Rev. McKinley L. Sims, M.Div.

Friends, 

(Below is an excerpt from my annual report to our congregation. What a blessing to be here in the now, present with all of these wonderful people. Here’s to many more.)

It’s come to the end of our first year together. What a year it’s been! My unofficial theme for this year was “Building a Bigger Sanctuary.” I feel real comfortable saying we’ve done that in a whole lot of ways. We crafted and celebrated worship services from diverse traditions and with diverse theological language to name the Holy. We joined in seven new members, and a whole host of new children were dedicated and welcomed to the Restoration family. We lived our values with our feet, showing up in solidarity for our trans community here in Philly, for our public schools in the halls of Harrisburg, and on the streets of Washington, DC. But most of all, we lived by our covenantal principles with one another, even when it wasn’t always easy, or straightforward, or particularly enjoyable. 

That’s life, though. It’s being present with folks even when you have a headache and they say that one thing that gets under your skin. It’s coming to worship and hearing that one hymn you don’t agree with. It’s the disappointment of a program not flourishing quite how you’d envisioned it.

And….

It’s a packed house on Christmas Eve. It’s a day of service in honor of Dr. King. It’s a Juneteenth celebration complete with cowboy hats and spirituals. It’s two memorials and thirteen child dedications. It’s that reading that speaks to you, the hymn that moves you. The brave soul who shares their struggle that brings out your tears of empathy and the one who makes you laugh from deep in your belly.

Like our Joys and Sorrows ritual, it’s a mixed bowl, this thing called church. I call it that because church for me has always been a metaphor and a microcosm of life– a mixed bowl. Church is a beautiful and messy gathering of perfectly imperfect people in a building that ought to be big enough to hold all the hurts and all the triumphs and all the names of God and all the styles of prayer and all the religious symbols you can get your hands on. It ought to be a place of safety and comfort…but it should also be a little bit brave and make you squirm in your seat if you feel too safe…too comfortable…too disconnected from your fellow worshippers. It’s a place where you show your hurts to others and start the healing process. It’s a place of truth and mystery, where we show one another who we truly are. A space where Humanists, Agnostics, Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, Earth Centered folks (and those of us still trying to find a theology that speaks to us deeply) can meet up and show up with our full selves to be fully known and to fully know one another. 

Life happens in that space– that space of discomfort and courage where the deep connections with one another are made. We don’t grow by hearing only the same messages from each other. We grow when we are challenged. When we have to translate and make new meanings.

I tried to challenge you this year, as a congregation and as individuals. I spoke my truth in hopes that you might recognize some of you in it, too. I shared my stories and my wrestlings, in the hope that you might feel like wrestling and doubting is part of the process. I asked you to build a bigger sanctuary by starting with yourself, by naming your own stuff, the shadows of our souls. I asked you to be welcoming of people of all faiths, including mine, and I railed against people who use my faith to justify their bigotry, their greed, and their hate. I will continue to do that, to challenge you and claim the promise of our UU experiment that is a beautiful interfaith sanctuary, where we are all nourished deeply by our personal spiritual practices and beliefs, and we find connection and joy in experiencing the spiritual practices and beliefs of our neighbors. It is a challenge. I know that. And that’s why we’re gonna keep at it. So I ask you to challenge me, too. It’s the only way I can grow. 

Actually, I can also grow sideways, as my need for a new pair of pants has informed me. Potluck Sunday is a huge blessing, y’all….but it does have consequences for your minister’s waistline! May we continue to grow in healthy ways, despite the challenges! 

Speaking of, here are some of the other challenges from this year: we had dreams of a fully functioning Lay Pastoral Care team that would help meet the spiritual needs of folks recovering from illness or going through hard times. The structure is now there, and our volunteers have been trained, but personal circumstances for many of them cut into our launching it with as much relish as I would have liked. I like to celebrate things, you may have realized. 

We’ve got a few of our folks who are in need of more help getting transportation. That will only grow as we get older. We’re in the process of revamping the volunteer structure to better meet the needs of coordinating care for our elders, welcoming guests and new members, and connecting folks in need of pastoral care with me or with our Lay volunteers. That requires commitment from you, and I know you’re already doing a lot. We’re taking it slow. 

