Both Sides By Rev. Nina D. Grey March, 2003

As I write, I am preparing for my fourth course in my Doctor of Ministry program at McCormick Theological School. My program is called "Pastoral Care in a Congregational Context". So far, I've taken Ministry with Groups, Human Development and the Church, and Pastoral Care and the Whole Church. This course, the intensive week of which is Feb. 24-28, is on Theological and Ethical Reflections on the Practice of Ministry. In all our courses, we are encouraged to take our contexts into account when thinking about our ministries. Although most of my learning group members are Christian, we are reflecting from interfaith and multicultural perspectives. In this course we are asked to come up with a Case Study for theological and ethical reflection. The Case Study focuses on a challenge our faith community is facing.

I thought of several challenges we face. Uppermost in my mind is the context of national preparation for war and how we, as a congregation, are or might respond. Our Social Justice Council's 911 Study Group has been educating us about some of the issues. They have also invited us into witness against war. At its last meeting, the Social Justice Council created and voted on a resolution to present to our Board of Trustees, asking the Board to reflect and then, hopefully, to invite the congregation into reflection and perhaps also decision about how the congregation might respond. Surely there are ethical reflections that I and we will undertake as we think together about this challenge. And, defining theology broadly as reflection on the nature of ultimacy and of humanity, and as reflection on our most core values as expressed in our Unitarian Universalist principles, on what we are called to, and to what we are accountable, surely also we will be reflecting theologically.

Next in my mind are our financial challenges and their meaning for our congregational life. Our Board is educating itself about these challenges. On February 23, after church, they will have provided an opportunity to the congregation to learn more and to reflect together. We know that the economy has affected our resources. We know that the condition of the spire and the need to take it down, restoring the church with its bell tower to its original architectural design, also impacts our financial resources. We know in the long run we will need to replenish our endowment and that we are embarking on possible fundraising ideas, including a potential capital campaign. And we also know that this challenge is about much more than money. It is about understanding what our decisions mean for us and for the larger community. It is about how we shall understand ourselves as a congregation and how we shall support our growing self-understanding. It is about how we will be a congregation for the spiritual growth of people of all ages. It is about the nature of our pluralistic community. Surely we will need to reflect ethically on these matters. And surely we will also need to reflect theologically in the sense I have already described.

There are other challenges too. And even as I write this, I recognize that every challenge provides opportunities for growth in depth and understanding, passion and commitment. How wide and deep is our shared pastoral outreach to one another? How shall we strengthen it? What are some of the greater implications of being a pluralistic community, pluralistic in so many ways: a multiracial, multicultural, multigenerational community? A spiritually pluralistic community? What effect might this pluralism have on our evolving religious education programs? Our pastoral care? Our social justice work? Our worship? What are our commitments to each other and to the larger community? How do we decide? What would it mean to reflect on these questions ethically and theologically?

At this moment, sun shining outside, a bright and warmer winter day, these questions are on my mind. For my course, I will need to narrow my focus and pick one, for me an always-difficult thing to do. And we, too, will not encounter every challenge/opportunity all at the same time. As we do begin to think more about each of them, we are invited to be in authentic conversation with one another. We are invited to ponder, to become more aware of our contexts, the "facts" of our lives, of our congregational life and of the world and to think about these things in relation to our shared faith principles. We are invited to listen, to speak, and to reflect together, as moments come that call for our decisions.

In faith, with love,

Nina