“I Believe” Statement:
My name is Margaret Bauman and I –am-- a “Covenant Group Junkie”, or as my covenant group colleagues call me—“The Covenant Group Queen”. I like the sound of that!—QUEEN!
I facilitate the “Creative Cluster” covenant group which is based on “The Artists’ Way”. I also facilitate the “In the Life” covenant group for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered persons to discuss all kinds of issues.
I am a member of the “Issues on Race” covenant group, and then of course the facilitors have a covenant group so I am in that one as well! Phew!
I will confess that I went out and got the book, “A Year to Live” even though I knew I couldn’t let myself join yet another group, and after having my service auction tea yesterday called “Tea and Art Conversation”, I thought what a great covenant group that would be!!! Everywhere I turn I see ideas for covenant groups, or people who would really benefit from the welcoming door to the church through a covenant group.
I think the whole concept appeals to me because as an introvert, I am drawn to what I call “structured community”. It is far less scary to be plopped into a small group with a focus, than to walk into fellowship hall on a Sunday morning. Some of us want to talk to people but at the same time dread someone coming up to us and starting a conversation. I am thrilled that this church recognizes that it can seem so large and impersonal at times, and offers alternative ways to feel “at home”. I urge any of you who recognize what I say to consider joining a covenant group.
When I first came to UUCA in 1992, Sue Philley, the then DRE scooped me up (some people call that recruitment and she reigned supreme!) but I was thrilled to be valued and allowed to discover my talents and ways to use them. I also learned about people and how organizations work. I never thought I’d feel this way, but it is amazing how much richness committee work has brought to my life!
I am truly grateful once again to this church for giving me the forums for my creative soul. From teaching the kids, to creating children’s chapel experiences, to having a special event idea come to fruition, I have always been encouraged to work through my creative ideas. And there is always a receptive and kind audience.
Thank you friends. You are my family.
Sermon:
This past week, Reverend Gelbein and I went to a monthly gathering of Unitarian Universalist ministers from the greater Washington and Baltimore area. These meetings with colleagues are my church, where I can worship and be comforted and challenged.
As usual, we started our meeting with a check-in. I was stunned by the health crises several of my colleagues were experiencing: one hospitalized with a blood clot in the lungs, another awaiting surgery for an aneurism close to the brain, and another who has been battling breast cancer for over two years.
After hearing the devastating news from our friends and colleagues, we all stood, held hands and shared words of sympathy, grief, and prayer. The tears flowed as we embraced one other. I came away feeling a deep sense of gratitude that I am a part of such a caring community of people.
There are so many differences between human beings, and yet we often forget how much we have in common. One of our most important commonalities is that we truly need each other.
Human beings cannot live by ourselves, though there are times when we may be tempted to do so. We need each other to grow emotionally, intellectually and spiritually.
Have you seen the movie, “Castaway”? It’s a wonderful film about a FedEx executive, played by Tom Hanks, who's charter flight crashes in the South Pacific, and leaves him stranded alone on an island for four years. While his fiancee and co-workers assume he's dead, he must give up everything that he once took for granted and learn how to survive both physically and emotionally.
Can you imagine being in that situation, trying to survive without the basic necessities of life, not to mention people?
The most fascinating part of the film for me is how he deals with his loneliness. The castaway finally figures out how to physically survive by getting food, water, shelter and fire, but he intrinsically realizes that he needs something else -- companionship.
Companionship is hard to find on a deserted island, but the castaway happens across a volleyball that washed up on the beach. He decorates it with a face and hair, and calls him Wilson -- since that is the logo tattooed on the ball. He then carries on long conversations with Wilson, pouring his heart out to his round buddy.
But that’s not all. The castaway needs not only companionship but transcendence, and so Wilson eventually takes on the qualities of a deity, sitting on his altar, dispensing wisdom that only the castaway can hear. And when Wilson is lost, the castaway, for the first time in his four years of isolation, weeps like a baby.
Life is relationship, isn’t it? It’s become more apparent to me as I get older and perhaps wiser that we grow as individuals according to our ability to relate to others. Those who do dare to take the risks of relationship, to be vulnerable to rejection, to care for others even when it is inconvenient or unreciprocated, are those who experience life in its finest and fullest.
