Sermon: Stewardship – Austin Karr

Can I tell you a secret? I love serving as the stewardship chair.

It’s connected me to this community in ways I didn’t expect. I’ve had conversations I didn’t know I would have, met people I might not have otherwise, and heard stories about what this church means in people’s lives.

I’m Austin and I have the privilege of serving as the Chair of the Stewardship Committee again this year. I’m also fortunate to be a part of an amazing committee with Barbra Snook, John Ehrman, Tom Abood, plus our wonderful staff (Katie, Kailey, Birch, Rev. Eric) who make sure everything runs smoothly.
Most years, that role begins for me on Founders Sunday—a moment where we pause and remember that this church didn’t begin with us. That there were people who built something here, sustained it, and carried it forward for the last 135 years.

And when I step into this role, that’s what I feel most clearly—that we didn’t create this. We stepped into something that was already in motion. Something that had been cared for, invested in, and carried forward by people who believed in it, even when their own lives were uncertain, even when the future wasn’t clear.

And I’ve realized something over time—it’s a little strange to say, but in this role, I sometimes feel more connected to the past of this church than the present.
Because as Stewardship Chair, I see the continuity.

I see the decisions that were made, the commitments that were kept, the ways people showed up—especially in moments when things weren’t easy or certain.

And it’s helped me understand my place in that story.

A few weeks ago, I had a chance to experience that in a different way. I was sitting with my daughter Charlotte in her Coming of Age class, listening to the history of this church, and I found myself amazed all over again. Because this wasn’t just something we talk about once a year on Founders Sunday.

This was being passed on—right there, in that room. The story of this church being handed to the next generation.

This year, we started our stewardship season in a different way – with the church musical. It was my first time experiencing it, and it was such a clear expression of the talent in this community. People showing up, sharing their gifts, creating something together. We often talk about time, talent, and treasure—and the musical is such a great example of talent and time.

I’m here today to talk about another part of that.

Treasure.

How we give. How we support this church.

Giving has always been part of how I’ve understood community.

I grew up in a family of volunteers—people committed to their community and to sustaining it. My dad served on the school board. My mom was a community activist. And one of the stories I heard at my grandpa’s funeral was that just a week before he passed, he was in the church kitchen washing dishes.
And in a small town, you learn something early—there isn’t someone else. You’re part of what makes it work.

You see, I grew up in a very small town—one stoplight and a Subway sandwich shop—a McDonalds opened sometime later.

There was a movie theater in town but had closed before I was born, but in the mid-90s, my mom and a group of people in the community had this idea that it should reopen. They spent years raising money—nearly a million dollars—to renovate that building.

What they created wasn’t just a theater. They created a space. A place for people to gather. A place for the community to come together. Something that didn’t exist—until they decided it should.

And more than 25 years later, it’s still going. There are a few paid staff, but it’s mostly volunteers—people still showing up, still giving their time, still choosing to be part of something they helped create or inherited from those who came before them.

That’s what makes it work.

Not just the money that started it—but the continued commitment that sustains it.

And growing up around that, I learned something early—giving isn’t separate from community. It’s part of how you build it. Of how you sustain it. Part of how you say—this matters, and I’m in.

And the more I think about it, the more I realize—that’s exactly what’s happening here.

This church exists because people made that same choice. Not just once, but over and over again.

To give. To support it. To fund it. Everything we experience here today exists because people chose to support it.

We’re sitting in a building many of us didn’t build—my wife and I joined in 2018 shortly after this beautiful building was completed. Many of you sitting here today did help build this building. You raised the money, made the decisions, and showed up for the meetings, the conversations, and all the small choices that turned an idea into something real.

Just the other night, I was talking with some of you about what that process was like and what it took to bring this space into reality.

When I sit here with my family most Sundays, I’m reminded of that in small ways. On the back of some of these chairs are the names of people who helped lead this church—moderators of the board, people who carried responsibility for this community, former ministers. There’s one name I find myself looking at often—the first woman to serve in the role of moderator. Ellen Brettel served as the moderator of the board beginning in 1967 and her name is in front of me most Sundays.

Those names matter. They remind us that this space on this corner in south Denver didn’t just happen.
But what also strikes me is how many names we don’t see—the thousands of people who showed up, who gave, who participated, who made decisions, and who kept this place going, whose names we may never know.

And still, we are the beneficiaries of their work.

And that brings me to this year’s theme: The Work Before Us.

