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Philosophy of Ministry
WORSHIP
Worship was my first entry into religious life. Growing up Catholic, I learned to find comfort in the continuity of ritual. Later in my teenage years, I broke from a Christian worldview and began practicing with a Wiccan coven.
Both experiences provided me powerful templates for understanding the role community worship can play in connecting us to things larger than ourselves, while at the same time providing an avenue for personal change and transformation. These experiences also taught me that worship provides a chance for a community to come together and give life its shape and meaning.
Throughout my ministerial formation I was provided with many opportunities to craft community worship. I have learned that while I very much enjoy the traditional Sunday worship format, I find small format worship to be more meaningful and spirit filled. For me this has taken the form of vespers services, children’s chapel, and adult religious education. I find that in these settings people are more willing to open themselves to the possibility of transformation.
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In regard to preaching, I find the act of writing sermons and crafting worship to be a spiritual practice. Part of this is due to my love of writing. But beyond this, I find spending time exploring a topic or theme in depth, deepens my well of insight to share with others. In general, my approach to preaching engages personal stories and life experience in conjunction with other sources. I strive to tell stories to illustrate my points. I find this way of sharing a message is more natural to how I engage with people and tends to be less esoteric in its conclusions.
PASTORAL CARE
Engaging in pastoral relationships, as a minister, is something that requires substantial self-awareness. It also requires a willingness to attend to the present moment. This way of being necessitates setting aside preconceived notions and judgments, instead focusing on what is really happening in the moment. For me pastoral care is about seeking to develop a relationship in which all parties have an opportunity to learn more about themselves and how they relate to the world. This is accomplished by exploring what is really happening beneath the surface—learning to push past the superficial niceties in a way that allows people to be authentically themselves.
For me pastoral care is something that can take place in a variety of settings and can include one or many people. That is because my approach to pastoral care centers the relationship with the self and others.
With this understanding of pastoral care, I feel prepared to enter into pastoral relationship with a congregation—seeking to provide spiritual guidance and counseling appropriate to a parish minister.
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I would also just like to note that pastoral care is the aspect of ministry that is most meaningful and profound to me. In the tender moments of pastoral care is where I most feel the presence of the holy.
FAITH IN ACTION
Prior to moving to California, I worked a part time job at the Whatcom Y in Bellingham, Washington. As part of this job, I was responsible for opening the Y in the morning and supervising the shower hours for homeless people in the community. In time, I began to develop relationships with many of the people I encountered. As these relationships unfolded, I began to learn more and more of people’s stories and the circumstances they faced living on the streets.
Gaining this insight, I began to find myself asking what I could do to help address some of the needs I heard expressed. I got my home congregation (The Bellingham Unitarian Fellowship), to join the shower pass program that helped fund the shower program at the Y. This small act got me pondering another question, how can we leverage the resources and social capital of the church to help address homelessness.
During my Internship a the UU Church of Berkeley, I became involved with the Greater Richmond Interfaith Program’s Ceasefire campaign. This campaign is aimed at educating people about gun violence as well as providing resources and support to victims of gun violence in the community. My involvement brought me into relationship with faith leaders of a variety of traditions. Out of these relationships I was able to deepen UUCB’s connection to other congregations in the community and was even invited to preach at a Baptist Church in Richmond California. Seeking out this opportunity showed me the way faith leaders can engage issues a community is facing through a faith lens as well as the importance of seeking to build bridges across differences of doctrine and belief.
My unit of Clinical Pastoral Education also gave me an opportunity to engage in ministry in the public square. During this unit, I worked to meet people where they were in a way that affirmed their personhood. This work required a deep examination of my own privilege and social location and called me to live more fully into my understanding of interconnectedness.
Overall, I feel each of these experiences has provided me a way to understand how ministry can intersect with the public sphere to build relationships and advocate for positive social change. These experiences also demonstrated to me how faith communities can help positively shape their communities.
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Ideally, I would like to find a church to serve that is interested in exploring issues of class and homelessness within their community. In this dynamic, I see my role as being one of helping to deepen the spiritual understanding of the work with the goal of building sustainable models of service and innovation.
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
My own spiritual journey has caused me to affirm the 4th principle of “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” For me spiritual development is about providing people an opportunity to decide for themselves. Regardless of the age group I believe that spirituality engages people in deepening degrees of exploration of who we are and how we relate to the larger world.
As Unitarian Universalists we root ourselves in a set of values that serve to guide our actions. Working under this framework it becomes important to incorporate our values into our exploration of the world. For me, this is where the “responsible” part of the 4th principle comes in to play. In its entirety, this principle speaks of a sort of relationship that empowers us to make meaning, while at the same time calling us back to our highest attested values.
Serving in my current role as Family Ministry Coordinator, I have been able to see how this way of spiritual development plays out with elementary age children. Through coordinating classes based in Tapestry of Faith curricula, I have witnessed how children can take values-based lessons from a session and apply them to other situations. To me this has spoken to the important role that Religious Education can play in the development of a person.
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I feel that this experience has been essential to developing a clear understanding of the role of Religious Education. I now see it as more than just Sunday School, but rather as an investment in the future. It is not about imprinting young people, instead the goal is to empower people to engage in their own free and responsible search for meaning.