fdo-webinar-military-ministry-in-uu-congregations.mp4
SUSAN LAWRENCE: Hi, everybody. I'm Susan Lawrence. I'm the Managing Editor with Ministries and Faith Development for the UUA. And I'm here to introduce and host our webinar on Unitarian Universalist Military Ministry and Congregations. So welcome. And with us today, we have Gail Forsyth-Vail from our staff. She's the Adult Programs Director for the UUA. Shawna Foster was not able to join us today. Robert LaVallee is the Military Ministry Coordinator for CLF, which is the UU Church of the Larger Fellowship. And you'll be hearing more about that later. Pat Kahn is in the background. She's unwell and not able to talk without coughing. So I'm being your sole host today. And I'm glad to do that. So welcome.
Here's some housekeeping for you. I see that you've all muted your mics, which I appreciate. And your cameras are not on, which is also very great. Thank you very much. We'll have some time for discussion when the webinar presentation is done. And at that point, you'll be instructed to raise your red flags if you would like to speak. And you'll find that in the meeting chat box or the group meeting, depending which version of Fuze you're using. So you might want to click on your flag now just to practice. And if I see some flags come up where the names are, I'll know that you know how to do it. So if you could find that. Yes has it. And I'll look around and-- it's right above the meeting chat box in the version of Fuze I'm using. And it's a little red flag. OK.
Meanwhile, we have a meeting chat box where you'll be able to type any comments or questions you have during the discussion. And we'll keep an eye on that so we can return to your questions or comments after the presentations. And I'll also be posting some links in there for everybody while the presentation's going on. So you can cut and paste from the meeting chat box onto your own computer, so you may want to get a document ready to dump your information into.
If your audio sounds really bad, and you think it's something going on at your end, you should mute the audio on your computer and call in by phone. As soon as I'm done talking, I'll post the phone number for you to have it easily handy. And you will be able to see silently on your computer and participate by phone fully every other way.
We may have glitches. So just be aware-- we're going to show some video later on during the presentations, and it's possible that if your download's not at the right speed that matches what we're broadcasting, you might not be able to hear it as lovely as you would like it to be. So I'm going to post the links where you could go catch up and see the videos we're going to show on your own, on your own computer after the webinar is done. And they'll also be included in the recorded version of this webinar. So after the whole thing's done, in a day or so, we'll get this posted and you can return to it and catch up with didn't play well at your computer screen.
I believe that's all I've got. Here is where the recording's going to be in a few days. And yes, I now send you to Gail Forsyth-Vail.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Hi, hello everybody. Good afternoon. I'm really, really glad that you're here. And I want to just share with you the goals that we have for the webinar this afternoon. And here they are. We would like you to consider why military ministry is important for Unitarian Universalist congregations and groups. We'd like you to become familiar with the UUA's Military Ministry Toolkit and with the military outreach of the Church of the Larger Fellowship, which is sometimes called CLF. And Church of the Larger Fellowship is our online congregation. And it's actually, I believe, the largest UU congregation. Bob is nodding, so yes, that is true.
And we'd like you to prepare to initiate a conversation about military ministry with your congregation's lay and professional leadership. And if you are part of that lay and professional leadership, we'd like you to prepare to initiate that conversation with other people in congregational leadership. So those are our goals for today. And we would like to welcome you. I'd like to invite Bob to light our chalice. And we will move to the next slide.
ROBERT LAVALLEE: Thank you, Gail. I'm Bob LaVallee with a ministerial intern at the Church of the Larger Fellowship. I'm a second-year student at Meadville as well. I'm also a veteran. I was in the Marine Corps about a hundred years ago, and I served in Afghanistan as a Department of Defense contractor.
I'd like to read this lovely Memorial Day prayer by Rev. Pescan. The prayer is in Bless All Who Serve. Do I have that aligned all right? There we go. Which is a really helpful resource for both veterans, civilians, and active duty. And it's also available on the Worship Web, and Susan put the link in the chat box a couple of notes ago. And thanks, thank you, yes for the Semper Fi. Hoorah.
