When I was a teenager at Second Unitarian, Greg Stewart was the director of religious education. Greg started a new program called Way Cool Sunday school. The most interesting component of this Sunday school for me was the element of a youth group.
Before Greg, there was no real youth group. I was the only teenager. All the rest of the families with teenagers defected to the suburbs for the good schools. Greg, bless his heart, must have recognized the loneliness I was feeling and gave me a job.
I am more of an introvert than you’d suspect, and the jobs he thought of were perfect. I was already babysitting a lot and I became the 2U babysitter. He also asked me to be a part of the children’s religious education committee. Being smart, he made sure I had transportation to and from meetings too.
It is an interesting thing to be lonely at the church you grew up in; for one thing, you perfect the art of lurking. You tend to stand on the edge of groups, ready to flee at the moment questions are turned to you, the teenager. They almost inevitably are about school, and no one really wants to talk about school when they are not there.
You tend to sit in the back of church if you go at all, or you get a job. I felt good because, as the babysitter and a member of a committee, I felt I was contributing to the life of the church in some manner. I was beginning to think about seminary and where that would happen in my life journey. It seemed quite natural to be on a committee like my mom and dad. Isn’t that what it means to be an adult in a Unitarian Universalist church—being on a committee?
The very first Unitarian Universalist youth conference I attended in Evanston proved me wrong. I was wrong in thinking it was normal to be on a committee at the age of fourteen. I was wrong to think it was normal to be lonely at church. I was wrong to think that the only role for teenagers is as the babysitter at church.
There were actual live youth groups with more than one person in them at the conference. In fact, there was a whole different kind of spirituality out there. I felt a shock of recognition in going to that Con. For the first time, I had people to be lonely WITH. I felt more at home there than I did being here.
When you are a Unitarian Universalist teenager, no one really understands what it is that you believe. Sometimes, you don’t understand it yourself. But it was super cool to find other people had this same problem of articulating their faith.
The youth group at Second Unitarian was successful about the time I began getting ready to leave for college. It was wonderful to me to see other people there and participating. It gave me hope that a youth group would become an integral component of Second Unitarian, and it has.
The loneliness didn’t really go away. You start to recognize lonely people by the look in their eyes. How they talk. What they talk about, or what they don’t talk about.
You begin to learn we all have our loneliness. Some hidden, and some not hidden.
I found that when you meet people who are also lonely, you create special holy space—liminal space, in-between space where you take that loneliness and you hold it ever so gently, like holding a newborn baby for the first time. In my case, I was in-between being a child of this church and an adult. You wonder at it. You poke at it, see if it makes you cry or laugh. Ultimately, you might resolve to do something about it.
I kept an eye on my loneliness and I went off to theological school. I found other lonely people there too. And lo and behold, I found a different kind of loneliness: The loneliness of being a community minister in a sea of people who want to be parish ministers.
Let me make a distinction. I love my colleagues. I think they are the best people in the world. But parish ministers—people who are ministers at a church—do things differently than community ministers. Meadville is a wonderful place, but its focus is really on training and developing parish ministers.
I have never really had a desire to run a church—too much time spent on committees, perhaps-—but I respect the people who do want to, very much.
Community ministers have an extra set of problems—for instance, each type of community ministry is special; each minister has to make an agreement individually with a church. And every community minister has to have an agreement with a church. The governing bodies that decide who gets to be a minister—the ministerial fellowship committee, the regional subcommittees—they don’t always understand community ministers because they work outside of the context of the church.
I felt kind of lonely—again—and I felt really frustrated. This was school. Wasn’t it supposed to teach me what I was going to do?
Until I rediscovered Robert Collyer in a class. For those of you who are not familiar with the first minister of Second Unitarian, take a gander behind you at the bust with the shiny nose. See him? That’s our first minister, and here is his anvil.
Robert’s life started out in England, where he was a blacksmith. He was married, and when his wife gave birth to their second child, she died. Robert was so lonely and sad. The feeling that lifted him out of his sadness was a call to ministry.
He began feeling a call to preaching. So, on the weekends, he would preach. He preached all over—any where he could get a pulpit—and he preached as a Methodist. But over time, he felt out of touch with Methodist dogma. In fact, his heretical feelings drove him to give up his preaching license.
He began reading—he was an avid reader, like me—and he learned about Unitarianism. He finally found a home in a faith, or rather, he found a name for what he had been preaching all of this time.
Robert fell in love again and decided to emigrate to America with his new wife. There, he took up the same routine he had in England—blacksmithing during the week and preaching on weekends. He moved to Chicago and preached there.
The first Unitarian Church of Chicago took notice of this preacher who told it like it was and who had a big heart. They hired him as their minister-at-large, which meant he did the work of the church outside of its walls. He was their social worker, and he describes it this way to a friend:
"The ministry at large is devoted to the poor—to their help in every possible way. I have a school for poor children on Sundays; I have a free night school in winter; as well as a day school, also. Then I get homes in the country for destitute children, where they are taught some craft and are well schooled and started in life. I get places for hopeless men and women; all the publicans and harlots are members of my parish—when all the churches turn them out and they are lost to society I am here to help them to themselves and to God. I visit prisons and get the deserving, or at least the deserving to do well in good places when they get out, or if it is better, get them out..."
