Have you ever learned anything the hard way? You’re past it, right now, and, as you look back over your shoulder, you go, “Whoa! That was hard–and I learned so much.”

If you’ve ever learned anything the hard way, say with me “OH YEAH”

OH YEAH.

Now maybe, this minute, you’re in the messy middle of something. You are decidedly not past it, you don’t know what your take-aways will be yet. Not only are you not past it, but you worry that it’s going to run over you, and in the end you’ll be some kind of roadkill…. 

I want to tell you right now: you will get through. You won’t be roadkill. You’ll be stronger and wiser for it. You will. You will. 

You just heard all the folks who testified OH YEAH about their own experience. 

And now, I want to testify to one of my own. One of the toughest times of learning something the hard way. 

Twenty years ago, I was ordained into the Unitarian Universalist ministry. In our religious tradition, only a congregation has the right to call an individual out of the laity and ordain them into the company of people we call Reverend. First Unitarian Church of Dallas did that for me. 

The distinguished speakers at the ordination service included, among others, the President of the Unitarian Universalist Association at that time, the Rev. Bill Sinkford, and the Senior Minister of All Souls Church in Kansas City, the Rev. Kendyl Gibbons.

I had asked Rev. Sinkford to preach my ordination sermon, which I felt was quite appropriate since I was (at the time) the Golden Boy in his campaign to grow Unitarian Universalism. I had been hired straight out of seminary (in 2003) to be the Lead Minister in what was called the UUA’s Rapid-Start Large Church Project. Essentially, the idea was to understand and copy the success of Christian megachurches which started at zero but grew into the thousands quickly. Unitarian Universalist leaders wanted to see if we could tap into megachurch magic. Could our typical UU disgust towards evangelism be turned right around? Could our reach-out to folks be more in a spirit of joy rather than awkwardness or apology? Could our churches be easier to find than, say, needles in haystacks? 

Something bolder needed to be done. 

Rev. Sinkford, together with a group of large church minister visionaries, raised a million dollars to fund the Rapid-Start Large Church Project, and they hired me to lead it. This wet-behind-the-ears, just-graduated-from-seminary, not-even-ordained-yet minister. 

Rev. Sinkford preached my ordination sermon, and I remember not one word of it. 

What I DO remember are the words that the Rev. Gibbons shared in her Charge to the Minister, which came later in the service. This is what she said in front of God and everybody. I quote: 

My dear Anthony, I bring you the greetings, congratulations, and bemused sympathy of some 1,500 of your colleagues. Make no mistake—if it feels as though you have jumped into the deep end of our Association’s political swimming pool, it’s because that is exactly what you have done. The splash reverberates around the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association. Any number of more experienced swimmers than you, my friend, have come to grief in the riptides and undertows of this particular stretch of water. If you don’t yet think that you are in over your head, it’s because you haven’t fully grasped the reality of your situation. And yet, I promise you that for the most part, we wish you well. It is high time that our liberal religious community learned to do this kind of work, and to get it right. 

How I wish I could have seen Sinkford’s face when she said all this! Maybe he smiled (or grimaced) knowingly. Of course. He was the UUA President. He knew all about the deep ends of political swimming pools. 

Soon enough, I would too.

OH YEAH.

But why, as a wet-behind-the-ears minister, would I accept the job offer? I had seven other offers to choose from which were much less risky. But lots of people said heck yes—you are exactly the right entrepreneurial leader for the job. One seminary professor did counsel me to be careful; he said that the UUA was, and I quote, “a repeat offender in the category of overpromising.” Another seminary professor I loved and respected above all was ambiguous in his advice. After I took the job, I heard through the grapevine that he believed I had compromised myself. 

Hearing this bewildered me. I could not comprehend what this meant. And it hurt. He had been the one who taught me that the Universe can take even our most flawed actions and turn them into some good, so have faith in your meager offering. He had taught me that. That grace is real, and the wrong train can take us to the right station. 

This teaching touched me to my core. I’m not the sort of person to allow myself to be touched so deeply. So his judgment that I had compromised myself stung badly.

It would take years before I understood just what he meant. 

OH YEAH.

I will say that in that challenging time of deciding which job offer to accept, I came across this poem by Rainer Maria Rilke: 

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.

I want to free what waits within me

so that what no one has dared to wish for

may for once spring clear

without my contriving.

If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,

but this is what I need to say.

May what I do flow from me like a river,

no forcing and no holding back.

When I heard these words, it felt like it was Love speaking to my heart. I did believe that so much of what was possible with Unitarian Universalism had not yet been spoken. And I did want to free what waited within me, to experience it flowing from me like a river, springing clear without contrivance. 

At least with this part, there could be no compromise at all. 