Memorial Day Prayer. Spirit of life, whom we have called by many names in thanksgiving and in anguish, bless the poets, and bless those who mourn. Send peace for the soldiers who did not make the wars, but whose lives were consumed by them. Let strong trees grow above graves far from home. Breathe through the arms of their branches. The earth will swallow your tears while the dead sing no more. Never again. Remember me. For the wounded ones, and those who receive them back, let there be someone ready when the memories come. When the scars pole and the buried metal moves. And forgiveness for those of us who are not there for our ignorance. And in us, veterans in a forest of a thousand fallen promises, let new leaves of protest grow on our stumps. Give us courage to answer the cry of humanity's pain. And with our bare hands, out of full hearts, with all our intelligence, let us create peace. Blessed be.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Thank you.
ROBERT LAVALLEE: All right. We're going to open by getting a sense of who's here. And Susan talked us through that process of raising your flag for a reason. Because now we're going to raise our flags, literally and metaphorically, to get a sense of who here has had what kinds of roles in the service and in the civilian life. So raise your flag if you're currently on active duty. Do we have anybody who's currently on active duty who's watching us right now?
All right. Well raise your flag if you are a reservist. If you're currently in the reserve.
No reservists on right now. But raise your flag if you are a veteran. And I'm raising my flag right now.
All right. Two flags raised. Raise your flag if you have a family member who is currently on active duty.
Raise your flag if you have a family member who is a veteran.
Three flags. Susan Lawrence. And I saw some other ones. It went by so fast, I wasn't able to-- oh, Gail.
And raise your flag if you have a-- oh, Connie.
Raise your flag if you have a friend who is either a veteran, reservist, or active duty.
All the flags come along. All right.
Great.
Thanks very much for that. Now we have a sense of who's in the room. I appreciate it very much.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Thank you, Bob. We're going to actually ask you-- we have found that, when talking about the military ministry, it's really important to find out what brought people to the webinar, or the workshop, or whatever it is we're doing. So what we're going to ask you to do is to actually type in the chat box what brought you to this webinar today. And then we're going to call on you to actually speak-- we'd like to hear your voice-- about why you are here today. What your and are you curious? Is there a particular reason that brought you to this webinar today? So if you want to just take a couple of minutes and type in the chat box why you're here. And then we would like to invite you to speak and to tell us why you are at this webinar today. So let's take a minute and do that. And the chat box on my screen is on the lower left. And you can just type in the bar and then press Send.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: As some of you may continue to type, I'd actually like to invite Sharon to speak. You were the first one to chat. So I'm going to unmute you and invite you to speak about why you're here today. Oops. Let me get you unmuted here. OK.
SHARON: Hey. I was just curious because I regularly have members with children, and they generally go active duty. We've had one who came back from Iraq with PTSD. And it was interesting being sensitive to him. He did not like to be in our congregation because it was so large. And he always had that sense of not liking to sit because his back was to the door, and that kind of made me aware of some of his issues.
We have another woman dying of cancer who's 60. Her son is on maneuvers in Romania. And I'm fairly certain that she will die before he returns in March. And so I'm kind of thinking about him for whenever he returns. And other folks who have their-- generally, their adult children-- deployed someplace.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Sharon, can you tell us where you're located?
SHARON: Yeah, I'm in Cincinnati, Ohio.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: OK. Thank you. All right. Lise, would you like to speak? Let me unmute you.
LISE: Hi. Can you hear me?
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Mm-hmm.
LISE: Great. First of all, for all of those who are wondering, I pronounce my name Lisa, like it's spelled with an A.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Oh, OK.
LISE: That's a challenge. Anyway, my nephew most recently served in the Marines, and that was a real good learning experience for all of us. I have older relatives who served in the Navy and Army, and things like that. But because he chose to join the Marines right when we were going into Afghanistan and Iraq, it was quite controversial in our family. And I find that those kinds of things are also controversial in our congregations. And so I'd like to help people negotiate that controversy.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Thank you. And Lisa, where are you located?
LISE: Elgin, Illinois.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: OK. Thank you. Susan, do you want to speak? I'll unmute you.
SUSAN LAWRENCE: What Lisa said. Well said. Thank you.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: And Connie, let me unmute you here. Oops. There you go.
CONNIE: Hi. Can you hear me?
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Yes, we sure can. Hi, Connie.
