PUUF and Covenant A message to the Fellowship from your Board of Directors
Unitarian Universalism is a covenantal community, not a creedal community. We are not joined together by a common belief system, and in fact, in our Fourth Principle, we aver a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. We honor theological diversity, but what holds us together at the core of our creedless faith is covenant. Covenant is both a noun and a verb. It can be a written agreement among fellowship members promising to behave in certain ways, and it can mean to engage in those mutual promises. Those mutual commitments, promises and agreements are the processes that form the bond of our fellowship and its center.
Creating, agreeing to, and periodically re-visiting a covenant is a tool for building a foundation of trust and mutual respect within a fellowship. By creating shared expectations around the behaviors we want to cultivate, we come closer to creating the beloved community. A covenant is also the positive expression of healthy behavior that makes for a healthy congregation. As George K. Beach has phrased it “People do not ‘join’ a covenantal community; rather they constitute it.”
PUUF is a fellowship with membership in the Unitarian Universalist Association, a relatively new member because of a choice made by members who remain active today. In accordance with our Fifth Principle we believe in democratic processes of self-determination, since UUA supports independent polity.
Our Bylaws establish a democratically elected Board of lay leaders to establish goals, guide the fellowship toward them and steward our resources. The fellowship asked the Board to move us to our new space at the Presbyterian Church and we did. The fellowship invested a Ministerial Search Committee to recommend a minister to the board. The Search Committee recommended Reverend Cawley. The board contracted with Reverend Cawley in a shared ministry, one half with UUCCWC in Hillsboro and one half with PUUF. The circumstances are unique in that Reverend Cawley’s ministry is being done virtually and remotely, an experiment in the time of Covid the details of which we are still trying to work out. However, what is clear from the contract is that Reverend Cawley has responsibility and authority over all worship services. How exactly this was going to work was a source for confusion at the beginning of her contract, especially since she assumed her duties somewhat abruptly at the start of the worship year.
Miscommunication and mistakes at the start of the worship year occurred and were at least partly because Reverend Denise and the Sunday Service Committee weren’t speaking the same language. Reverend Cawley has been using the language of covenant because we are UU. Reverend Cawley assumed that we had a covenant that was a living document as to how we will behave together in fellowship, but we don’t really. We have our gathering affirmation, but have not been more specific about what we expect of ourselves and each other. We must come in to right relations, all of us together, and that means we need to make a new covenant.
Writing a covenant is important and powerful work that this Fellowship must engage in now. A covenant is aspirational, expressing what we hope can be our best selves together. Living it is another thing, and it takes practice and commitment, but it can be transformative. As we work on our covenant, we will ask for a Listening Circle, a safe space with UUA mediation, to hear the concerns of those members of the fellowship who are uncomfortable with the direction PUUF is taking. I would ask that those who are dissatisfied be clear in their own minds on what their issues are when we are in a Listening Circle. We also plan a workshop on healthy congregations in December. There will be more details on the Listening Circle forthcoming.
Being UU requires work, work at being curious and supportive, kind and loving, but also growing and changing. We are humans and often times fail in our efforts, but we can still chose to keep trying to cherish one another in the beloved community.
In fellowship,
Laura Gordon, President, on behalf of the PUUF Board of Directors
Currently our gathering affirmation, based on a covenant written by Unitarian minister Rev. James Vila Blake around 1900, seems to serve as our statement of covenant.
Love is the spirit of this Fellowship
And service is its prayer.
This is our great Covenant,
To dwell together in peace,
Seek the truth in love,
And to help one another.
Blake’s original covenant: Love is the spirit of this church, and service is its law. United in the free quest of high values in religion and life, We covenant with one another: To dwell together in peace, to seek the truth in love, and to help one another.
UUA resources where you can learn more about covenant:
https://www.uua.org/leadership/library/congregational-covenants