Going Viral

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” ― Simone Weil

It’s one of those unspoken rules in preaching that you don’t spend time in the sermon talking about how you wrote the sermon… but… it’s Community Church, and we’re a little known for being rule-breakers.

So I’ll tell you about how I picked the title for today’s service.

“Going Viral.” It’s a slightly strange title for a sermon. The phrase has changed a lot over the past six years.

In the spring of 2020, “viral” meant at least two very different things. One was a virus that upended all of our lives. The other was an app that suddenly seemed to be everywhere.

Like so many college students, I was sent home almost overnight. I moved back in with my parents in Oregon, attended Zoom classes from my childhood bedroom, and suddenly found myself with a lot more time online than I had ever expected.

That’s when I started a TikTok account called @unitarianuniversalist.

At the time, there weren’t many people making videos about Unitarian Universalism, so I started experimenting. Some videos were dances or trends. Others were just me talking about business resolutions, the Principles, my favorite hymns, and whatever else I thought people might find interesting. Some of them got a few hundred views, some got a few thousand. A few went viral, and with that also attracted the comments of some people decidedly not looking for what I was offering.

Looking back, I don’t know exactly what I expected when I started making those videos. I wasn’t trying to become internet famous. I also wasn’t imagining that a sixty-second video explaining the Seven Principles would somehow transform the future of Unitarian Universalism.

Mostly, I was curious. I wondered what would happen if someone scrolling through dance videos and cooking tutorials suddenly stumbled across a nineteen-year-old talking about covenant, singing a hymn, or explaining why we light a chalice every Sunday.

I think I was asking a question that we have always asked:

How do people discover us?

Fortunately, I wasn’t the only one making UU TikToks. Around the time I got too busy with school and work and everything else and tapered off posting videos, a UU minister named Rev. Joanna Fontaine Crawford came on the scene. She even turned her hateful comments into a running series of cocktail videos with names like “Filthy Heretic” and “Agent of Darkness.” Today she has over 75,000 followers and has done more UU evangelism through TikTok than anyone else I know.

In preparation for this service, and because our theme for the month of July is “fun,” I made my return to TikTok a few weeks ago with the help of our fabulous media editor AJ, and Br. Zachary. You might have seen us recording the video before the service, or maybe reposted on Facebook or Instagram. It took me longer than I’d like to admit to get the dance down, but Br. Zachary and I turned it up to “Lush Life” by Zara Larsson and had a pretty fun time while we were doing it.

If that sentence made absolutely no sense to you, you’re not alone.

And here’s the good news: this sermon isn’t actually about TikTok. Or dances. Or trying to convince any of you to download another social media app.

Even though my official job title here is now basically “cool youth pastor”—or at least, that's what I’m choosing to call it—it’s not actually TikTok that piques my interest.

It’s people.

Because, even though it doesn’t always feel that way from behind our screens, every view is a person. Every comment is a person. Every account that follows Community Church is a person. Well...most of them are people. The bots are another sermon.

It’s surprisingly easy to forget that online. Numbers have a way of flattening people. Seven hundred views sounds like a statistic until you imagine seven hundred actual people. Seven hundred people with jobs and families and worries. Seven hundred people who are grieving someone, or celebrating something, or trying to figure out what they believe.

Somewhere in that crowd might be someone who has never met a Unitarian Universalist before. Somewhere might be someone who hasn't been inside a church in years. Somewhere might be someone who didn't know communities like this one existed.

Once you start thinking about people instead of numbers, the question changes. It stops being, “How do you go viral?” and becomes, “What is worth spreading?”

One more story about TikTok, and then I promise I’m done.

If you're on social media, you've probably seen clips of our choir—posted by Community Church or by choir members themselves. They get shared around a lot, and every time I see the comments, I’m reminded how extraordinary both our music ministry and our social media ministry are.

A few months ago, someone commented on one of those videos asking, “Do you do this every Sunday?”

Yasmine replied with the time and place.

Sam showed up.

And then they kept showing up.

That story has stayed with me because it reminds me what social media can do—and what it can't.

