Early Adopters
- 6 days ago
- 19 min read
Sunday Service, 3 May 2026
Led by Rev. Stephanie Bisby
(video and audio to follow after the event)
Musical Prelude: Skye Boat Song - arr. Christopher Ball. (performed by Benjie del Rosario and Blanca Graciá Rodríguez)
Opening Words: ‘Why Do We Gather?’ by Priya Parker
Why do we gather?
We gather to solve problems we can’t solve on our own.
We gather to celebrate, to mourn, and to mark transitions.
We gather to make decisions.
We gather because we need one another.
We gather to show strength.
We gather to honour and acknowledge.
We gather to build companies and schools and neighbourhoods.
We gather to welcome, and we gather to say goodbye.
Words of Welcome and Introduction:
These words from Priya Parker’s book The Art of Gathering welcome all who have gathered this morning for our Sunday service. Welcome to those who have gathered in-person at Essex Church. Welcome to all who are joining via Zoom (including Meadrow (Godalming) Unitarians), and also to anyone tuning in at a later date via YouTube or listening to the podcast stream. For anyone who doesn’t know me, I’m Stephanie Bisby, and I’m half-time minister with Doncaster Unitarians in South Yorkshire, and I’m a member of the national Executive Committee, who act as trustees for the Unitarian and Free Christian movement. It’s a great pleasure, as always, to be here with you today to lead your worship in the absence of my friend and colleague Jane.
This morning our service is on the theme of ‘Early Adopters’. This theme was inspired by two largely unrelated connections with today’s date. Firstly, May 3rd is the anniversary of the first ‘successful’ heart transplant in the UK – performed just about 20 minutes from here at the National Heart Hospital. The patient survived only 45 days but the operation paved the way for over 8000 successful surgeries since. Secondly, May 3rd is also in some church traditions the feast of St Phillip and St James, two of Jesus’ early disciples.
Those two things got me thinking about innovators and pioneers and those people who aren’t afraid to step into the unknown and do something a little different. But before we get to talking in detail about things that are a little different, let’s begin with a familiar ritual.
Chalice Lighting: ‘New Light’ by Charles Howe
We’ll light our chalice flame now, as we do each week. It’s a moment for us to stop and take a breath, settle ourselves down, put aside any preoccupations we came in carrying. This simple ritual connects us in solidarity with Unitarians and Unitarian Universalists the world over, and reminds us of the proud and historic progressive religious tradition of which this gathering is part. Our chalice words today are by Charles Howe, adapted from an affirmation by the wonderfully named Napoleon Lovely.
(light chalice)
We light this chalice to affirm that new light is
ever waiting to break through to enlighten our ways:
That new truth is ever waiting to break through to illumine our minds:
And that new love is ever waiting to break through to warm our hearts.
May we be open to this light, and to the rich possibilities that it brings us.
Hymn 135 (green): ‘Sing in Celebration’
(Stephanie to introduce hymn)
Sing in celebration, time to remember
Those who in past ages kept love of truth alive;
Now, in dedication, as we pay them homage,
We too would pledge for truth and love to strive.
Pioneers undaunted, upheld by courage,
Freed the mind from fetters and set the conscience free;
By the tyrant taunted, for their faith derided,
They yet stood firm in love and liberty.
We who share their vision must share their labour,
Marching to the future – a new world yet to be.
This shall be our mission – to extol compassion
Till humankind become one family.
Candles of Joy and Concern:
Each week when we gather together, we share a simple ritual of candles of joy and concern, an opportunity to light a candle and share something that is in our heart with the community. So we’ve an opportunity now, for anyone who would like to do so, to light a candle and say a few words about what it represents. We’ll go to the people in the building first, then to Zoom.
So I invite some of you here in person to come and light a candle and then if you wish to tell us who or what you light your candle for – please keep it brief – be considerate of others. I’m going to ask you to come to the lectern to speak, as we want people to be able to hear you.
