Minister’s Annual Report: 2001-02

While practically every year I’ve spent in the ministry has, in one way or another been eventful, this one just ending has been especially “event-full.” It began with the quite literally earth-shaking events of September 11, which have reverberated throughout the year. During the fall and into the winter there were tensions within our NH/VT District that led to the early resignation of our District Executive. The Executive Board has spent some long sessions getting our elevator project revived and in place after the bids we received last summer had, at first, seemed to place it beyond our reach. The Board and I have also had to deal with a very sensitive matter of congregational safety in recent weeks, and I’ve been particularly proud of their work in this regard.

But, somehow, matters such as these have turned out to be an overall part of a very fruitful and productive year as we celebrated our 175th anniversary as a Unitarian, and then Unitarian Universalist, congregation in Nashua. It has been my privilege to serve as your minister now for 14 of those years. Many of my ministerial responsibilities remain constant from year to year in such areas as worship leadership/sermon preparation and delivery, pastoral care, adult education, staff supervision, administration, and church governance. But each year, as just noted, brings its particular challenges and activities. In this report I will point to some of the areas where I’ve especially focused my energies and attention in the 2001-02 church year.

I have made it a point to be more involved in Community Interfaith activities this year. I meet monthly with the Greater Nashua Interfaith Council, and have become more supportive and involved in some of their work. I authored one of their monthly columns in the Telegraph. I’m also very pleased with the involvement of many in our congregation in the Granite State Organizing Project. I was a part of some of their groundwork laying meetings over the past couple of years, and its great to see the work of this organization taking hold in the larger congregation now. Nancy Dowey and others on our Social Responsibility Committee did a great job of organizing the Listening Campaign within this congregation; and we had 18 people in attendance at the GSOP Issues Assembly this past June 3.

My other area of community involvement has been with the Nashua Historical Society. I worked with this organization and the Fairgrounds Junior High School in offering a series of programs to eighth grader students about our Cemetery and the “notable Nashuans” buried there. Six groups of eighth graders have visited our Cemetery this year as part of a field trip to learn more about the history of our community.

Continuing in this vein, I will be taking a course this July through the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California on “Effective Public Ministry.” The course is being taught by former UUA President, Rev. John Buehrens.

This year we complete our two year program as a Teaching Parish and Internship Site for Emily Burr as she prepares for the Unitarian Universalist ministry. I’ve greatly enjoyed being her supervisor. It’s been wonderful having Emily with us and I know she will make a fine addition to our UU ministry. We are continuing as a Field Education site for the Andover Newton Theological School with Ms. Jacqueline Clement as our student beginning this fall. We’ll also be offering some opportunities for congregational involvement for one of our long-time members, Lee Page, as she also prepares for the UU ministry through the Modified Residency Program of the Meadville Lombard Theological School of Chicago, IL. In addition to this I am the Ministerial Mentor for the recently settled minister at the UU Church in Manchester, NH, Rev. Mary Wellemeyer, as she moves through her first three years of Preliminary Fellowship in the UU parish ministry. All of these activities, of course, make for certain demands on my time. It is time I am more than grateful to expend as I’ve long felt that congregations such as ours should play an instrumental role in helping to prepare prospective, as well as in place, Unitarian Universalist ministers for all that lies ahead of them.

As each church year comes to a close, and as I reflect back on all of its happenings, it continues to be clear to me that ministry in the free liberal church has to be a shared enterprise if it is to be ministry at all. It is the ministry of our church staff that allows and enables me to carry out my ministry as well. I’m delighted at the ensemble manner in which we as a staff continue to work together. My deepest thanks to Barbara Komjian, Barbara Berrios, Chris Parker, Carol Lasselle, Charlie Curtis, and Sandra LaBarge- Neumann for all they bring to the overall life and health of our congregation.

As it is with the Staff, so is it also with our Governing Board, Committee Chairs, and Committee members. Without their hard and dedicated work we would not be a congregation at all. John Sanders has wisely, and with good humor, taken the Board through what has been an often challenging, but also quite rewarding year. I especially want to acknowledge here my personal thanks to those leaving the Board this year: Cathy Grossman, Church Clerk; October Craig, Vice-President; Jim Fisher, Assistant Treasurer; Billy Parker, and Bob Keating. The time they each and all have given over the years as Executive Board members has been invaluable.

A special word of thanks is also in order here for Bob Sampson and Steve Gronberg for helping to keep the elevator project alive when it looked like it might have been finished before even getting underway. I said in my report of last year that I hoped it would be completed by the time we re-gathered in the fall. Well, I’m saying that again tonight. The difference is that this time around it’s really going to happen! I’m particularly appreciative of Bob Sampson being our “clerk of the works” for this undertaking over the summer, beginning on June 17.

Even in the midst of the economic uncertainty now being felt in our area, we had a very successful pledge drive that has exceeded last years level. In addition to thanking each of you for your support, I want to especially thank Kathy MacDonald and John Burkitt for their hard work in making this year’s pledge drive a success.

One of my favorite comic strip pieces is an old “Hagar the Horrible” one which has only one long panel drawing of a Viking ship. On the ship each guy who is at an oar-lock is waving his oar in a different direction from each of his fellow rowers. As a result, of course, the ship is going nowhere except, maybe, in circles. Hagar is yelling at the main oarsman: “Will you stop saying ‘Different strokes for different folks!’”

I don’t know that the author of the strip intended this, but with this one little sketch he has very aptly portrayed one of the challenges of being a Unitarian Universalist minister. We are indeed expected to honor individuality of each of our members and friends, and to be respectful of the personal needs and desires that bring each of them to a liberal religious congregation. But a true congregation is more, much more, than an aggregate of individuals with each pulling at their own oar. A true congregation is one where the individuals who make it up have also learned what it means to pull together to achieve certain goals and to see its liberal religious principles and values lived out.

This is the kind of balance I seek to maintain in my ministry with you, as together we create a congregation of individuals who also know how to be in community with one another. That is a challenge this church has faced and meet for the past 175 years, and one that we will continue to meet as we take this church into a future that will be every bit as rich as its past. My thanks to each of you for what you do in keeping us on this shared journey.

Respectfully submitted:

Rev. Stephen D. Edington, Minister

Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashua, New Hampshire

Date of Annual Meeting: June 13, 2002