But Like the farmer in Robert Frost's poem, some of us simply continue to pile rock upon rock, defense upon defense, to separate ourselves from others. "Good fences make good neighbors" because each person can feel safe inside those walls, safe from other's demands and needs, safe from our own conscience and sense of transcendence.
And yet those walls eventually become a prison rather than a sanctuary, isolating us as if we are castaways on a deserted island with no one to share our experiences, no one to comfort and challenge us, and no life of the spirit to give us meaning.
The truth is that we cannot be truly ourselves until we are able to share freely the things we most have in common: our weaknesses, our incompleteness, our imperfection, our inadequacy, our lack of wholeness and self-sufficiency. We cannot be truly ourselves until we remove the walls that surrounds us stone by stone so that we may step out into the light of day.
Only when we enter into real community do we become our true selves. In the words of the poet, Rainer Maria Rilke:
"I live my life in ever widening circles, each superseding all the previous ones.
Perhaps I never shall succeed in reaching the final circle, but attempt I will.”
This is one of the primary purposes of covenant groups: to give us the opportunity to widen our circles of community and spirituality.
There is a quiet revolution going on in many religious communities today. It is a revolution of small group ministry. Some call them cell groups or meta-groups or covenant groups, but the name doesn’t matter. What matters is that these small groups are radically changing the structure and culture of faith communities.
Small group ministry is certainly not new. Early Christians met as small groups in each other’s homes to avoid the suspicion of the authorities. But these small groups have been resurrected ironically by the Christian mega-churches. These congregations discovered that the secret to growing churches with thousands of members was the development of numerous small groups.
Some of these groups are bible classes, others support groups, and others outreach groups. But the magic of the groups was simply the gathering together of a small group of people to share common experiences.
Eventually Unitarian Universalists started to realize that small group ministry was made to order for us. As congregations of people who thrive on honest conversation and learning from each other, it was a natural.
I first became interested in small group ministry when I was serving the West Shore Church in Cleveland. I started a program there with the help of my team colleague, Midge Skwire, and I was amazed at how satisfying it was for the participants and the leaders. I kept hearing responses that this is what a church should be all about.
When I arrived here a year and a half ago, Joan and the board of trustees were enthusiastic about starting a covenant group program, so Joan and I recruited leaders and trained them. Now we already have thirteen active groups, plus the leadership group, a Board of Trustees’ group, and the possibility of a couple of other spinoffs from other groups. That’s close to 150 of our members and friends who are presently involved in covenant groups. We even started a covenant group for Unitarian Universalist Ministers of Northern Virginia.
So what exactly is a covenant group? It’s not complicated. Covenant groups have the following characteristics:
First and most important of all, they consist of no more than ten people. Once you have more than ten, the group loses its sense of intimacy and community. With ten or less, everyone has the opportunity to share their experiences and to be heard.
Secondly, there is a facilitator for each group who is selected and trained by the ministers and who is part of a monthly leadership covenant group that meets with the ministers for ongoing training and support. The facilitators are not teachers or therapists or committee chairs but instead individuals who help steer a creative conversation into deeper waters of the spirit.
Third, covenant groups meet monthly or twice a month either at the church or in individual’s homes.
Fourth, covenant groups create a covenant. The covenant is a promise that group members make to each other about how they will relate when they are together. The group itself determines what their covenant will be, but it usually includes a promise of confidentiality and respect for each other and the expectation that the group will do something beneficial together in the church or in the larger community.
Fifth and last, a certain format has proved to be effective in helping participants get to know each other better and to develop their spirituality. Each group starts with an inspirational reading, then there is a check-in so that participants can share what is going on in their lives, followed by a creative conversation about a subject that relates to spiritual growth. The group ends with a brief check-out so that everyone has the opportunity to say how their needs were met, and then there is a final brief reading to send all on their way.
This is a format that works extremely well to create a sense of community and depth of spirit. We have a multitude of small groups in our church, and they are all important, but the covenant group format provides a structure that is especially effective at taking down those walls that separate us and widening our circle of community.
In fact, I’m pleased that the board of trustees and the pastoral associates use this same format so that their meetings can be more than mere meetings. And I encourage all of our committees and classes and gatherings to adopt this tried-and-true format.
