A Little About Me: My Life and My Call to Ministry

I was born and raised in Fort Wayne, Indiana. My parents were liberal Catholics who raised me and my two brothers with progressive values. My dad was a math teacher and my mom was (is) a musician and church professional. We didn’t have a lot growing up, but we were safe and loved and encouraged.

My parents were unhappy with the educational options available for us kids in Fort Wayne, and so they joined together with some likeminded parents and founded what was called in the 1970s a “free school.” There were about forty of us who attended. The school emphasized creativity, inquiry, and progressive values. My elementary school teachers were radical feminists, peace activists, free-thinkers, and environmentalists. They taught us to ask questions, confront injustice, and change the world. (Also, they were serious sticklers for the 3 R’s!) When I discovered Unitarian Universalism in adulthood, it was like coming home to the culture and values of my free school.

What I remember from childhood was a feeling that the world was filled with magic and wonder. I remember the evening sky was sometimes so beautiful it was almost painful. I remember thinking meanness and cruelty were incomprehensible aberrations in a world where kindness and compassion were so obviously what was needed. I delighted in art and reading and writing, in color and imagination and story. I had a sense I didn’t have words for, that life was supposed to be an adventure and that we were meant to do something important with the time we had.

In my teenage years I decided I was no longer a Catholic and stopped attending church. Theologically I identified as an atheist. I had never heard of Unitarian Universalism and so was simply unchurched in my 20s. I was not anti-religion. I just assumed it was not for me. I was interested in philosophy and art and history and how ideas shaped the world. In college I studied math and economics and history. I wanted to change the world for the better, without exactly knowing how I would do that. I thought I might be a writer or maybe a professor. As life happens, I ended up working at the Federal Home Loan Bank of Indianapolis for eighteen years. And I was now a dad my own self—one of the greatest joys of my life.

When I met my future wife, Susanne, she had started attending a UU church in Houston. I was fascinated by the stories she was telling me about this open-minded and liberal congregation. A few years later we were married and raising a blended family in Indianapolis (where she had relocated.) We joined a UU congregation as a family and I fell in love with it right away. I loved the community. I loved the thought provoking and challenging sermons. And I really loved singing with people every Sunday! Who knew that hymn singing was a thing that was missing in my life?

We dove in. We enrolled our three children in the excellent religious education program, joined the social justice committee, and volunteered in sundry other ways. The UU church opened me up to service and activism in a new way. It was with the UU church that I marched in my first Pride parade and phone-banked for marriage equality. I even served on a governance task force and learned about something called “policy governance.” The more I learned about Unitarian Universalism, its values and principles, the more I said, this is exactly right. This is me.

In 2009 I joined the worship team and discovered I had a passion for writing sermons. My bank job was a great job but definitely not a calling. Serving on the worship team was feeding me in a way that nothing else had. The next year when the congregation called a new minister, I became co-chair of the worship team. Unfortunately, the new ministry was a controversial one that shortly ended in a negotiated resignation. With the church in severe conflict, half the congregation left. We stayed. This was our family’s church, where we had made a home for our children. I did not want to quit when things got messy—that’s when the church needs people the most. We had made a commitment.

At that point I was the only person left on the worship team, so I approached the Board and offered to keep Sunday services going. With half the church gone, there was no money in the budget to replace the minister. I began leading Sunday services myself as a volunteer, preaching full-time. The congregation responded positively. After a year of this, the Board hired me to continue as a contract worship leader. The church began to regrow.

As I continued to preach every Sunday, I took on a gradually expanding role with the congregation—offering adult RE classes on UU history and theology, leading the church deeper into social justice work and anti-racism work, and supporting my wife in her new role there as full-time Director of Lifespan Religious Education. (By 2015 we had grown the church back enough to hire a full-time staff person. The church wisely decided to hire a DLRE first, and new families began to pour in.)

It was through this work that I discerned my call to ministry. Shortly thereafter I enrolled in seminary, left my bank job, and with the UUA’s blessing, began serving the congregation full-time. Preliminary fellowship and ordination followed.

All told, I will have served the congregation eleven years when my time with them ends, five of those years full-time. I am delighted to say that the congregation is a thriving place today, with a bright future ahead of it. And I am excited to bring all I have learned in those eleven years to a new congregation.

My call to ministry was not one event or one big moment in my life. It was many decisions, made over and over, to go deeper in my service to Unitarian Universalism. Sometimes those decisions were small and easy. Sometimes they were big and life-changing. In the end, UU ministry has connected me to the deepest longings of my childhood and the understanding of life that I felt then but had no words for: wonder, beauty, compassion, and service. For this I am grateful.