Robert was a busy man when Unity church of Chicago, known to us as Second Unitarian, was first started. This church asked him to be their minister while they looked for a permanent one, but quickly he became the one they wanted to stay.
This idea of being a parish minister was not what Robert wanted. He loved being a community minister and social worker among his parish outside the church. He provided a special link that opened church doors and changed people’s lives. But he stayed and continued the community ministry inside. He started a day care center for children and his wife helped him by teaching Sunday school.
Robert railed against the evils of slavery from his pulpit in our church. He joined the sanitary commission during the Civil War and helped the troops, preaching when he was in Chicago. He became known as the Midwest preacher—indeed, the newspapers ran his sermons and he was known as the minister of Chicago.
In 1871, the great Chicago fire destroyed the new building they had just built. He lost almost his entire library and his own house. Robert stood on the steps of where the church was and told his people:
"For two or three days after the catastrophe I was stunned; at first I felt as if I had somehow or other got personally injured with the flames. But after two or three days, I began to wonder what I should say to you when we should all come together this morning, and it has all come to me in one word, that the fire makes no difference to me. If you’ll stay here, I will, and we’ll work together and help each other out of our troubles."
Robert, like me, found community at first outside of the church walls. He found a ministry that was starting—community ministry. It’s no coincidence that this was the same time social workers were coming into being—Jane Addams’ Hull House was hopping with people. People needed help—there were no social programs like social security, no disability aid, only private charity and a moral philosophy that drove people to help others.
The communities outside of the church are communities that we still serve. We work with Deborah’s Place. We work for equal housing and we buy special coffee. We feed people on Sunday nights. We helped begin the Night Ministry. Community ministry is not something that is just outside of the church. It is something that is interwoven into every church in some manner.
In rediscovering Robert Collyer’s secret life as a community minister, I felt like maybe I wasn’t so lonely anymore. I found a new connection in my church home at 2U. This connection between Robert and I is made more important by the fact that I think my ministry is best served by having two degrees: one from Meadville Lombard Theological school, and one in social service administration, also known as social work. I’m exactly half way through six years of school. The knowledge that community ministry is an essential part of Second Unitarian’s history is helpful to my understanding of my ministry as it evolves.
Right now, I think my calling is to work with young adults and their connections to Unitarian Universalism, either through counseling or through creating a program at a church.
Being lonely is a challenging time for people. Everyone responds differently. Some folks throw themselves into work, trying to forget this feeling. Others fall prey to depression. Yet other folks devote their lives to a cause or an idea they love. I found a calling.
Loneliness is complex. Our society says loneliness is a bad thing. It configures people into couples or families and teaches us from elementary school that there is something wrong with us if we don’t have a valentine. Being single in America is hard because we tend to associate loneliness with it. It’s almost too much to run against being the cultural norm of a couple.
You can get stuck in a mental rut, being lonely. Thinking too much can teach you things about yourself that are hard to face. Those inner demons can be right around the corner, in the medicine cabinet mirror.
However—consider this—everyone needs time to be lonely. Buddha sat under a tree for a long time. Jesus was lonely knowing his death was right around the corner at age 33. He tried all the time to be alone with his dad and succeeded only when the disciples weren’t bugging him for wisdom. Mother Teresa was alone—presumably not lonely, but alone by western standards all of her life.
Being lonely sometimes teaches a greater connection. For some people it is enough connection to come to church and be a part of the congregation. Part of the wonder and goodness of Unitarian Universalism is the diversity in loneliness: we understand being lonely in a group.
Being lonely challenges you to connect with your inner thoughts and feelings. It can be a great gift. My time being lonely in this church pushed me to pay attention to my still small voice calling me to ministry.
David Bumbaugh, a professor at Meadville, insists that the relationship of the stranger to a church is crucial sacred space for people. He says that some people need space, both physical and emotional, in order to tap into that vulnerable time that brings us into connection with the divine.
We, when we come to church, are in a marginal space, an in-between space of loneliness. Simultaneously connected and apart by our choice to be here, aware of the need for both relationship and space, desiring both.
Community ministry, for me, is about acknowledging that in-between space, the space that also exists between the congregation and the wider world. Holding that newborn baby in my hands, I offer the baby to you. Be gentle. Help our baby to grow.
Keep an eye out for the lonely people. The power of a church is not just in who it serves on the inside of its walls, but what it teaches the people on the inside about the folks on the outside. Maybe being lonely here will push you in the direction of a committee or more work on your theology. Maybe your loneliness is the birth of a new connection between yourself and someone else, or maybe a new calling.
Be gentle with yourselves at this time in your journey.