2017-09-22

Theme-Based Ministry

Monthly Themes at Community UU -- and, starting in 2015, also at 1st Unitarian Society of Westchester (Hastings), and, starting in 2016, at all Westchester UU Congregations: Past and Upcoming


2013-14
2014-15
2015-16
Sep
Vision
Faith
Renewal
Oct
Evil
Death
Wonder
Nov
Covenant /Democracy
Forgiveness
Hospitality
Dec
God
Hope
Letting Go
Jan
Ecospirituality
Justice
Resistance
Feb
Religious Authority
Love
Desire
Mar
Redemption
Brokenness
Liberation
Apr
Freedom
Transformation
Creation
May
Mercy
Transcendence
Blessing
Jun
Happiness/Joy
Presence /Mindfulness
Simplicity





2016-17
2017-18
2018-19
Sep
Covenant*
Forgiveness*
Letting Go*
Oct
Awe
Death*
American Experiment
Nov
Evil*
Mindfulness*
Hospitality*
Dec
God*
Embodiment
Curiosity
Jan
Mystery
Resilience
Simplicity*
Feb
Grace
Love*
Desire*
Mar
Mercy*
Wandering
Humility
Apr
Compassion
Faith*
Renewal*
May
Joy*
Truth
Beauty
Jun
Freedom*
Justice*
Borders/Boundaries
*Theme re-visit from three years before

By design, each year's themes duplicate many of the themes from three years before -- allowing for returning to important themes and exploring them in more depth, and from the different vantage point at which we find ourselves after three years.

The following account of theme-based ministry borrows liberally from the website of our Tulsa congregation.

Each theme plays a part in the development of a well-grounded religious and spiritual life. The church’s offerings each month are by no means limited to the themes. However, these topics provide an axis around which many elements of church life gain more meaning and depth. The themes provide us with a set of common stories and ideas that become elements of an ongoing community conversation.

Be warned: Seriously engaging these themes could transform your life!

PURPOSE

To engage and empower CUC (now CUUC) and its members to think theologically and live our ministry and calling at home and in the wider world -- thereby also strengthening the Unitarian Universalist network of congregations so engaged and empowered.

VISION

That North American Unitarian Universalist congregations adopt a transformational approach to ministry that includes the entire congregation and equips members with resources for living each day with faith, integrity and wisdom; that Unitarian Universalists across the continent are prepared with the language and religious understanding to play a substantial role as shapers of our country and its culture, and to engage in dialogue with people of other backgrounds regarding issues of faith, values, ethics and religion.

THE BASICS

The monthly theme is the focus of church life and programming across the lifespan. Each theme has a story associated with it and the story offers language, symbols and metaphors on the theme. The congregation is offered multiple ways to engage the themes through worship, classes, small groups, newsletter articles, spiritual homework, at-home family practices, a reading list for further reading on the theme and more.

The resources are provided so that members can decide at what level and depth they want to engage a particular theme. Children maintain journals on the themes each month, so that if they are in our program for 12 years they will have 4 sets of reflections on each theme at different stages of their own personal, spiritual and cognitive development. The themes offer the congregation (across the generations) a common set of stories, ideas and topics to be in conversation about each month. The story each month will usually come from World Scripture -- the Tanakh, New Testament, Sutras, Vedas, Quran -- or from Unitarian or Universalist history. Additional stories will reflect how the theme is addressed in a variety of traditions. Thus members attain religious literacy and have the opportunity to develop a theology informed by many faiths and rooted in Unitarian Universalism.

IMPORTANCE

1. Religious Competence: A Need Currently Not Well Met

Most Unitarian Universalist congregations today do not offer their members a common language of faith, a common set of stories, or a clear and systematic map for developing their own understanding of theology and liberal religion. Members are rarely provided with ways to engage their religious life at various levels of depth and understanding. The result is many congregations with members who are not being offered competency in the areas of liberal theology, biblical literacy, familiarity with World Scripture, or religious ways of dealing with loss, betrayal, addiction, evil, etc.

2. Integrating Worship, RE, and Small Groups

UU congregations rarely have significant coordination or collaboration between the Sunday school programming for children and what is being discussed by the adults in worship, classes and small groups. The lack of integration across the lifespan is a missed opportunity for community building and hinders intergenerational religious learning.

3. Resources for Coping

"Religious Competence" means having resources for dealing with challenges, tragedies, crises -- as well as all the the day-to-day minor annoyances -- and finding deepening joy in simple, ordinary life.