(in person candles)
And if that’s everyone in the room we’ll go over to the people on Zoom next – you might like to switch to gallery view at this stage – just unmute yourselves when you are ready and speak out – and we should be able to hear you and see you up on the big screen here in the church.
(zoom candles)
And I’m going to light one more candle, as we often do, to represent all those joys and concerns that we hold in our hearts this day, but which we don’t feel able to speak out loud. (light candle)
Time of Prayer & Reflection: based on words by Kye Flannery
Let’s take those joys and concerns into an extended time of prayer. This prayer is based on words by Kye Flannery entitled A Blessing for Leaders. You might want to adjust your position for comfort, close your eyes, or soften your gaze. There might be a posture that helps you feel more prayerful. Whatever helps you get into the right state of body and mind for us to pray together – to be fully present – with ourselves, with each other, and with that which is both within us and beyond us. (pause)
Blessed are you who hold the threads
who trace a through-line
who tack the climbing rope
for this team's journey
Blessed are you who tug twice, three times to check —
such precious weight
this thread supports — may it hold, may it hold!
may it safely lead us together
where we couldn't go alone
Blessed are you who weave
your thread with many others
to welcome, to warm,
a warm blanket,
a tapestry, a climbing rope,
holding history, guiding the journey,
a square with matte and shine to rest beneath a warm bowl of food
Blessed are you in your picking up
and your setting down,
letting another join and weave,
or letting this design muddle or rest in the background for a spell —
nothing is lost, all is love.
You are still a weaver, there will still be warmth and bread.
In every culture, to dance is to trade places.
Bless your intention, to love, to comfort, to draw close —
to weave beauty, coherence, symmetry,
to yes
all masterpieces contain flaws
a broken and inscrutable beauty we did not create nor can we remove
no weaver works alone
no weaver works without ceasing but the great weaver:
seed, movement, flourishing, rest, unravelling, rebirth
each climber stops to feel the wind’s embrace
to admire the trail
to rest, eat, reorient
tending to what is sore,
allowing inspiration to unfold
rarely in words, but in colour —
in pattern —
in the nostrils and the tips of our fingers
in yearning and rest
what we sought finds us
So may you be blessed today as you join in reflection, and later as you go forth into your life. May you take with you the courage to go forward boldly, the stability to be an anchor when needed, the wisdom to choose your trail well, and the serenity to take a moment, now and then, to enjoy the view.
Amen.
Reading: ‘Controlling Scurvy in the British Navy’ from The Diffusion of Ideas by Everett Rogers
Many technologists believe that advantageous innovations will sell themselves, that the obvious benefits of a new idea will be widely realized by potential adopters, and that the innovation will diffuse rapidly. Seldom is this the case. Most innovations, in fact, diffuse at a disappointingly slow rate, at least in the eyes of the inventors and technologists who create the innovations and promote them to others. Scurvy control illustrates how slowly an obviously beneficial innovation spreads. In the early days of long sea voyages, scurvy killed more sailors than did warfare, accidents, and other causes. For instance, of Vasco da Gama’s crew of 160 men who sailed with him around the Cape of Good Hope in 1497, 100 died of scurvy. In 1601, an English sea captain, James Lancaster, conducted an experiment to evaluate the effectiveness of lemon juice in preventing scurvy. Captain Lancaster commanded four ships that sailed from England on a voyage to India. He served three teaspoonfuls of lemon juice every day to the sailors in one of his four ships. These men stayed healthy. The other three ships constituted Lancaster’s “control group,” as their sailors were not given any lemon juice. On the other three ships, by the halfway point in the journey, 110 out of 278 sailors had died from scurvy. So many of these sailors got scurvy that Lancaster had to transfer men from his “treatment” ship in order to staff the three other ships for the remainder of the voyage. These results were so clear that one would have expected the British Navy to promptly adopt citrus juice for scurvy prevention on all ships. Not until 1747, about 150 years later, did James Lind, a British Navy physician who knew of Lancaster’s results, carry out another experiment on the HMS Salisbury. To each scurvy patient on this ship, Lind prescribed either two oranges and one lemon or one of five other supplements: a half pint of sea water, six spoonfuls of vinegar, a quart of cider, nutmeg, or seventy-five drops of vitriol elixir. The scurvy patients who got the citrus fruits were cured in a few days and were able to help Dr. Lind care for the other patients. Unfortunately, the supply of oranges and lemons was exhausted in six days. Certainly, with this further solid evidence of the ability of citrus fruits to combat scurvy, one would expect the British Navy to have adopted this innovation for all ship’s crews on long sea voyages. In fact, it did so, but not until 1795, forty-eight years later, when scurvy was immediately wiped out. After only seventy more years, in 1865, the British Board of Trade adopted a similar policy and eradicated scurvy in the merchant marine.