CONNIE: Yeah, I'm a community minister and a couple years ago, I took a class called Writing As A Healing Ministry down at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley. And the instructor showed a video of Maxine Hong Kingston doing writing groups with Vietnam veterans. And that just really touched my heart because that's my generation. That's my age group. And I just feel like I've never really-- I remember when the Vietnam vets were coming back, and I had neighbors. And I just didn't know what to do or what to say. And now my niece is married to someone that's on active duty in the Army. And many of my older relatives did serve in World War II. So I just feel like I wanted to know more of what I could do to help support or our veterans. Because, especially in the Vietnam generation, I feel like they didn't really get much from us as a society. So that's really my interest.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Thank you. And Connie, where are you located again?
CONNIE: I'm in Portland, Oregon.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: OK, thank you. Thanks. Is there anyone else who would like to speak? OK. We're going to bring a couple of people into this webinar via video. A couple of years ago, when the Military Ministry Toolkit, recently published by the UUA, published last spring by the UUA, was initially a project that was done by the Church of the Larger Fellowship as an internship project that Seanan Holland, Rev. Seanan Holland, who's a military chaplain, did. And it was handed over to the UUA to make it something that could be led by somebody other than Seanan, who did a gorgeous stop, beautiful job leading it himself. So it came to our staff group because we create religious education resources. And one of the things that we did is invite a number of people with connections to the military, either veterans, or active duty people, or family members-- Unitarian Universalists-- to answer the simple question, why should Unitarian Universalists be engaged in military ministry? And the result is a video. So we're going to show you a couple of short clips from what is a 23-minute video that is available on UUA.org. But I'm going to just show you two short clips. The first one is Jeff Pixley, who is active duty person. And this is Jeff speaking about his experience. So it's a little over a minute.
JEFF PIXLEY: Why should Unitarian Universalist congregations reach out to military? Because there are thousands of people like me in the military. Although you may get the sense if you served, that everybody's like you. Or everybody's of one faith or another, or primarily deeply religious, or evangelical Christian, or Catholic, or Jewish, or some Protestant. Without that Unitarian Universalist outreach, there could be dozens of people in any given installation or unit that just don't feel like they have a place, like I did for decades. So reaching out and finding one person and bringing them in the fold, and making them feel welcomed and appreciated, and like they're part of family. A place where they can let their hair down and be themselves, even just a couple hours a week, has been huge for me. It's honestly changed my life.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: OK. And that was Jeff Pixley. And I'm also going to show you Kimberly Paquette, who is a district staff person and a veteran, who speaks about her experience.
KIMBERLY PAQUETTE: I first identified publicly as a veteran years after leaving military service, during a Veteran's Day worship service in my home congregation. I was immediately struck by one woman approached me after the service. She was a long-time beloved member of the congregation, and her high school age son was considering joining the Marines. She did not know what to do. She was certain that, as a peace-loving people, her congregation, our congregation, would not understand or support her or her son. We need to do better than that. Our congregations must be open to our members, their families, and friends who choose to serve in the military. Our military needs deep change, and we are best prepared to do that change when it's inundated with people, our people, who work for peace, justice, are tolerant, and respectful.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: OK. So I wanted to bring their voices in because I think they're important voices. And I will recommend to you the entire video as a way to help your congregational leadership begin to hear some of the many, many Unitarian Universalist voices with experience with the military. So I'm going to turn this over at this point to Bob, with the question, who is served by military ministry?
ROBERT LAVALLEE: Thank you, Gail. Well, that role call we just did answers the question. That we're all engaged in the military, one way or another. We're coming up on 14 years of war in this country. 2.6 million men and women have passed through Iraq and Afghanistan in the last 14 years. And they're coming back home to this country and to our congregations. So we need to understand how to welcome them and have conversations with them. Exactly the motivation that folks are talking about.
There's an appalling statistic-- I worked as a chaplain this summer at the Veterans Administration hospital in New York City. And then there's an appalling statistic that 22 veterans a day, 22 a day are committing suicide in this country. It's unacceptable. And I think, based on my experience, a big driver of that suicide rate is the isolation that veterans feel when they get here.
And the funny thing, I think the thing that we really need to get past is that the experiences that people have in the military-- good, bad, and indifferent-- are actually not as unique as they tell themselves, as we all tell themselves. And that these experiences actually have a lot in common with experiences that people in the civilian world do, too. For example, you may experience PTSD from being near an IED. But if you're someone who's been trapped in a domestic violence situation, that's a situation that will engender PTSD as well.
