As I shared in a 2013 post, the Unitarian Universalist ritual of Water Communion can be more than a recitation of where people spent their summer vacations, if we give it careful attention. Dozens of comments on that post and responses in other forums have revealed that many congregational leaders are doing just that. Another change we’ve made in our Water Communion in Palo Alto is the timing, and I’m wondering if other congregations have made a similar change.
As in most Unitarian Universalist congregations, our Water Communion service is also our Ingathering service: the official start of the church year. (We have services every Sunday–no “summer off”–but there is still a rhythm to the liturgical year; the circle of the year has a beginning and a closing.) A few years ago, our Minister of Religious Education, Dan Harper, noted that due to changes in the local school districts’ schedules, our church year was no longer in sync with the school year, and proposed that we re-align it. We have done so ever since, and this year’s Water Communion will be August 21, the first Sunday after the beginning of the school year for most of the children in the area.
In most Unitarian Universalist congregations, the church year has long aligned with the academic year. That in itself might reveal an upper-class bias if it were only about post-high-school education. But in U.S. secular life, there are two major beginning-times: January and the start of the school year. Not surprisingly, therefore, these are some of the peak times for visitors to check out a new church.
People move house most often in the summer. Children begin new routines such as extracurricular activities when they settle in to the new school year. If a parent is contemplating introducing a child to religious education, the chances are they think about it in coordination with secular school. So the first few weeks of school are a natural time for church-shopping. In Palo Alto and neighboring towns, that no longer means the week after Labor Day as it once did, but mid-August. Until we made the switch, our church year, including the Sunday School year, began almost a month after the first day of school.
If you have an Ingathering service, is it timed to coincide with the beginning of the church year? Is your Ingathering service a Water Communion Sunday, or are they different days? Do you have an Water Sunday at all?
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August 19, 2016 at 12:33 am
Kim Cooper
It’s not just children — UUs have an unusually high number of teachers in our ranks, so they would orient around the school year too.
Is a water communion a good way to introduce new people to UUism?
August 19, 2016 at 6:34 am
Amy Zucker Morgenstern
Excellent question. My gut feeling, based on comments from visitors and my own visits to other people’s worship services, is that our special rituals (thinking of Flower Sunday also) can be particularly good introductions IF care is taken to make newcomers welcome. E.g., it’s important to reiterate, in several places and ways, that there is water / there are flowers for YOU to share if you didn’t bring them, and to frame it in a way that doesn’t make it second-best to bringing your own. I didn’t do that very carefully at our last flower communion and I was so sorry when I saw a newcomer without a flower afterwards. “Didn’t you take a flower?” I asked, and they said, “No, because I didn’t bring one.” We remedied that right away, but others might have slipped away feeling shut out.
What do you think–is water communion a good first service for an inquirer?
August 19, 2016 at 6:21 am
Jamie Hinson-Rieger
We moved ours to August 14 this year for the reason you gave.
August 21, 2016 at 12:50 pm
K.L. Allendoerfer
I’ve thought about this too, and there have been years that I’ve skipped Water and Flower Communions for a number of complicated reasons, some but not all of which you touch on here and in your other post.
I’m not sure I agree with having–or at least with making a big deal of and reiterating several times in several different ways and then following up on– the extra water and flowers there for people who didn’t bring their own, though. In the past, I’ve not participated in these because I didn’t want to, but when asked said I didn’t take a flower because I didn’t bring one, thinking that that was a more socially acceptable reason for not taking one than just not wanting to take one. I felt welcome enough by being allowed to watch, listen, and observe, and to make my own decision about whether and how much to participate.
Whereas if you keep pushing water and flowers and immediate participation on everyone, and even putting people on the spot by asking them afterwards why they don’t have a flower, then the only graceful way people have of not taking a flower or not contributing water is to stay home altogether.
Maybe I’m an outlier, or it’s just my introverted nature, but I often feel that well-meaning efforts to make me feel included in this way backfire and make it worse.
To your question, I think a better service for newcomers actually might be something a little more familiar and routine, with music, readings, Joys and Sorrows, and a well-delivered sermon. If they are already UUs just looking for a church, they will get a good idea of the particular features of that church and whether it’s a good fit. If they are coming from another denomination and looking for what UU is all about, I also think they would get a better idea of that from a regular Sunday service.
August 22, 2016 at 10:38 am
Amy Zucker Morgenstern
Thanks so much for this perspective, K.! It’s so good to be reminded that what works for some does not work for all. (I don’t think I was invasive with the person who didn’t take a flower–just invitational–but who knows how they perceived it!)
August 22, 2016 at 10:58 am
K.L. Allendoerfer
Oh, Amy, I doubt you were invasive. I have seen you in church and you are always kind and respectful.
I’m thinking of the church I used to attend and discussions we would have around being welcoming. That was the first church I had ever been to where the introverted perspective of not wanting to be extrovertedly, conventionally “welcomed” with hearty handshaking, hugging, nametag-using, phone calls from strangers, and expectations of small talk, was really listened to and honored rather than shamed as being unfriendly and elitist. But people there, as everywhere, struggled with straddling the line between being welcoming and being too much, because it’s important to be welcoming but not turn people off.
I just appreciated that both sides were heard, and that congregations and ministers talk about this.