Reading:from  Churchworks: A Well-Body Book for Congregations
    by Anne Odin Heller

Every living organism has within it the potential for creativity.
Cells shed, yet the pattern renews itself.
They transcend themselves, creating new forms.
Living systems always, always, always
explore.
Grow.
Evolve.
Create.

    Listen to this: Growth is not the objective.  It is a sign, a symptom, and an indicator of a healthy congregation.  As in flowers, trees, fish, birds, animals, and the children we adore, signs of growth are signs of good health.  The garden grows and multiplies – and we flourish.  Any living thing that ceases to grow begins to die.  Just as we care for our gardens and pets, the creatures of the forest and field, and our children, our congregation must pay attention to its health.
     Some people fear congregational growth, that things will change, that they will be different in their sweet, familiar church if it grows.  They are right.
     Just as a new baby turns the house upside down, just as life is never the same after its arrival, so a congregation changes irrevocably when it starts to grow.  There are people you don’t know around; the parking lot is full.  You have to share power with new members.  The newsletter gets thick with their names.  The sanctuary begins to fill up each Sunday.  There’s more work to do; the budget is bigger, so you have to raise more money.  The minister is busier.  The building is used all the time.
     That’s the down side.  The up side is that you meet and make new friends.  You [may] have two services to choose from.  You share the leadership with new, energetic people.  The newsletter has an editor and a new look.  The sanctuary begins to fill up each Sunday.  The leadership pool deepens, so there are more people to do the work.  Financial resources increase; you can afford to increase staff hours.  The building is used all the time and the future is exciting and wide open...
     Here are some of the most important things you can learn about growth:  A congregation that does not want to grow will not grow.  A congregation that is healthy and offers an environment for spiritual awakening cannot keep from growing.  Which best describes [our] congregation?

         Because, you see, change isn’t always easy to deal with.  It can be scary.  It can be a lot of work.  It requires adaptability.  It can disrupt our comfort level.  One of my mentors, The Rev. Kenn Hurto, preached a sermon a couple of years ago that I’ll be drawing from this morning.  He called it “Nobody Likes Change Except a Wet Baby.”  That about sums it up.  And it suggests that the discomfort that comes with change may be most welcome when we’re uncomfortable already.

         E. B. White captured the ambivalence many of us feel about change when he wrote: “I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve upon (or save) the world, and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world.  This makes it hard to plan the day.”

         “Ah, yes,” responds Hurto, “we want things to stay the way they are, we want things to be different.  We fear the unknown;  we hunger for the new.  We want eternal comfort and we’re terminally bored.  Ah, yes . . .”

         But of course change is inevitable.  It always has been.  Greek philosopher Heraclitus proclaimed 2500 years ago that “nothing endures but change.”  So things will change whether we like it or not.
We do, however, have the power to choose how to respond.  We may resist change that seems detrimental.  We may seek to expedite and direct change in directions we deem beneficial.  Or we may just sit back and go with the flow, making the best of what comes.

         As we attempt to guide the direction of change, may we remember Newton’s Law of Inertia.  While it describes physical systems, experience suggests that it applies equally to human systems.  According to Newton, “Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it.”

         Perhaps the best we can do is a kind of jujitsu, where we embrace the change charging toward us and try to channel it as best we can in desirable directions.  Some might describe the process as taking the lemons that life hands us and making lemonade.  Or – from Kenn Hurto again – “To forestall the corrosive forces of unintended change, we have to choose to change or to revitalize what we want to keep.  Grow, adapt, or die.  It’s a law.”

         All that being said, I’d like to remind you of a statement made by Anne Odin Heller in our reading this morning.  She said “A congregation that does not want to grow will not grow.  A congregation that is healthy and offers an environment for spiritual awakening cannot keep from growing.”

         What that means to me is that, if we have something good here, then it’s only natural to want to share it with others.  When we do, theymay find it good as well, and before you know it the parking lot is overflowing and the sanctuary is wall-to-wall bodies.

             When I titled this sermon “Taking It to the Next Level,” I had several levels of meaning in mind.  At one level, it refers to the transition of our congregation from a Small Midsized Pastoral church to a Larger Midsized Program church.  The way the Unitarian Universalist Association frames those size categories, we have just passed the boundary, which is at 250 members.  We are now at about 260.

            But as I’ve said before, and as Anne Odin Heller reinforces, numbers are only a symptom of something more – of congregational health and vitality.  And those qualities arise out of other, perhaps more subtle, forms of growth.

