Emerson Church Unitarian Universalist On Being a Good Minister Written by Rev. Harold Beu

When I was an intern minister in Santa Monica at the UCC, now the UUCC, I received a cartoon from my friend Natsumi. It was from B. C. from the Sunday paper. In the beginning, we see B. C. climbing a mountain, day and night, day and night, and finally he comes to a plateau and there we see a wizen old man sitting in lotus position on top of a ledge. B. C. goes up the old man and says, “Oh, Guru, tell me please, what is the meaning of life.” And the guru points his index finger heavenward and says, “Life is not one path, but many and each will go a separate way to find meaning. Meaning comes from the journey that we take and the journey begins now. Where you look is where you find meaning…” and on and on. Finally, B. C. interrupts the guru and says, “In other words, you don’t have the foggiest, right?” Then we see two frames in which the guru has a blank look on his face, and then in the final frame he shrugs his shoulders and says, “Hey, it’s a living.”

this may be funny to you or perhaps not, but it does reflect a truth for me as a professional minister. There are times I just don’t have the answer, but here I am, preaching and leading, doing my best to at least give an adequate impression of a U. U. minister. It is, for me, a living.

That seems to be a rather modest view of ministry. Others have a more exalted view, such as in the case of Jack Mendelsohn, Unitarian Universalist minister from Chicago and once a candidate for the Presidency of the UUA. he wrote this in his book Why I am a Unitarian Universalist.

We can see in this quote that Mendelsohn, from the time he was a young man had a heighten view of the ministry. Mine is not so exalted. I came into the ministry because I interested in many things, such as, public speaking, counseling, community action, organizational functions, music, drama, politics, even religion. So, I originally went into the ministry to cover all the bases. Ministry is the last of the generalist professions. I do many different things, some better than others.

And I know that there are people in this congregation who could do some of these tasks better than me, but who would be willing to do them as a volunteer. In my view, a church needs a minister to do all these tasks, but also to give continuity and a sense of identification to our community, for better or worse.

But that says to me that we are all ministers. We all could do some if not all the tasks of a minister. And to the extent the members and friends take responsibility to be ministers is the extent to which the church is vibrant and healthy.

So, it is important to ask ourselves, what does it mean to be a good minister?

I think of my work as a math teacher here. I remember once reading a didactic book on the teaching of math by a middle school teacher. In his introduction, he told a story about a time he was in the teacher’s lounge talking with a social studies teacher and they both came to the conclusion that their purpose was the same. Now, I would ask my students, “what is the purpose of math?” I ask the same, “What is the purpose of math?” and I would get quizzical looks and some lame answer such as it has to do with numbers and to it helps to deal with money, etc. But I suggest that the purpose of math is the same as the purpose of social studies or the ministry or any other profession, or indeed any profession or any relationship. The purpose of math is to solve problems. Now, admittedly, the problems of math and of ministry are different, but I believe that we can look to the discipline of math to help us to solve problems and become good ministers.

I liked word problems in math the best because they represent what could happen in real life for example, Sam will travel 56 miles to a business appointment. How much time will he save if goes at 80 mph as opposed going the speed limit of 70 mph? Now, I begin by saying the first step in solving a problem is to identify what the problem is. What is the question asking? We are looking at a rate problem and we need to identify what units the answer will be in, miles, hours or miles per hour. In this case, it is a problem in time, so the answer will be in hours, or actually in this case, a fraction of a hour.

Now, when we talk about being a good minister, we begin with a problem. and the problem in ministry involves people. I like to joke about my vocation, saying that ministry is wonderful profession if it weren’t for the people. But obviously that is what ministry is all about. And so we ministers have problems with people. It is bound to happen.

One of the worst problems that comes in dealing with people is anger. Anger can destroy relationships and prevent problems from being solved. So, when we have a problem with a member, say, and feel anger, it is important to identify the problem.

Now, if we identify the problem as the other person, that is there is something they are doing that is causing us anger, then we have placed the problem of our anger outside of ourselves. That suggests that the other person needs to do something so that we are not angry anymore. And realistically speaking people don’t change that much, so the odds of their changing are two, slim and none.

But is it realistic to identify our problem of anger as being with the other person? Does that make sense? For example, I could get extremely angry with our government because of its stupid and harmful foreign and domestic policies, but would that help? And does it make sense? Now, I can work to change things in my small way and I do. But to let our leaders determine my feelings does not solve the problem.

It would be better to identify the problem as being within us and within our control. Then we have the means to solve the problem. We can examine our thoughts and see if they make sense. We can also look at our anger and see if it gets us what we want, that is, if it helps us to solve problems, for certainly anger can work to give us energy and at times to intimate people who may be trying to intimate us.

After identifying the problem in math, we go on to sorting out all the variables and numbers to see what information we need and what we don’t need. In ministry, we look at all the relationships to sort them out. This is not easy. For example, we have a congregation of approximately 50 members. Now, how many relationships of just two people, of dyads, would there be, do you suppose? Well, it would be 1225. And that is just dyads. This makes ministry a complex task to try to figure out all those relationships and how to work with them. and it is not just the sheer number of relationships, but the complexity of human personalities that make ministry a challenge. Which brings us to the next step, analyze the problem with all the numbers and variables. In the case of being a good minister, we look at the ways of dealing with all these relationships with these complex personalities, I believe what is important is that we have some principles that guide us. They are like formulas in math, only it is not quite as cut and dry. We have principles of affirming the worth and dignity of every person and of making a free and responsible search for the truth. These are faith statements, not facts. We believe that if we hold to them, we will have a good life.

Therefore, our analysis is then one of ourselves. That is a necessary attribute of a good minister. When we are able to do that, we are then able to relate to others with intelligence and compassion. And ministry begins with a relationship with one person. The Jews have a saying that when one Jew goes to a second Jew to talk about his problems, the second Jew automatically becomes a rabbi.

I would like to close with some thoughts on the movie Stand By Me. It is a story of a group of 4 boys who go on a journey following the railroad tracks to find a dead body of a boy their age. Each of the boy suffer in their own special way. The one boy, Vern, is fat and nerdy and kids tend to dismiss him. Another, Teddy, has a father who cannot control his anger and actually put Teddy’s ear on a hot stove almost killing him. The protagonist, Gordie, had lost his older brother in a car accident. His parents have never gotten over the tragedy and ignore him. And finally, there is Chris, the leader, who comes from the wrong side of the tracks, but who is intelligent, strong and decent.

There is a scene when the boys camp out for the night by the railroad tracks when Chris is suppose to take his turn to stand guard. Gordie can’t sleep because of nightmares about his brother’s death and so he gets up and talks with Chris. Chris tells the story about how everyone knows that he is trash, just look at his family, and everyone knows that he stole the milk money, but he then tells how he brought it back to the teacher and she then used it to buy a new dress.

Obviously, no one would believe Chris given his background. And no one would doubt a teacher. And so, he was suspended for three days. Chris then tells Gordie as he starts to cry, that he would have never thought that a teacher would do such a thing. And Gordie comforts him and encourages him, telling him that he is not trash and he can do anything.

We know from Chris due to his intelligence and hard work would grow up to be a lawyer and that he got killed when he tried to protect a stranger from a man with a knife. We know how much Gordie missed Chris, and we know that at that special moment, when Chris made himself vulnerable, Gordie was his minister, and a good one at that.

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Author: Patrick Skomski - Published on: 2008-09-06 (655 reads)