Now What: Thoughts on Transition

by Rev. Janet Onnie August 17, 2025

Back in 1978 Alban Institute consultant, Roy Oswald, wrote a 19-page treatise on how to leave a congregation called “Running Through the Thistles.”  In it he suggests that styles of saying ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ are learned very early.  He relates his own childhood experience of being run through a patch of thistles by his older brothers.  It was a significant shortcut on their way home from school.  He said, “I can still vividly remember the experience: running full speed in bare feet across 20 feet of prickly thistles, yelping in pain all the way through.  When the three of us reached the black soil on the other side, we would immediately hit the dirt and start pulling out the few thistle ends that stuck in our feet.”

Someone gave me this book as an ordination gift.  At the time I thought it was an odd choice for someone just beginning ministry, but since it’s been around as a ‘must-read’ for a long time I figured I would eventually need it.  Sure enough, eventually happened.  Several times in my career I’ve needed this wisdom.  I used to take my leave by running through thistles.  I knew that whatever I was leaving – or was leaving me -- was going to be painful, so I got through it as fast as I could, figuring I could deal with the painful thistles later.  What I have learned during my ministry years is that if you don’t deal with the pain when it happens, those thistles just get more and more deeply embedded.  After a while you know it hurts, but you’ve forgotten why.  It takes a good therapist and a lot of money to remember and deal with it.

Happily, my time at with the Harrisonburg Unitarian Universalists has been mostly thistle-free.  I feel we have done good work together despite the inevitable lurches and misunderstandings and unintended consequences.  It’s also been a little awkward.  I am an outsider. I don’t know which is worse: being a part-time minister in a historically lay-led congregation or being a resident of somewhere other than Harrisonburg.  You all are tightly woven into each others’ lives. I can’t even recommend a local place for coffee.  Nonetheless, you have made me feel welcome and have graciously tolerated my ministerial impulses to advise in the arcane ways of our shared free faith. 

I want to use the time this morning to celebrate our work in the past year and suggest a path going forward.  We have done this work within the construct of a hinge time, which has been made more intense by a pandemic. We are feeling the effects of this time in history when everything undergoes a foundational realignment.  Systems of governance are in turmoil, global communications are available almost instantaneously, and artificial intelligence beckons or threatens (depending on your outlook) to define what it is to be human.  Religious institutions have never been -- and are certainly not now -- exempt from these transitional times.  

What we are transitioning to – what will change as a result of our actions during this time -- isn’t clear.  Rev. Kathy Schmitz made the distinction between change and transition.  “Change”, she said, “is external”.  “It is something imposed from without.  Change is external.”  A traditionally lay-led congregation hiring a minister is a change.  “Transition, on the other hand, is internal.  It is a movement from one perception or outlook to another.  That movement comes from within.”  How we view a professional minister in our midst speaks to transition.  Transition is when one’s perception of an event shifts.  You may experience a professional minister as good or not-so-good or something in-between. Whatever your previously held notion, if your perception of the event shifts, it’s transition.  While transitions fuel change, change also fuels transition.  It’s a cycle.  Since HUU is about to transition away from professional ministry – at least in the short term – I thought this might be a good time to talk about how you – the members and friends who identify as Unitarian Universalists -- understand yourselves as a religious community.    

Historically religion has done four main “jobs.”  First, it provides a framework for meaning-making, whether helping our ancient ancestors explain why it rained when it rained, or helping us today make sense of why bad things happen to good people.  We are hard-wired to be meaning-making creatures.  Over the years HUU has invited diverse voices into the pulpit to lend unique perspectives on the question of WHY.  I don’t see this changing anytime soon.  In fact, the expanded worship team has prioritized accessing this diversity of viewpoints to address the WHY of life events and how our free faith helps us make meaning of those events.

The second job of religion is to offer rituals that enable us to mark time, process loss, and celebrate joys – from births to coming of age to family formation to death.  Any repeated action imbued with meaning is a ritual.  Our Unitarian Universalist communities begin our gatherings with the ritual of lighting the chalice. In December HUU acknowledged the culture in which we live with a Christmas Eve service.  In January we greeted the New Year with a Burning Bowl ritual.  In March the HUU community gathered to memorialize and bury Sherry Thrasher.  Although the elements of this ceremony vary from culture to culture, responding to death and burying the dead is a ritual as old as humanity.  Last Sunday we had the ritual of blessing backpacks in preparation for the start of the school year.  The Order of Service could be seen as a ritual.  Rituals are important in locating us in ourselves, our relationships, and our communities.

The third job of religion is to create and support communities, allowing each of us to find a place of belonging.  This is a real strength of HUU that I want to unpack in a minute. 