Likewise, moral injury, which is the feeling of shame that comes from doing something that you know was wrong, or letting something happen that you know is wrong. Like accidentally killing a civilian. But I think maybe less dramatically. But in the civilian world, civilians experience moral injury, too, when they see things that are wrong or are somehow party to things that are wrong, but aren't able to do anything about it, or feel like you didn't make the right decision.
So these kinds of common experiences actually mean that in our communities, especially in our church communities, we can have conversations that heal everyone, rather than separating out the military from that. Pardon my dogs. We've been a country at war for a long time, and as Unitarian Universalists, I think we need to acknowledge it, embrace it, and engage with it. I'll stop there, Gail.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Thanks, Bob. And again, the question, who is served by military ministry? Our active duty personnel, our chaplains tell us that it's a pretty common time-- and I think we know this anecdotally-- for a young adult to have a crisis of faith and the military ministry-- what we hear from our chaplains is that they are actually the largest young adult ministry in Unitarian Universalism. And it's a very diverse young adult ministry.
And often the faith of childhood does not hold up for young adults when they are faced with the situations that they are faced with in the military. So Unitarian Universalism can provide a way for people to process things, to work with a crisis in faith, and to come out the other side spiritually healthy. And Bob, you want to say more about how our active duty personnel are--
ROBERT LAVALLEE: Sure. I had a firsthand experience of this. And you talk about chaplains. I went to Afghanistan in mid-2012. I spent four months in Kabul and then went down to Kandahar for eight months. And I was repairing the x-ray scanners that they use at the gates to check people in vehicles for IEDs. It's a very high stress job.
And being over there-- I lived in Boston and in Washington, DC, which are places where the values on the street are kind of the same as the ones-- I was thoroughly-- kind of the same ones inside the sanctuary. I was thoroughly in the NPR bubble. But over in Afghanistan, you're in the midst of sort of the moral entropy of war. And it's a very, very hard place, spiritually.
So when I discovered a little tiny UU congregation in Kandahar, when I walked into that little tiny meeting the first time, the sense of homecoming, of finding a place where my values where affirmed was so powerful. And I was so grateful for it. Because frankly, if you're a progressive person in a war zone, you spend a lot of time keeping your mouth shut.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Wow. We also know that our military has many gay and lesbian people, and that Unitarian Universalist chaplains have a long and deep experience, and Unitarian Universalist lay people have long and deep experience with being welcoming and affirming. And our chaplains are actually really helpful in situations where other chaplains either are prohibited by their theology or their denomination from providing the kind of support needed there. Or else are not skilled in that because they have not had that experience. So there's another place where our voice is very, very important.
And I think if you also listen to Kim Paquette's full piece on the videotape, and I hope you will, she talks about-- and the same thing that Jeff Pixley talked about-- a place to be yourself. Kimberly talks about her congregation when she was in active duty. She was in the Northwest and going to a congregation where it was the only place anybody ever called her by her first name, and how important that was to her at that particular time. So do you want to say anything more about chaplaincy, Bob?
ROBERT LAVALLEE: Sure, well it's post don't ask, don't tell military. But the chaplain corps, frankly, has not caught up with that. When I was Afghanistan, there were five Unitarian Universalist chaplains in the entire military, and only one of them in country. And I just happened to be lucky enough to have that one at Kandahar with me. If you're a gay, lesbian, queer, unless you happen to be fortunate enough to have a UU chaplain or United Church of Christ chaplain nearby, you're not going to get your spiritual food because of the theology that you're encountering. And that's really-- so our chaplains-- and frankly, Unitarian Universalist chaplains are really solid on the interfaith things. So they make great military chaplains.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Fabulous. Thank you. And who else is served by military ministry? Veterans. And I will say that that's actually a photo taken in my hometown. And my dad is among those veterans at the annual Veteran's Day ceremony. So I'm kind of fond of that picture. But Bob, talk about that. Why is military ministry important for veterans?
ROBERT LAVALLEE: Well for us as Unitarian Universalists, when we get back in our congregations, this is where the rubber hits the road in the lives of chaplains, and the lives of veterans in our denominations. The thing that veterans, just like any other human being needs, is the ability to tell their story their way. And to get past the stereotypes.
