First Universalist Church

Annual Report 2005–2006

Minister's Musings

"Thank You"

Ministers’ annual reports take many forms. Sometimes they are a statistical analysis of the year just ending—how many new members, how many deaths, how many Dedications, general attendance trends . . . You get the idea.

Sometimes a minister looks at the programs that people have engaged in since the last annual meeting; sometimes she or he offers suggestions for future directions. In the past eleven years I’ve written each one of these kinds of year-end reports at one time or another.

This year, all I want to do is say, “Thank you.”

• I want to thank my predecessor in the pulpit, the Rev. Peter Luton, for helping to create the incredibly warm and exciting congregation that I discovered here more than a decade ago.  It is great to follow someone who really knows what she or he is doing, and it was very evident from the beginning that Peter knows.
  
  
• I want to thank Andrew Tonks, Brent West, Isabel Denham, Joy Ahrens, Peter Friedrichs, Sandi Donnelly, Sarah Marshall, and Wen Murphy.  They are the Search Committee who saw something in me—even though I was fresh out of Divinity School and my Internship—and believed in it enough to recommend me as your next minister. Everything that has followed results from their faith. (All the good stuff, I mean; for all the rest I take full and sole responsibility.)
  
  
• I want to thank Sue Ellen Bordwell, Linda Routhier, Ann Nye, David Kolb, Sarah Marshall, and Ken Nye. These are the people who, during my time here, have cared enough about this congregation to take on the challenges (and joys!) of being President of the Board. No matter how much they have been thanked, believe me, they have not been thanked enough! Each brought her or his own unique gifts and perspectives, and we are the richer for their generosity. Each taught me much, and I am truly grateful.
  
  
• I want to thank Naomi King, Andrew Tonks, Nancy Greenleaf, Wik Wikstrom, Sue Barker-Miller, Chop Hardenbergh (twice!), Wen Murphy, Emily Ojala, Ruth White, Diana Levin, Hilary Hayes, Tom Levin, David Kolb, Kate Connelly, Larry Marshall, Elizabeth Chapman, Susan Elias, Rudy Gabrielson, and Leslie Bailey. These are the people who have worked with me in the Worship Weavers’ Guild.  (The first five, the ones in italics, deserve special thanks because they, back in 1998, were the ones who helped me to originate this important lay ministry!) There has not been a service since the inception of this Guild that has not been deepened by their intelligence, their instincts, their insights, and their inspiring love of this church and our movement. I was not trained to do worship in this way; I’ll never do it any other way again. Thank you.
  
  
• I want to thank Irene Friedrichs, Ann Healy, and Pat Pooters. These are the people who’ve worked in the front office—and I’ll get back to Debbie Woodbury in a moment—making sure that everything that needed to get done got done. I enjoyed working with each of them, and you can’t believe how much work they did and with such grace!
  
  
• I want to thank Marilee Marrinan and Barry Horn. These were the first two DREs during my time here. As I look back I remember with real gratitude the gifts of these two individuals, and the myriad ways in which they ministered to this congregation. There is a reason that we’re known as “the family church” and that we have a disproportionately high number of children relative to adult attendees—it’s because we have, and long have had, an outstanding program of RE.
  
  
• I want to thank Bob and Jean Duchesneau, Dave Shirley, and Ted and Gladys Moon. These have been our sextons during my time here, and I thank them for their good work and their large hearts.  I have been lucky to have sat and chat with each of these people and I will remember our interactions warmly.
  
  
• I want to thank Debbie Woodbury. I left her off the list of office folk above because, as our Office Manager, her job is so much more comprehensive and complex than any of her predecessors’. The Board recognized the need for a central hub through which all the many things our church does, and the many people who do them, could flow and created a nebulous new position.  That position is evolving, and Debbie is a large part of that evolution. I am so grateful to have had the chance to work with her.
  
  
• I want to thank Deb Sawyer, but words begin to fail. I can still remember how, during a phone call from Massachusetts to plan the candidating week services, she couldn’t contain her exuberance and had to run to her piano to play a chord change for me! There is no hyperbole in saying that working with her is one of the reasons I so wanted to make Yarmouth my first church.
  
  
• And I want to thank Jenn McAdoo. I used to believe that a church was ill advised to “hire from within,” but I’m glad I changed my mind. Jenn is so much more of a minister in this congregation than most people have any idea. There’s an apocryphal line in her job description—“and anything else that needs doing”—which she has truly taken to heart. I have learned so much from her, and value all the advice she has given me over the years.  It’s been an honor, a privilege, and a pleasure.

And, of course, there’s everybody else: All of our kids—so many now so grown up—who sat on the steps for all those stories. And the adults who’ve shared of themselves through teaching in RE. And the folks who’ve given of themselves by serving on our committees.  And the people who attended the Adult RE programs I’ve offered over the years (I’m glad I didn’t have to explore all that stuff by myself!). And the people who’ve come to see me for counseling and spiritual direction, trusting me with their pain and their dreams, the questioning and their discoveries. And the people who’ve lit candles and the people who’ve listened to the candles. And the people whose faces have become part of the fabric of this place for me. And the people—and you know who you are—who may not attend often but who do attend regularly and who I will deeply miss. And the people who’ve only recently started coming, like the woman who recently said after a service, “I came because I’d heard about you but I think I’ll keep coming” because it was obvious to her that this is still an incredibly warm and exciting congregation and that that won’t change even as the person in the pulpit does.

And so, to you each and to you all, I say “thank you” for the honor of being your Minister these past eleven years. I hope that I have done more good than harm, and hope that you will remember me as fondly as I shall always remember you.