Hymn 201 (green): ‘Tomorrow is a Highway’
(Stephanie to introduce hymn)
Tomorrow is a highway broad and fair,
And we are the many who’ll travel there.
Tomorrow is a highway broad and fair,
And we are the hands who’ll build it there,
And we will build it there.
Come, let us build a way for humankind,
A way to leave all hate and wrong behind;
And travel onward to a better year,
Where love is, and there will be no fear,
Where love is, and no fear.
O come then friend, and travel on with me,
We’ll go to a time of liberty.
Come, let us walk together, hand in hand,
From darkness, into a happy land,
From darkness to sunlit land.
Tomorrow is a highway broad and fair,
And hate and greed shall never travel there;
But only they who’ve learned the peaceful way
Of fellowship to bring a better day;
We’ll see that coming day!
Reading: from ‘A Faith That Matters’ by Rev. Bill Darlison
'Matters to what or to whom?' one has to ask. I suppose the answer will be, 'To society and to the individual'. We Unitarians have been very good at saying and doing things that matter to society. We have taken a stand on many of the big social and political issues of our time and on the big social and political issues of times past. We can boast a proud record of standing up for the under-dog, of proclaiming freedom and tolerance in times when it was unpopular and even dangerous to do so. Our involvement in social justice issues has been, and is, exemplary.
But what about the individual? What about the person who feels an existential sickness of soul, who is seeking answers to life's deepest questions, who wants to learn how to pray, how to approach God, how to find forgiveness for past sins and how to find hope and faith for future endeavours? What can we offer him or her? Is it enough to say that words like 'God', 'soul', 'forgiveness', 'sin', 'prayer', and 'faith' are very troublesome and so don't get much attention in our churches? Is it enough to satisfy such a sensitive individual when we preach about world religions, global warming, gay rights, feminism, abortion rights, assisted suicide and the like… Is it enough to say to the earnest inquirer, 'Here you are free to find your own spiritual path.', when they probably came through our door thinking we could offer them one?
The great American playwright, Tennessee Williams, became a Catholic towards the end of his life. When he was asked why, he replied, 'To get some goodness back.' Would someone become a Unitarian 'to get some goodness back'? I doubt it. We don't deal in such categories. As James Woods wrote in the Guardian a few years ago, 'Unitarianism is tediously untragic', meaning that it is a fair-weather religion which speaks to the optimistic and the comparatively prosperous and which confidently (and often patronisingly) addresses issues of social amelioration but which has little or nothing to say about the anxiety and despair which afflict us all, not because we are poor or disadvantaged, but just because we are human.
…
Like so many people who 'convert' later in life, I naively used to think that when people heard about Unitarianism they would immediately be attracted to it. But it's not true. Very few of my friends and family have shown much interest, and our declining numbers demonstrate lack of interest generally. … And it's not, as we sometimes condescendingly assume, because the vast majority of people are simple-minded and in search of 'certainties'. It is, rather, because people instinctively feel that life has more meaning than the sterile rationalism of our white, Anglo-Saxon, protestant outlook will allow and so they go where their imagination can be fed, where their deepest instincts can be satisfied, where their sense of transcendent otherness can be explored. Our own ethical society-masquerading-as-religion satisfies few human desires.
