My Journey In Parish Ministry:
A Narrative Journey Through The Last 20 Years
Rather than dividing out the responsibilities of any one church, I will choose to describe the nature of my ministerial relationships and duties over the last decade. In all of the either Family or Pastoral sized congregations I have served, I have hired staff, counseled the dying, designed RE programming, planned outreach, visited shut-ins, and planned both social and social justice events.
On an average day, I might be photocopying orders of service, having lunch with a potential new member, visiting a shut-in, or setting up chairs and tables for an event. I am proud to say I have provided these small churches with a fuller ministerial experience than they could normally perhaps afford. I have had in every setting, a successful ministry.
The first church I served as credentialed Pastor was The First Parish UU church of Northfield, MA. I served the First Parish from 2003 to 2007 as their community as a quarter-time minister. “Northfield” is a small rural church in western Massachusetts with an average Sunday attendance of 20. In the second year of my ministry career, I added the half-time ministry in Rutland, VT, and again the next year, in 2005, added the Bernardston Congregational Unitarian Church to my initial grouping of part-time ministries.
Said a different way, substituting a diesel car that ran on vegetable oil for a trusty steed, from 2003 to 2008 I served first one, and then two and then all three of these communities in something resembling a modern circuit rider style. Most commonly I would be “out” at or between these communities from Friday morning to Monday night. During those years, I was learning a lot, and hated the thought of leaving those communities I had come to love. The thought still pains me.
After five years of spending an average of four consecutive days a week on the road, I was itchy to both drive less, and take on the challenge of a larger church back in Boston. It had grown practically difficult to go into search while serving three congregations on the road and working two or three overnights a week in group homes, I decided to seize the opportunity for something of a gap year while I went into search for a Boston based church.
In the spring of 2008 I said a painful but sweet goodbye to my Western New England UU communities, and after a long wait for visa clarification, I spent most of the 2008 to 2009 church year serving the small “Spirit of Life” UU community in Sydney, Australia. It was a temporary part-time role equivalent to a half-time developmental ministry. That adventure described more fully in its own section, in short, went well. I brought to them some significant gifts. I returned home, in the summer of 2009 to accept the call of All Souls UU Church of Braintree. Back in a church, near home, I was happily coaxed back to renew my role as the consulting minister of the Bernardston church. I have jointly, really seamlessly, served both communities for the last eight years.
It would be inaccurate to group my ministry in Braintree with that of the other, earlier churches. In Braintree I really am the settled minister in a way I have not been elsewhere. I entered All Souls with no constraints about treating my role as this 5/8th time called settled ministry as a full-time one, and have accordingly been treated and respected as such. Since I began, I am at church and/or stirring about the church and town on average three and a half days a week.
There is really nothing that I don’t do at All Souls. I preach 3 Sunday’s a month, coordinate and manage the worship calendar, and attend half of all the church’s committee meetings. I am active in the Braintree Interfaith Clergy Committee, moderately involved in Clara Barton District Ministers group, and prioritize any large event in the life of the church to the top of my calendar.
In my resume are fuller and more specific descriptions of the parishes I have served and my duties as their minister.