I had hoped to build stronger relationships with our neighbors in faith in the immediate community, and I’ve made some friendships with local clergy. That prompted two new churches to join the PIHN guests’ dinner teams, and we should be proud of that. However, I’d love for us to have some kind of relationship with local congregations, even and especially the ones that are more conservative than us. They’re most in need of the message of Love with a capital L, in my view. 

We haven’t always acted as our best selves. Sometimes we use the ritual of Joys and Sorrows to air grievances, or for personal political agendas, or for other totally human reactions that aren’t sins. They’re not wrong, but there is a better time for them to be said than during a worship ritual. As always, I will continue to ask you, “How does that make you feel?” if I hear something that doesn’t meet the spiritual threshold of the ritual. And it’s because I love you and naming our emotions in community is a direct antidote to the white supremacy cultural inclination to never appear imperfect. We’re not perfect, and that’s why we get together on Sundays to worship together- that we might learn from one another and become our highest selves. The growing pains are part of the process, and I have full confidence in our ability to build Beloved Community.

With that, we celebrate our victories this year: 

• More than 150 pastoral visits, phonecalls, conversations, and connections 
• A renewed sense of purpose and energy towards our 200th Anniversary 
• A new group of members, friends, and families 
• An uptick in average Sunday attendance
• Excellent worship experiences using the Soul Matters resources for both RE and Sanctuary worship 
• Some cutting edge work done by our 8th Principle team to help us dismantle racial oppression ino ourselves and in this church 
• Commitment to POWER and interfaith coalitions seeking justice across our state. 
• A brilliant voter registration drive and election day turnout! 
• Rich and deep conversations about who we want to be together, how we want to be together, and whether the name of our congregation reflects those desires 
• The completed service of some incredible Board members and an incoming group who will continue to lead us faithfully 
• A couple of very successful community bazaars!
• Ten weeks of interfaith hospitality for 5 different families in need of sanctuary in our church
• The return of the Singles scene to our community, reclaiming that part of our identity as a Mt. Airy congregation that the wider community feels connected to
• A fantastic Pledge Drive with the Goal met!
• The four year anniversary of the faithful witness of or Black Lives Matter Vigil
• Friends of the congregation connected to housing, food, employment, and social services when no one else would help
• Faith lived out loud. Prayers made with feet. Justice sought. Love sided with.

Our congregation is special. I have no doubt about that. It is special because of You. Every one of y’all who supports the mission in ways both large and small. Our worship associates. The building and grounds crew. The Board. The staff. The hospitality teams. The coordinators. The flower crew. The A/V team. The ushers. The justice council. The vigil goers. The folks who bring chicken to potluck. The folks who do the audit and manage the finances. The folks who bring friends to church. The choir. The musicians. The cleaners and the dancers and the drummers and the lovers.

We are you. We are us together. And together, we are more than we could be separate. That’s the promise of Unitarian-Universalism. If we can ever bring our whole selves to the sanctuary and be in it together, we’d have the foundation for Beloved Community that welcomes all people. 

A man named Paul once wrote a letter to a faith group in the city of Corinth. The church was having issues, because they were small and didn’t always get along. They had different ideas and were struggling to survive and thrive in much wider world. But they had a vision for who they wanted to be, the kind of world they wanted to build. I think their vision and situation are similar to ours. That vision runs on two things: vulnerability and faith. Vulnerability to drop our walls and open our doors to let the Other into our life, into our pain, and into our heart. Faith to bring a sense of security and Hope to our every action, that guides us on our path to build that Beloved Community, that Kingdom of God, that Kin-dom of the Good. We will need these tools – vulnerability, faith, and hope – to stay engaged going forward, to wrestle with where race, gender, and theology intersect and have become barriers for us, and to heal our wounded corners into a tapestry of Restoration. 

If we are to continue the work of living out the 8th Principle, which I believe is the most important work we can do as humans and as UUs, we will need our own personal faith and trust in the faith of others. We will need courage to be vulnerable and authentic with one another. And finally, we will need one more thing. As that great theologian (with whom I don’t always agree, but he was on the money this time…) once wrote, speaking to a small faith group in Corinth having growing pains of being together, we need Love to go forward together. Faith, yes. Vulnerability, yes. Hope, yes…..and… 

“the greatest of these, is Love.” May that always be so. Amen.