Welcome!

Whether you’re considering a visit to Emerson or just looking around our web site—hello! We extend you our warmest welcome! Emerson Church is a special place. We have never experienced a congregation as supporting and loving as this one is. And the scope of our outreach, activities, groups and programs is quite broad. Please do visit us soon—we look forward to getting to know you!

Revels Musings from our ministers

It’s a Minister’s Life for Me…

It’s been some time since we wrote about the subject of co-ministry and many new people have joined our church in the interim. What is co-ministry? Basically it is two people working together as equal partners to serve the ministerial needs of the congregation. Not all co-ministers are married to one another, but being so certainly makes this highly collaborative style of ministry easier to effect. Need to consult your fellow co-minister? Why there he/she is–immediately accessible!

People often ask us how we divvy up the responsibilities of serving a vigorous congregation like Emerson. Some things are pretty obvious. By and large we take turns preaching on alternate weeks, except for certain “big” Sundays, such as Homecoming or Easter, for example, when we feel it is important for us to share the worship service. Worship is, of course, our primary focus because it is the central act of a religious community. We spend a tremendous amount of time reading, studying, writing, selecting, etc. in preparation for worship services. But religious education is also a major focus. On any given Sunday, the one who is not preaching is usually involved in some aspect of the Religious Education program. Each of us meets several times throughout the year with the Coming of Age class and the high school group, teaching and mentoring. We try to lead the children’s worship a few times during the year and we are apt to assist in any other of the children’s classes as needed.

We also both spend a lot of time working with the other staff, advising, suggesting and coordinating programs. We meet every week with the Director of Religious Education and the Music Director, bi-weekly with the Business Administrator. We have whole staff meetings once a week as well. It sounds like a lot of meetings–and it is–but we find they are absolutely essential for staff morale, effective communication and smooth functioning. We have a great staff at Emerson and together we spark one another’s creativity, inspire one another to high levels of performance, and ensure coherency and quality of the entire church program.

The two of us also work closely with the church’s lay leadership as they carry out their ministries. We spend a lot of time consulting with individual leaders, offering counsel and assisting them in their tasks. Except for the Board of Trustees and the Growth Planning Committee, which we both work with, we divide responsibility for other committees and activity groups. For example, Becky works with the Lay Pastoral Ministry Team, the RE, Adult Education and Finance Committees; Mark with the Worship and Membership Committees, the Social Action Council and the Arts Council. We each do pastoral visits and counseling, but Becky does more because of her background in psychology and pastoral counseling. Mark is more active representing Emerson in community organizations, such as SEARCH and Interfaith Ministries. We alternate leading Pathways groups and Becky also teaches other adult education classes periodically. Mark is working with the new Covenant Group initiative.

We are both very dedicated to the well being of Emerson and we spend a lot of our personal time as well thinking, planning and strategizing together about how Emerson might better meet the needs of its members and friends and become a more effective incarnation of our Unitarian Universalist faith. Because we live together, we are in constant communication with one another and we believe that redounds to Emerson’s benefit. Co-ministry is, in some ways, more challenging than other forms of ministry, but we believe working together in this way makes us both better ministers than we might be solo. Together we complement one another’s skills, expertise and interests, supporting, informing and inspiring one another to excellence.

We realize of course that we have our blind sports and our growing edges. We encourage any of you who have concerns about our ministry or ideas about how Emerson’s well being might be improved, to please come talk to us. We think we are pretty easy to talk with and we will treat your conversation with respect. We want to hear from you. We know good communication is essential.

If, however, you are more comfortable talking with other lay people, we have a Committee on Ministry, with whom we meet monthly. Their job, in addition to advising and acting as a sound board for our ministry, is to help serve as a channel of communication between us and the congregation. They will listen to your concerns, offer to come with you to meet with us, or carry your concern to us so long as they may share your identity with us. (We discourage anonymous communication because that puts the members of the Committee on Ministry in an unfair, triangulated position and because it makes continuing dialog impossible.)

Co-ministry is challenging, but we truly enjoy our work together and we feel privileged to be serving such a wonderful congregation as Emerson. There are no finer people with whom to be sharing ministry!

Yours,
Mark & Becky