Dear congregational leaders of the Central East Region,

I’m writing with news – after ten years as field staff and nine as CER’s Regional Lead, I’ve decided to complete my tenure at the UUA over the course of 2025.

This July I will step down as CER Lead, continuing on three days a week as Deputy Director of the UUA’s Congregational Life staff group — a role I’ve been holding along with Lead for a few years now. Around January 2026, I will step down from my staff role at the UUA entirely.

Why am I leaving? My spirit, energy and call to ministry are pulling me in other directions, and I am grateful that I have the means to spend time exploring what those new directions might be. And also, life is short – my own life has taught me that unwelcome lesson many times — and I want to spend the time I have being with the people I love doing things that I love. The importance of that has lately resurged in me. My time and work with the UUA have been interesting, challenging, fun, and important. I leave this role with gratitude, and with excitement for this next chapter of my life.

There will be a job posting shortly for the Lead position (interested? Keep an eye on the UUA Jobs page) and I know the hope is that the new Lead will start in the summer of 2025.

Although some of you are familiar with me in my previous primary contact role to the DC area congregations, and are aware of your congregation’s own primary contact, you may be less familiar with the role of a Regional Lead. A Lead manages the team of primary contacts (sometimes called ‘field staff’) and administrators who are serving you and your congregations day to day. Leads help the regional team decide on programming, pastoral directions and outreach based on what we hear from you in the field about your congregation’s work, needs, struggles and energies.

For me, the real work of the Lead is drawing out the alchemic skills, passions and energies of the staff team for the benefit of our congregations and thus our shared faith. Your CER staff is committed to the thriving of our congregations. We do that every day. The question is always, how do we help? The landscape in which we ask that question has swung so very widely over the course of my ten years. Whether it was UUA regionalization, the first Trump presidency, the pandemic lockdown years, the second Trump presidency, and all the other stuff in between, there is no ‘ordinary time’ for congregations and therefore not for field staff, either. Our secret sauce is in our relationships with you all. Within that magic of relationship we at the UUA learn what’s needed and we work hard to provide it, or point the way to it. We pivot based on what we hear and what works (and doesn’t!). Through it all we are always in your corner, cheering you on.

Those of you who have worked on culture change in your congregations know that social groups have a DNA that proves pretty durable. Sometimes that’s good news: The DNA of your CER team is solid, and it lives in the staff who will continue to serve you after I am gone. Whether it is now Sana, Beth, Cassie, Alia, Renee and Lenore or it was Evin, Pat, Sunshine, David, Amy, Shannon, Cristina, Joan, Andrea, Elaine, Paula or our beloved Hope, I’ve learned through the years that although the people change, through it all they have been here to love and serve you and our faith — and that won’t stop for one minute when they are shepherded by another Lead. I am so grateful to have been able to do this work in partnership with them through these past ten years, and so proud that so many of them have been promoted to work in other important roles around the UUA.

We still have many months yet to connect and touch base! I hope to see you in the course of these next few months, especially at one of our upcoming in-person Learning, Transformation and Community Networking Days.

With love,

Megan