In the November 30, 1959 issue of The Uniter, our church’s newsletter, the minister, David Harris Cole, wrote the following, which he titled, “What Lies Ahead.” Consider, please, how appropriate for today this 66-year-old commentary is.

“This church has now reached a point where its finances are secure, its administrative and organizational machinery functioning fairly well, and its new minister beginning to feel at home. There are rough places here and there to be ironed out, and future location to be determined, but by and large it is a well-running, well-organized, well-financed church. We do not have to kill ourselves with Bazaars, running after new members, and fighting internal battles.

So what do we do now? Settle down to a quiet existence for the next decade or more with the usual type of program, activities and occasional spats?

It seems to me that this is the point at which we can continue to be a good church, or take steps to become a great church.

A great church is one which makes an impact beyond the bounds of its own membership. It makes a contribution to the community, to culture and to the world.

I am mindful that a very small group of liberally oriented people in Boston meeting weekly called Transcendentalists had an effect on culture which was unparalleled. The books, magazines, sermons and movements they influenced had an effect which has not ceased even now. I am mindful of a church in New York City which believed in brotherhood enough to organize a whole community for integration and underwrote the real estate financing it involved. I am mindful of a church in Chicago which sparked a program ten years ago in urban redevelopment that is unique in our country and still is having a profound effect on Hyde Park.

What are the needs in this community and University that the talent of our church can have creative and positive effect upon? How, in the sickness and crisis of our present society, can we gather our resources to make a beacon list of hope shine?

I do not have the answer fully at the moment. I do have the feeling that with so many capable and talented people in this church pretty much freed from the burden of simply holding the institution together, we must reach out into new and untried fields. The gospel of liberal religion must find expression, through us, of new vistas.”