Author’s note: This is a personal response to Rev. Kate Brady-McKenna’s Summer School address in 2021, which can be seen here:

Like many fellow Unitarians, I loved Rev. Kate Brady-McKenna’s closing worship at Hucklow Summer School 2021. But it was hard to listen to these words without a wince:

“Someone does not have to become actively involved, does not have to join any committees, does not ever have to bring flowers or biscuits, does not ever have to do a reading, join a social group or anything else.  If someone comes along to our services – in person or virtual – for years and years and never even joins us for the social time afterwards, we have to be there for them. Let’s not see everyone who comes along as a potential resource.  We are the resource.  We are there to provide the nourishment.  “

I imagine I was not the only person in a position of responsibility within my congregation thinking “Yes, but… I don’t ask people to volunteer because I fancy ditching my responsibilities and sunning myself for a few weeks. It’s because we have a very small pool of volunteers, all of whom are very, very tired after a year and a half of having to become public health and online worship experts with no prior warning. Other people’s choice not to volunteer is subsidised by mine and others’ choice to do so.”

Which of us is right? Kate or myself?

Both.

Kate is entirely right to point out that many of our ways of relating to new and existing members tend to be based more on ‘what can they do for us?’ than ‘how can we meet people’s spiritual needs’? Even more importantly, and I think this is at the heart of the challenge we face now, is that if we are sincere in wanting to embrace diversity in our  congregations, our ways of working and relating to each other are going to need to change radically.

Did you spot the assumption in my sentence above, that other people have a choice to volunteer or not?

Kate – and others – would rightly point out that people on very low incomes, with poor physical and mental health, with caring responsibilities, whose first language is not English, who have literacy issues… are not in the same position as regards being able to volunteer as other people with more resources. They still have the same absolute right to have their spiritual needs met as anyone else, and to be in spiritual communities that don’t exclude them or make them feel like second-class citizens or charity cases.

I am right to point out that our congregations are generally run by a small pool of volunteers, and that many people who are volunteering in congregations now are doing so because someone asked them directly, not because they stepped forward. We are generally constituted as excepted charities or CICs, and we often own buildings and employ people, with all the attendant legal and other bureaucratic responsibilities. A lot of our organisational processes are left over from an era when the working assumption was “a full-time minister, a building we own that can be rented for income, a largely homogeneous middle-class, reasonably well-off congregation containing lots of people (often women and retired members) who can be relied upon to keep things going with volunteer labour”.

The friendly but very tired elephant in the room is braying and trumpeting and trying to get our attention, so that it can deliver the message that if we are serious about surviving and becoming more diverse, we probably need to radically rethink how we are organised, not least because becoming more diverse requires some very hard and challenging conversations and needs new skills. It’s one thing to say “freedom, reason, tolerance” and “all are welcome here!” when in practice most people in the congregation will be from the same background and have similar outlooks on life. It’s another to attempt the very delicate and challenging conversations needed to really deliver on that.

Anyone who has ever attempted to take part the conversation about why a beloved hymn which someone has sung all their life needs to change its wording from “We of all ages, women, children, man” to the more gender-neutral “We of all ages, living out our span” will know that trying to nurture an environment of freedom of thought and expression whilst at the same time having an environment where everyone feels equally respected and people are kind to each other can be a mighty challenge.

Anything that challenges assumptions people have held all their lives has the potential to be difficult and painful. I know this from first-hand experience. Like any middle-class non-disabled white person, I have frequently caught myself wanting to shout the “I’M NOT A RACIST / ABLEIST!” defence – which is missing the point. I’m neither of those things, but I grew up in a society which discriminates against Black, brown and disabled people, and without meaning to, sometimes I have caught myself behaving in ways which perpetuated those attitudes.

The moral case for doing this extra work – and it is work – to move towards diversity cannot be challenged. We cannot say “all are welcome here” without acknowledging that, often inadvertently, that isn’t always the case. That, without necessarily meaning to, our language, our buildings, and our ways of organising ourselves may exclude groups of people.

The moral case for doing this extra work does not negate the practical challenges or make them go away. Asking people who are currently volunteering to keep their congregations going to take on this extra work – and it is work – without at the same time thinking about whether they have the resources and training to do it, is doomed to failure. If the trustees are juggling running the committee meetings, ensuring the insurance is paid up, reading the government’s latest public health advice and dealing with the solicitors (all of which being a trustee legally obliges them to do) in what little free time they have left after they’ve  worked their full-time job and / or looked after the kids, grandkids, or elderly relatives, trying to find time to also learn what anti-racism means in a congregation and how to implement it is going to be nearly impossible unless they also stop sleeping.

I don’t counsel despair and throwing up our hands to say “Oh, well, it’s all too difficult!” I also don’t have a magic wand to resolve this problem. I do have a few thoughts; can we have a pragmatic and hard-headed look at what resources we’ve got and how we can free up more of them? Can we invest more in charity bonds to increase our income? Do our existing structures and practices actually serve us now? Do we need to own our own buildings? The Church of England is moving towards setting up new, lay-led Christian communities in locations as diverse as nature reserves and Chinese buffets; could we be as radical?

More controversially, should we, as congregations, be actually paying people for the work that keeps us going? The default response is usually that given our financial situation, no we can’t – but is this always the case? In a world increasingly moving away from every congregation having a trained full-time minister, can congregations, associations and the GA pool resources to employ people, even part-time, to do some of the work needed to take the administrative burden off lay leaders, and free up more time for ministry and leadership?

Another controversy; is it possible to fix everything all in one go? Trying to make a congregation friendly and welcoming to LGBTQI+ people, disabled people, people with sensory impairments, BAME people, neurodivergent people (and other groups I’m no doubt overlooking) all at once would be the ideal, but these are very different groups of people with very different needs. And that’s before we get into the reality that some people belong to more than one group at once, and that we are all individuals with individual needs.

Might it be the case that unless a congregation is blessed with strong leadership, large resources and a willingness on the behalf of everyone present to do a lot of work all at once, they might need to choose one area to focus on at once? Registering buildings for same-sex marriages takes time and effort. So do assessments for disability access and commissioning building works, reviewing publicity materials for inclusive language, and images, and rewriting constitutions to be gender-neutral. With only a limited amount of time, money and people available to do this, it may not be possible to do it all at once.

Over the last year, we have seen our movement innovate in ways we never thought possible. We’ve gone online, employed a Congregational Connections Lead, done training on congregational strategies and leading change, and held sessions on race, disability and same-sex marriage that have been genuinely challenging and spiritually nourishing. We’ve faced the challenge of Facebook groups that were becoming increasingly virulent, and resolved them. We are not obliged to be bound to the past.

And let me say that I often see posts and articles criticising Unitarianism, and whilst sometimes that criticism is deserved, I usually want to shout in response, “Yes, but I LOVE being a Unitarian! I love that I do not have to toe the line of a theology I don’t believe in in order to be part of a spiritual community! I love that I can believe in evolution and that all religions are in some ways human creations without being repeatedly told that I am wrong! I love that I am free to explore the radical meaning of the teachings of Jesus without having to hold the view that as an incarnate God he was beyond all criticism and the perfect human being! I love that I can hold the view that sex outside marriage with partners who aren’t required to be the opposite sex, and with whom you don’t intend to procreate, can be a good and life-enhancing thing without being told I’m on a path to sin and immorality! I love that I can actually be part of creating my community, rather than sitting in the pew, dropping a few quid in the box, and calling it quits!”

As we move into what we all sincerely hope is the post-pandemic era, here’s hoping the spirit of innovation stays with us, and we will rise like phoenixes from the ashes of the old. Who’s with me?