Ministerial Record

Ministerial Settlement System Ministerial Record

This record provides information about a minister during the ministerial search process. It is made available to member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association and to UUA staff. It is not intended to substitue for a complete resume. Search committees receiving this record are cautioned not to share it. When a committee has completed consideration of the minister, all records are to be deleted and destroyed.

Ministerial Record of:

First name: Charles      M.I.: P. B.     Last name: Ellis

Mailing address:
3122 153rd Ave NW

City: Andover
State/Prov: MN     Code: 55304

E-mail address: rugosa@comcast.net
Website address: www.ancientrails.com

Phone (home): 763-323-4874
Phone (office): same

Present position: Novelist and gardener     Since (mm/dd/yy): 6/1/1991

Date of preliminary UU fellowship (mm/dd/yy): 6/6/1996
Ordination (ordaining body, place, date): Presbyterian Church USA Minneapolis, Mn. Sept. 1976

Why are you seeking a ministry now?
My wife has begun to phase into retirement. I want to help make that process as easy as possible for her. Since I have skills in congregrational consultation, assessment, and planning, and have preached in a UU fellowship regularly for several years, an interim position makes the most sense.

Describe the new ministry you hope for:
Interim

Education and certification:			Add a School or Degree
Degree	College/University/Seminary	Area of Concentration	Date (mm/yy)
Doctor of Ministry	MCCORMICK SEMINARY (CHICAGO)	Urban Ministry and Church Administration	1990
Master of Divinity	UNITED THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY (Minneapolis)	Parish Ministry	1976
Bachelor of Arts	COLLEGE	Philosophy and Anthropology	1969

Awards, honors, and published writings:
Blue Key Men's Honorary, Outstanding Philosophy Student, Outstanding Anthropology Student, M.Div. with honors, D. Min. thesis on numberical decline of the mainline Protestant church

Personal and family situation:
Kate Olson, my wife, is a physician working at a clinic in Coon Rapids, Minnesota. Our family situation requires that I remain in the Twin Cities area.
We had our first grandchild, Ruth Olson, born on April 4th, 2006! She is in Denver with our son, Jon, and his wife, Jen.

Our second son, Joseph, lives and skis in Breckenridge, Colorado.

Over the last several years I have written five novels and have large rough draft in revision for a book on pilgrimage. Kate supports my writing. Bless her.

Our garden and woods also receive a good bit of my time. I have an associate certificate in Horticulture from the University of Guelph in Ontario.

This fall I will begin the second of two year's training as a docent at the Minneapolis Art Institute.

I also have a men's group, the Woolly Mammoths, with whom I have met for over 19 years.

Background and development:
From your late teens forward, describe your higher education, the three or four most important events in your life experience, the context in which you felt called to ministry, and your professional development, continuing education, and work history; include every ministry (include dates by month/year) and what you bring from it and your other work to a new ministry:
College
At Wabash College in Indiana the study of philosophy turned my religious and intellectual life upside down and inside out. I came into my first semester of Philosophy a nominal Christian, I left an existentialist with Albert Camus as my guidepost.
Due to the death of my mother, Gertrude, and a recession in 1966 I had to leave Wabash and attend a cheaper state school, Ball State University, near my home. In one year at Wabash I took sufficient class hours to need only 3 more courses for a major at Ball State. I discovered Anthropology at Ball State, fell in love with it, and completed a major in it as well.
In 1968, while walking out of the Philosophy Building after a class in contemporary metaphysics, the universe came into me, suffused me, and I knew then that the universe is alive. Since this came after studying Alfred North Whitehead’s process metaphysics, I associate Whitehead and his philosophical system with this experience.
In retrospect I root my call to the Unitarian-Universalist ministry in this significant moment in my life. A living universe as Whitehead understands it does not require a traditional God, in fact, it argues against omnipotence and omniscience.
The years1965-1969 were pivotal for the country and for many of us who attended college as draft eligible men. My lifetime commitment to radical politics took shape here, transforming, for me, the liberal politics I absorbed at home from my newspaper editor father, Curtis, to a class and race based analysis of U.S. politics and economics.
College and post-college were difficult years. My mother’s death, estrangement from my father, my studies in philosophy and anthropology, and time-consuming political involvement took their toll.