And there are some great and powerful and really damaging tropes that we veterans and civilians alike embrace. For example, there's this whole idea that all veterans are heroes. Which is, if you've ever walked through an airport or watched a football game, you've seen this thing. This is really unhelpful because veterans come back, and they may be experiencing some regrets about what they did. They may have moral injury. And it doesn't help them to be told that, no matter what they did, they were heroes. And I don't want to in any way diminish people's service, but it's different for everybody.
And then we have this other trope where we tell ourselves that-- and this is really popular with liberals, frankly-- that all veterans are victims. That they're somehow trapped in a socioeconomic system that brainwashes them, and they don't have any choices. And they do have choices. And they make choices all along. And for them to help heal from the choices they made, the decisions they made, they need to have that acknowledged that they did make some decisions so they can atone and make amends and move on. But it's a long process for healing.
So I think I'll stop right there. But the whole thing about being able to tell your story your way is the most important thing. Getting past the stereotypes.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: I would also say that-- as I said, I'm the daughter of a vet and I actually had a cousin who served in Afghanistan and Iraq. And I will say that for both of them, military service is a foundational part of their identity. And so we don't want to have our folks in congregations take something that they might see as a foundational part of their identity and have to be closeted about it.
They don't want to-- we don't want to take those stories where people really-- it's the stuff of life. Those ethical dilemmas or the growing-up moments, or the moments of really being-- my dad talks about, in his experience the first time he ever actually interacted with a person of color was in the military. He had no experience prior to that. This would have been 1952. And how important that was for him, formationally.
So I think our veterans are holding stories close to their hearts that are very important to them and could be very helpful in congregations to be shared. And I also find that many of our vets, when the time comes for memorial service, really want their service as part of their eulogy as part of the ways in which they are remembered. And that's an important thing for families as well, to make sure that we're careful about how we do that with memorial services if the veteran wants that to be part of their service. So those are some of who is served by military ministry.
And who else is served by military ministry? There are families. There are families of people who are deployed who need support, sometimes practical support. There are families that move around from place to place and need to find a place where it's normalized to be a military family that's moving around.
So that if we have a congregation where it's OK for kids to come in for a period of time, and then need to move. Where our children and youth can come to the joys and sorrows parts of their meetings or their classes and can share their anxieties. Where the cousin of somebody who is deployed in Afghanistan can bring that to really the place where children get their primary pastoral care, which is in their RE classes, can bring that there.
We need to-- I know that we at one time we had a young adult who was in basic training, and the kids all made Valentines. We sent this package of Valentines, which was really important. And he shared them around. Apparently it was with the best thing we could have done was the heart-shaped doilies and all of that the Valentine messages. And sometimes we take greeting cards for family members of people in the congregation who were deployed and invite lots of members of the congregation to sign them and send them off.
So really simple things. But I think families can feel supported by normalizing military service as part of the human experience that our families experience. So and Bob, you wanted to say something, too, I think.
ROBERT LAVALLEE: I totally agree. The care package thing, frankly, is a little overrated. Because unless you're really at a remote post when you're deployed, usually you can get whatever you need. But the thought really counts when having card is just as powerful and a lot easier to do. So I strongly recommend it. And the folks who are receiving cards while they're deployed from your congregation, they're the ones who are going to have no problem walking back in the door when they come back. So you're laying the groundwork for that meeting well ahead of time.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Thank you. I wanted to call-- we both want to actually call your attention to the "Creating Peace" Statement of Conscience, which was passed by our 2011 General Assembly after a four-year process of congregational reflection. And it's a pretty long document. You can actually find it on UUA.org, if you just look up "Creating Peace" Statement of Conscience. But I want to call your attention to one clause in this statement that was passed by the General Assembly after a great deal of thinking.
For Unitarian Universalists, the exercise of individual conscience is holy work. Conscientious discernment leads us to engage in the creation of peace in different ways. The creation of peace in different ways. We affirm a range of individual choices, including military service and conscientious objection, whether to all wars or particular wars, as fully compatible with Unitarian Universalism. For those among us who make a formal commitment to military service, we will honor their commitment, welcome them home, and offer pastoral support.
And I actually want to call attention to that clause because this is passed by the General Assembly. It's a Statement of Conscience of the Unitarian Universalist Association, which I believe is pretty clear in calling us to military ministry. For those among us who make a formal commitment to military service, we will honor their commitment, welcome them home, and offer pastoral support. So there is. This is not, I don't think, a side issue. I think it really is part of our commitment that we make.
