First things first: accolades. I want to give a great big shout out to your UUCL board members– Brandon Nuckols, Kelly Justice, Helen Dingus, Jane Eskenazi, Wesley Hargrove, Justin Neal, and Melissa Marshallfor leading us through this time of change. This has been no easy task. But you see, even before the pandemic, this board was leading us through congregational change and doing a great job!

So, what does it take to lead and organize through times of change and towards a new and unknown future? Well, patience and respect for each other, that’s first and foremost. I appreciate how well we listen to one another at board meetings, considering the validity of each person’s perspective and taking our time to make the best decisions for the congregation with respect to our mission.

But, in great times of change, there’s so much more that is required! I’ve been reading about this in my classes this semester. Each author I’ve come across has articulated the qualities of leaders and organizers a bit differently. For today, I’m going to lift up the work of Saul Alinsky who wrote Rules for Radicals, published in 1971. Alinsky was an organizer based in Chicago. He began his work in the 1930’s. It’s important to recognize that he delineates between a leader and an organizer, pointing to leaders as those who want to build, hold, and wield power. An organizer, on the other hand, “finds his goal in creation of power for others to use” (please recognize that Alinsky, as a white male writing in 1970, does consistently use he/him/his pronouns, but that we, as a church community, respect all individuals as leaders and organizers). As a board, we seek to build a shared ministry to which all of our members and friends contribute. We also seek to center the voices of those on the margins, assuring that power is indeed for others to use, too. In the context of Alinsky’s writing, I’d say we lean towards the organizer side of the spectrum. So, without further ado, here are just a few of the qualities that the “best of organizers” have, according to Alinsky, and that I see in our board members:

• Curiosity: Life for the organizer is a “search for a pattern, for similarities in seeming differences, for differences in seeming similarities, for an order in the chaos about us, for a meaning to the life around him and its relationship to his own life…”. Organizers raise questions that agitate and break through accepted patterns (p72).
• Irreverence: “To the questioner nothing is sacred. He detests dogma, defies any finite definition of morality, rebels against any repression of a free, open search for ideas no matter where they may lead. … As with all life, this is a paradox, for his irreverence is rooted in a deep reverence for the enigma of life, and an incessant search for its meaning” (p73).
• Imagination: Imagination is “the dynamism that starts and sustains him in his whole life of action as an organizer. It ignites and feeds the force that drives him to organize for change” (p74).

Alinsky goes on to list a few other characteristics of an organizer and then concludes with creativity. An organizer is the kind of person “whose greatest joy is creation. He conceives of creation as the very essence of the meaning of life.” And at UUCL, our board members are focused on creating a community that loves, connects, and transforms the world.

But I hope that you don’t just think these are characteristics that only our board members have. Indeed, I see them in all of you! Do you recognize them in yourself? Sure, we all come about them differently, but it is that diversity that is our strength. There are many ways to organize, to protest, to create, to transform. All of our talents are needed! As we move forward, please consider how you can offer your time and talents to building the beloved community. What is your calling during these times? What is your vision for the future?