Seminary
After some stumbling around, my rejected Christian faith began to reassert itself. Curtis Herron was an anti-war minister in Appleton, Wisconsin who convinced me of the close connection between the gospel and radical politics. At his urging, I decided to try seminary for one year.
While in seminary, the support for my political beliefs and actions amazed me. When we formed a human chain around the St. Paul Federal Building to protest the war, two of my seminary professors stood by ready to bail me out of jail.
With a growing appreciation of the connection between spirituality and politics, I chose to remain in seminary another year. At the end of that year I took an internship at South Central Ministry, a ministry of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. (PCUSA) focused on the neighborhood around and just south of Lake Street and Nicollet in Minneapolis.
This was the academic year 1974-1975. During that internship I learned community organizing skills and took part in several anti-welfare reform demonstrations, at one point occupying the Governor’s office with a Welfare Rights Organization.
Counseling street people and alcoholics was also part of this ministry, as well as preaching and working with youth at a small Presbyterian parish, Bethlehem, then at the corner of 26th and Pleasant.

Call and Ordination
This exposure to the Presbyterian church convinced me that the PCUSA offered a place for ordained ministry engaged in political action.
At that point the convergence of my political passion and my growing spirituality merged, creating a call to the Christian ministry.

Community Involvement Program
After graduation from seminary, I took a position as program director for Community Involvement Program (CIP). CIP’s residential program taught independent living skills to individuals released from Minnesota state hospitals as they deinstitutionalized in the early 1970’s. The Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area ordained me to this job which I held from 1976 through 1978.

The West Bank Ministry
In 1978 the Presbytery created a neighborhood based ministry on the West Bank of the Mississippi in the area of Minneapolis known as Cedar-Riverside. I applied for, and, in a national search, got the position of director, West Bank Ministry, which I held until 1984.

Neighborhoods emerged as a political force in cities during the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, utilizing Federal Community Development Block Grant Funds, guided by neighborhood organizations. This movement got underway in both St. Paul and Minneapolis. The Cedar-Riverside neighborhood became a national model for neighborhood empowerment and neighborhood based economic development.

The community came to trust me through my work with senior citizens, a story-telling collective I organized, and marriages I performed. In 1979 the community elected me chair of the board of the West Bank Community Development Corporation. (CDC) In this position, which I held until I left the neighborhood, I managed the board’s strategic planning processes, neighborhood involvement in that planning, and served as the Board’s legal representative in negotiating and signing development contracts. We did over 11 million dollars (early 1980’s dollars) worth of affordable housing construction, local business development, and, in our largest project, funded the development of a hotel, parking lot, and 212 unit apartment building in the Seven Corners area. All of the profits, well over a million dollars, benefited further neighborhood development.

Through those years I had an active and often central role in the organizing of several organizations still at work today: Jobs Now, The Philanthropy Project (now the Minnesota Council of Non-Profits), and M.I.C.A.H., the Metropolitan Inter-Faith Coalition for Affordable Housing.

Director of Urban Ministry
In 1984 the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area (PTCA) hired me as Director of Urban Ministry for the Presbytery. In that position I consulted with the 74 Presbyterian congregations in the PTCA on social justice organizing. I also worked in metro and state organizing efforts as a representative of the denomination.

In that time I helped create Sin Fronteras, an organization designed to support undocumented persons who needed access to legal counsel, shelter from abusive situations, or aid in dealing with the INS.