         The graphic on the cover of your order of service, I selected because it illustrates the kind of growth that makes us strong as a spiritual community.  We might call this growth in spiritual maturity.
 We start at the top of the chart with “ME” and “MY NEEDS”.  Indeed it may be personal needs and hungers that get us through the door in the first place.  And if the church is doing its job, then at least some of those needs may well get met.  But it can’t stop there.  After all, there will be others coming along with their own needs that we will need to help meet.

         Also there are the functional requirements of maintaining a building and an organization that serves the needs of hundreds of people.  Somebody has to pay attention to the sanctuary walls.  Somebody has to staff the Board and committees.  Somebody has to help make Sunday services happen.  Somebody needs to guide the social action that expresses our values in the larger world.

         As you find yourself getting more deeply engaged in the congregation, you may find yourself moving through these levels, going deeper, maturing in your faith and your involvement.  And as the congregation matures, those pieces of involvement will spread ever more widely across members and friends.

         At the next level we find children and youth and adult religious education.  Now we’re talking explicitly about growth, about personal and spiritual development in the context of community.

         And what’s that other fine print on that line?  Oh, yes, fundraising.  I probably should say a little bit about that today, since this is the official kickoff of our Annual Giving Campaign.  It sometimes feels awkward to talk about spiritual growth and finances in the same breath.  It’s as if matters of the spirit might be sullied by crass material concerns.

         But if you believe, as I do, in the fundamental unity of existence, then the dichotomy between spiritual and material is a false one.  Someone once wrote that “a budget is a theological document.  It indicates who or what we worship.”  Indeed, what we create, what we produce with our spending, is an expression of our values.  Likewise, how we as individuals spend our money reflects our values, what we consider important enough to work and save for.

         One Sunday morning a pastor encouraged his congregation to consider the potential of the church.  He told them, “With effort and commitment we can see the day when this church will go from crawling to walking.”

         The people responded, “Let the church walk, Pastor, let the church walk.”

         He continued, “And when the church begins to walk, next the church can begin to run.”

         And the people shouted, “Let the church run, Pastor, let the church run!”

         The pastor continued, “And finally the church can move from running to flying.  Oh, the church can fly!  But of course, that’s going to take lots of money for that to happen!”

         The congregation grew quiet, and from the back, someone mumbled, “Let the church crawl, Pastor, let the church crawl.”

         In another congregation, I knew a couple who were long-time members, but who rarely attended services.  Nevertheless, they were the largest givers in the congregation, pledging in excess of ten thousand dollars a year.  They treasured the support they had received in earlier years while they were raising their family.  And it was important to them that the church continue to exist, as a voice in the community, and to be able to serve those who still needed its support, both now and in the future.

         That attitude – that way of thinking – takes us down to the last level of our chart.  Here we find the real life blood of a healthy congregation.  Devotion and commitment to the life of the church and the values it lives out in the world.  Spirituality – that sense of connection and belonging to something larger than ourselves.  And the discipline to pay attention to how things are going, and to do our best to channel our growth and the changes swirling around us in the best possible directions.

         As we think about moving to that next level – the next level of generosity, the next level of personal involvement, the next level of church size and organization – may we summon the courage to face change and to embrace the adventure that comes with it.

         One of the primary reasons we balk at change is that we just don’t know how it’ll turn out.  Things might get worse before they get better.  We may mess it up.  But as Wayne Gretzky, the hockey star, said, “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.”

         And then there’s this story:

  One day in July, a farmer sat in front of his house, rocking in his chair.  Along came a stranger who asked, “How’s your cotton coming?”
 “Don’t have any,” was the answer.  “Didn’t plant any.  ‘Fraid of the boll weevil.”
 “Well, how’s your corn?”
 “Didn’t plant any.  ‘Fraid of drought.”
 “How about your potatoes?”
 “Don’t have any.  Scared of potato bugs.”
 The stranger finally asked, “Well, what did you plant?”
 “Nothin’,” answered the farmer.  “I just played it safe.”

         Once again I call on you for courage.  Courage to do more than play it safe.  Courage to embrace change, embrace growth in all its forms, and make it work for you.  And as you go along your way, may you carry with you these words from Ralph Waldo Emerson:

     “People wish to be settled.  Only insofar as they are unsettled is there any hope.  Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions.  All life is an experiment.  The more experiments that you make the better.”