Ironicschmoozer’s Weblog

Sometimes during previous UUA presidential election campaigns I voted for a candidate who had the support of accomplished and revered colleagues who knew the person well and could articulate the candidate’s gifts and accomplishments to me.  Sometimes I put my support behind a candidate whom I had known up close over a stretch of time.  This time, I will be voting for the candidate who fits both of those descriptions, Laurel Hallman.

I think the UUA will be well served by either of the current candidates. I think we have been well served by the dialogue that Peter and Laurel have conducted with each other.  Moreover, they have  sparked important conversations among volunteer and professional leaders about our congregations and the future of our movement.  I am glad that Peter entered the race, but I am voting for Laurel.

Many months ago I heard that Laurel was being urged to run for UUA president and was considering it seriously.  I found this hard to believe, but was thrilled to hear it, so I emailed Laurel to tell her how I felt and give my own encouragement.   Since then, close colleagues and friends of mine–experienced, wise and brave ministers who have taught me so much about ministry–lined up to endorse her and join her campaign team.

Twenty-seven years ago (surely not that long ago!) in Bloomington, Indiana, a group of undergraduate friends and I walked into a church that we had just learned about.  This is how Laurel Hallman became not only the first Unitarian Universalist minister I’d ever heard but also the first female minister I’d ever heard.  We were gleeful and nearly incredulous at her choice of relevant, real-life sermon topics,  and touched by her accessible, intelligent and powerful preaching.  I recall with gratitude her friendliness and approachability.

We kept going to church there for the rest of my senior year of college.  My attraction to this faith and my discernment of a call to ministry began in those encounters with Laurel Hallman.  Of course, you can read stories from countless people inspired by Laurel in significant ways.  My story is not exceptional, but it matters to me because I found this faith at a crucial and scary time in my life.  Finding it has transformed my life.

During that same  year, a close friend was having intellectual and spiritual difficulties with his Roman Catholic faith. The rest of us raved about Laurel’s wisdom and intelligence, and we urged him to ask her for pastoral counseling.  She generously gave him some of her precious time and listening presence.  She didn’t convert him or otherwise help him leave his admittedly flawed church, because that did not turn out to be what he was seeking.  She helped him discern his longing, clarify his thinking, and reclaim his faith in ways that would sustain him and help him keep his integrity.  Last year I saw him for the first time in 23 years.  He’s a college professor with a longtime male partner and a 10 year old child.  He remains a committed Catholic and he won’t let any right-wing archbishop take his faith away from him.  He recalled for me how helpful Laurel had been to him as a young adult, and how smart and wise she was.   Laurel’s ministry to my Catholic friend exemplifies the generosity of our faith.

In 1991 as a lay person I attended a convocation of UUs for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Concerns (now Interweave) at Laurel’s large church in Dallas.   By that year AIDS was killing off thousands of gay men among many other people on the margins of society.  We learned of Laurel’s leadership in the community and her guidance of the church’s pastoral and practical ministries to those suffering from the symptoms of AIDS and its stigma.

Laurel led the welcoming worship for us on Friday night and preached a sermon on Sunday in honor of our gathering.  She spoke of the need to live with one foot in each of two worlds:  the real world and the possible one, the world that we were yet to achieve.  Many of us were in tears.  I recall few of the sermon titles or messages I’ve heard over the years, but I remember that one.  I recall also that she began the service by introducing by name each one of her ministerial colleagues who was present for the conference.  Laurel’s gestures of welcome and her church’s leadership in its community exemplify the generosity of our faith.

All this took place long before I knew that Laurel had been a DRE at a large church in Minnesota, where she forged a new, spiritually rich children’s RE curriculum called Images for Our Lives. This was long before I saw her “Living by Heart” video, which introduced spiritual disciplines that could appeal to people for whom old religious terms or traditional practices were impediments.  It was before I learned that so many congregations are made ineffectual or even hurtful by a lack of transparency, an absence of mission, or a failure to practice covenantal relationships.  Laurel’s current and former parishioners (including key lay leaders where I serve) testify to the remarkable health, growth and effectiveness of the Dallas congregation during Laurel’s decades of collaborative and accountable stewardship there.