I also headed up an unsuccessful, but exciting venture designed to create a financial institution whose primary aim was service to the poorest of the poor. We had representatives of Norwest Bank, some smaller independent banks, the Citizen’s League, several organizations representing various communities of the poor, and denominational offices. This work found its inspiration in Grupo Sociale, the tenth largest company in Colombia, whose sole mission is the provision of financial and housing services to the poorest in the barrios of Bogota.

This effort did spawn other, successful efforts in this area.

Associate Executive for Mission and Congregational Development
In 1987 the PTCA created the position of Associate Executive for Mission and Congregational Development and promoted me to fill it.

The position included staffing one of the three Councils of the Presbytery. (A presbytery is a corporate bishop composed of all clergy in the Presbytery—Pine City to Iowa, Hudson, Wisconsin to Buffalo, Minnesota in area—and one lay person per clergy, or between 150 and 175 individuals. It meets monthly and makes decisions identical to those delegated to a bishop in episcopal polity.)
As staff to the Council on United Action, I prepared a proposed budget, usually in the $250,000 a year range, assisted the Council as its various committees reviewed the budget and developed line items of their own, then worked with the Council on implementation of the budget. At the end of the fiscal year I also facilitated evaluation based on the budget.

This position also entailed consultation with the Presbytery as a whole and with individual congregations on strategic planning, mission (social justice) work, and congregational development.

Continuing Education
We had a continuing education requirement all the years I worked for the Presbytery and I met or exceeded that requirement every year.

In my first year out of seminary I completed a year long alcoholism counseling program through Hazelden Foundation.

Over the years 1976-1990 I participated in numerous continuing education opportunities. I attended, for example, a week-long seminar on community organizing in Chicago, a week focused on the task of bringing liberation theology to North America, and a labor rally in Washington against Ronald Reagan and his firing of the air traffic controllers.

I attended courses on congregational development, congregational growth, and urban planning.

I also helped organize a national level organization of Urban Pastors within the Presbyterian church which had a focus on continuing education peculiar to the needs of urban pastorates.

Doctor of Ministry
With several clergy members of the Presbytery I organized, with McCormick seminary, a Doctor of Ministry program focused on urban ministry and church administration. This was a first for the seminary and they agreed to teach several of the courses here in the Twin Cities Area. 16 of us began the degree program and 14 graduated.

After graduation McCormick seminary asked me to sit on the seminary’s Doctor of Ministry Committee as a student’s representative. I held that position for the full term, two years.

Leaving the Christian Faith
You may, at this point, be asking yourself, well, why isn’t he still with the Presbyterian Church? Good question.

Joseph happened. (This is significant event number 3 after my mother’s death and experiencing the vitality of the universe.) In 1981 my then wife, Raeone, and I adopted Joseph. Since Raeone had just started a new job as business manager for the Bridge, Inc., I promised to take primary responsibility for Joseph.

And I have. Joseph went with me to work every day until he was 18 months old; in fact, I conducted the key organizing meetings for Jobs Now with Joseph on my hip. Later, he ran after me when I dropped him off for his first day of kindergarten. When we moved to Andover, I drove him into St. Paul Central each day of the two weeks he stayed with us during the month. This last March I spent five days in Breckenridge with him right after he broke his femur in a skiing accident.

As I grew closer and closer to Joseph, a nagging doubt began to emerge. Joseph comes from Bengal, in the rural lands outside of Calcutta. Had he remained with his birth parents he would have had Hinduism or Islam as his parental religion. In either case he would have been outside the pale of salvation since Christianity claims an exclusive hold on the means, i.e. belief in Jesus as Lord and Savior.

Never much of a Christ follower, I had always held closer to the notion of an abstract God; the tie which bound me was perhaps a bit looser than you might imagine. Jesus, as a man and a leader, was important to my politics at that time, but the notion of Jesus as Christ, the messiah, seemed a bit much even back then.

As Joseph grew older, the question became more urgent. How could this boy whom I loved so much, not be loved by God? It made no sense to me. Still doesn’t, for that matter.

