We are only one week away from the start of our next church year on May 1st and our annual Stewardship campaign is just about over. For some time now, we have been talking to you about money and how much it takes to provide all of the programs and activities that we all want from our church. For example, if you have been paying attention to our message, you know that this sermon has already cost you fifty cents and I haven’t even said anything yet.

Also, if you have been paying attention to our message, you have some idea what it takes from each of us to cover the cost of operating our church. We know that people want to have some sort of yardstick that they can use to measure their pledge contribution. We have tried to provide one by asking for two percent of your income. I’ve proved, at least to my own satisfaction, that if each of us gave two per cent we would balance the budget and be able to do all that we need to do. Of course, not everyone is able to give two percent and not everyone is willing. But some people are able to do more, and want to do more, so they contribute at the three percent level, four percent level, or even more. Of the 104 people who have turned in their pledge forms so far, 23 have identified themselves as contributing at this “Pillar” level and we know that there are more who do so but don’t choose to identify themselves for one reason or another.

Today’s service isn’t about money, however, it’s about your other important contribution to church. We are here today to honor the work that so many people have done to build, maintain, and improve this special place. It takes significant effort from all of us to make sure that the church provides what we all expect from it…and to be sure that it is here to provide a spiritual home for generations to come.

Here is a question for you to consider. How much effort should you be contributing to the church? On the monetary side of the stewardship ledger, you have a benchmark. We ask you for two percent of your income. That’s about one week’s salary. Does that mean you should be contributing about one week’s labor to the task of operating the church?

I don’t know if that is the proper benchmark or not. There’s a lot to consider. For example, what if you are lazy and don’t do much in a week? Conversely, what if you are a workaholic? Should you devote a full workaholic length workweek to the church or just a modest forty-hour workweek? I don’t have the answers to all the exceptions and I can’t prove that one week’s work is the proper amount. But give some thought to that benchmark and you might start to get some idea of how your contributions measure up.

If you want to do more, you have a choice. You can step forward and volunteer or you can wait to be asked. Unfortunately, however, we are very bad askers. It’s true that we have a few who are good at asking, but they don’t need any more help because they have already asked the people they needed and they are now off doing their thing. The rest of us are basically afraid to ask you. Why? Because you might reject us and we are pretty vulnerable right now. Or, because you might have something terrible happening in your family and we’ll be very embarrassed not to have known. Or, because you might already be doing more than you should and this one more thing would be the straw that breaks your back and you will quit the church and it will be all our fault.

On the other hand, you might be reluctant to volunteer to help because you just don’t know where it might lead. What if you indicate that you are willing to help and they stick you on the Finance Committee? How will you ever escape from those people? What if you inexorably get sucked into the leadership void and you wind up as a committee chair, or a board member? What if you accidentally agree to be President, God Forbid!

It is my observation that a great many people won’t step forward to volunteer for church work because they do fear it will lead to church leadership. First, let me tell you that it doesn’t have to happen and second, that it isn’t so very terrible even if it does. I have two suggestions for you. Volunteer for followership and don’t be afraid to say no. I’ll talk more about saying no a bit later.

To explain what I mean by “followership”, I’m going to go just a little bit academic on you for a minute. But I promise I won’t use the word “paradigm” or make you do any statistics.

In 1988, Robert Kelley wrote an article entitled “In Praise of Followers” and later expanded his thesis into a 1991 book called The Power of Followership. Kelley examines the behavior of followers and their relationship to leaders and to their organization. He defines the term “followership” as a set of self-directed skills and behaviors that determine how followers interact with their leaders, with other followers, and with their work. It starts with the point of view that followers should be capable and independent. They don’t need leaders to do their thinking for them.

Leadership then is a role that may be taken on as necessary but it is not an indispensable ingredient. Rather it is a value-added contribution where needed. That value-added concept is supported by research studies that Kelley claims demonstrate that a leader’s contribution to organizational success is only 10 to 20 percent of the total. The remaining 80 to 90 percent – by far the largest portion of the pie – is due to followers’ contributions.

Here’s where church comes back into the picture. As soon as I read Kelley’s article, a face appeared in my mind that epitomized the perfect follower operating in followership mode. It was Lisa Lemble, who was once a member of this congregation.

