I have begun attending a Community of Practice, hosted by the Wisconsin Conference of the UCC.

Six UCC pastors meet each month as a community to talk about pastoral ministry. It is a chance to talk with friends who have answered the call to ordained ministry and how we put this call into practice.

It is a great help to gain perspective of congregational life in other churches, sharing the joys and burdens of ministry.

Our leader, Bob Ullman, a retired pastor, has many years of experience serving as the church, and now works with the Wisconsin Conference to develop pastors and to help congregations.  

Bob shared an article recently on the page that follows.  

The article, originally published in the Wisconsin Conference Newsletter, summarizes a talk Cameron Trimble delivered to local pastors and church leaders. I hope it speaks to you as it did to me.

Yours in Christ,

Pr. Craig 

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Congregations Provide the ‘Circles of Sanity’ We all Need

The pandemic is over, but the challenges to mainline churches remain: Although 50 to 60% of people are regathering in person, there’s nothing to suggest that the other 40 to 50% of the congregation plans to return. How can the church thrive in the face of those statistics?

The answer, suggests the Rev. Cameron Trimble, is to engage our collective imagination to shape the church we want to see. Trimble, a UCC pastor, futurist and church consultant, earlier this month delivered a Leadership Matters Lecture hosted by the Damascus Project. Her talk, “Church Post-Doom: The Future of Spirituality and Congregational Life,” took dead aim at the malaise gripping many segments of the church.

“What we’re suffering from in the human condition is a poverty of imagination,” she said, noting later that “innovation comes at times of desperation.”

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated existing trends, Trimble said, including the breakdown of democracy, the climate crisis, the racial reckoning around the death of George Floyd and widening economic inequality, as well as the declining size of religious institutions and their influence on society. One result of these trends is an epidemic of loneliness.

“It feels like a hot mess,” she said.

The antidote: Build “circles of sanity . . . communities that hold the values we want to see in the world.”

“I would call them ‘congregations,’” Trimble said. Among the keys to building the congregations that serve the future we want:

• Build trust. “Change moves at the speed of trust,” Trimble said, and people increasingly find institutions untrustworthy. As we create “circles of sanity,” let’s make sure they provide a trusting, safe environment where relationships can blossom.
• Be authentic. For trust to grow, congregations and individuals must be accountable for being who they say they are.
• Nurture community and connection. “That’s the subversive act of congregational life,” she said. 
• Communicate. Lack of communication erodes trust. In her work with congregations, “Almost universally one of the first complaints is ‘I don’t know what’s going on,’” Trimble said, noting that “surprised people behave badly.”
• Recover a deep sense of spirituality. People of faith must cultivate the inner life, to “recover a deep sense of spirituality, of experiencing the faith we proclaim.”

These imperatives are vital to innovation. “What we need to be doing is building and rebuilding trust, identifying and living values, building connections and bringing forth our greatest creativity to meet the moment,” Trimble said.