ROBERT LAVALLEE: It's wonderfully nuanced and balanced, too. I think this is a really important thing to have as a core UUA document. The fact that the General Assembly took the time and voted on it, I think, is really significant.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: So I'm going to give you a little bit of a guided tour of the Military Ministry Toolkit. What it is that's online and available to you. And I will tell you that the Military Ministry Toolkit invites people into an intentional process to answer these, among other questions. But these are some of the questions that you are working with if you engage in thinking about military ministry.
How do we support families who have someone serving in the military? How can we be welcoming to military personnel who are discovering Unitarian Universalism? How can we invite the stories of veterans and their families into congregational life? And how can we hold honest, faithful conversations about war and peace that make room for multiple perspectives, experiences, and truth?
So those are the guiding questions of the Military Ministry Toolkit. And what it is, here it is, this what it looks like online. So if you go to UUA.org, and I think Susan just put the link in. But you can also type military in the search box, and it'll get you here.
It has three parts. There's a program that has six workshops, and I'll talk with you about that a little bit in just a minute. They're one hour apiece. The idea being that it's actually-- that's a reasonable-- oh my gosh, somebody's not seeing it. It's a screenshot, so it's a photo of the page. So if you go to the military ministry on UUA.org. You'll be able to look at this, but what I have in there is actually a photo of that page. There are six workshops. And then there's some recommended reading. And then there is the video, the 23-minute video that is all on that page.
Here are what the workshops are. And again, this is a screenshot of what's online. So if you're having trouble seeing photographs, you might not be seeing this. But I will tell you that the first four workshops invite some deep conversation, four one-hour workshops. You investigate the messages that you've received about military service over time, in your family and in the community where you live.
The workshop 2 asks you to take a really good look at your congregation's approach to military service. How is it talked about? Some really good scenarios that people can kind of wrestle with. How is your congregation talking about military service, or not talking about it?
Workshop 3 is philosophical and ethical questions about war and peace. And it's deliberately the third one because often people want to go right there. Let's get in our heads and talk about war and peace. And we are asking people to really think about what messages they've received, and what maybe the messages that are being sent by the congregation that they may not be aware of. We're asking people to surface those things before they start talking about philosophical and ethical questions about war and peace.
Workshop 4 is about the impact of war and military service on families.
Workshop 5 is actually has the group that's been doing the conversation. Plan a worship service to invite the congregation to engage with this issue.
And then workshop 6 is how do we take next steps? What is our next step, or steps, that we're going to take in our congregation?
So that's the actual set of workshops. Then there's the video, and it looks like this. And you could-- actually it's of the right length that you could show it even like as a-- it could be shown in a board meeting. It could be shown even framed with a worship service framed around. It could be shown as a sermon. It's about that right length. So there's a possibility for you.
And then there's some recommended reading including Bless All Who Serve, that Bob has talked about. War Zone Faith, which is some reflections from a UU chaplain in Afghanistan. And Soul Repair, which is about moral injury. And Bob's talked about moral injury. And actually, I think you wanted to talk a little bit about Ed Tick's work on moral injury as well. And our chaplain, Chris Antal.
ROBERT LAVALLEE: Yeah, I'm a big fan of the organization called Soldier's Heart, which was founded by a gentleman named Ed Tick. He's a psychologist who's been working with veterans since the Vietnam era. And now, actually, Rev. Chris Antal, who is a reservist, Army reservist, Captain in the Army, and chaplain, is working with him as well. And they're doing really great work around moral injury. And they were actually, they were working at the VA where I was at, too.
And also, Ed Tick has a brand new book out called Warriors Return, which I highly recommend. Highly recommend if you're thinking about this work. And thank you, whoever put up the link for Soldier's Heart. Was that you, Susan? Thanks very much. Great organization. And they can also help you with anything you want to do with your congregation.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: And now I'm going to ask you to keep going here, Bob, and talk about what the Church of the Larger Fellowship-- which is, as I said, it's the largest congregation of the UUA. So tell us what CLF is, and tell us about the military ministry.