Laurel has long experience in policy-based governance, which the UUA Board is adopting as it strives to clarify leadership roles and empower the administration to pursue clear goals and achieve measurable outcomes.

She  has raised daunting amounts of money for expansions of her church’s physical plant and for expansions of its ministries within and beyond the congregation.  The burden and relentlessness of fundraising is a large but little acknowledged part of the UUA president’s job.  Laurel’s past challenges and successes have prepared her for this job.

Laurel has mentored seminary interns into skillful and confident ministers. She has been a leader in her city and interfaith community, especially in working for local economic justice.  She has led countless church members into discerning their own ministries as laypersons and living them out in the world.

I am happy to be voting for Laurel Hallman.  Her  leadership continues to encourage my faith in the possibilities for our congregations and the future of our movement.

(To recap from Part 1: Linda Laskowski, our brilliant PCD trustee to the UUA Board, and I saw the same UUA presidential candidate presentations at our recent District Assembly but we came away with different conclusions.) 

I enjoy Peter Morales’s energy and way with words, and I agree he
knows how to fire up a crowd of UUs, but as a district board member
here I had been expecting that both leaders would be giving a major
address, not a stump speech.

Peter made a lively campaign appearance in the morning. Though Laurel
Hallman did take audience questions in her post-dinner address, she
first gave a strong, thoughtful, research-based and visionary address
to us about a window of opportunity for the liberal church: the
Millenial Generation of young adults, born UUs and unchurched alike.

Demographically, they are the most multi-ethnic generation of adults
ever; they are more numerous than the Baby Boomers were. Spiritually,
Millenials are now in an open yet risky phase of life; they yearn for
depth, meaning and purpose; they want to make a difference in the
world. Furthermore, Laurel said, the Millenials (unlike the earlier
Generation Y) are NOT anti-institution. Thank God!

If we are to be relevant to the worlds around us, if we are to be true
to our spiritual legacy, if we are to walk the walk, it is more than a
calling that our congregations learn how to minister to Millenials–it
is a necessity, a demand. That’s what I took away from her heartfelt
address.

Laurel did something better than stir us up: she challenged us to
start with ourselves. Laurel called on us to encourage young adults
to find their depth by seeking our own depth, to promote their growth
by attending to our own growth, to help them gain spiritual maturity
by becoming spiritually mature ourselves. In other words, we can’t
feed the spiritually hungry until we can be present to our own hunger
and until we can know what it means to be fed.

Who are the “ourselves” to whom Laurel makes these challenges? I
think she is addressing the current keepers of the flame and the
sitters on the franchise.

Yet I trust that she will not just exhort us to change, she will bring her gifts of wisdom, experience, tenacity and courage to guide and help congregations and congregation members
transform themselves and the communities beyond our church walls.

Our excellent and beloved PCD trustee to the UUA Board and I saw the same candidate presentations at District Assembly but came away with different conclusions.  

Trustee Linda Laskowski recalled that in “their first 100 days in office” Peter Morales said he would pursue his vision with urgency and Laurel Hallman said she would start with the staff.  Linda said Laurel’s intention is appropriate but it’s not what the crowds want to hear in a campaign.  Sure, and I would add that it may not be what we want to hear in a president’s address at General Assembly.  

Well, we’ve been fired up and urged on by excellent presidential orators for decades, but those convention-hall altar calls have not correlated with any growth in the UUA ‘s membership numbers.  

Remembering that the growth of our movement relies on the growth of local congregations, my urgent concern is for wisdom and leadership to help congregations achieve health, strength, depth, relevance and effectiveness in  our local communities.

With most organizations, your best assets are your people, the relationships among them, and the health of the system. I am heartened that as a leader Laurel wants to attend to the health and strength of her first and best resource.  

The UUA President heads a team of people who work for an organization with a religious purpose:  to serve congregations and extend the reach of our faith.  

There is deep dedication and talent among UUA staff at all levels.  We put incredible expectations on them; many of them work too much.  Soon, due to lost revenues, we’ll have fewer of them to do all that work.  Maybe it will fortify those who remain if they pause to ask:  Just what are we doing here?  Given how hard this work is, what’s in in for me?  

Whether in time of financial crisis or not, in individual church leaders might pause to ask ourselves and one another the same questions.