In the ministry the fit between your values and your work has to be tight, or the motivation begins to fray. It did, for me.

I loved my job with the Presbytery, but I had to leave. When I left, the Presbytery held a celebration in my honor and gave me a painting of a Jewish prophet called the Dancing Prophet and another of the Celtic Trinity—an all female god-head; these as gifts indicating, they said, how I was seen in my work.

Kate and Unitarian-Universalism
Meeting and marrying Kate Olson was significant event number four in my life. Our marriage, now in its seventeenth year, is rock solid and a great joy.

We have just had our first grandchild born, Ruth Olson, an exciting introduction to another stage of life.

Only a year or so after leaving the Presbytery, 1992, a small UU fellowship began to meet in the Highland Park neighborhood in St. Paul where Kate and I lived.

Kate and I attended. The freedom and breadth of liberal religion met me just where I’d left the Presbytery, thinking about Joseph. Here Joseph and I could just be, even Kate, a Jewish convert, felt comfortable and enriched.

After 3 years I decided to transfer my credentials from the Presbyterian church to the UU. After a lengthy process of reading and meeting with UU clergy, I went before the MFC in 1996, and got a 1 on my first visit. Rob Eller Isaacs, now at Unity, was on my MFC committee.

My fruitful, but not remunerative, writing career
After leaving the Presbytery, I began to write full time. I wrote novels and short stories for 7 years, completing five novels and several short stories. I’ve had little luck with publishing houses. Not none, but too little. One of my novels made it all the way through Bantam’s selection process to get axed by the acquisitions committee. They had already purchased too much Celtic fantasy, they said. Ah, well.

I continue to write. I added non-fiction work, samples of which are in my packet. Current projects include revision of a 200,000 plus word rough draft on pilgrimage, a novel, a regular series of brief meditations on the Great Wheel of the Year, and Wayfinding: A Liberal’s Pilgrimage.

Unity
The MFC indicated I needed to have a year long internship in a UU congregation to learn the culture of UU congregational life. A good idea.

Roy Phillips, then senior minister at Unity, selected me, and I worked for a year, 1996-1997, at Unity, staffing the membership committee, providing support to the Adult RE program, and helping as Roy instituted his small group based spiritual conversation ministry.

At the end of my year Roy asked me to stay on as Minister of Development, or Minister of Money, as we called it. I then made a significant mistake. I accepted.

Fund raising is not my métier. Even so, I stayed through one fund-raising cycle and increased giving by 10%, but the process ate at my insides. It was a terrible fit and I should have known it from the first. After the campaign, and as planning for the next year’s fund drive began, I resigned.

Roy flattered me and I allowed his judgment to make my decision for me. Not my best moment.

Since Unity

After Unity, I returned to writing.

Groveland Fellowship, the small UU group that had begun to meet in Highland Park, has asked me to preach often and I have preached off and on there for the past ten years. While at Groveland I have done various adult RE sessions, e.g. Pragmatism, Developing Your Own Theology, and Developing Your Own Liturgical Year. I developed and led a jazz & poetry Sunday and a critical approach to movies Sunday, plus many regular Sunday services.

Just last month, March, 2006, I led a planning retreat for Groveland focused on membership growth and the question of purchasing a new building.

I have also preached in the last year at LaCrosse and Bemidji, though I have not sought preaching engagements other than those Groveland offered.

What do I bring from this experience to an interim ministry position?
• A theoretical understanding of congregational dynamics and, through my Presbytery work, experience working with that theoretical knowledge in many different sized congregations, in diverse settings.
• A results orientation. Organizing, political and community-based, requires an ability to work with others toward goals and objectives they deem important and to see those goals realized.
• Long term political and personal knowledge of the Twin Cities Metro area.
• Pastoral counseling skills learned in a year-long intensive program with Hazelden Foundation. The Presbytery position entailed counseling clergy and members of committees I staffed.
• Strong budgeting and evaluation skills.
• An awareness of my limitations as well as my strengths. (see Unity.)
• Critical thinking crucial to intellectual and spiritual development in the liberal faith tradition.
• A knowledge of how church organizations work.
• Preaching and worship leadership in many different contexts.
• Writing skills.

