The Fellowship Experience

A Sermon by Sarah McGettrick

Delivered to the First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City

Sunday June 05, 2005

Prayer and Meditation

#418

Come into the circle of love and justice.

Come into the community of mercy,

holiness, and health.

Come and you shall know peace and joy.

The Fellowship Experience

A Sermon by Sarah McGettrick

Delivered to the First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City

Sunday June 05, 2005

I realize I may be preaching to the choir, so to speak, but I’d like to tell you a little about the fellowship I grew up in.  Just for my own information, how many people have been members of Unitarian Fellowships?

When I was 4 years old my parents started down the road to creating a fellowship in the small, liberal town of Eureka Springs Arkansas.  Like anything that involves Unitarians, it all began with a conversation.  They commiserated with their friends, also parents of young children, that there just wasn’t a church in the area that they wanted their children to attend.  One of the parents involved in the conversation had been raised Unitarian himself, and so it began. 

They just met the membership requirement at the time of 10 adults to begin the process of becoming a fellowship.  In the fall of 1980 they visited a Unitarian church about an hour away, purchased some of that church’s used Sunday school curriculum and found a home.

Our first sanctuary was 2 rooms we rented from the local Junior High School.  I clearly remember looking around as my mom and my best friend’s mother showed us how to use the obligatory Unitarian Sunday School “feely bag” and thinking that this church was really different.  As I remember it, I was comparing the structure of my church to that of others I had visited with my grandmother, but now that I look back it was a pretty insightful observation for a 5 year old.  As Unitarians will, the adults involved got to thinking…they decided that meeting in a school might  be a separation of church and state issue, so we moved to a private school just down the road.

At that school there was a playground where my little brother learned to cuss and classrooms where other young Unitarians and I learned that we could make anything out of clay and make ourselves into anything.  It was while we were there that the group (I’ve since come to learn) nearly fell apart.  Having only 10 adult members was a vicious strain on the group.  Everyone felt that they were the only one doing all the work!  The group came through it…they became affiliated in 1982, started their monthly newsletter, and with a little help given by Dave Ricard from Little Rock, they were reenergized and back on their feet.

A few years later, we moved to our last rental; an office building/dance studio…/church.  Our sanctuary overlooked Spring Street, a busy street for Eureka standards, and our playground was the sloping yard that belonged to the Post Office (talk about separation of church and state).

We finally acquired a church in 1988.  With a loan from the UUA, they paid a whopping $26,000 for a church that was completely gutted.  The kitchen had no floors, the doors were long gone, the toilets were unusable, and there were squatters in the place that had to be kicked out.  After lots of work, we moved into our first official church. 

Even though there are challenges weekly, the Eureka Unitarian Universalist Fellowship continues to thrive and gain members. 

I’d like to invite Jonalu Johnstone to tell us a little about her experiences in Fellowship.

In conclusion; fellowships have experiences and challenges similar to and also very different from those in a large church. 

In Eureka, they’ve had to explain to a member why they didn’t want to hang a hand-stitched “Noah’s Ark” themed covering on their altar.

Because members of the congregation take turns planning programs, they’ve had some interesting presentations.  One week they invited a member of the congregation to do the short meditation portion of the Sunday service.  He spoke for an hour. 

My favorite, however, is the couple who planned the Mother’s Day program a few years back.  They had no children, and they had both lost their mothers years back, so they just didn’t think about which day they invited the local funeral director to come and speak.  A few people who had lost mothers recently had to leave that service.

Through all of these experiences…no matter how frustrating or how funny, the group grew physically, spiritually and emotionally.  We do too; every week when we step into this building or attend a church social gathering or covenant group.  This is what I treasure about this church.  I know you do too.

Go forth connected!  Draw strength from the people around you, and offer strength to those in our congregation who need it.