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to the Essay: "After Running Through the Thistles the Hard Part Begins"
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The Rev. Dr. Mark Morrison-Reed delivered with emotion and conviction the 180th Berry Street Essay about the paradox of the ministry and community.
The assembly paused in silence in consideration for a planned execution. Then, following tradition, the meeting opened with a prayer, given by the Rev. Dr. Mark Belletini, and the "election" of a moderator — the Rev. Jane Bramadat, of London, Ontario — who introduced the speaker.
Beginning with a sunny recollection of his naming ceremony, childhood, and youth at First Unitarian Church, Chicago, Morrison-Reed moved to the reality and the paradox at the heart of the ministry. Ministers are in their communities — indeed, he is a minister "to help sustain religious communities" — but ultimately they cannot be a part of the congregation the way a lay member can. He called this the "Faustian bargain" ministers make. As a sign of his personal investment in the ministry, Morrison-Reed paused, put on his pulpit gown and stole, paused, and resumed his lecture. This paradox is the "one cruel irony" which makes the ministry the source of "unrequited grief."
Rich with examples from his own life, our religious traditions, and conventional wisdom, Morrison-Reed cataloged these paradoxes. "Love your parishioners with all your heart," he said, "but never befriend them" for "no matter how warm or deep" the relationship between minister and parishioner "is not a friendship. The minister is always more responsible for the relationship." Confusing the ministerial relationship and making friends of parishioners creates two classes of members. Secondly, he said that as ministers, "[we will] give out your lifeblood for the community but we will never settle there." This is because all ministries end. "The risk of loss is not just great: it is certain." His third "rule" to the assembled ministers is "you shall die to the community so the ministry may live." One minister must make room for a succeeding minister. He quoted a truth from a minister's installation charge: "You can and will be replaced." At the end of a ministry, the exiting minister must submit to "dying to the parish," and at the end of one's career, submit to "dying to the role" of minister. Anything less puts an incumbent minister in an impossible situation, and prevents him or her from growing in the ministry.
Morrison-Reed crystallized his thoughts about the ministers' dilemma: "Despite making religious community the center of our lives, ministers live in isolation." "The power of the ministry [is] in the eye — and the expectation — of the beholder," he continued, because of our tradition of radical laicism, both removing barriers and blurring the boundaries. Ministers are "communal creatures without a community to call our own." He offered his audience some hope in the image of the phoenix that prepares its own end so that its successor can come into being.
Modeling this preparation, Morrison-Reed paused, removed his pulpit gown and stole, folding them carefully, and ended his essay.
The Conference in Berry Street is a hallowed Unitarian and Unitarian Universalist tradition, and was founded by William Ellery Channing.
The Rev. Dr. Mark Morrison-Reed is co-minister, with his spouse, the Rev. Dr. Donna K. Morrison-Reed, of First Unitarian Congregation, Toronto, Ontario. He is the author of Black Pioneers in a White Denomination and is a former preacher at the Service of the Living Tradition.