Denominational and community activities:
Describe with dates active membership in and significant volunteer service to local congregations, the UUA and its districts, and civic, political, social service, and interfaith organizations and programs:
Organized first seminary Arts Week, 1972
Organizer and participant in many demonstrations around anti-Vietnam War issues in Minnesota
Speaker, Amnesty for Vietnam War Protestors 1973-1974
Chair, Stevens Square Community Organization 1975 and 1976
Chair, Citizens for a Loring Park Community 1978 and 1979
Chair, Minneapolis 2000 Planning Council, Central District
Chair, Hennepin County FLA (Farmer-Labor Alliance. “Put the FL back in the DFL.”) 1978-1980
State Delegate, DFL 1980
Senate Delegate, DFL many times
Board Member, Partners in Ecumenism 1985-1990
Jury Duty in Hennepin and Anoka County
Election Judge: City of Andover, 6 elections, last in 2004
Election Judge: Anoka/Hennepin School District 2005
UUA Large Church Conference, 1997
GA, 1996 & 1997
Planned and executed a National UU conference on small group ministry, 1997 at Unity
Served on the UU Campus Ministry board for three years: 1999-2001
Volunteer for Bill Luther Campaign, 3 election cycles
Volunteer for Betsy O’Beery State House race: 2 election cycles
Convener, Paul Wellstone, Dialogue’s for Action 2003

Non-professional interests:
Fine Arts
In 2001 I began volunteering at the Minneapolis Art Institute as a Collection in Focus Guide. I received art history education in Art of the Americas, Japan/Korea, and South/Southeast Asia, then lead public tours in those galleries and for many special exhibitions. In September of 2005 I began the educational process to become a docent. This will finish in 2007.
Reading
I love poetry: Rilke, Billy Collins, Hafiz, Rumi, Mary Oliver, Japanese and Chinese traditional poetry, in particular.
Traditional classics like Ovid’s Metamorphosis, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Milton’s Paradise Lost. Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad are favorites to which I return.
Also, American authors like Kate Chopin, Willa Cather, Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ambrose Bierce, Henry Melville, Richard Ford, Richard Russo, and Dashiel Hammet.
Other authors, too, e.g. David Lodge, , Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann, Herman Hesse, and John Cowper Powys.
Magazines
I subscribe to the following: The Economist, Scientific American, Science News, Orion, Washington Spectator, Jim Tower’s Lowdown, Americas, Christian Century, Funny Times, and Wired.
Gardening
Over the years since we purchased our home in Andover Kate and I have developed several different garden beds: perennial borders, a 3-tiered perennial garden, and 7 raised beds in a park-like area.
Blog
Since February of 2005 I have written a blog, One Pilgrim’s Progress.
Pets
Kate and I live with 1 Irish Wolfhound, Tor, and three Whippets: Emma, Kona, and Hilo.
Travel
We enjoy travel and have visited China, Mexico, Colombia, Italy, Austria, France, England, Scotland, Greece, and Turkey together. As you might tell from our dog’s names, we also like Hawai’i.
In 2004 I spent a month in Southeast Asia focused on Southeast Asian art and culture.
Theater and Classical Music
Kate and I met at the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. We kept the orchestra seats when our former marriages ended and the SPCO seated us next to each other for a year. We attended the Guthrie season for many years. I acted in college and seminary.

Ministerial development:
What are your current developmental needs, and how might a congregation assist you in addressing them?
I need to write a book about the liberal faith. This project, Wayfinding: A Liberal’s Pilgrimage, will focus on three roots a sturdy liberal faith: an existential perspective of the individual, a neo-Romantic, Shinto-like affection for the natural world and its cycles, and a communitarian approach to political life. Wayfinding will argue that these three roots are just that, roots, and not exclusive of other faith positions, rather, they are a priori to them.
Encouraging me to teach and preach about Wayfinding would give me an opportunity to test my ideas within a community of lay thinkers.

