by Kathy McGowan, Congregational Life Staff
I am in love with Unitarian Universalism. It makes me very sad to think that we are such a small denomination. I believe that the world needs us. If there were more UUs living out our faith in our lives every day, the world would be a better place. I truly believe this.
What do you say? Are you ready to get generous with UUism? I mean really generous. It might mean giving up something that is dear to you personally. It might mean giving up something that is important to your friends. You might become uncomfortable during worship on Sunday mornings because it has changed. You might have to get to know people that you are not sure you want to know.
What if we cared more about changing the world than we did about having “our wonderful church” for ourselves each week? What if we started to be known as that church that uses American Sign Language interpreters all the time, or the one that pipes in the service to the local homeless shelter. But perhaps that is not thinking big enough.
What if our Unitarian Universalist congregations were the ones called when the local community needed to hold a real dialogue on difficult issues. We might be the ones called because deep listening is one of the values that we hold so dear that we have trained compassionate communicators, mediators and facilitators to help our communities.
We might value hope so much that our congregations become the think tanks for alternate ways of living. If we lived out the value of joy, we could be the congregations where people drop by in the evenings because “it seems like there is always something fun happening at that place”. Maybe our commitment to compassion has been so strong that we have become the place where lower, middle and upper classes now gather to strategize on how to work together to battle the common enemies of poverty and racism.
I am probably not thinking big enough yet. I am not being generous enough with Unitarian Universalism. I need you in order to think bigger. How generous can we be with our faith to truly make the world a better place?
