First, an apology for an awful pun! I claim no credit for it. The best that can be said is that it gets attention. The matter at hand, our pledge campaign, does require our most serious attention - especially this year, a year without a settled minister. Not a year of crisis, but a year we can describe as "the pause that refreshes" Your first full-time minister, Roberta, has gone and after my own time here, a search committee, after interviewing a short list of potential candidates and hearing them preach in a neutral pulpit, will recommend a minister to candidate for a week here in Sterling. On the final Sunday, a vote on his/her candidacy will take place, but before that process begins in the fall, the search committee will provide interested and suitably qualified ministers with a profile of the congregation. Ministers themselves will begin to provide the committee and the congregation at large information about themselves, both professionally and personally, to allow you to make the wisest and, therefore, the best decision.
Nobody here doubts the importance of the choice of any new minister, and we know it is not a decision to be lightly undertaken because the final choice forces upon every congregation a very serious exercise in values clarification. It provokes two fundamental questions for each one of us. First, what kind of minister do I think the congregation needs? That may be a real "shot in the dark" because no one can speak for anyone else, but it's a valuable and clarifying exercise. Second, what are the qualities that I am looking for? What are the qualities I need? After all, I am here for personal as well as religious reasons. There are obvious needs: thoughtful preaching, pastoral care, social concerns, children and adult religious education. However, you also need to know from the minister the one thing, the next and necessary thing he or she needs to address or hope to achieve. In this 'pause that refreshes" there is the need for dialogue of how we establish our Vision as a congregation with funding needed to accomplish our vision. I just can't separate this "vision thing" (as the first President Bush used to call it!) with the financial means to carry it out. Vision and Money are twin-concerns joined at the hip, and this makes all the sense in the world, particularly in this goal-oriented American culture.
The last thing I want to do in my sermon is get into all the themes and variations on organizational development, but I do want to join the dots along the line between "Vision and Money." Vision is seeing ourselves, and what we want to accomplish. It doesn't have to do with specific goals, but it's the vision of who we are as a congregation at its best and deepest. This is what I think we are and at our best what we ought to be. Like the Vision of America or the vision of more compassionate community. Beyond the personal and mutual clarification of our best vision is Mission. If it is indeed our mission to accomplish certain things for ourselves and for the community at large, we have to set specific goals as clearly as they can be expressed and here there is the need for consensus — on two or three objectives — not a long list! When we've discussed and settled on these action-items, we must then determine how best to prioritize and "who and how" best to carry out our agreed agenda — and this leads to what might be said on any opening Sunday of Canvas!
What I've said so far leads to my central conviction and concern. Money raised for our more obvious and idealistic needs is an expression of our Vision, our Mission, and our Emerging Priorities. I happen to think that the congregation already has more than its fair share of commitment to Vision, Mission, and Goals; and already a sound financial base from which to move forward in our congregational life and service. We have a lot more than our fair share of talented and committed leadership. I'm not talking of something new, but in an energetic congregation like this, we don't need to organize, but just regroup and refocus. This is the great value of this "pause that refreshes"; to recollect our own best insights and deepest emotions concerning this congregation — emotions, hopes, dreams, ideals recollected in tranquility, and new hopes nurtured in friendship and optimism.
In closing, I have a final personal word — a "question" really that is the ultimate question about why we are here at all under the umbrella of Unitarian Universalism. What is it about your own Unitarian commitment where you are most passionate? For some, it might be unquestioned concern for social action. For others, an accepting and affectionate community. For me, along with the above, it is the most precious gift of intellectual and spiritual freedom from the deepest levels of Unitarian history. The Unitarian mandate or indeed Mission to understand all religious and moral values in the light of Reason, Freedom, and Conscience. These are not woolly principles many of our detractors accuse us of, but principles that Unitarians literally died for!