Current Situation in the UCC

Background Context

Following a local Church renewal project in Keewatin United Church, I left formal Ministry to find the missing piece in the process of Protestant Church Renewal, using a variety of operational platforms for this task.

After finishing up the work related to the White Bear Media Project, I worked in two churches adjoining the White Bear Reserve which enabled me to watch the ongoing developments on the reserve while re-acquainting myself with the current status of the Church.

I had pre-checked the congregations to see if there were any obvious "boobie traps" in them in terms of unique situations. I just wanted a straightforward context for a while. Unfortunately, this was not to be. It was not until I arrived that I realized that one of the two towns was virtually shut down (sociologically speaking). I later found out that it was due to the Agricultural Economic Crisis

By the time I figured out what the problem was in the local Church/Community, the provincial and National level Church folks were on my tail implementing their "national dream" in regards to me, bringing a whole new meaning to the term "prairie oysters".

Approach Used

While separating out the National agenda of the UCC personnel from the local situation in my mind, and focusing attention on the issue which was of more immediate concern to me (the local one), I kept an eye out as to the nature of the national dynamics of the UCC.

I thought that the two towns in SE Saskatchewan were far enough back from the center of National attention that its current obsessions would be negligible in their impact. I though I would have a few years to get my head around the current "culture" and dynamics of the UCC before the national agenda's impact would become an issue in that Location.

Current Status

Well, it was a nice thought. I failed to take into account several factors:

• Saskatchewan has a high number of small places staffed by new clergy paying off their free tuition with three years of service, so the National agenda is more pronounced in these extremely rural areas than in other areas of Canada.
• Newbie Clergy have
  • high idealism,
  • low experience,
  • low perspective,
  • urban outlook,
  • fairly homogenous approaches to the job still,
  • operate by the book,
  • don't know the book
  • almost know as much as I used to know...
• narrow definitions of ministry prevail in a church which is on the skids and obsessed with survival issues rather than concern for the community life around them.
• There had been a significant change in one structural committee( the Ministry and Personnel Committee) since I had worked there, and that committee had become the local arm of the provincial and national church, with very little accountability to the local level organization. It was a loose (and very active) cannon in the system.
• The procedural "manual" was virtually abandoned, and where used, "read" as post-modern style would have it now to mean "anything you wanted it to mean" so there was no operational procedure.
• Most males had now fled or been thrown out of the UCC leadership, and the ones remaining were keeping their heads down.
• It was no longer a fun organization filled with dynamic people...that in fact, was the exception.

Findings To Date

• The United Church was providing no leadership in the area of the economic crisis at the time.
• The UCC was demonstrating the virtual abandonment of the field of "social and economic interface with faith" and was otherwise occupied with residential school lawsuits, and issues surrounding sexuality in our modern world.
• The local church was still one of he last institutions to be shutdown in the small towns, and therefore still on the scene to be of help in the period of institutional restructuring, it was virtually incapacitated with survival issues.
• The UCC had become a franchise operation, a "McChurch", run for the most part from "head office" in Toronto, a mere shadow of what had been when I worked there last.
• Training for clergy was pitiful, and the emphasis had shifted from the academic rigor of the Presbyterian "educated clergy" model to the hand-holding, pain-consoling obsessions of the medical (chaplaincy) model.
• Most sermons now come pre-canned right off the Internet, right down to the jokes, and are not the product of original hermineutical exploration and exposition of Scripture within a specific social context.
• The organizational structures ,such as they were, had virtually been abandoned and group life had deteriorated to a "sensing of the instinct of the herd" as one person so eloquently put it.
• Most of the non-compassion-oriented folks were no longer represented in he ranks of he membership or leadership. That is , the demographic composition of both clergy and laity had shifted over a 30-year period.
• Senior leadership within the church were themselves giving the institution from five to ten years maximum in projected life span (likely conservative, as small churches have an amazing tenacity).
• In Calgary, the only city in Canada with significant growth, there are now thirteen large churches up for sale...an indication of the current state of things in the UCC (down rather than up).
• All of the above had the feeling of being totally unnecessary, an of not really being a big problem...more like that of a house that has been allowed to deteriorate without maintenance. Too bad, it was a nice outfit.
• The leadership people are under tremendous pressure. When the revised medical plan was introduced, we were informed:
  • that of the ten top insurance companies asked to bid on it, three refused owing to the high number of personnel on long term disability
  • the highest drug prescribed for clergy was Prozac and the second was its sister drug.
  • (and in another context at the time) we were told that the average working life of a female clergy person (not the majority) was 7 years. (it was nice to see them finally develop and Employee Assistance Plan, though it strikes me that cleaning up the mess would alleviate many of these problems).
  • Repeated stories of morality issues (drugs, sex, and intrigue) circulated through the leadership and most surprising of all, were treated with "urban indifference" so to speak.

  I was thrown out because I didn't fit.

  Lateral Connections

  Required for Completion

  I've pretty well got all the crap washed off and the bullet wounds patched up. Saying farewell to an institution which played so large a place in my formative years has been hard, but I have since found that there are still a lot of us out here who find that although the ideals and legacy of the UCC are still important to us, the existing institution no longer represents our outlook or faith. One man compared it to a polluted river: "It looks the same, it flows the same, it even has the same name, but you can't drink the water, it's toxic."
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