This is why I said yes to the Search Team representing the UUA’s Rapid Start Large Church Project. This was what decided it for me. This vision of the Spirit of Life that is always already moving in our midst, and our task is to learn the structures and the means to get out of its way and allow it to work upon us, so that we are all feeling ourselves as a part of that river, and what began as a bunch of random individuals becomes a Beloved Community of no forcing and no holding back…

Life handed me the Rapid-Start Large Church Project, and working in partnership with wonderful lay leaders like Meryl Gunter, Kristen Robertson, Therese Adamiec, Larry Pettit, and so many others, we transformed what had been a grab bag assortment of “best practice” church growth ideas into a living Church with a vibrant DNA. 

Together, we gave birth to a baby, and we named it Pathways Church. 

Our very first official Sunday service was on Sept. 19, 2004 and we had 142 folks in attendance. On the way to that glorious day and afterwards, as often as I could, I shared my vision for Pathways and it was always in the form of BIG METAPHORS. The vision flowing from me like a river—the vision Love was whispering in my ear—allowed for nothing less. So I am unsurprised as I look through old sermons from the time and discover one in which I talk about “growing spiritual redwoods.” Here’s an excerpt: 

Some years back, I had been traveling in California and found myself at Redwood National Park. I had heard things about redwood trees before, how they live an average of 600 years and some up to 2000 years. How, from something as small as a tomato seed, they can grow to heights of up to 370 feet and widths of 22 feet at the base. I had heard all this, but hearing and seeing are different things. The face-to-face reality blew me away. Down my back ran a shiver, and goosebumps sprung up on my arms. It was an AMEN moment, a moment of AWE. 

But immediately came the insight: how could I even recognize the sacredness of this moment unless something sacred was already within me? The insight nudged at me, until the idea formed: the spiritual redwood inside of me was recognizing the spiritual redwoods outside of me. I laughed when this namaste-like insight landed. Of course! You and I and everyone has a spiritual redwood within–or at least the seed of one, a seed that itches to burst open; a potential that ultimately wants to grow into nothing less than peace like a river, joy like a fountain, love like an ocean, pain like an arrow, tears like the raindrops, strength like a mountain. 

We are all spiritual redwoods waiting to happen. 

And that’s a bit from an old, old sermon. 

Now, why am I bringing up ancient history? Pathways started twenty years ago. Since then, I have been the Senior Minister of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta for 12 years, and now I am in my fifth year here at West Shore. Pathways was so long ago….

But, as I said at the beginning of this sermon, I bring it up to spark a remembrance in yourself of your own stories of learning things the hard way. To spark an affirmation of the resilience that got you through or will get you through. 

OH YEAH.

But there is another reason for sharing which I have not already put out there: it’s that when we tell our stories of vulnerability like this, and we allow ourselves to be more fully known, warts and all, love grows. I love you and want you to know me. Upon the 20th anniversary of my ordination, I want you to know about this particular experience of growing up, an experience that changed me forever. 

When you look at me, I want you to see someone who has been nothing less than the Golden Boy of a denomination–and then the bottom fell out. The goal of the Rapid-Start Large Church was for there to be an average of 465 attendees at worship after only six months of opening our doors. After 18 months of worship, there was to be an average of 808 folks every Sunday. 

Mission impossible, right? And, just like in the Mission Impossible movie, I was handed a plan that was supposed to take us there: plant the church in a Dallas/Fort Worth suburb called Keller (acres of land had already been purchased–I kid you not!); start by building a network of small groups and don’t gather for communal worship until you can guarantee 300 folks in attendance; start with a church staff team of multiple full-timers; and so on. Like Mission Impossible hero Ethan Hunt, I took that plan and ran with it, and sought to marry it to the realities on the ground. 

Besides handing me the plan, denominational officials also said, ”We’ve never done something like this before. No Unitarian Universalist knows how. So, make mistakes as fast as you can and learn from them. Embrace trial and error.” And this was the right thing to say. It was the fair thing to say. However, it became clear, all too soon, that there was in fact no room for mistakes. We burned through the one million dollar seed money that made the project possible, primarily because the Keller/Southlake area was super pricey, and because the multiple staff of full-timers only meant a hugely expensive overhead. Nothing less than a perfectly conceived plan from Day 1, led by a minister already experienced with church planting, would have been necessary to achieve anything close to the results denominational officials hoped for. 

There were even more surprises. When I consulted with a professional church-planter named Tom Bandy in the first months of my work, imagine my surprise when he strongly disagreed with many of the starter tactics that I had been directed to implement and were non-negotiable. Tom also pointed out that church plants which result in megachurch-style growth tend to require an almost militaristic mindset in the leaders and the followers. Churches that grow into megachurches need army-like discipline. He took one look at who we are as a freedom-loving, liberal people, and he laughed. He just could not see how our cultural DNA was consistent with a conservative Christian rapid-growth model. 