Offering a systematic approach to theological learning in churches gives people the resources for dealing with life's challenges prior to encountering particular challenges. It is often difficult to suddenly try to develop a spiritual life and an understanding of the most important concepts for living when one is in the midst of dealing with a major life crisis. For example, it is often when someone receives a terminal diagnosis that they begin to explore death and the meaning of life or when they have been betrayed that they begin to try to understand forgiveness. However, when a person has a basic understanding of major life issues prior to encountering them and also has an ongoing spiritual practice, this allows the person to move through life's travails with greater integrity, gracefulness and acceptance.

Life is never the same after a significant loss. Spiritual deepening, however, allows the bereaved to grieve well, heal, and move into the new life that awaits them.

Through a theme-based approach, Unitarian Universalists may develop resources for living throughout their lives, and at times when they are not in the midst of a crisis. Therefore, they carry these religious resources with them and are able to draw on a well-established religious understanding and perspective as they deal with the vicissitudes of life.

THE TULSA MODEL

Here are ways that the All Souls UU Congregation in Tulsa suggests that their members go deeper with the 3-year cycle of themes. We'll look to implement or adapt many of these ideas for CUC.
  • Attend the First Sunday of the month service where the minister will explore the theme in detail in Sunday worship and we will introduce the story for all ages that is used in our Children's Religious Education program for the month.
  • Attend Soulful Sundown on the first Friday of the month where we use a more secular exploration of the theme using popular culture including: live music, drama, video, slam poetry, and improv.
  • Attend our Wednesday Night Adult Religious Education Programming throughout the month that relate to the theme.
  • Read Simple Gifts. Simple Gifts (SG) is our monthly journal and can be used to explore ideas on the theme (ideally to begin considering the theme before hearing the sermons)
  • The SG list of quotes. Inside Simple Gifts is a pull out list of quotes on the theme to consider as part of a daily journaling or meditation practice.
  • The SG book list. Inside Simple Gifts is also a book list for further reading. Choose one to add to your reading for the month.You're probably getting the idea that SG is a great resource!
  • SG Theme tips for parents.In most issues of Simple Gifts is also a section designed especially for parents including practical help about how to answer our children's questions on the themes.
  • Consider sharing your gifts and talents with our children by volunteering in our All Souls Kids program as a workshop leader.
For a more in-depth overview of Theme Based Ministry, visit www.themebasedministry.org.

See also, "Interconnections," 2011.01: www.uua.org/interconnections/interconnections/174595.shtml

INTERCONNECTIONS, 2011.01.01:

Monthly Themes at All Souls, Tulsa, Help Congregants Go Deeper

At All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa, Okla., the theme for the month of January is “Creation.” In February the theme shifts to “Religious Authority.” When March comes around “Redemption” will be taken up.

Going out further, Senior Minister the Rev. Marlin Lavanhar knows what themes he will be preaching on for the next three years, at which time the themes will start over.

Theme-based ministry—adopting a specific topic for a month and focusing on it in depth in worship, religious education, and other aspects of congregational life—is catching on in Unitarian Universalist congregations. All Souls adopted theme-based ministry nine years ago, shortly after Lavanhar arrived.

“When I was in my first year of ministry here I realized I needed something with a little more structure,” he says. “UU ministers have to work a little harder to come up with sermon topics because for the most part we don’t follow the lectionary that traditional Christian ministers do.” A Christian lectionary is a list of specific scripture passages that are used in developing worship for any given Sunday.

Here’s how theme-based ministry works at 1,800-member All Souls: On the first Sunday of the month Lavanhar preaches on that month’s theme. On other Sundays of the month he is free to preach on other topics. As he does that he finds ways to also touch on the monthly theme.

The themes are not limited to sermons but are infused through the rest of congregational life at All Souls, including religious education and small group ministry. There are newsletter articles on the theme and take-home study materials each month to help congregants go deeper with the topic and talk with their children about it.

There is a more significant reason for using monthly themes than just Lavanhar’s need to be better organized, he notes. “I want our members to have a systematic theology. There are certain core topics that people need to know about to have a good grounding in liberal theology. For example, if I only preached about ‘evil’ every six or seven years there could be people who come and go from All Souls without ever hearing anything on that topic. With theme preaching they’ll hear about it at least every three years.”

The themes also provide a way to introduce Bible stories, he notes, giving children and adults a cultural literacy foundation that’s often missing in Unitarian Universalism. Stories from other traditions are also included “so children learn that stories about forgiveness, for example, are not just found in the Bible.”

Too often, Lavanhar says, we as UUs don’t have the theological grounding we need when we are confronted with life’s crises. “We get a diagnosis, or someone dies. Then we want a crash course on seeking redemption and forgiveness. All the big questions come up. What we need to be doing in our UU congregations is giving people resources when they are well, not when they’re in the middle of an issue. Then when there’s a crisis they’ll have the wisdom and the resources they need. Theme-based ministry helps with that.”

