Parson To Person

September 2010

The air freshens (finally!) and I feel the surge to move forward.  Yet I don't yet want to lose touch with these good days just passed.  Connecting past to future is fitting work for the passage from summer to autumn.  It will mark much of our efforts together this coming month.

Our faith's past, in Nebraska, can be dated to the founding of the First Unitarian Church of Omaha, in 1869, and to our own church's founding, as the First Universalist Church of Lincoln, in 1870.  A few churches sprouted in other parts of our state in earlier years, but all soon withered and died.  (A Unitarian church building still stands in Ord NE, but it passed long ago into private use.)  It took over a century, 'till 1976, for us to give birth to a new generation congregation – Second Unitarian Church of Omaha.  Younger siblings have now come along too: the UU Fellowship of Kearney in 1986 and Prairie Vista UU Church in Scottsbluff just in the last decade.  We can both hope and plan for more to be on their way.

Right now, though, seems a very good time to recognize and celebrate the full maturity of that first born child to our east – Second Unitarian. It serves the western region of the Omaha metropolitan area, sited at 3012 South 119th Street (just south of Center Road).  Its youth was partnered somewhat fitfully with trained clergy, but it's now marking 10 years of continuous full-time shared ministry by preparing to install the Reverend Scott McNeill into its service.  Scott's a recent graduate of the U.U. seminary of Chicago, Meadville-Lombard Theological School.  We met Scott here in Lincoln last March when he led our Sunday service, as a candidate for Second's pulpit.

And now we're blessed to welcome two religious professionals into our Lincoln U.U. shared ministry who have both been nurtured into their own maturity by Second Unitarian's spirit.

We presented Chelsea Maitland as our candidate for Religious Growth Director to you last Saturday.  On the strength of your enthusiastic response, we entered into our covenant for her service to begin on September 1, with her first Sunday among us on September 12. Chelsea introduces herself to you on page 3 of this newsletter.  Our church can claim to have helped raise Chelsea to adulthood, but it was Second Unitarian, this past year, who first recognized and affirmed her as a U.U. Religious Education Director.

Now I present to you Laura Shennum who will partner with us as Student Minister.  A year ago, Meadville-Lombard Theological School asked me to become Teaching Pastor for Laura as she entered into ministerial training there. I mentored her in her first training placement, at In Common Community Development, an interfaith community-building agency serving mid-town Omaha.  This past summer she progressed through intensive clinical pastoral training through the chaplaincy service of the Nebraska Medical Center.  Now, as authorized by our Trustees, she will begin a placement among us – 20 hours a week for two years – to pursue a careful progression of experiences directed by the Meadville-Lombard faculty.  She will move gradually from observer and analyst of ministry among us into full ministerial leadership among us.  If all goes well (and it will!), she will receive her Meadville-Lombard degree and her U.U. Association fellowship in June 2012, to seek her own settlement in another U.U. congregation.

And who can we thank for this gift we are about to receive?  Laura began her life in California. She's a graduate of Mills College in Oakland CA, with majors in Anthropology and Sociology.  Eleven years ago, when she and husband Don welcomed their first child Siena into their family, they were living in La Vista, Nebraska.  They joined Second Unitarian Church.  Conor (now 7) and Bree (4½) came along in their turn.  And from 2006 to 2009, Laura served the congregation as Religious Education Director. (She was Chelsea's predecessor).   Don is a manager at Union Pacific Railroad Company and a Church Trustee.  While Laura is our Student Minister, Second Unitarian will remain their home church.

So . . . Welcome Laura. Come meet her this Sunday, August 29 or September 5.  
And . . .Welcome Chelsea. Come greet her on September 12.
And THANK YOU SECOND UNITARIAN CHURCH OF OMAHA!!!    

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