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Truth 1 – We are a worshiping church. We share communion.
We baptize our children. We pray together. We sing together. We share our joys
and concerns. The sanctuary is our shared space. In this space, as we worship together,
we are transformed from strangers into brothers and sisters. What binds us to one another is not that we
think the same things or make the same choices. What binds us to one another is the yearning to open our
hearts to God.Truth 2 – We are an informal church. In a world in which
you have to decide what you’re going to take seriously, we care about and love the guy in a Blackhawks sweater and the
woman struggling with Alzheimer’s and the child in the toucan costume at the Christmas pageant more than we care about
how things look.Truth 3 – We are a thinking church. This is a Church in which we believe God
gave us a brain with the hope and expectation that we would use it. This is not a sanctuary where folks
hang up their coats and their minds before entering.Truth 4 – We are a learning church. Real thinkers share one
common insight: the more we learn, the more questions we have. We are deeply committed to educating our
children and our youth.Truth 5 – We are a diverse church – Many of us come from Lake Bluff.
Yet in increasing numbers, we are from any number of surrounding communities. The roots of this
Church are Protestant. However, quite a few of us grew up Catholic. Quite a few of us
grew up in no Church at all. A number of our families blend religious backgrounds: Jewish
and Christian, Muslim and Christian, We have folks regularly reading our sermons in Holland, in England, in Germany, in Russia,
in China and in Brazil, among other places. Some of us are white collared managers and executives.
Some of us are craftsmen and women. And the work some of us are currently pursuing is simply finding
a job. Still others of us are more or less retired. We are conservative and moderate
and liberal in our politics. We are affluent and middle class and struggling mightily. Truth 6 – We are an eating church. Not unlike the family that sits down at the dinner table, when our church
family sits down to eat together, we remember just how much we enjoy each other’s company.Truth 7 –
We are
a member-driven church. Here’s the bottom line on how this church runs: aside from what the pastor’s
preach and what baptisms and weddings they perform, everything in this church is up to its members. Members
run all the meetings. Pastors do not moderate or vote. Things happen in this church
as a result of folks working on committees and reporting to boards and taking action at congregational meetings.
Every member gets one vote and every vote counts equally.Truth 8 – We are a changing church. Our job is, and has always
been, to carry the essential principals of who we are into each era and to discover the unique challenges and opportunities
that are there for us as a church in being the Union Church, here and now. Each generation has done that.
That’s why the church is alive and vibrant today.Truth 9 – We are a caring church. Part of what it means to
be the Union Church today speaks to the life we share within this community. We are the Union Church in
hard, challenging times. There is a lot of anxiety and insecurity and worry around and many of those worries
are quite real. And yet, the truth that we are called to live with one another is that none of us are alone
as we face those challenges. If we freely share the gifts that God has given us and that we have worked
to hone with one another, there is hardly a challenge which we cannot overcome!Truth 10 –
We are
an outreach church. When someone from beyond our church family arrives at our door, we do what we can to
help. We try to identify needs and resolve problems. We care. We
help. And yet we don’t sit and wait for those who come and find us. We support
the great works that Mother’s Trust and P.A.D.S. do in their own spheres, and that support is financial, thanks to the
Chili Auction that so many people work and support. We reach out to those in need.What makes us a church and
not simply a social club is our willingness to respond to the needs of others both within our church family and well beyond
our walls.
Excerpt from a recent sermon.
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