ROBERT LAVALLEE: We have 3,500 members. We are a church without walls. And we use every medium possible to connect to people. So it will surprise to you to hear that we have over 600 members who are incarcerated. Which is quite an unusual demographic for most of our churches. But we do face-to-face meetings with them. We do letter writing campaigns. And then more generally, we do online worship. We do pastoral care. We have Facebook groups for grieving and for other kinds of small group interests. And we help to foster small group work in other settings, too.
Specifically for our military ministry, one thing we encourage people to do, when families are separated by deployment, because we do worship online, and we do it twice at different times, families can get together and watch together even though they're on different continents and participate in worship together. That's really kind of a lovely thing. You can still go to church with your kids at the CLF.
We encourage the Bless All Who Serve. We can try to get these passed out to as many VA hospitals as we can. As I said, we provide specific pastoral care for military ministry for folks who are encountering the unique challenges of being abroad, being in war zones. We have blogs. And we also-- and we're trying to do more of this-- but we also help folks who are deployed develop small group worship or covenant groups among UUs on their bases to help foster a sense of community and keep that Unitarian Universalist identity. That's just a few of the things we do. I'll stop there though.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Well, I think what's really interesting is when a nice partnership it is because the UUA is looking to have congregations become more skillful in their military ministry. And CLF is really doing a lot of work with active duty personnel and their families, and reservists, and whatnot. So it's a nice kind of partnership, I think, between the two groups. So thank you. And we're going to actually open it to any questions that you might have for a little bit. And then we do have a closing piece. So if you have a question, there's a couple things you can do. You can type it in the chat box, and then I can call on you to speak it. Or you can raise your red flag and tell me that you have a question, a comment. Either way. So raise your flag or type in the chat box. Now's the time for any questions that you might have.
ROBERT LAVALLEE: Don't be shy.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: And you know it always takes people a minute to kind of think about their questions.
OK. So there's a couple of comments. Some people don't have any questions. And yes says raise your flag if you had to register for military service before being allowed to exercise your right to vote. That's really interesting. Yes, I think registration-- yes. Interesting. Susan says she'd be interested to hear about any military ministry now going on existing UU congregations.
I know that Evanston, Illinois, is working really hard. And I think there's been some things going on in Florida and Michigan. Often the congregations that are nearest to bases are the ones that are most active. San Diego has done some work. Although the two veterans, or veteran and active duty person whose videos I played were both participating in congregations that didn't necessarily have a quote unquote "military ministry." So Bob, what do you know about congregations that are doing some work?
ROBERT LAVALLEE: There's a little bit-- I know Soldier's Heart is doing this across dominations, not just for UUs, where they're training civilians to start to engage in conversations. Much like the Military Bridge Builder Toolkit does for you. And so I know that's actively happening, but I don't know how far any specific congregations are going with this. I wish I had a better answer for you.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: So Lise, you have a little bit of a story about the show and tell. And do you want to just share it with people out loud? I'm just going to unmute you.
LISE: I recently found in one of our church closets those signs that have the names of people who have served in wars. And I brought them out. And a couple members said, hey, we should hang those up. And I know that in my family's United Methodist Church, there's a plaque honoring those who served. That is not something I see very often, if at all, in UU churches. And I'm wondering if you're aware of anything like that.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: I think a lot of the-- I live in New England, and I think a fair number of the New England congregations have them. But I don't know about elsewhere in the country.
ROBERT LAVALLEE: There's just such ambivalence. I know it's really hard for congregations because I think folks sometimes feel manipulated by the support our troops kind of language. As if it implies we also have to support the policies. That's a cynical view, I think. Which is why the Military Bridge Builder, those conversations-- which by the way, the great thing about the toolkit-- I was part of the pilot program that happened for that-- is that a civilian, people with no experience in the military at all can facilitate these conversations just as well as a veteran does. So there's no special requirements, just facilitation skills, which I think are universal.
So I do remember Chris Antal telling me a great story about being asked to go to a church that's a different denomination that had just installed a stained glass window that had all the service seals-- you know each branch of the service has its own unique seal-- and all the seals actually in the stained glass, and how uncomfortable it made him, how uncomfortable it made him feel about this idea of an official endorsement of the military by the church. Rather than the church being a place apart. So there's a lot of interesting things to talk about when we talk about what do we put in our public spaces, our common spaces in the church.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Yes. has a question about the changing of the name. It was called Bridge Builders when it was the Church of the Larger Fellowship's program. And we've changed the name to Military Ministry Toolkit for a couple reasons, the most important of which is that it was causing some confusion with Bridging, which is the young adult ceremony that happens in many congregations. And we wanted this to be easily searchable and findable and not to get lost in a title confusion. Which is why it's the Military Ministry Toolkit on UUA. But the original-- Seanan was the original author, and we worked with Seanan Holland's material. And just made it accessible to congregations. So that's why the name got changed. Although CLF people always call it Bridge Builders and--
ROBERT LAVALLEE: Sorry!
