Minister’s Letter — June 2006
We have recently welcomed new members to the Fellowship. When new members are introduced at Sunday morning services, I usually read a statement I wrote several years ago about what it means to become a member of the Fellowship. I’ve decided to include it in this space for all of us to read and especially those who are still considering whether to join the Fellowship. It still best expresses my own thoughts about membership. Of course, I could elaborate about each sentence. I’m sure it can be improved. I often say to people that we are a liberal religious community as opposed to a literalist” religious community that is defined by dogma. In other words our faith or worldview is shaped by our own personal experiences, knowledge, insights, and fortified by reason. Our overall mission is ministry. These thoughts are at least implied in the membership statement below. Hopefully it’s a good enough statement to serve as a guide for those of us who are already members who may want to contemplate anew what your membership means and to those who are considering membership.
This is what I say:
This morning we welcome new members into our Fellowship— persons who find themselves in agreement with our principles and willing to support our program and who want to affiliate themselves with our religious community.
Membership in this Fellowship means that a person has made a decision to join a community of human beings who are searching for Truth, struggling for justice and who strive to live in loving relationship with one another. In other words we are primarily concerned with how we should live, individually and collectively, so that we might become better people, partners, parents and citizens. One does not have to be a member here to believe in those ideals. But for many of us, joining and becoming a member somehow deepens our commitment to those ideals and to the common good of the larger community. We are saying in effect: “this is where I stand.”
Membership in this place also signifies a reciprocal relationship with a religious community wherein one not only receives and is enriched by its intellectual and spiritual offerings but also gives back to the Fellowship so that the congregation may thrive and remain a beacon to those in the larger community looking for a spiritual home like ours.
We represent not a building or a creed, but a high ideal, a set of principles and values, drawn from many different sources, humanistically grounded and spiritually vivifying, to which we remain daily committed and from which we create and experience the meaning of our lives. See you at the Fellowship!
Jim Covington