My wife, Barb, and I both had many opportunities to work with Lisa and we always referred to her as a “world-class Indian”. Lisa was not, however, a Native American. We used “World-class Indian” in the sense of that old saying that complained about “too many chiefs and not enough Indians”. If I remember correctly, Lisa was a planner for the City of Omaha and she was truly a world-class follower. She had no interest in committee work and did not like to attend meetings. She did love to cook and also was quite willing to do any number of other things as well. She was quite competent and the only leadership she needed was information about what needed to be done and when. She’d take it from there. She did a lot of work for this church, she was fun to work with, and she seemed to have a very good time at it. If you had a few dozen Lisa Lemble’s, you certainly wouldn’t need any leaders to get things done. She was truly a steward of this organization and she was honored as one of our Unitarians of the Year in 1986.

If you look through the list of Unitarians of the Year, you will certainly find people who did serve in leadership roles, but they did not do so exclusively. And some, like Lisa, preferred to stay almost solely in the followership role.

We need more followers who are willing to work for the church in a followership sort of way. What does that mean? Well it means that when you agree to do something, you won’t require a lot of leadership. You’ll be proactive and do what needs to be done to make your task successful. You’ll coordinate with others and you’ll tell your leader what you need from her to be successful. You will work in what I call a “Go West” manner.

“Go West” doesn’t refer to our President Elect, Janet West…although does fit nicely. It refers instead to the type of visioning or planning that works well in any organization that operates in a followership mode. Most of us think of plans in a tactical way, full of details. That sort of planning is quite useful, but it often doesn’t get done…especially in volunteer organizations. Or, the plan often falls apart and ceases to be useful when things change during execution.

“Go West” simply means providing a fairly high level vision of the goal so everyone understands what we are trying to accomplish. If everyone involved in a single task, or a committee, or the board understands where we want to go, we can all practice our followership skills and attempt to get there…even if there is no detail plan or the old plan is no longer among the living. And we can measure what we are doing against this vision. If the steps we are taking lead us toward the East, and our goal is to go west, it’s not a good thing.

In your Order of Service today, you’ll find the Vision Statement adopted by the Board of Trustees. It isn’t a detail plan of what the Board wants to accomplish next year, but it does provide a compass to help point the way west. If you disagree with this vision, you will want to let the Board know. Otherwise, we want you to invest your followership skills to help the church pursue this vision.

But, you aren’t going to want to do every job in the church…and you certainly aren’t going to want to do all the jobs in the church simultaneously. So you have to be able to say no.

Or, since we are a church…and a Unitarian one at that…perhaps we must have a covenant. A covenant is just an agreement, but is has a religious sounding name so we like to use it. I’ve included an orange insert in the Order of Service that sets forth what I think might be the Follower Service Covenant for asking and answering. Let’s go through them together and read them responsively. I will be the church and I will read my #1 first, then you read your #1 and so forth.

This is covenant is still a draft so feel free to add your suggestions on the back when you turn it in.

Many of our materials this spring contained the following definition: “Stewardship is the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one’s care”. That seems to me to imply a responsibility, a moral obligation. And we are asking for your precious time and for the investment of your followership skills to meet this obligation that we owe to ourselves and to the future generations that will follow us. It sounds like pretty heavy lifting, doesn’t it? Where’s the joy? Where’s the fun? Please let me offer you some hope on that score.

Several of us attended a Stewardship conference last October given by Jerry King. During the meeting, Jerry made a statement that meant the following: “People are happiest at church when they are working together to get something done”. There is real power in that message. It is a compelling prescription for member satisfaction and for church performance. If you believe it is true, you should volunteer because the work itself is important to your satisfaction.

That has certainly been the case for me. During this third period of retirement, I have spent much more time working for the church than I ever did before. I think of it as my intern year. And I have never enjoyed myself more. First, I’ve gotten to do some things that I don’t normally do and I’ve learned some new skills. Second, I’ve gotten to work with many more people than ever before and it’s been great fun. Let me give you a few examples.

First, let’s start with the pagans. It’s probably fair to say that I’m not theologically well aligned with mainstream paganism. But, three pagans Ashe, Heather, and Tyr, signed up for the clean up crew for the Twelfth Night Ball. They worked really hard and they were very pleasant to be around…even at 5:30 A.M. when the hot water had been gone for hours. As a result of that positive experience, I attended the Sunday service put on by the CUUPs group. I wouldn’t have otherwise. As it turned out, I enjoyed that service and found the manifesto they distributed to be quite reasonable.

Who else do you think was still at the church at 5:30 A.M. after Twelfth Night? Lois Norris. Unless we had worked together, I would never have known that Lois has a pathological need to recycle. And the next afternoon, I washed the leftover dishes with Ruth Nicklin. Now that is a life experience that I recommend to you all.

