| President's Column - Aug 2010 |
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Welcome, Reverend Kathy Schmitz! A big and hearty First Unitarian welcome to our new minister, Reverend Kathy Schmitz! We are thrilled to meet you and look forward to many years of productive development under your ministry, Kathy. Years from now, we will be looking back at your beginning at First Unitarian and say, “We remember that watershed time!” Reverend Kathy’s first day here will be August 15th, and her first day in the pulpit will be August 22nd. What a journey toward Reverend Kathy’s selection and arrival it has been. Many, many, many thanks again to our Search Committee for their intensive and essential efforts. Our church simply would not be where we are today without your efforts.
Beginnings can be scary, exciting, fun, hopeful, and awe-inspiring. Let’s adopt the hopeful, fun, and exciting point of view. Together, with Reverend Kathy’s leadership and ministry, we can work so our church becomes a fully programmatic church and a dynamic leader in the social justice areas again in our community. We are evolving over the last few years, and the energy building in our church is palpable and contagious. Let’s claim our heritage. As Unitarian Universalists, we are the heirs of many strong and independent pilgrims whose craving for justice is their legacy. Truly, our religious tradition has included many astute and courageous people including Servetus, Joseph Priestley, Isaac Newton, Thomas Jefferson, Clara Barton, Theodore Parker, Mary Livermore, A. Powell Davies, Whitney Young, Jacob Reeb and many, many more. We are their religious descendants. Together, with Reverend Kathy’s leadership and guidance, we can focus on the needs of a truly hurting world and work to bind up those wounds and help solve those social problems. This need to work for social justice is in our religious blood…passed down from our religious ancestors. I am so excited and looking forward to the next chapter in our history and sharing it with all of you, and with new members whom I have not yet met. Our world needs us… We are transforming ourselves and our world, issue by issue and person by person. “Yes, we can!” Patty Reynolds,
President of (your) Board of Trustees
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