We lost so much when we surrendered to contemporary naturalism. We need to start 'exploring boldly' again, to become, in the words of John Pickering, 'spiritual pioneers'. We need to stop the interminable agonising over words, to let the spirit move us, to re-learn the meaning and importance of prayer and of regular spiritual practice. And, most of all, we need to discard our literalism and discover the centrality of poetry and imagination in religion.
If we can do these things; if we can put as much emphasis on our interior life as we put on our political efforts, we can be a faith that matters.
Words for Meditation: by Leslie Ahuvah Fails
We’re moving into a time of meditation now. To take us into stillness I’m going to share words by Leslie Ahuvah Fails, including words from an adaptation of a Hebrew blessing. Following this poem, we will hold a few minutes of shared silence, which will end with the sound of a bell. Then we’ll hear music for meditation from Abby and Grace. So let’s do what we need to do to get comfortable – adjust your position – put your feet flat on the floor to ground yourself – close your eyes. As ever, these words and music are just an offering, feel free to use this time to meditate in your own way.
All that we have been separately
and all that we will become together
is stretched out before and behind us
like stars scattered across a canvas of sky.
We stand at the precipice, arms locked
together like tandem skydivers
working up the courage to jump.
Tell me, friends:
What have we got to lose?
Our fear of failure?
Our mistrust of our own talents?
What have we got to lose?
A poverty of the spirit?
The lie that we are alone?
What wonders await us in the space
between the first leap
and the moment our feet, our wheels
however we move our bodies
across this precious earth
touch down softly on unknown soil?
What have we got to lose
that we can’t replace with some
previously unimaginable joy?
Blessed are you, Spirit of Life
who has sustained us, enlivened us
and enabled us to reach this moment.
Give us courage in our leaping,
and gratitude in our landing.
And share with us in the joy of a long
and fruitful ministry together.
Period of Silence and Stillness (~3 minutes) – end with a bell
Interlude: Après un rêve - Gabriel Fauré (performed by Benjie del Rosario and Blanca Graciá Rodríguez)
Address: ‘Early Adopters’ by Rev. Stephanie Bisby
Maybe it seems strange to you that it took so long to introduce citrus fruits to the navy's diet after it had been demonstrated how effectively they prevented scurvy; it certainly seems strange to me. And yet there is evidence all around us that many of the best inventions languish, ignored, for long periods of time before being adopted, or are even passed over in favour of other less effective solutions. OK hands up, who’s now thinking “Betamax”? There’s an even better example, which the techies among you might be familiar with, and which Everett Rogers dives into in the book “The Diffusion of Innovation.”
If you have a computer at home, you’ll be familiar with the standard keyboard layout, known as ‘Qwerty’ for the six letters which appear in the top left hand corner. But do you know why those letters appear where they do, in the order they do? The Qwerty layout has been around long enough that it feels as if that’s just ‘the way things are’ but in fact the earliest typewriters simply had their letters in a much easier to predict alphabetical sequence. The problem with this was that some letters that were often used together also sat right next to each other, so if the typist moved quickly, one of the hammers would pop up before the one next to it had gone down, and so you’d end up with a clumsy tangle which then had to be fixed before typing could continue. So the Qwerty keyboard was designed to slow things down and prevent such tangles.
When we moved from typewriters to computers, the Qwerty format moved over, because people were familiar with it, even though the electronic keys couldn’t tangle in the way that typewriters’ mechanical hammers had. In 1932, a professor at Washington University, August Dvorak, did a time and motion study, figured out how much time was being wasted by this absurd inefficiency, and proposed a new keyboard design which would eliminate the vast majority of these inefficiencies. The Dvorak keyboard is provably vastly superior. Typists using it regularly beat typing world speed records. But what do you find when you go down to PC World for a new device? Yes, Qwerty.