Describe a mistake you have made in the past, and how you have addressed it:
When I substituted Roy Phillip’s judgment at Unity for my own, and accepted his offer of the Minister of Development position, I committed an error.
I realized my mistake only weeks into the new position, but I knew I had made a commitment important to Unity’s financial well-being in the next year, so I remained in place until the fund-drive finished up and planning had only just begun for the next year.
In consultation with Louise Wolfgramm, a Unity member and key figure in financial matters, we developed a reasonable plan for handling Unity’s fund raising needs. This involved hiring an outside consultant and eliminating the position of Minister of Development.
After these plans were in place, I tendered my resignation.

Ministerial roles and functions:
How would you wish to function with lay leadership? Comment on your leadership style:
I have a collaborative leadership style.
For example, I work with chairpeople of committees and boards to develop agenda, plan meetings in advance in terms of information/data necessary for action, and then evaluate meetings and decisions after the fact.
This does not mean I defer to lay leadership; it means I recognize my role as consultative to decision makers.
My position on various matters will always be clear.
Interim or not, a minister’s role in a congregation is temporary. This is true even of long term pastorates. A minister must encourage the congregation as a community to take responsibility for its own life. In order for this to happen governance must be clearly in the hands of the congregation.
Boards, committees, programs, and all other lay roles need to have clear expectations and defined accountability within the congregational structure.
I may initiate discussion on certain policies, programs, or structural change, but the decision making authority and the accountability for decisions rests with the congregation as a whole and those groups it delegates to carry out its work.

How would you wish to function with (paid) church staff?
Though my preference is to work in a collaborative style with paid as well as volunteer workers, there are employer/employee relationships with regard to supervision, work delegation, and evaluation that cannot, by their nature, be wholly collaborative.
In those cases I will be clear, direct, and open.
I can adapt to arrangements already in place, but the minister has primary responsibility for the effective functioning of church staff.

How would you wish to function as part of a ministry team?
I have experience as a ministry team member. As I would collaborate, so I would want to have collaboration as the prime understanding of a ministry team of which I was a member.
This means, to me, that decisions are not made unilaterally unless certain areas of responsibility have been assigned to team members.
Work as a team also implies a commitment to work on the relationship at affective as well as functional levels. Honest and clear communication must be a minimal expectation.

How would you wish to function in the communities beyond the local congregation?
If work beyond the local congregation in the community were undertaken as part of the work of the church, then, I would hope a collegial relationship would exist between the congregation and me. This collegiality would encourage negotiation, when necessary, of the scope of outside work, so that such work respected expectations for ministry within the congregation.
There could be situations in which an issue or event might call for action with some time urgency. In these cases I would tend to act, then discuss the effects of that action ex post facto. This would be rare, and anything that led to involvement over time would be subject to negotiation.
It is the church’s responsibility to play a prophetic and timely role in community life as much as it is the minister’s. Ideally the two come along together

Ministerial skills and current special interests:

"4" = those functions in which you are gifted and expert
"3" = those in which you are accomplished
"2" = those in which you are competent
"1" = those in which you have little experience.

What is your approach to the religious education of children, youth, and adults?
In one sense I view the primary role of a local congregation as education, i.e. equipping members to deepen their faith, widen their sense of responsibility, and ground themselves in the resources of the liberal faith tradition.
In this sense education is not the province only of a Religious Education Committee, but is an expectation of each worship service, committee meeting, board meeting, and other church event.
For the more traditional religious education program, I find the UUA’s, Philosophy-Making, A Process Guide, a good tool and one I would use if a congregation felt a need to recreate or renew an existing religious education program.
Clear expectations, job descriptions, and adequate resources will make the difference between a successful and a lack luster program.