A video can spark curiosity. It can answer the question, “Could this place be for someone like me?” It can introduce someone to Community Church. But everything that happened after that first visit had nothing to do with an algorithm. It had everything to do with this community: the people who welcomed them, remembered their name, invited them to community events, and made room for them here.

That’s why I don’t think of our online presence as separate from what we’re doing here. It’s an extension of it.

For some people, the first Community Church they experience is the one on a screen. They hear the choir before they ever hear us sing in this room. They watch a sermon before they ever sit in these pews. They attend online because they live across the country–or the world, are disabled, immunocompromised, caring for children, working on Sundays, or simply gathering the courage to visit for the first time.

That’s real ministry too. And none of it happens by accident. We have a dedicated staff who think carefully about what we share, what platforms we use, and how to tell the story of Community Church with integrity. They spend hours editing videos, writing captions, taking photographs, updating the website, and making sure someone who’s never heard of us can figure out who we are before they ever walk through the door.

In the 1960s, UU congregations across the country placed newspaper ads that asked, “Are you a Unitarian without knowing it?” Many congregations, including Community Church, would broadcast services on the radio and distribute pamphlets of sermon manuscripts. The impulse to share what we are doing has always been there. The mediums have just shifted. Because an algorithm can recommend a video, but it can’t build a relationship.

And maybe that's the thing that’s been sticking with me as I’ve thought about this sermon. We talk about things “going viral” as though they spread all by themselves. A video suddenly takes off. A movement suddenly catches on. A church suddenly starts growing. But “suddenly” is usually just the moment everyone else notices.

Long before something becomes visible, someone has been doing the work. Someone has been building relationships. Someone has been asking hard questions, making coffee, sending emails, rehearsing music, welcoming newcomers, showing up week after week.

By the time the rest of us notice something spreading, there’s usually a whole foundation underneath it.

That’s the part Conor was talking about earlier.

Ella Baker called it spadework—the work beneath the work.

I keep thinking about that because it’s true in organizing, but it’s also true in almost everything else.

It’s true on TikTok. Every video that “goes viral” sits on top of dozens that don’t. It sits on top of years of learning what to say, how to say it, and who you're trying to reach.

And it’s true here.

There is so much spadework around Community Church that most of us never see.

Someone has to decide which choir clip to post. Someone has to write the caption. Someone has to make sure the livestream actually works. That is ministry too.

Someone remembers that another member was having surgery this week and asks how they're doing. Someone stays in a conversation after the service because another person needed to be heard. Someone invites a newcomer to the diner because they remember what it felt like to walk through these doors for the first time. Someone suggests nametags, or shares their pronouns, or notices when a familiar face hasn’t been here in a while.

None of those moments are likely to end up on Instagram.

They’re also the reason people come back.

So maybe the question isn’t whether Community Church can—or should—go viral.

Maybe the question is:

What do we want to spread?

I hope it’s not just our name. I hope it’s not just our reputation. I hope it’s not even this sermon.

I hope what spreads from this place is the feeling that someone belongs.

I hope what spreads is the courage to stand up for a neighbor.

I hope what spreads is curiosity instead of certainty.

I hope what spreads is the conviction that another world really is possible.

Because that’s how faith has always moved through the world.

Through ordinary people who keep showing up for one another. Through the quiet work that rarely gets noticed. Through communities that choose, week after week, to welcome one more person, sing one more song, have one more conversation, and keep dreaming another world into being.

During the congregational year, after we sing the children out to Learning in the Loft, they gather upstairs in a circle, sing together—sometimes you can hear them from down here—and light a chalice. These are the words they say every time they meet, words they have said for as long as anyone in the Religious Education program can remember:

“Flame that starts with one tiny spark that can so quickly spread, reminds us that good ideas, loving acts and peaceful thoughts can spread quickly too.”

I think that's the perfect call to action.

May we spread good ideas.

May we spread loving acts.

May we spread peaceful thoughts.

May we be one tiny spark...

...that can so quickly spread.

Amen.