People are not logical. We like what we like and what we like is, predominantly, what we know.
All of which made me realise just how astonishing it was that Jesus’ earliest followers, without a formal church to join, without the social proof of prominent citizens leading the way, without anything but a single charismatic individual with a new take on Judaism, were willing to drop what they were doing and sign up to support and promote hid radical worldview.
Matthew 4 tells the story of the first disciples this way: “As Jesus walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the lake—for they were fishermen. And he said to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.’ Immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him.”
In John 1, “Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. Finding Philip, he said to him, ‘Follow me.’” And Phillip did.
I don’t think I would have been that brave. It took me ten years to go from, ‘I really like listening to my friend play the organ at Golders Green Unitarians’ to ‘I think maybe I am a Unitarian.’ For a supposedly intelligent person, I can be very slow on the uptake. Which makes it all the more comical that for so long, like Bill Darlison, “I naively used to think that when people heard about Unitarianism they would immediately be attracted to it.” After all, I wasn’t immediately attracted. It took me ten years. But then I became a Unitarian, and then a minister, and then I forgot why Unitarianism had ever seemed strange, and wondered why anyone wouldn’t immediately want to dive in and “follow us.”
Don’t get me wrong, I still think that if people were logical they would. Not everyone, of course. And by that I don’t mean that I think some people are “simple-minded and in search of 'certainties'.” Some people are attracted by fixed doctrines, others are attracted by ritual and beauty and mysticism. For some people, logic and science just live in a different category to faith and there’s no need to test one against the other.
But if you are the sort of person who likes to ask a lot of questions, is open to reconsidering the answers when knowledge changes, and wants to test their faith against tough realities, surely you’d want to be a Unitarian. It’s only logical. Just as if people were logical they would eat oranges to ward off scurvy and type on the high-speed Dvorak keyboard instead of the deliberately cumbersome Qwerty one. But people are, as we have seen, driven by many things besides logic.
I very much do not agree with James Woods’ words in the Guardian: 'Unitarianism is tediously untragic'. Nor do I agree with Bill Darlison’s paraphrase: Unitarianism ‘is a fair-weather religion which speaks to the optimistic and the comparatively prosperous and which confidently (and often patronisingly) addresses issues of social amelioration but which has little or nothing to say about the anxiety and despair which afflict us all, not because we are poor or disadvantaged, but just because we are human.’
Unitarianism does, I suppose, speak more to the comparatively prosperous. Its intellectual demands require us to have a certain amount of headspace which is rarely available to those who are struggling for day-to-day necessities. And it does speak to me as a natural optimist, but part of the reason it speaks to me is because it has something to say to the anxiety and despair which afflict me on occasions, not because I am poor or disadvantaged, but because I am human.
What it says to me is that the world is complex, and in its complexity lie many possibilities: the possibility of beauty, of progress, of greatness. I believe in Hans Rosling’s brilliant thesis, expressed in his book Factfulness, which has the subtitle ‘Why things are better than you think’, that in general the world is getting better, and we only think it is getting worse because of a genetic bias towards negativity, and a media bias towards attention-grabbing – for which read negative – headlines.
We might not always move straight to the best possible solution, but give us time and we get there. Scurvy was eventually eradicated in the Merchant Navy and Marines. Dr Donald Ross performed the UK’s first heart transplant with short term success, leading to Sir Terence English performing the first heart transplant with long term success, and now over 1500 people are alive who would not previously have had a chance of life. Over time, medicine is advancing, life expectancies are increasing, and so are incomes and standards of living.
Things are changing, and in many ways, over time, they are changing for the better. These changes depend on people willing to try things that may not succeed, to take chances, to experiment. We need innovators and pioneers, radical thinkers and experimenters. And we need the people who are willing to follow in their footsteps, the early adopters, the disciples, who may not have the most visionary ideas, but have the courage to do things that aren’t obvious, that aren’t yet regarded as the norm.
