Williamsburg Unitarian Universalists History-Starting A Church

The impetus for starting our church came from the visit of our district executive at just the right time. “Williamsburg is ready,” I said. “We want to start a church. What do we do?”

“I will send you materials,” he said….

And he said the most important words we were to hear. “Gather the people,” he said….

We gathered the people that summer phone call by phone call. Each call was carefully made, to a UU who might share our vision of a religious community, a spiritual gathering, a home for us and our children. We called local Unitarian Universalists who had depth of knowledge and experience but who were unchurched or driving distances to other UU groups…. We also knew some UUs who would be less comfortable with ministry, meditation, prayer and spirituality. We knew this church could be a welcoming place for them someday, but not yet. We gathered the people we thought might share the vision….

“Gather the people,…” our district executive said, “when I visit Williamsburg over Labor Day.” And so 10 of us circled up in our living room. “Why are you here?” he asked, a question that we have continued to ask newcomers even today. That night we spoke of unspoken needs. Of the dream. Of the church.

“Gather the people,” he said. And then he gave us simple and practical advice. Take it slow. Don’t start worship too soon. Don’t write bylaws or do church business too soon. Build a community first that can agree on the shape of the church. Get to know one another religiously. He closed by asking us to take hands, a move so simple yet so unfamiliar that one of our future members expressed discomfort. But we felt connected, drawn together in our purpose.

Building Community

We began to do what our adviser had called “building community.” We invited folks we thought might be interested to monthly Friday night meetings. These gatherings were small and spiritual. We worshiped together briefly -- a reading, music, wise words from the thoughtful among us -- and talked about our essential truths. We introduced occasional business items, but the personal, social and spiritual dominated. We shaped a carefully structured discussion for each night, with small group discussion leaders who then pulled us back together to share information.

Our topics seemed simple:

What are our personal religious histories? How do our histories reflect our concerns and hopes for our new church?

What have been meaningful religious experiences that we have had? How have they affected our lives? How can we aim for the best experiences in our new church?

What meaningful worship experiences have we have had? What do we like about worship in the churches we attended at other points in our lives? What would be meaningful worship for us in our new church?

How has ministry made a difference in our lives? What role do we want ministry to have in our new church? What kind of ministry do we expect -- and when?

How has religious education been meaningful to us? What are our concerns about religious education? What kind of religious education program would we like to have in our church?

Yet discussing these topics provided the crucial framework for our future church. As we asked ourselves these questions, we deepened our understanding not only of one anther but of our religious needs. And miraculously and mysteriously, we found harmony, the vision shared. We valued worship and professional ministry: we would be a religious community with intellectually challenging and spiritually uplifting and stirring programs. We sought music and art and light-filled space to buoy us. We committed to religious education for our children and for us.

Our connections with our district executive were crucial to our early success. He provided a framework on which we hung our discussions: the idea of community building, the necessity of a quality newsletter early on, the need to connect people to one another to agree on fundamental issues that might otherwise divide a new congregation.

We also benefited from our varied experiences with other UU congregations, large and small, formal church and informal fellowship. We knew from experience that some congregations disagreed about ministry, use of religious language, social action programs, and sometimes the role of humanism, paganism, Christianity and others belief systems. And so we recognized the importance of community building which would help define who we would become….

(Our district executive) connected us with groups we came to call our “sister churches.” These two groups had formed a year before we did, and their lay members provided valuable ministry to us. An organizer of the Piedmont church near Charlotte, North Carolina, gave us hope that our community-building process would work. A lay leader of the Westside (Knoxville) group described their meeting space in a public school, leading us eventually to rent a spacious, lofty cafeteria in our newest elementary school. They told us of their commitment to two or three year terms as leaders to provide continuity to their young congregations….

Our district executive also provided us with advisers, what the denomination calls New Congregation Organizers (NCO’s). For one year, our first NCO drove 120 miles round trip (from Richmond) to facilitate group discussions and introduce us to the video series on Unitarian Universalism. When her responsibilities to job and children ended her time with us, another lay volunteer was appointed, an experienced church leader then vice-president of First Unitarian Church in Richmond and now employed by the Unitarian Universalist Association. Each New Congregation Organizer brought with her $1,000 start-up grants from denominational headquarters. In addition to paying the expenses of our organizers, the money was used for concrete purchases: a chalice, denominational handbooks, and eventually religious education material.

Using our district executive’s direction and our own connections, we continued to seek others who could minister to us. We were linked to a woman highly recommended as a group facilitator, to teach an adult religious education course, “Building Your Own Theology.” She drove to Williamsburg three weekends from central North Carolina to lead the course, giving us her time and talents for free….

