
interdependence we all share with one another.”
Love and compassion are constant themes of our gathering to worship.
This month, the classes in Religious Education are looking at the second
principle, which in part states that we affirm and promote “…compassion in
human relations.” Our
interdependence, then, leads to our need for love, for compassion, and to
respond to that need brings the greatest happiness to us all.
One of the definitions of
“to minister” is “to attend to the wants and needs of others.” (Am.
Heritage Dictionary) Perhaps our
interdependence has led, in part, to the profession of ministry in its various
names and forms, but everyone ministers to others at different points throughout
life. The act of ministry is not
reserved for those alone who bear the title.
Lay ministry is the term we use to refer to the ministry of those who are
not professional ministers, but who are attending to the wants and needs of
others, in some way that leads from their hearts, their compassion for others
and the world.
We’ve been exploring the
meaning of Lay Ministry through the Finding Heart program, a program which
encourages you to recognize what is in your hearts, what you care most deeply
about, and to bring that to reality in the world. This all-congregation program of small groups also helps us
connect with each other as we grow larger, and to find the ways that are most
meaningful to us to be of service to the congregation.
Today, we introduce another all-congregation program of neighborly care,
of lay ministry, which will add to the ways we can connect with and minister to
each other.
As congregations grow to
mid-size, which we now are, ministers can no longer pastor to everyone and must
help to spin out programs which enable laity to pastor to each other.
Ministers can’t do it all, even though we might like to, and shared
ministry is about sharing that work of ministry among all of us.
The needs are great and many in any congregation, but multiply as we
grow. We all have our problems and
we all struggle. We all need ministry.
I keep thinking about an
insight that grew from when I was a new minister and a new mother.
I was living in Phoenix and working with the Religious Education program
at the Phoenix UU church. I had heard from the RE committee members that there was a
woman who had two severely disabled children and how she was struggling to take
care of them. They had lamented
that she almost never got out of the house anymore.
I related this to my father, who was the minister, and he listened, but
he didn’t say that he was going to visit her or anything, as I had expected.
I’ve thought about that over the years and have experienced ministry
with two congregations since then. I
have learned that in spite of expectations, ministers can’t make anyone’s
lives better nor solve anyone’s problems for them.
Everyone has problems to one
degree or another. All we can do is
encourage each other to rise above those problems, to keep going, to see
alternatives, and to hold on to hope. As
ministers, we are always on call, always, for those times when people feel they
are in crisis, when tragedy strikes, death visits, or they feel they can no
longer endure. Ministers will visit
you in the hospital or at home when you need us.
But you don’t always need or want that kind of visit; we’re here when
you ask or another asks on your behalf. Or,
sometimes we just drop in anyway, but not as often.
We ministers are
Jacks-of-all-Trades: we’re
educators, writers, speakers, listeners, managers, trainers, advisors,
counselors, recreation leaders, planners, team-players, confronters, organizers,
officiators, crafters of sacred space, and on and on. We have a multitude of responsibilities, and pastoral care is
one of them. The traditional
reference to ministers divides their major duties into three: preacher, teacher and pastor; but we play many roles.
Growing congregations (and
the ministers that serve them) need to learn to shift expectations of pastoral
care, among other things. Laity need to embrace their sense of pastoral ministry
and take on the care tasks that are within their reach and abilities.
Whenever I get emails about
someone, not in crisis but needing help, I feel a little guilty.
I want to rush out and help, drive them where they need to go, visit
them, console them. Instead, I try to delegate, and let others take up the
pastoral care. I have to reserve my
attention for those times when someone really needs me as a minister, or I will
end up doing only a ministry of pastoral care and leave the teacher and preacher
and organizer and recreation leader, etc., in the dust.
Two years ago I was at the
Minister’s Convocation and talking with a colleague who was minister of a
large congregation. I told him how
I felt guilty about not being able to visit everyone in the hospital or nursing
home as much as I’d like, and I asked him how he was able to pastor to such a
large group. “I don’t,” he
said, “and I feel guilty.”
I know I’m not the only
one who feels guilty-- many of you do, too.
We want to help each other, but we don’t always know how, don’t
always have the time and energy to do it ourselves, don’t always know who to
call, don’t always know whether that person would want our help.
We also don’t know, often, how to ask for help when it’s our turn.
In my old congregation, I
went to visit a man who had had a triple by-pass. I was there when he woke up in ICU. He wrote me a letter that year, saying that he had never
really understood the importance of ministers until that moment in his crisis
when I was there representing the congregation’s support for him.
“Now I believe in ministers,” he wrote.
This ministry isn’t
reserved only for ministers. Yes,
we’re trained and ordained, but all of you have these skills, too. What skills? The
ability to BE THERE, to be present, to be standing there when someone wakes up
or reaches out. It’s mostly about
being there for each other.
This program, which we been working on since at least a year before my sabbatical, in anticipation of covering ministerial pastoral duties, is about being there for each other. May you respond to the interdependence of our lives and allow into your hearts the love and compassion of others that will bring you the greatest happiness.
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Northwest Tucson