In the Interim, April 2019

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I do not own a car. So, I walk a lot. Walking around the Museum District I have noticed how other congregations in the neighborhood present themselves. I have been taken with the presence of St. Paul’s United Methodist Church. They have a labyrinth which is available for the public to walk. During the Christian season of Lent they have added the stations of the cross for people to use as part of a meditative prayer practice. And they have banners hanging on lamp posts that share the congregation’s vision statement with the neighborhood. It reads: To be a cathedral for Houston that embodies its diversity, inspires faith, and leads change for the common good of all peoples and communities.

Reading St. Paul’s vision statement prompted me to look for First Church’s. It is on the web site and in the Board policies book. It reads: Firmly grounded in our Unitarian Universalist principles, we join together on the path of spiritual and intellectual growth to promote and celebrate community, diversity, and social justice for a healthier and more equitable world.

I must admit that St. Paul’s vision statement struck me as clearer than First Church’s. Our neighbor congregation’s statement articulates what kind of church they aspire to be: a cathedral. And it states the location of that kind of church: Houston. These aspects of St. Paul’s vision statement give it a particularity and rootedness that seem quite powerful. The congregation aspires to be nothing less than a major center for the city’s religious life.

Contrasting, First Church’s vision statement with St. Paul’s, prompted me to wonder: What kind of church do you want First Church to be? Does your current vision statement reflect that aspiration? One of the tasks during an interim or transitional period is to help a congregation recast its vision. If you were to articulate the vision of First Church today, what would it be? Is it the same vision the members of the congregation had ten years ago? Twenty years ago? Fifty years ago? Is it the same vision the congregation will have ten, twenty, or fifty years from now? How important are the congregation’s two locations to that vision? Does it matter that First Church is a congregation in Houston and Richmond? Or would the congregation’s vision be the same if, for instance, its two campuses were located in Washington DC and suburban Maryland? Finding answers to these questions will help the congregation prepare as it begins to search for the senior minister who comes after me. And it is something we will be working on, together, in the coming months. I look forward to that work.

As always, I close with a poem. This spring poem comes from the ninth-century Japanese poet Ki no Tsurayuki:

The wind that scatters
cherry blossoms from their boughs
is not a cold wind–
and the sky has never known
snow flurries like these.

love,

Colin

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