I’ve been thinking about that phrase, because it holds the past, the present, and the future all at once. It’s honoring what came before. It’s fully living what we have right now. And it’s shaping what comes next.

And that’s really what stewardship is.

Stewardship is about being entrusted with the care of something—something we didn’t create alone, something we don’t own, but something we are responsible for, for a time.

And part of that care is very real and very practical.

It means funding this church—this year’s budget.

It means making sure we can support the staff who create Sunday services, who fill this space with inspiring music, who care for us and our children, who show up in difficult moments, and who build the programs that sustain this community.

It means paying them in a way that supports their full lives—not because we have to, but because we choose to.

It means adding staff so we can grow and create programs that help each of us thrive.

It means sustaining this building so it remains a place we can gather.

And it means making sure that what we experience here doesn’t slowly become something less over time.

That is what we are funding.

And that funding doesn’t come from somewhere else.

It comes from us.

We’re not the beginning of this story, and we’re not the end of it either.
We are in the middle.

And the truth is—we’re always in the middle.

We get to hold this space in the story, for a time.

There was work that came before us. There is work right now. And there is work that will come after us.

And being in the middle means we have a choice. We’re not just inheriting something—we’re shaping it.

What this church becomes, how it feels, and what it offers to the world is being decided right now by the way we show up.

Just as we are the beneficiaries of the work that came before us, someone someday will be sitting here—benefiting from ours. They won’t know all our names. They won’t know the conversations we had or the decisions we made.

But they will feel the result of them. And what they inherit will be shaped by what we choose right now.

So when you think about your pledge this year, I want to be very clear about what we’re asking.

We are asking you to help fund this church. To support this year’s budget.

To make it possible to live into the commitments we’re making—to our staff, to this community, and to the future of this place.

Because this doesn’t happen without that.

So when you think about your pledge this year—yes, think about the budget, think about the needs—but also think about this:

What do you want this place to feel like while you’re here?

And what do you want someone else to experience here because you were here?

Because this only continues if we choose it.

If we show up for it.

If we support it—together.

And that’s really what this moment is asking of us.

To consider what this place means in our lives…and to make a commitment that reflects that.

Sermon: Embracing Possibility – Rev. Eric Banner

Last fall we did a question box service, in which one of the questions that was asked, but not answered, was “Where would you like the church to be in five year?”

It felt like a good time to answer that question would be now, in the midst of our annual stewardship campaign, which kicked off with the musical a couple of weeks ago, written and performed by our members, and continues now. Like you, our household received a pledge packet, inviting us to increase our giving by $10 a month or 10%, whichever was greater. And like you, we give a pledge in support of this congregation that gathers our family in, though spiritual small groups, religious education classes, camping trips to the mountains, the weekly uplift that I hope every Sunday brings, and so much more.
As it relates to the question, though, you should know about me, that I’m not actually big on sudden and dramatic changes.

However necessary they can be, and they can be necessary sometimes, I’m a big believer in slow, incremental changes that allow us to grow, learn, adapt, and change along the way, and that is what we’ve been doing here at First Universalist for the last few years. We are bigger, more vibrant, and alive, than we were a few years ago, but we didn’t start everything all at once, and along the way we let some things go that weren’t working, or weren’t working anymore. Now, if this is your first Sunday here, you might be wondering what you walked into, and what I want you to know is that what you walked into is a living, breathing, place, and my answer to that question, where would I like us to be in five years, is an outgrowth of that.

An outgrowth of what I said nearly four years ago when I asked you to consider me as your next senior minister. Our practice calls for candidates for that job to come through a process, and be brought forth to the congregation for a weeklong interview by anybody and everybody, bookended by two Sunday Services. There we were, May 1st, 2022. We were only a few months into a return to in-person services after pandemic distancing. Johanna Fitt was our worship associate. Austin Karr was up here telling you about the end of the pledge drive, encouraging everyone to get their pledge in, and increase it if you could. Sara Murray, our Moderator, welcomed us all into the service.

And I told you many things, that looking back have come to be. I told you of the wisdom of that early 20th century Universalist leader, Lewis B Fisher, who was known to remark that “Universalists are often asked to tell where they stand. The only true answer to give to this question,” he said, “is that we do not stand at all, we move.” I told you of the people I thought we would see, and I see them all here, today.

“There’s barely an open seat in the house,” I said. “We’re going to have to start thinking about a second service. And adding another minister to the staff.”

