So, why church at all?

As I’ve written before, we Unitarian Universalists need to organize new churches to replace those that shrink and die, and to reach those unserved by those that exist.

But to what end? To put it plainly, what is it that churches do that others couldn’t do better?

And it isn’t that the question is academic. The opportunity cost of organizing, staffing and maintaining churches is very high. Say, about a thousand dollars of giving per year per member, providing for some measure of paid minister and without a deep endowment, not to mention the costs of cultivating appropriate leadership. Are the existing churches themselves costly optional extras to, well … what’s at the core is the real issue.

Is it simply community, that fallback substitute not only for mission, but for deity itself? (To think about how often it is evoked as the source of inspiration.) If so, Unitarian Universalists become nothing more than a high-minded social club. Far from progressive, a bring-your-own theological model replaces mutual care and support for a sink-or-swim contest. Or as Jesus put it, “if your son asks you for bread, do you give him a stone?”

Moreover, I think that churches have meaningful reasons for being, and that many of them are deep and decent. But these are far from uniform, determined more by history, locality and grace than by the would-be guiding hand of a central organization.

That’s why I get so angry when congregational polity — the one constant referent in our history — is derided as counter-productive or obsolete. A successful appeal to centralize power has to prove that what it offers is more valuable than what’s lost. And since the common core is all but undefined, and the local, particular sources of mission are all but unrecognized, such a move is nothing but an avoidable disaster.