Finally, fueled by each of the first three, religion inspires us to take prophetic action—to partake in building a world that is more just, more kind, and more loving.  Throughout HUU history its folks have been active in change-making organizations such as the Valley Interfaith Action, Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy, Coalicion Solidaria Pro-Immigrantes Unidos,

Immigrant Support Group, Skyline Literacy, Friendship House, Harrisonburg Community Health Center, and the Rockingham-Augusta Indivisible.  In addition you all have been on the front lines of witnessing to issues such as GLBTQ+ rights, immigrant rights, reproductive freedom, accessibility rights, political action, and children’s welfare.  The HUU Social Justice Team is focused on the prophetic imperative for religious communities.

Through the pursuit of these four jobs – meaning-making, offering rituals, creating and supporting communities, prophetic action -- folks might experience a sense of wonder, discover some new truth about themselves or the world, or even have an encounter with the divine.  The balanced combination of these factors is what makes a community religious. 

Of these four jobs I think creating and supporting community is the foundational strength of HUU. The small covenant groups, the book clubs, the family camping trips, the full moon campfires, the circle dinners, the shared history, the cross pollination between the educational, social service, political, and non-profit communities is what defines this congregation.  You are intertwined with each other through participation in the myriad of local organizations, but still open to people new to the Harrisonburg community. Knowing this community so deeply is what makes your pastoral care team so outstanding.  This is why the evolving governance structure is so important in creating transparent, accountable structures in which to grow. You’ve established term limits for committee chairs to avoid leaders burn-out and clear the way for fresh leaders and ideas.  The Program Council provides a structure for enhanced communications between the committees and the Board. 

So how do you view yourselves as a religious community?  I know this description of HUU is like nails on a blackboard to some of you.  While HUU has excelled in the task of building community, the tasks of meaning-making, marking rituals, and prophetic witness have taken something of a back-seat.  The pandemic further unbalanced the four jobs of religion.  We have become so anxious to be back into the company of other people we have forgotten how much trust and energy it takes to contemplate questions of meaning, or develop rituals, or risk ostracism by speaking out against Empire.  We have been so lonely for so long that our first impulse is to find a place to belong to and with others.  HUU provides that place to belong and says, “we’ll figure out the rest of this religion …. Later”. 

I’m not sure this is a bad thing.  There’s a saying, probably from the Buddhist community, that advises Don’t Just Do Something. Sit there!  Unless and until you have a good sense of HUU’s identity – how you want to be known to yourselves and in the world – it’s not a terrible idea to just keep doing what you’re doing.  However, I think you’re going to run into a couple of big things fairly soon that will compel a conversation about identity. 

First of all, I think you’re running out of space.  Studies have shown that for new people to feel welcome in a place there needs to be about 20% of unoccupied seats.  Most Sundays you’re already there.  You’re going to need to figure out if and how much you want to grow and how you’ll accommodate that growth.

Then there’s the elephant in the room: the question of professional ministry.  It’s not enough to articulate What you want a minister to Do.  Most of the tasks of ministry are already being done by your members and friends.  You need to be very clear on WHY you want a minister.  I think there are really only two reasons:  accountability and credibility.  Do you value the fact that your minister is accountable not only to you but to the UU Ministers Association Code of Ethics, to the credentialing body of the UU Association, and to their colleagues?  Do you value a person who has access to a myriad of resources, including colleagues who will offer advice and consent?  Do you value the credibility of a person whose professional training is equal to or exceeds that of a doctor or lawyer?  Do you value the opinion of other local and/or national organizations who may judge your credibility based on your leadership choices?  These are questions that are going to take a lot of time and conversation. And any action resulting from these conversations should be supported by at least 85% of the congregation. 

Mr. Rogers said that sometimes what looks like an end is really a beginning.  In these times of transition and change I sometimes find myself unreasonably hopeful that this is a beginning.  Jim Wallis explained that “Hope is the very dynamic of history. Hope is the engine of change. Hope is the energy of transformation. Between impossibility and possibility, there is a door, the door of hope. And the possibility of history’s transformation lies through that door. . . Spiritual visionaries have often been the first to walk through that door, because in order to walk through it, first you have to see it, and then you have to believe that something lies on the other side.

In this time and place we look to the spiritual visionaries and the poets for hope. Through them we will find the courage to desert Symborska’s island of static clarity and ‘plunge into the depths’ of transition and change. Let us “live our priceless days abundantly, hopefully” and hold each others’ hands as we dive “Into unfathomable life.”  Blessed be.  Inshallah.  Amen.