And so we are. Over the last four years we have grown, not like a dandilion in the spring, but like a hardwood forest, adding layers of strength and possibility that withstand the storms of life, shelter the people who live beneath its shade, and tie together the roots which hold us, and all that sustains us.

I once asked a colleague, who served nearly 30 years in a single congregation, how it was that her congregation had become the large church it was when she retired. She told me a story of a church that learned some things, tried some things, plateaued for a while, figured out what they needed to learn at their new size, and did it all over again. Not quickly. Not in five years, but in twenty five.

For the numbers people among us, the same kind of consistent, steady growth we’ve been experiencing these last few years might take us to more than 600 members in five years. We have the space for that kind of growth, but not the staff. To do that we would need to add a second service, and a second minister, both of which would be big deals. Deciding to have two services, which our parking lot, and our neighbors, increasingly call for, would mean making big decisions about what programs to have when, and what impacts it would have on things like our beloved choir, or our religious education programs. In just a couple of weeks our sister congregation downtown will be going to two services, but with religious education only at one of them. The choices we face get more complicated the more we hope to do.

But much like our budget, important as it is, doesn’t tell the whole story, no set of numbers do. And for that I come back to our shared vision, a vision of a congregation that “is a mosaic of diverse generations, backgrounds, and identities, where we can bring all of who we are, and who we hope to become. Through arts, exploration, and justice, we cultivate possibilities, ministering with those who share the journey.”
So let me tell you about the First Universalist I see five years from now –

You show up for the first time on a Sunday morning, having carefully scoured our website to figure out who we are, and what to expect. You show up and there is a space for you, whether you came on the bus, or walked, or rode your bike, or drove. As you walked in you were greeted by warm, friendly people who made you feel welcome, but not overwhelmed. You look around, and no matter your race, or your age, or your gender, you see people who look like you, who you might find something in common with.

The service starts, and you notice that the music feels both familiar and new. You recognize some of the songs, and look to the screens to find the lyrics to others, and everyone is singing. You’re next to someone who smiles and introduces themselves, always glad to meet someone they don’t yet know. Maybe one of you is that person.

You, the long-timer, you’ve been coming here for years, maybe decades, and you’re greeted with the same warmth as the newcomer, and with a connection that tells you that you are known. A question not about the weather, or the Broncos, but about the surgery you just had, or the kid’s birthday party that happened last week, or the new job you just started, because you’re not only known, you’re remembered.

You hear a message that inspires and challenges you, that speaks to your heart and your head, trusting that you really are smart enough to have figured out a few things yourself, and come always ready to learn something new. The service ends, and there is a place for you to meet with your friends, in the building or in the park. And as you do, you make plans for how you’ll be getting together later in the week, at choir rehearsal, at a justice action in the broader community, at a dinner with friends. Our kids are having the same experiences, participating in service, as leaders, as song leaders, as volunteers setting out treats for coffee hour, learning and growing in their classrooms, and so much more.

And no matter the stage of life you’re in, or how long you’ve been a member, you can always see, clearly, what your next steps are here at First Universalist. Whether they are leading or serving, teaching or learning, at every step there is clear guidance that helps you know not only what is possible, but how to make it happen. We have processes that are clear, and only as complicated as need be, and there are people who are always ready to teach someone what they need to know, because we’ve all been beginners at some point, and we all hope to give back from what has been given to us.

Now, I suppose it’s probably likely that whoever it was that asked that question, and we specifically didn’t ask for names, so it could have been any of you, might have been wanting to know how big I think we’ll be, or how our influence will be felt in the wider community we serve, but what I’ve come to know is that, for me at least, the answer to that kind of question depends on all of us, together.

Will we be a gathering place for social justice leaders across the metro, a trusted partner that has deep and abiding relationships that are called upon when a voice and vision of moral clarity is needed? I hope so, but I can’t do that without all of you. Will we be a place that has vibrant programs for children of all ages, and classrooms filled with hundreds of kids spread across every age and stage? With your help, we will. Will we be known for the music that carries you, not just Sunday, but all week long? So long as you keep coming and keep singing.

This is our work. This is our calling. To make real the possibilities before us, standing for all that is good and right in our world, love, and hope, and a future that is bigger than any one of us, and bigger than all of us combined, and remembering that Universalists don’t just stand, we move, open to all that may yet come.

Rev. Eric Banner
Senior Minister