We linked with a Unitarian Universalist historian from the Norfolk church who drove to Williamsburg to teach us Unitarian Universalist history. His session was particularly meaningful, for it linked our Unitarian Universalist group to Williamsburg’s early history. Through his research, this historian had found that it was so difficult to be Unitarian in England that many had emigrated to the American colonies, primarily in three locations: Boston, Philadelphia, and Williamsburg. In fact, the College of William and Mary had been a center of Unitarian thought from the 1740s through the Revolution. He told us that anti-Unitarian attitudes here forced several professors to remain “closet” Unitarians, including one tried in the Bruton Parish Episcopal Church tower. We marveled that William and Mary had actually been known as a “hot bed of heresy and Unitarian thought.”….

Public Meeting

Upon the advice of our District Executive, we decided to hold our first public meeting -- to announce our presence to the larger community…-- and going public meant we had to get organized. We now needed a steering committee to make decisions. We volunteered for our parts….We had important decisions to make, keeping in mind that we were a religious community, that we built community with each decision, that we established precedent and tradition with each decision. We wanted to make the best decisions for a future church that had not yet taken physical shape….

But we had a marker to work towards now: our first public meeting April 10, 1988 to tell the local community what a Unitarian Universalist church was. We invited our district executive to lead the service because he knew us so well. We took out paid advertising in our twice-weekly newspaper (which the community reads almost word for word), finding an amazingly friendly religion editor who eventually put our chalice next to the cross and star of David on the newspaper’s religion page. We arranged for child care and hospitality.

The night before our public meeting, we tossed and turned….The most we’d had at a small group session was 25: could we get more together in one place? But we had done our ministry, and 80 people in all attended the service. When they walked in the door, they said to us, I’ve been a UU all my life. They said, I’ve been looking for a church like this. They said, why didn’t you tell us you were starting? I could have helped. We had so many children we had to recruit child care providers on the spot.

Our first public meeting was an energizing and encouraging session for everyone. It cemented our plans for beginning regular services twice a month the next September. It meant that we would become a church….

Charter Sunday

We were now beginning to reach out in our ministry from the small inner circle. Our ministry was becoming complex: to our children, we must provide RE. To the congregation as a whole, we must deliver quality worship. We must minister to social needs, to connecting strangers. And yet we must continue to minister to one another.

Creating Sunday services became a priority. Our worship co-chairs wrote a guiding philosophy for worship which emphasized high standards of quality and spirituality, specifying that even lectures and performances have a spiritual component (“such as personal morality, social responsibility, religious implications, emotional appeal, relationship between the individual and the community”). To provide variety but show a strong commitment to professional ministry, half of our services that first year were led by visiting ministers from as far away as Winston-Salem, North Carolina….

We continued being ministered to but in more structured, institutional ways. Our finance committee attended the District Church Management seminar. We applied for the UU New Congregation Ministry program upon the advice of our district executive and the strong recommendation of the steering committee, eventually voting as a congregation 72-5 to enter the Extension Ministry program. We applied for a district chalice lighter grant, receiving almost $4,000 to help toward ministerial expenses our first year of ministry.

We set up new lay ministries. We formed a caring committee. We created a choir, informal but organized enough to sing hymns at our first Christmas service. We held the first “New UU” orientation class for 15 interested people.

But our energies were directed toward the most formal service yet: our Charter service. We invited the participants for the weekend and planned a dinner social and a lavish reception for after the service. We surprised ourselves by wanting to make signing the membership book as charter members a public event, as part of the service, rather than a private event after the service. We were used to being religious together, to speaking our commitments aloud, and we were not embarrassed to make a public commitment to our new church..

On Feb. 5, 1989, we woke up to a treacherous ice storm, a rarity in Virginia and poorly timed for our charter service that day….But the auditorium was full. And when we asked those wishing to become charter members to rise, almost everyone rose. The lines for signing were so long that the volunteer pianist ran out of music. 89 people sign the book, joined by 10 others later that week, to set a UU record for chartering.

Before this date, the Williamsburg UUs had spent almost two years in formation, from the first conversation with our district executive to formation as a church affiliated with the UUA. In the months ahead, the group would complete bylaws, run their first canvass, hire a new congregation minister, and begin weekly worship and religious education. During this two years, we had not functioned alone but had leaned, sometimes heavily, on professional ministry, and during this time we had also kept the dream alive of hiring our own full-time professional minister. We did not begin to end as lay-led. Our task in the future would be to make the transition to shared ministry, a sometimes difficult task but one which we had committed to early in our brief history….