The first Unitarians were pioneers who thought differently about the Bible and asked questions that other people weren’t asking about the relationship between God and Jesus, the demands of faith and the promise of salvation. Along the way, Unitarians have pushed the boundaries in all sorts of ways. Our first female minister was in 1904, a long way ahead of most denominations. We have stood up where change is needed, supported gay ministers, worked for recognition of same-sex marriage and passed a motion in favour of trans rights. And we stand up for the need for spiritual foundations in an all-too material world. Unitarians nowadays may no longer centre their faith around God, or Jesus, or the Bible, but we still centre the difficult questions, and we still hold that as humans, the things we do, and the things we believe, matter.
Our meditation earlier asked us: “What have we got to lose? Our fear of failure? Our mistrust of our own talents? What have we got to lose? A poverty of the spirit? The lie that we are alone?”
We do not need to be alone. We can be together, even if our beliefs are not identical, because we value the quest, the journey, the voyage of discovery. As Bill Darlison reminds us, we need to “to let the spirit move us, to re-learn the meaning and importance of prayer and of regular spiritual practice.”
“We need to start 'exploring boldly' again, to become, in the words of John Pickering, 'spiritual pioneers'.”
Hymn 166 (green): ‘All Heroic Lives Remind Us’
(Stephanie to introduce hymn)
All heroic lives remind us,
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
Forlorn sister or lost brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Stil achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour and to wait.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end our way;
But to act that each tomorrow
Finds us further than today.
Announcements:
Many thanks to Stephanie for leading our service today. Thanks to Ramona for hosting and Shari for co-hosting. Thanks to Benjie and Blanca for lovely music. Thanks to our readers. Thanks to John for greeting and Pat and Anna for making coffee. If you’re online stay for a chat with Shari if you can. If you’re in-person please do stay for tea and cake (Ramona’s brought some cake as it was her birthday this week).
Our minster Jane is on leave for a few weeks but all our usual events are happening. Tonight and Friday at 7pm we’ve got our online ‘Heart and Soul’ online contemplative spiritual gathering – this week it’s on the theme of ‘Influence’ – sign up with Mandy for tonight or Helen for Friday night (you can find their email addresses on the order of service or the Friday email).
We’ve got the poetry group on Wednesday night, here in-person with Brian, sign up with him.
Sonya will be here with her Nia Dance class on Friday lunchtime – have a word with Sonya.
Next Sunday the service will be led by Dr. Mel Prideaux of Mid-Wales Unitarians on the theme of ‘Listening’. That’ll be followed by yoga with Hannah and our regular Crafternoon.
We’ve got a late addition to the programme: After the service on Sunday 24th May we’ll be hosting a screening of ‘The People’s Emergency Briefing’, a 50-minute film about the climate emergency, followed by a conversation about our responses and what we can do to bring about change. Jasmine is organising this event so perhaps you can ask her for more information.
Our walking group is going to the Lee Valley on Tuesday 26th May. Please let Jane or Patricia know if you’re planning to come along to that and we’ll let you know the precise meeting details.
This month the Better World Book Club is talking about ‘Is This Working?’ by Charlie Colenutt and we have one copy left to lend out. That’s on 31st May on Zoom - sign up if you plan to come.
Details of all our various activities are on the order of service, also in the Friday email, so sign up for our mailing list if you haven’t already done so. The congregation very much has a life beyond Sunday mornings; we encourage you to keep in touch, look out for each other, and do what you can to nurture supportive connections. Just time for our closing words and closing music now.
Benediction: based on words by Rolfe Gerhardt
We extinguish this flame,
a mere wisp of matter in process,
almost as insubstantial as the thought of it.
Yet our civilization has harnessed the power
of such a flame to drive and shape a new world.
So may it be with the power of our thoughts,
that in truth and love they may drive and shape a new world.
Closing Music: April Afternoon - Oliver Ledbury (performed by Benjie del Rosario and Blanca Graciá Rodríguez)
Rev. Stephanie Bisby
3rd May 2026