Unsettled Ministry

I could not be more pleased and excited that I will be serving as your minister for the 2008-2009 church year! This coming year, my role will be different and expanded from what it has been during the 2007-2008 church year. During this past year, I largely served in a ministry of preaching, or “pulpit supply”. Next year, I will be your half-time minister, still preaching twice a month put also adding significantly to my pastoral and administrative duties (among other duties). I am very excited about this change and expansion of my role. I want to get to know the people of this congregation better, and would love to meet face-to-face, one-on-one, with as many of you as possible. (Please don’t hesitate to contact me at 508-615-1686 or mlhoke@uuma.org if you’d like to arrange a meeting during the summer months – or for any other reason!)

This coming year, I will be what is known as a “contract minister”, meaning that it’s a year-to-year arrangement, rather than what is known as a “settled ministry”. A settled ministry is when a minister is called to serve a congregation indefinitely, and it is an ongoing covenant.

I have never been crazy about the term “contract minister”. It sounds very cold and clinical, and it makes the whole thing sound rather more like a business arrangement than a calling. Personally, I feel “called” to serve the First Congregational Parish, Unitarian, in Petersham even though I haven’t been called to be your settled minister. I feel called to be your “unsettled minister”.

I thought of this term, “unsettled minister”, as a little joke on May 18, when a special congregational meeting was held and voted to have me stay for the 2008-2009 year. But the more I say and write the term, the more I like it (if I do say so myself!). Unsettled ministry is exactly what we’ll be doing together this upcoming year. And that’s a good thing.

“Settled” is a funny word to describe a ministry. “Settle” is one of those verbs that means many things, some positive, some less so. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, some of its meanings are “to put into order; arrange or fix definitely as desired”; “to cause to sink, become compact, or come to rest”; “to restore calmness or comfort”; and “to move downward; sink or descend, especially gradually”. As a professional minister, I would love to help put things into order and to restore calmness. I’m not so sure, however, that I would even aspire to arrange or fix anything definitely – congregations are more dynamic than that! I definitely don’t want to cause any sinking or resting or gradual descent. Most of all, I don’t want you to feel that you’re “settling for” me.

I think we should be unsettled together. Unitarian Universalist ministry, both professional and lay ministry, should be unsettling! Yes, we want to comfort the afflicted, but we sometimes need to afflict the comfortable. We don’t want to become static – we should be continuously moving and changing, growing. In a word, unsettled. Thank you for unsettling on me.

In faith,
Lara