So why have covenant groups? It’s not a coincidence that the purpose of these groups is the same as the three paths chosen by our congregation as the vision of our church.
The first path is one of Community Building, Growth and Outreach. As I mentioned before, this small group ministry brings people together so that they may more fully experience the intimacy of community.
The word community is used loosely in our culture to mean almost any collection of individuals without regard for the level of communications and commitment. Community, in its more radical sense, means much more. Scott Peck defines community as "a group of individuals who have learned how to communicate honestly with each other, whose relationships go deeper than their masks of composure, and who have developed some significant commitment to 'rejoice together, mourn together,' and to 'delight in each other.”
That's a superb definition of community and it's a goal I would like to see us set for ourselves as a congregation. But to create such a real community means that we must dare to enter into real relationships with each other, and we can do that best in small groups that have a format and leadership that encourages authentic intimacy.
The second path of our church vision is the Path of Religious and Spiritual Growth. Covenant groups give people the opportunity to develop a richer spirituality by encouraging them to share their beliefs and life experiences in a supportive atmosphere.
There are many different definitions of religion and spirituality, but what I mean is the relationship that exists between all beings, all experience and all facets of the Truth. Remember? Life is relationship!
We have the opportunity to expand our circle of relationship not only to other human beings, but to the Earth, to Life itself, and to God – whatever that concept means to you. Personal spirituality emerges as we gain an increased awareness of our relationship to that which is greater than ourselves.
Spiritual practice then develops as the way we integrate this realization into how we experience our lives. What we are looking for in this spiritual odyssey is not an escape from life but helpful ways to come to grips with the existential problems of everyday living. How to grow up and grow old; how to love; how to live; how to preserve one's sanity; how to make moral and ethical decisions; how to make justice in an unjust world.
If spirituality can't help us make these vital decisions in our lives, then it's meaningless. On the other hand, if our spiritual beliefs give us the courage and compassion to do the right thing when it comes to the multitude of choices we must make, then we have a religious path that is genuine and authentic.
In the words of Sophia Lyon Fahs: "The religious way is the deep way, the way with a growing perspective and an expanding view... The religious way is the way that sees what physical eyes alone fail to see, the intangibles at the heart of every phenomenon... The religious way is the way that touches universal relationships that goes high, wide and deep, that expands the feels of kinship..."
The third path of our church vision is the Path of Social Action and Ethics. Most of the covenant groups help people to not only grow their own spirituality but to struggle with social justice issues in our society, such as racism, homophobia, and ecological crisis. All groups are also encouraged to participate in projects that reach out to people beyond their own group.
To reach out to others in transforming injustice into justice is to tear down the walls that divide us and expand our circle of community. Into our circle come those who experience the pain of oppression as well as those who share in our struggle for a better world.
We grow a conscience when our consciousness takes a leap over the walls that divide us and enters into relationship. Our conscience is the awareness that other people are real like ourselves, that you hurt just like I hurt.
There’s a story about a Sufi master who one day was strolling through the streets with his students. "When they came to the city square, a vicious battle was being fought between government troops and rebel forces. Horrified by the bloodshed, the students implored, 'Quick, Master, which side should we help?'
"'Both,' the Master replied.
"The students were confused. 'Both?' they demanded. 'Why should we help both?'
"'We need to help the authorities learn to listen to the aspirations of the people,' the Master answered, 'and we need to help the rebels learn how not to compulsively reject authority.'"What this story tells us is that in true community there are no sides. There are no fences, no walls. Everyone is seen as having inherent worth and dignity, whether they're a part of the community or not.
This is what we seek to learn in our congregation and in our covenant groups: that all of us, no matter what our nation, religion, language and customs, are connected in the interdependent web of being. We are one people, one nation, one spirit. There are no boundaries, no borders, no walls. We are all related.
As you can probably tell, I am passionate about covenant groups, and my hope is that we will add more and more groups as they are needed. I would like to see support groups, social justice groups, spiritual growth groups, new member groups, special interest groups, and who knows what else. I believe that the community building and spiritual growth emphasized by covenant groups are what churches are all about, and I invite you to take part in this exhilarating movement.
May we break down the walls that separate us from one another and our world. And may we keep widening our circles until there is nothing left out.
-Amen and shalom!
