Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Duluth 
Sabbatical Kick-off Sermon
Karen Gustafson
January 4, 2004
Eighteen years is, by most standards, a long term relationship. Relationships of all kinds, I have come to understand, stand or fall in the end by the ways that the people in them negotiate their expectations and resolve their disappointments.
I remember in the seventies, piece by the psychologist Fritz Perls that hung on dormitory walls and in other places more or less likely. It started out, “I am not here to live up to your expectations and you are not here to live up to mine.” This was an early cry for freedom from role bound co-dependency. The concept which Perls was promoting was, in fact, more complicated than that phrase would suggest but it reinforced the birth of the “me” generation.
But relationships are not, by their very nature, about “me” or about “you” but about a mutual arrangement in which everyone involved negotiates and communicates what they need and want from one another. At best when those needs are met, we celebrate and are grateful; when they are not, we express our disappointment and concern in ways that are constructive and we make adjustments either in our behavior, in our expectations or in the system that supports our best intentions.
The relationship between a minister and a congregation and the individuals who make it up, is complicated. It seems, at times to be an almost impossible dance that demands constant attention to where the relationship is at any given time, of weighing the needs of the individual with the needs of the organization. Should I be at a Board meeting or with a staff member who is in need or on the phone talking to a newcomer interested in the history of Unitarian Universalism or doing work on a sermon that has intellectual depth and spiritual thrust? Should I be visiting a shut in or at a peace rally or working with a committee to define its role?
I accept these choices as the necessary nature of this work. I am also aware of three things: 1. The expectations and demands of ministry increase with the size of the congregation. 2) This requires more clarification of expectations 3) The systems and structures which make up and support the ministry of the church need to be strengthened and affirmed.
Dan Burrows Life Matters and news letter articles over that past few months about the transition from Pastoral to Program Church have begun to address this from an organizational perspective. The recent ministerial evaluation has also given good feedback about the choices I have been making and the degree to which those choices have been meeting your needs. I can say that I was gratified by the response of the forty five families and individuals who responded. There will be time, I am told for further response nad I hope that those of you who for whatever reasons did not respond earlier, will do so. So far the suggestions you have offered have been both humbling and stimulating and have provided great food for thought. I am pleased that most of you are more satisfied than not and that the changes you suggest can probably be addressed in one way or another.
What is also clear is that I am at the end of my ministry of a pastoral church.
I often talk to couples in crisis about the end of their first marriage. This is not a suggestion for divorce. Rather it is an acknowledgment that we start out a marriage with hopes and dreams and expectations about what a marriage should be. It takes months, years, sometimes even decades, to test those dreams and expectations within the context of the real life relationship and then at some point there is a time of clarification around what has changed over time and about which of those expectations are still mutually held and a viable basis for that particular marriage. Often it is a matter of one or both of the people letting go and grieving the loss of some closely held hope about how things would be. Always it is a matter of asking, “Can we find together the basis for an ongoing relationship built on a revised set of mutual dreams and hopes and expectations that reflect who we have become.” If the answer is “Yes”, the old marriage ends and makes way for the new. If it is no, it is sometimes necessary for couples to part.
The people I know whose relationships have thrived a half century or more all talk about the times when they renegotiated their covenant, their mutual expectations and promises and chose to continue their journey together.
I am reluctant to use the marriage metaphor for a minister’s relationship to a church. I many ways it does not hold well. What does hold about the metaphor is that both are covenantal relationships at best, based upon the promises we make to each other and to the mutual expectations we negotiate. As in any long standing covenantal relationship, we are at the end of a time.
The threats to our continued health and well being is the lack of clarity in our changing expectations. Over the past year, I have been increasingly aware of needing to fight the urge to define myself by what I am not getting done rather than by what I am. I have felt overwhelmed more time than I would like. This is not anyone’s fault. It is the result of unintegrated change. I am completely confident that the leadership of this congregation has the tools and the wherewithall to make the transitions that will accommodate the who you are becoming.
And this is why this sabbatical is so important at this time. This is the opportunity for me to see if I can do the same. There is still much that is good about this relationship. I experience much mutual kindness, and trust, and commitment to the strength and growth of our Unitarian Universalist movement. We are committed to quality programming and and to living our faith in the larger community. What is missing is passion and energy and new ideas.
Tomorrow afternoon I will get on an air plane and fly to Chicago. In the evening I will have dinner with John Saxon, a middle aged attorney law professor from South Carolina who, on Tuesday, will begin his preparation for the Unitarian Universalist ministry as a student in the modified residency program at Meadville Lombard Theological school. This is a program which allows people to work toward a Master of Divinity Degree by providing week long intensive classes in January and July each year. As part of their program, they are assigned to a mentor. I will be John Saxon’s mentor. We will be meeting for the first time. We have had two phone conversations. We will know each other in the restaurant because I have white hair and he is short.
The rest of the week we will be oriented to the program and will attend educational sessions on music and worship, the topic of this years modified residency conference. I will be eligible to attend this conference annually from now on which features a different topic each year.
The following week I will switch from mentor to student when I begin a class on Liberal Religious Ethics. I have spent most of the last week between meetings, preparing for this class and already have learned enough for a couple of pretty heady sermons. I am excited by the prospect of engaging with my colleagues and my future colleagues about such things as the ethics of race and class, postmodern ethical theory and seeking an ethic of clergy self care.
The following week I will switch back to my minister consultant hat when I spend four days at Thunder Bay helping them to address some of their growing pains.
Then back to student hat with a final week in Chicago in a course entitled “Evil, Trauma and Ambiguity”.
The seven weeks between February 1 and March 18 will include some time in the Twin Cities at an internship conference and another trip to Thunder Bay and a lot of time integrating my work in Chicago, looking at the woods, writing for myself and organizing my responses to the very helpful feedback that came to me through the surveys that some of you filled out regarding the ministry of this church. I will also be getting ready to preach four sermons at Rosslyn Hill Chapel in Hamstead Heath, England between March 21 and April and to participate in the European Unitarian Universalist Spring Retreat April 23-25.
I will probably spend May figuring out what all of this will mean to the future of my ministry.
June will be a good time to return. It will allow me to ease back in beginning with the summer schedule. My three weeks at Rainy Lake will be the last week in June and the first two weeks in July and then there will be time to plan for the fall and the coming of our intern.
In the fall Nancy Heege, our District Exec. will come here for a week-end and you and I will set about to clarify our new covenant.
I will be in touch through the newsletter and in the event of catastrophe, heaven forbid. I will miss you. You will, I hope, miss me. But in the words of an unnamed country western song writer , “How can you miss me, I don’t go away?”
Until June, this so long. And here’s Hal Bertilson for the committee that holds it all together!!