Are you aware that Bob Perrin can climb like a monkey? We went up into the steeple together by climbing a ladder out over the organ pipes and I would have never made it to the top by myself. I’m kind of proud of that adventure, even though my wife insists on calling us the belfry boys.

Did you know that you might get three generations of help if Liz Stawycznyj works with you? That’s because her daughter Jenny and grandson Drew will also often pitch in to help. Drew is a jack-of-all-trades, a really hard worker, and a good guy to know. Unfortunately, however, you may also get Sukey’s help and she will eat your pens if you don’t watch her.

Did you know that we are wearing hats today simply because Yvonne Price wanted to wear hats? She helped plan the very first Stewardship Sunday and thought it would be a good idea. If you like wearing hats, tell her thanks. If you don’t like wearing hats, you now know whom to blame. But the important message is that you can influence what happens around here for years just by showing up at one meeting.

Did you know that Jaime Alexander can hang drapes and that David McCracken is really quite organized? Or that Sandi Bruns isn’t afraid to ask anyone for anything? Did you know that Dick Benner has a dog named Josh?

When Jerry King says, “People are happiest at church when they are working together to get something done”; the “together” part really matters. You make connections with people in different, deeper ways working together than you can by sitting in adjacent pews, chatting over coffee, or even enjoying a religious education class. If you aren’t already involved with volunteer work here at the church, you owe it to yourself to give it a try.

You might be wondering if there is any scientific reason for all of this satisfaction with church work. I’d suggest that there is and that the explanation lies in the work of Dr. Abraham Maslow, a psychologist who proposed that there is a theoretical hierarchy of needs that guides human motivation. To my knowledge, no one has ever proven Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, but it has influenced a number of fields simply because it makes practical sense and we see it reflected repeatedly in real people’s behavior.

Dr. Maslow postulated that there are five general levels of needs that motivate us and that they are arranged in a hierarchy, from lowest to highest. The lowest level of unsatisfied need is the one that provides our motivation. Once a need is satisfied, however, it no longer motivates and the next higher level becomes the motivator. From lowest to highest, the need levels are:

Physical – the need to eat, drink, breathe, etc.

Safety – the need to be free from danger

Belonging, love, or affiliation – the need for positive human interactions

Esteem – both self esteem and esteem from others, the need for respect, feeling valuable

Self-actualization – the need to be all one can be, fulfilling one’s potential

How the church satisfies the lower level needs are obvious. We will feed you and we have a well-written safety policy in our Board Guidelines. But do you see the opportunities to have your higher order needs fulfilled here as well? Working together here can garner you those positive human dealings that we all crave and it can give you the opportunity to help meet other peoples’ needs for belonging as well. At the esteem level, your good work, your dedication, and your sense of fair play will be recognized and appreciated by others. In just a few minutes, two members of our congregation will know for sure how much we value them and how much we appreciate their contributions.

Self-actualization is possible here too. This highest level need is all about recognizing and achieving your potential. This is a place where you can try new stuff and see if you are any good at it. You can learn about yourself and your abilities. You can make connections with people who can help you make progress. We have all seen members grow and blossom and you can too.

And today, as we focus on our stewardship obligations, I want to call on you to bring your followership skills to church with you and put them to work. I want you to do that because it will be good for the church. But even more importantly, I want you to do that because it will be good for you.

Now, let’s touch briefly on leadership. Up to this point, I’ve only asked you for your followership skills. Clearly that’s the way to get started if you are not already involved. But some of you out there are already experienced at church work, know your way around, and have excellent leadership skills as well. And, of course, we need those leadership skills.

Take a lesson from geese, or if you prefer, from bicycle racers. In both examples, the leader…the point-person or point-goose if you will…has to do more work because they are breaking through the wind unaided. The other geese in the V or the other bicycle racers in the pack stay in position and conserve their strength by drafting on the leader. When their turn comes, they move up into the point position and the leader falls back and rests.

Church leadership is a lot like that. It gets tiring out in front. So, if you have leadership skills and you have spent sufficient time conserving your strength, please take your turn, move to the point-position of your committee or of the church as a whole, and help us break wind.

Tongue in cheek, I have sometimes titled this talk “Ship Happens”, referring to leadership, followership, and stewardship. I took the “Ship Happens” part out for the Order of Service today because no one seemed to think it was particularly funny so there was no point in offending those that might think it was vulgar. But, upon reflection, I would put it back in. Ship does happen. We will have leadership, followership, and stewardship whether you volunteer or not. But, without you the load will be heavier and the result less than it could have been. And you will miss all the fun.

Bill Ross

April 25, 2004