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: We do a little bit of translating here, there, and everywhere. But that was the reason for it.
ROBERT LAVALLEE: I need to update my language. I'm sorry, Gail.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Oh no, that's all right. Meg did the same thing. Meg Riley, who is the minister. Are there are other questions? Because we have a closing video that's a couple minutes long. And if you're having trouble seeing the video, I really think it's important to see it, and you might want to go actually to the Military Ministry Toolkit video. It's the last and starts at 19:30, 19 minutes and 30 seconds on the video. This is Seanan Holland talking about why it's really important to hear the voices of our military folks. And so I urge you to listen here if you can, and if you can't, you can go right to the video on the Military Ministry Toolkit on UUA.org and here again, beginning at 19:30. So you'll hear-- I'm going to go get it open-- you can hear the last of what Kimberly Paquette says, and then it'll go right into--
KIMBERLY PAQUETTE: --a beloved member of the congregation, and her high school age son was considering joining the Marines. She did not know what to do. She was certain that, as a peace-loving people, her congregation, our congregation, would not understand or support her or her son. We need to do better than that. Our congregations must be open to our members, their families, and friends who choose to serve in the military. Our military needs deep change, and we are best prepared to do that change when it's inundated with people, our people, who work for peace, justice, are tolerant, and respectful.
SEANAN HOLLAND: Within our tradition of Unitarian Universalism, we have made noble progress in making space for veterans and their loved ones. And we know that many of our veterans are still, and just now, finding ways to share their stories in their congregations that are, themselves, only now becoming ready to hold such stories.
We must continue this healing and coming together because our time calls on us, on the one hand, to redeem a piece of our past as an association. And on the other, to be a redemptive force in nothing short of seeking a cure to the ailment of war. And it is this second task that looms even larger. Even more so than the first task, it will require us to work together and to build bridges between veterans and non-veterans.
As we work together, may the songs we sing, the prayers we lift up, and the litanies we recite to bind ourselves in purposeful covenant, may they reach beyond ourselves and our neighborhoods. May they reach beyond the bounds of relative comfort and security. May they reach out into the distant chaos and confusion of conflict to steal the hearts and minds of young servicemen and women that they might survive in their witness of the sorest of humanity's dysfunctions. We need their stories. We need the shutter of distant artillery to speak to us through the wincing of the web of life. We need the images and sounds to become just real enough to move us. We need to allow ourselves to be changed by the stories of our warriors and all who are affected by war.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Thank you. So I think, thanks everybody. And at this point I'm going to turn it over to Susan to talk to us about upcoming webinars in this series.
SUSAN LAWRENCE: Thanks, Gail, and thanks everybody for joining us today. We have the topic of professional development for religious educators coming in December. And the dates are a Tuesday midday and Thursday evening Eastern Time. Just calculate three hours back if you're on the West Coast. And Jan Gartner is the associate at the UUA for credentialing of religious educators. And she's going to talk about how to think about professional development and what some of the opportunities are. And how to help pay for it as well.
And in January, we hope to do something on financial planning for religious educators, which really applies to all religious professionals. It could be of interest to anyone who is involved in working on staff with a congregation or another organized setting of the religion. And Gail is going to talk to us about Managing Easter in February. And in March, we're going to have the Youth and Young Adult Ministry Office with us to talk about creating youth leadership and how to work more multi-generationally successfully in congregations to get youth engaged.
So the webinar we just completed, and the ones to come, and about a year's worth from before are all available in archive format at the website you see below, which is www.uua.org/re/t eachers/webinars. So please catch up with us on an archive webinar or join us again. And thank you for being here.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Thanks, everybody, and I'm putting my email in the box. But if you have any more questions about the resources, you can get in touch with me.
SUSAN LAWRENCE: I'm going to stop our recording. And people are welcome to stay on and say goodbye some more if you like to. Thanks everybody.