Case in point: Lavanhar’s three-year-old daughter Sienna died suddenly four years ago. Earlier that year death had been one of the monthly themes at All Souls, along with a discussion of brokenness and how it can be transformed into something of value. “We found that during this crisis the congregation had a spiritual maturity that we were able to draw on,” Lavanhar says. “Because we had talked about death earlier people knew how to respond. That brought home the value of the themes to us.”

Lavanhar meets with RE teachers quarterly to talk about themes for the next three months. Then the teachers create and design classes to fit those themes. The All Souls RE program for children and youth has adopted a “rotational” model. Children learn about the monthly themes by rotating through classrooms that use visual arts, drama, movement, yoga, and music to explain the lessons.

Having topics come up every three years means that by the time youth at All Souls have graduated from high school they have been exposed to each topic at least three times. Throughout their time at All Souls they are given journals and asked to write in them monthly. “When they graduate they have a stack of journals that document their theological and spiritual growth through their childhood,” says Lavanhar. “They can look back and see how their thinking on a particular topic, such as their view of God, has changed over time.”

Adults too, he says, can chart their own growth. “The themes become yardsticks for a spiritual life.” All Souls member Toni Willis says the monthly themes are her family's spiritual practice. “We take the theme of the month and we talk about it all month. I have a son who is five, and he knows exactly what the theme is, and we have conversations about how we view it in the world around us, and that’s really beautiful.”

Kathy Keith, executive director of All Souls, and formerly the director of its religious education program, says the inspiration for theme-based ministry came in part from the children’s program, which had its own monthly biblical themes before the church-wide program was adopted. “Here in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Bible literacy is a survival skill,” she says.

“Theme-based ministry has closed the chasm between ‘big church’ and religious education,” she adds. “It has knit our congregation together. And now adults can volunteer in RE for a month at a time without giving up their entire adult experience.”

Jaclyn Rusher, 17, believes the monthly themes and the opportunity she’s had to experience them during the past nine years through various mediums, has given her a better RE experience. “I don’t remember much of church before we started doing themes and moving from room to room and using drama and acting out what we were learning. But I remember many of the things we’ve done since then. Having something to focus on for a month and having different ways to look at it made church something to look forward to every week.”

All Souls has created a website for its resources on theme-based ministry, including newsletter articles, sermons, discussion ideas for small groups, poems, music, and video clips. Lavanhar says other congregations are also contributing to this database. “We’re increasing the possibilities for what Unitarian Universalism can offer. If we take theme-based ministry seriously it can really raise the quality of Unitarian Universalism and help us have a larger role in shaping U.S. culture.”

The Rev. Thomas Wintle introduced theme-based ministry to his congregation, the 600-member First Parish Church in Weston, Mass., in 2006, after learning about it from Lavanhar. He does a three-year rotation of themes and preaches on the theme all four or five Sundays in a month.

As a Christian UU minister he’s used a lectionary for 20 years to determine worship topics. He was intrigued by the possibility of exploring a topic for a full month in worship and RE. “You can go much deeper than if there’s just one sermon or one RE lesson,” he says. “It assures we have a theologically literate congregation. Our families go home on Sunday and I hear later about these amazing dinner table conversations. And I have to say theme ministry has rejuvenated my preaching.”

He says monthly themes help him collect information for sermons. “I have a file for each topic. When I read something about mercy, or redemption, it goes in the file.”

At the beginning of each year First Parish creates a five-page brochure laying out the themes and mails it to every resident of Weston. “It’s a terrific PR piece,” says Wintle.

Other congregations using or exploring theme-based ministry include West Shore UU Church in Rocky River, Ohio; Unity Church-Unitarian in St. Paul, Minn.; First Parish in Concord, Mass.; the UU Church of Arlington, Va.; Pathways UU Church in Southlake, Tex.; and the UU Society: East in Manchester, Conn.

RESOURCES

More information on All Souls Unitarian Church’s use of theme-based ministry can be found here, including a list of themes, resources for each, and an explanation of this approach to ministry. All Souls and several other congregations using theme-based ministry have created another website -- ThemeBasedMinistry.org -- with additional resources. Congregations using theme-based ministry are invited to submit resources to this latter site.

The “Journeys of Faith—Year at a Glance” brochure for theme ministry at First Parish Church in Weston, Mass., can be found on the church’s website: www.firstparishweston.org/programs/index.html.

No comments:

Post a Comment