What do you see as the role of music and the arts in the life of a congregation?
Music is the language of the soul. In worship music builds community, expresses reverence, allows for individual participation, and for a wide variety of individual and group performers and performances. My gene pool didn’t include the gift of music, but I’m a long time appreciator and student of music.
One only has to recall the civil rights movement, or attend a church filled with African-American gospel music to appreciate the power and the possibility of music in the religious and political life of a community.
Arts like painting, quilting, sculpture, weaving, and print-making can create a sense of coherence, a visual unity to a congregation’s spiritual life.
Color, design, and texture in a sanctuary, in hallways, in a social hall speak to the heart and both reinforce and multiply a congregation’s spiritual growth.
The interior design of a church building contributes to and reinforces the interior growth of the church’s members.

What involvement do you desire in the stewardship of a congregation, most particularly its financial affairs?
As an interim, I would expect to support a vigorous stewardship campaign, one designed to meet the financial needs of the congregation with special attention to any new demands anticipated when a new minister settles.
In a smaller congregation such a campaign would be managed and executed by lay people with the full support of church staff.
Financial management is a key part of congregational planning and I would ensure an adequate financial accounting and reporting system is in place, if it is not already. I would also see that reporting tracks with program objectives and the yearly budget. A key aspect of evaluation is the management of available resources in a prudent manner.

Theological orientation: What is your dominant theology, and how do you deal with other Unitarian Universalist theologies with which you may not be in sympathy?
There are, in my opinion, at least three roots of a sturdy liberal faith: an existential perspective toward the individual, a neo-Romantic, Shinto-like affection for the natural world and its cycles, and, a communitarian approach to political life. These three roots of a sturdy liberal faith are just that, roots, and not exclusive of other faith positions, rather they are a priori to them.
An existentialist perspective represents is a strong tap root in discussions of faith. The humanity of each person comes before any secondary characteristic like skin color, genitals, sexual preference, accidents of birth, or institutional connections focused on the holy.
Agreement here encourages a discussion focused more on those many, many things we share, rather than disagreement focused on those matters assumed to make us different.
Individuals do not live alone. As humans more alike than different, our common life entails interdependence with each other and the natural world from which we come, in which we live, and to which we return at death.
Combine an existentialist approach to the individual and a communitarian political bias with an American animism. Then our love of the chernozem soil of the middle west, the great lakes, the north woods, the high plains, the rocky mountains, the big horn sheep, the human habitations we have built like nesting birds, the sun, the air which comes in and out of us in a holy rhythm, the stars and their seasons, will support all.
Love these and love each other just as we are, flawed creatures yet splendid and, yes, made of star dust.
Do these two acts of holy contrition first: one to our common humanity, one to earthhome, then sit down at table to discuss matters of our common fate and our distinctive approaches to faith.
An Iroquois medicine man I met at the liberation theology week put it this way, “We two-leggeds are so fragile. We must support the four-leggeds, the winged creatures, those who swim, the water, and the land, and the air. Only in that way will we two-leggeds survive.”

Additional information: Finish introducing yourself in any way you would like to.
Kate and I have lived in Andover for over 12 years. I have come to love Anoka County. Its parks are large and wild, its northern sector is, in my opinion, the prettiest sector of the Metro area, especially the Carlos Avery State Wildlife Refuge, Bootlake SNA, and, in nearby Isanti County, the UofM Cedar Creek Natural History Area.
It took me a long while to make my peace with living outside the city where, as you can see from the rest of this document, much of my active ministry happened. I have, though, and I have come to appreciate the value of suburbs, their diverse nature, and the complex forms of human community they nurture.
The vibrant and interdependent nature of a metropolitan area has become real to me in a way it never was before we moved.
Any ministry, in any congregation in the metropolitan region, needs to recognize its location and the necessary interdependencies occasioned by contemporary urban growth patterns.
Finally, I would be delighted to talk further with you, if you think we might able to work together.