I left that consultation wondering if the UUA higher-ups who created the whole Rapid-Start Large Church Project idea had ever spoken with folks who really knew the subject matter. Or if, out of megachurch envy, they had just fantasized a big plan and never really did the necessary due-diligence to see if it was even possible…..

(I couldn’t find a picture that evoked “megachurch envy” per se–but this one does a good job evoking the envy part….)

Two years into the Project, the denomination pulled all funding. I immediately had to let go of all our full time staff: Executive Director Meryl Gunter, Worship Pastor Rev. Christine Tata, and Family Ministries Pastor Rev. Rob Moore. Dropped just like that. How terrible for them, and how terrible for everyone who had come to love them and rely on them. It felt like the denomination saw us as a mere project–a Frankenstein–but I knew Pathways intimately, as a living, breathing church with real people and things at stake. If congregations can suffer bleeding chest wounds, Pathways did; and I was the MASH unit to put it back together and keep it going. When I went to the annual meeting of the UUA that year (General Assembly) in 2006, I hung my head in shame while I slunk around conference rooms and hallways, painfully aware of all the people staring. 

I was *that* minister. 

In subsequent years, there would be General Assembly workshops featuring church planting. I was never invited to be on any of them. 

The Golden Boy was now just something smelly at the bottom of a shoe. 

When you look at me, I want you to see all this. 

OH YEAH.

But I also want you to see how I still believe. I still believe in all that has never yet been spoken. I still believe that something waits within me and within us all that is ready to be unleashed. I still believe in the Spirit of Life and Love that can, if unblocked, flow from us like a river, no forcing and no holding back. 

I still believe in the spiritual redwood within, that aims for peace like a river, joy like a fountain, love like an ocean, pain like an arrow, tears like the raindrops, strength like a mountain.

And, I’ve learned a thing or two. I’ve got the scars to prove it. Yes, the UUA really is a “repeat offender in the category of overpromising.” It never comes from a bad place. But from the first UUA presidency of Dana McLean Greeley (back in the early 1960s)  who spent money like it was growing on trees, to the financial overpromising that was a big factor in the Black Empowerment Controversy, to our denomination-wide enthusiasm for Policy Governance and how that was supposed to solve everything, to the Rapid Start Large Church Project, and on and on, we have seen this pattern stuck on repeat. Denominationally, but also at the congregational level, we can find ourselves falling in love with grand visions, and we throw ourselves into them without doing the necessary homework first. We want to exempt ourselves from the homework and we say, Let’s just do it and learn trial-and-error. Leaders can even denounce people who don’t immediately get on board. And, in my experience, every time a vague project idea is sent into the world like this, people get hurt. They do. 

Understand me: there will always be a need for trial-and-error learning, but that’s no excuse not to pause and do at least some of the necessary homework first. 

OH YEAH.

At both denominational and congregational levels, we aspire to embody Beloved Community, but we must never underestimate how the devil is in the details. We will continue to be an endlessly frustrating denomination if we don’t cease being fascinated by the latest silver bullet solution and cease being possessed by a spirit of perfectionism and envy.  

Please, let us cease from this. Let’s stop this. Because a Spirit of Life natural power stirs within us RIGHT NOW. The megachurch envy that was at the base of the Rapid Start Large Church Project–which is why my beloved seminary professor said that I had compromised myself, that I had compromised myself to this megachurch envy–it was only a distraction. It was unnecessary. Enthusiasm for liberal religion is already in people’s hearts. People are already hungry for integrity and freedom and creativity in religion. People are already hungry for that, and it just doesn’t require the ice-cream cone reward of the megachurch to get them interested! 

Denominational politics–so often possessed by a spirit of perfectionism–can be so very frustrating. It’s just the truth. But as for every-day Unitarian Universalism? It is still the sweetest honey, a path to beauty, a gift to the world, and we need to keep inviting (in all our imperfect ways) as many people as possible into this, so they can receive the gift too. 

The inner spiritual redwood is real, and it waits for our patient gardening to grow. That’s the only justification, really, for any church ever to exist. 

I still believe. 

And, gratefully, I can say that Pathways still exists. It celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2023. 

I gave birth to that. It still exists, despite the great trauma it suffered. May it serve as a reminder to all of us that, yes, the Universe can take even our most flawed actions and turn them into some good. Yes, yes it can. So have faith in your meager offering. Grace is real. The wrong train can take us to the right station. 

OH YEAH.

Pathways, may you still believe in all that has never yet been spoken. 

May it flow from you like a river. 

West Shore, may you free what waits within you.

no forcing and no holding back.

Someone once said that “any old fool can tear any sermon apart in seconds if they want to, so it must take an exceptionally committed fool to decide to write one.” 

For 20 years, I have been this exceptionally committed fool. 

Because what Love says is that we are the people we’ve been waiting for, and now is always the time. 

OH YEAH.

OH YEAH.