Staffing for Social Justice Has Church-Wide Benefits
September 15, 2007
Rev. Nathan Woodliff-Stanley is Minister of Social Responsibility at Jefferson Unitarian Church in Golden, CO (760 members), but the title doesn’t tell everything. At some congregations social justice is a separate entity, as is music and religious education. But at Jefferson, Woodliff-Stanley (JUC) is charged with infusing social justice throughout all aspects of congregational life. He works with JUC’s Social Responsibility Council, but he also interacts with JUC musicians, religious educators, and others, helping to add a social justice focus to those programs.“We don’t think of social justice as exclusive work,” he says. “If it’s a separate entity sometimes that helps keep it marginalized. When you really connect it with other parts of the church community it can make it even more powerful.”
Here’s how it works at JUC. Children and youth in the religious education program have a social action Sunday every other month when they do church and community projects. “Nathan often works with the kids, helping with ideas and drawing out the kids on why we’re doing these projects, and why they’re important,” says Sara Lacher, JUC Youth Religious Educator. “These Sundays are very well attended.” And at a social action weekend in April, 431 of the church’s 760 members participated.
Woodliff-Stanley and Minister of Music Keith Arnold have worked together to bring appropriate music to services that have social justice themes. He and the Social Responsibility Council have talked about creating an adult education curriculum composed of core social justice topics.
Dee Ray, chair of the council, notes, “Just having Nathan here, his pulpit presence, his support, it’s made a world of difference. It’s given social justice more credibility with the congregation. In the congregational survey we take annually, social action used to be toward the bottom. This year we were ranked third.”
Woodliff-Stanley brings resources to the eight social justice task forces at JUC, but does not lead them. “I help make connections between them. A lot of what I do is connecting and behind the scenes,” he says. He preaches approximately monthly and includes topics beyond social justice.
Social justice is only part of his portfolio. He also does some pastoral care and starting this fall he is responsible for the Continuous Religious Education program at JUC. He says, “We often assume the ideal for a congregation is a full-time dedicated social justice coordinator. That’s out of reach for most congregations, and it’s not the only way to go.”
Dividing his time is a necessity, given limited resources for staff positions at JUC. But it works well because social justice has an impact on all of his responsibilities, he says. “And we chose to use the Minister of Social Responsibility title for me, even though I am also doing other things, so that we could demonstrate that social justice is a priority here and that it is ministry.”
nathanws @ jeffersonunitarianorg for a full description of his job. JUC modeled its social justice program after one at First Unitarian Church in Rochester, NY, and uses as a guide the book The Prophetic Imperative (Skinner House, 2000), by Rev. Richard S. Gilbert, minister emeritus of the Rochester congregation. Gilbert was interim minister at JUC several years ago and helped inspire the social justice program.
Woodliff-Stanley’s position was initially made possible by a $100,000 donation four years ago by a member of the congregation to develop social justice work. He started at half time and is now full time. The position is now almost fully funded through the church budget, and the grant has almost been phased out. Woodliff-Stanley is one of about thirteen paid social justice coordinators at Unitarian Universalist (UU) congregations.
For more information contact interconnections @ uua.org.
Last updated on Friday, April 18, 2008.
