"The Coming Church"
Founder's Day Celebration Service

The Reverend Samuel Schaal
January 13, 2002

Call to Worship

Into this house we come, From the generations which have preceded us. Here we remember our histories. And here we build anew, this day, our faith. And here we dream the dreams that our children will inherit. When, on another day, it is their turn to take up the task.

Sermon

We stand today in a moment pronounced by our awareness of being in-between. In-between the realities of our history and the possibilities of our future.

So we are today looking backward and yet also looking forward. It seems a strange thing, this, looking backward and forward at the same time. The native people of Ghana in West Africa have a word that might help us find our place on this historic day: Sankofa.

Sankofa is a Ghanian word that means, "looking back to move forward." That is to say, we must go back and reclaim the past so we can move forward and understand how we came to be who we are today. The term has particular importance for the people of Ghana and elsewhere on the African continent in trying to reconnect with their homeland after forced into slavery. But it is a concept we might borrow, for it helps us find our place on this day, when we return to the past in order to move forward.
The symbol of Sankofa is that of a bird whose head is faced in the opposite direction of its body. So even though the bird is advancing, it periodically makes it a point to examine its past, since this is the only way for one to have a better future. Some also interpret Sankofa to mean, no matter how far away one travels, one must always return home.

Let's go home for a moment. To the home of this congregation. Back to 1959. In November, 35 people gathered in Wauwatosa at the old Underwood Court for the first service of the Westside Branch of First Unitarian Society of Milwaukee. They listened to a sermon by John Cyrus, longtime minister of First Church. He was not physically present, but the small congregation employed what was in that day high technology by listening to the sermon he was giving downtown, transmitted to Wauwatosa by telephone line.

The small congregation grew. At first the group was mainly members of First Church, but soon began to attract new people to the faith.

The year 1961 was pivotal for the new church. In June 1961 the branch voted to become independent from First Church. In September 1961 services began at the old Wauwatosa YMCA. In November they became incorporated as Unitarian Church West. That year they called their first minister, Christopher Raible, whose ministry would start in 1962. They officially chartered as a church in January 1962, the event we are today celebrating.

The founding members quickly harnessed the energies of the congregation in the church's first capital fund drive in late 1962, resulting in the purchase of this four-acre tract in Brookfield. A second capital fund drive in 1965 resulted in the building. Church member and architect Ken Kurtz was chosen to design the building and it was dedicated in March 1966. Interestingly, the ceremony was deemed in the order of service as the dedication of the "first building" of the church, in knowledge that there would be more.

Chris resigned in 1970. R.C.A. Moore was called as the congregation's second minister. The church was challenged during those years as the District Attorney of Waukesha County wanted to review the material for the new sexuality curriculum, to determine if it violated the state's obscenity law. The church refused, the case eventually was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where it was remanded back to the appellate court and the case was dropped in 1974. The decision was rendered in favor of the congregation to teach its children as it saw fit, an advance for religious freedom.

In 1971, during RCA's ministry, the church hired Bob Simiele as Music Director, so the congregation is celebrating Bob's 30th anniversary this year.

RCA left in 1974 and Robert Latham accepted the call as minister in 1976. In 1981 Marni Harmony began her tenure and planted the idea of charting a more explicit program of growth. David Hicks MacPherson was then called in 1987 as the fifth settled minister of the congregation and he and leadership leveraged the resources to build the addition of the church. During his tenure the church added "Universalist" to the name, reflecting the denomination's dual heritage.

Tom Yondorf was called as the church's sixth minister in 1994. During Tom's ministry Maria C. O'Connor was hired as the church's first fulltime Director of Religious Education in 1997.
We are currently in an interim period awaiting the calling of the seventh settled minister of UUCW.

During those 40 years, seven church members have entered ministry and currently there is one church member in seminary.

These is just a sketch of the congregation's history, a mere frame into which many, many personal stories were placed. Some of these stories will be shared at the luncheon following today's worship service, as charter and long-term members will be invited to tell their recollections. And the history exhibit in the social hall fills out the details of our history nicely.
So we stand today as that Sankofa bird, facing forward, but looking backward. This is where you have been as a congregation. Where are you going? What might the "coming church" look like?

Whatever it is, it will not look exactly like the church of the previous 40 years. In this morning's reading, Theodore Parker said in 1846 (and this, incidentally, was just a few years after First Church Milwaukee had gathered) that what was true in the fifth or the fifteenth century will not do in his day, the 19th century. In 1966 as those words were repeated in this congregation at the dedication of the first building, it was understood that what was true in the 19th was only a partial truth at mid-twentieth. And today we begin to realize that what was true in the 20th century may not be true in the 21st. For truth is ever-evolving, never completely finished.

