Local Minister Says Time Off Is Good For Congregations

Local Minister Says Time Off Is Good For Congregations

In an era when most church leaders are seeking ways to boost declining church attendance, one local pastor is making an unusual pitch to his 500-member congregation by telling them to keep away from his church during summer months.

Unsuspecting visitors looking for a place to go on Sunday morning will be greeted by a sign which declares, “Services Resume in September” if they choose to worship at the First Unitarian Church.

But for most of his members, the summer vacation from church is nothing new since Dr. Erwin A. Gaede, pastor, has practiced the tradition ever since his Ann Arbor ministry began 11 years ago. Last Sunday was the first time this year that the church doors have been closed.

"I think it’s a good tradition,” Dr. Gaede says. “People come back in the fall with more enthusiasm. I don’t have to apologize for closing the church. Our members are welcome to attend elsewhere. One shouldn’t identify religion with a building.”

Dr. Gaede himself stays home on his summer Sundays. “We do lots of entertaining ... and I may do some swimming.”

Though not faced with the task of preparing a weekly sermon, Dr. Gaede spends much of his leisurely summer studying in the U-M Graduate Library which he travels to on his bicycle almost daily from his home at 509 Dartmoor. He's in St. Louis, Mo., for a brief vacation this week but says he spends most of his summers in Ann Arbor because he likes it here. He tries to prepare a dozen sermons before services resume each fall.

Dr. Gaede’s wife, Marge is a teacher and will be instructing an open classroom at Wines School this fall. He has a daughter Sherry, who works at the U-M Medical Center; a son Steven, who will be a senior this fall at Pioneer High School; a daughter Susan, who is a graduate of the U-M School of Social Work: and a son-in-law Patrick, who is a Woodrow Wilson fellow graduate student at Princeton University and is working in the campaign to put Attorney General Frank J. Kelley in the U.S. Senate.

The 55-year-old pastor, widely known as a community leader, and also for the often controversial and vociferous positions he has taken in the past years on community and social issues such as when he led protests aimed at closing the incorrigible cell in the Washtenaw County Jail during 1968 — says that despite the fact that the church is closed for two months, he always gets calls from people asking what time the services are. His own members don't complain, however.

The tradition of closing a church during summer months is one which actually goes back to early New England days when some towns were virtually abandoned in hot weather, the pastor says. The Unitarian - Universalist position also grew out of the early American Protestant church, primarily Congregationalism, and Dr. Gaede's own theological leanings have followed similar transformations. He quit the Congregational ministry at a church in Madison, Wis., during 1951 and began a Unitarian church in South Bend, Ind., where he stayed for five years.

“You might call it a noncredo religion,” Dr. Gaede told The News in an interview. “It is incumbent on each of us to develop our own religion. The pursuit of purpose and meaning in life is a basic concern of all people. We don’t hesitate to go to the widest number of possible sources for answers to these questions.

“There need be no conflict portion between religion, science and intelligence.

“Most of us believe in only one life, you know, and we concentrate on how to make it better. Some people here believe in a personal God, some are agnostics, some athiests.”

Dr. Gaede explains that over 90 per cent of the Unitarian-Universalists are what he terms “come-outers” — they have come out of some other religion. He is no different. In addition to his background as a Congregationalist, that, too, was a transition. He was raised on an Iowa farm in the conservative Missouri Lutheran Synod.

“As a freshman in high school I was determined to be a minister. The natural denomination for me was Lutheran. But, after my first year at secular school — Iowa State Teachers College-I knew it couldn't be Lutheran. I knew nothing of the Unitarians.

Dr. Gaede received his doctoral degree at the University of Notre Dame where he did his dissertation on “Reinhold Niebuhr and the Relationship of Politics and Ethics.” Dr. Gaede received liberal theological training in graduate school at the University of Chicago’s Divinity School.

He is still centering his studies on the relationship of politics. This has led him to the works of such theorists as Locke, Machiavelli and Marx in addition to continuing his look at Niebuhr, "who was actually more of a political scientist than a theologian."

A graceful auditorium at the church reflects dignity, universality and the search for wisdom, according to the pastor. The person, not a savior, is the center of worship and concern. Art works by Richart Wilt and Milt Kemnitz decorate the walls. There are no religious symbols.

The church is housed in a building of which the original portion was constructed in 1917-the same number at the street address, 1917 Washtenaw Ave.

Dr. Gaede described a typical Sunday morning worship service:
Music under the direction of William Albright, an organist who graduated from the U-M School of Music, begins the service. A choir backs him up. There are no restrictions on the type of music they play. “Anything that is inspiring is religious," explained Dr. Gaede. “We’ve had Mozart, Bach and classical music. Albright has even introduced some modem music, including ‘rag’ music (which is similar to jazz).

"The central part of the service, I guess, is the sermon. I take my sermon preparation very seriously. The are all written out. A sermon is different than a lecture — it is a work of art. It brings together a wide number of sources. It should be provoking and inspiring, calling for some kind of action or commitment, not that every one of mine does ”

The service closes with the same hymn every Sunday. “Since what we choose is what we are, and what we love we yet shall be, the goal may ever shine afar, the will to win it makes us free.”

Dr. Gaede says he thinks members of the congregation sitting in the seats (not pews) of the auditorium come to the church to worship, maybe reflect . . . and perhaps to be disturbed.

“Some here think of themselves as Christians, but this church is not Christ-centered.”

Dr. Gaede’s sermons may deal with a wide variety of topics, including social issues. There are a few things that won’t come up in them, however.

“I don’t find the concept of God necessary in worship as we try to better understand ourselves and the world in which we live . . . The term seems to obscure the answers rather than to help find them.

"I never try to make an issue out of theology."

Dr. Gaede Relaxes At The First Unitarian Church