As we embark on new Pathways at OUUC next month, each of us will find exciting new opportunities to engage with our congregation, our faith tradition, and the larger community. For the past three years, OUUC’s Faith in Action Ministry, which I serve as the Accountable Person, has coordinated the many social, environmental, and economic justice initiatives in which many of you have been involved, emphasizing how our participation in justice work is, in fact, one of the important ways we live our faith in the world.
Pathways will more clearly integrate critical justice work we do with all areas of our congregation’s life, including spiritual growth and lifelong learning, articulating how members and friends at all ages and stages in life can participate in meaningful action for personal and social transformation.
As Faith in Action evolves, much of the administrative role that I had as Accountable Person will become part of Sara Lewis’ new role as OUUC’s Director of Community and Faith Development.
Following my ordination by this congregation in 2006, I was welcomed as OUUC’s Affiliated Community Minister. My ministry is primarily in the larger community, building and maintaining relationships with our interfaith partners, including Interfaith Works and Concerned Clergy of Olympia, and with the nonprofit civic organizations with which we have worked over the years. In addition, I often meet with officials at all levels of government, often advocating for the most vulnerable in our communities. I will continue working in the community as a Unitarian Universalist minister, collaborating with Rev. Mary Gear and Sara Lewis – and each of you – to bring a voice for the values and principles of our liberal religious tradition to the public square on issues of social, economic, and environmental justice.
Justice work is, of course, the critical, ongoing ministry of each of us. Pathways offers an opportunity for exciting new ways to everyone to engage in the continuing call for liberation for all people, and for the Earth.
In faith,
Rev. Carol McKinley
Affiliated Community Minister
OUUC’s Faith in Action Ministry