The spiritual aftermath of September 11th reminds us of that. It is true that church attendance, like other congregations, has receded back to normal levels following the spike we saw on September 16 when we had 425 people in this room, with overflow in the lobby and social hall. It is true that a new sense of normality has taken ground in our community. But we still live in tenuous times and people will be looking for spiritual grounding. It is my prayer that this church positions itself as a beacon of hope in these western suburbs and in this specific City of Brookfield.

You heard me tell this story last year, but it bears repeating. Annie Dillard tells the story of a science experiment in elementary school. In a mason jar the teacher had placed the cocoon of a polyphemus moth.

The moth crawled its way out of its cocoon and the children watched transfixed as the moth emerged wet, climbed upon a twig in the jar, and began to shake its clump of wings, spreading the new wings so that blood would fill their veins and the birth fluids on the frail wings would harden to make them tough. But the jar was too small for the tremendous wings of this particular variety of moth. The children watched as the moth tried in vain to spread its wings, but the wings could not fill to their capacity. So they hardened while they were still crumpled.
A smaller moth, Dillard says, would have had enough room to properly spread the wings, but not this large moth.

The founders of this congregation saw to it that the church was large enough to hold the polyphemus spirit of this church. The church outgrew its structures, first in Underwood Court, then the YMCA, then the first building. But churches can have other structures that are too small as well that stunt the growth, that stifle the spirit, that retard a church's full mission in the community. Just as a church building has to be large enough, so does the vision of the church, so does the understanding of the church's mission in the community.

We claim, those of us in this particular branch of the free church tradition known as Unitarian Universalism, we claim to be a place where people can grow their souls, where people can discover who they are and let their spirit grow as large as it needs to be.

How well do we really encourage people to fully spread their wings? How large is our structure, not just the physical building, but the vision, the spiritual grounding, the commitment to mission, the right relationship of the component parts of the church working toward a higher vision of the health of the church as a whole, the leadership structure, the understanding of the role of ministry as visionary spiritual leader, working collaboratively with lay leadership. How large is our structure? How well are you continuing the vision of those who founded this place?

Have we really made ourselves large enough to hold the growing spirit of a community of seekers of truth? Are we ready, as we honor the past, to build the coming church: a Center of Free Religion in Brookfield?

American poet James Russell Lowell - himself a 19th century Unitarian -has said:

"Life is a leaf of paper white
Whereon each one of us may write
His word or two
And then comes night.
* * *
Greatly begin! though thou have time
But for a line. Be that sublime,-
Not failure, but low aim, is crime."

Not failure, but low aim is crime. The aim of the founders was high. The aim of the church is high. You are dedicated to building a church large enough to not only hold your spirits, not just to make it a comfortable place for you, but to encourage the spirits of those who have yet to find you.

We are not gathered as a church to feel good. We are gathered as a church to minister to the world. People need a spiritual home. Sankofa, remember, may be understood to mean that no matter how far away one travels one must always return home. There are many people who are spiritually adrift in our society. They need to go home, to their home of the heart, where they can connect with the ultimate source and mystery of all creation.
Novelist and essayist Anne Lamont recalls a story that her minister told her. When the minister was a little girl about seven years old, she got lost one day. The little girl ran up and down the streets of the big town where they lived but she couldn't find a single landmark and she was frightened. A policeman put her in a police car, and they drove around until she finally saw her church. She pointed to its steeple and told the policeman firmly, "You can let me out now. This is my church and I can always find my way home from here."

Lamont says the story has stayed with her - "Because no matter how bad I am feeling, how lost or lonely or frightened, when I see the faces of the people at my church and hear their tawny voices, I can always find my way home."

Over these past 40 years, this place has been a spiritual home for many. In the following generations, may this place continued to be such a home, to you and to those in this community who need you but have yet to find you. As you consider how to make your church large enough to hold not only your growing spirits, but the spirits of those who have yet to find their way here, remember that you ARE keepers of a light. A light that found expression forty years ago and still shines. A light that needs to keep shining, even brighter and higher and more gloriously than it has even shown before, for this world needs such beacon lights.

This is the coming church. The church of the 21st century that is to lead will not be a church creeping on all fours, mewling and whining … it must be full of the brave spirit of the day, keeping also the good of times past.

Amen