Staff Blog

We want to welcome these ministers who are serving in new ministries in the Southern Region, including some who have relocated within our region:

Every fall congregations begin to look at the challenges and needs they might be facing in the coming year. Please remember that the Southern Region Congregational Life Staff Team is your team. There are many ways that we can partner with you as you begin your new church year.

Welcome to the 2018-2019 Congregational Year! As the summer days wind down and school bells start to ring, we on the Southern Region Team are excited for the months that lie between now and the beginning of next summer.

On August 12, we will mark one year since the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, when hundreds of white supremacists gathered in Emancipation Park around the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. That day, Heather Heyer lost her life when one supremacist...

What is The Point ? The Point is a customizable Unitarian Universalist retreat for all. At The Point we worship, sing, play, explore, question, eat, laugh and learn while living in a covenantal community. In late July 2018 at Lake Murray State Park, Oklahoma, our new home for...

Most of your Southern Region staff are fresh from our Unitarian Universalist Association’s General Assembly, held this year in Kansas City, Missouri, June 20-24. You can read about the highlights in UU World Magazine . In the midst of our familiar rituals and procedures such as...

"If you don’t believe that your enemy can be redeemed you will become what you hate.” - Rev. Dr. William Barber II “I learn from my enemies,” Killmonger retorts. “ You have become them,” T'Challa responds. I have said this so many times in the past year that it rings in my head...

So you are a leader in your congregation and you are having a difficult time finding volunteers for the XYZ committee. You feel like you’ve tried everything – advertising in the newsletter, asking people directly, but still, it is the same few folks who say “Yes” and they are...

We are delighted to be writing this blog as the Southern Region’s new Co-Leads. Wait - what? Four years ago the four District Boards that made up the Southern Region voted to regionalize. In other words, they chose to break down District boundaries, pool resources, and combine...

Last Tuesday night, I felt a tremendous wave of relief move through my body when I saw online that Doug Jones had been declared the winner of the Alabama Senate race . It had boggled my mind: The idea that the other candidate, Roy Moore, a person with a history of overt racism,...

He asked, “Can you explain the logic behind having Dwight Brown Leadership Experience in May in Arkansas?” “Why, yes I can.” I replied. The Southern Region staff routinely hears from congregational leaders and staff members who are concerned about the cost, timing, location, and...

We in the UUA Southern Region are not strangers to violence and disruptions in our churches. This weekend's massacre at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas, reminds many of us of that Sunday in July 2008 when the UU Church of Knoxville was visited by an(other)...

“New occasions teach new duties.” — James Russell Lowell, The Present Crisis, 1844 Beloved Companions, There is an ancient Greek myth that relates an otherwise mute swan trumpeting just before its death. From that tale we get the phrase “swan song” to denote the closing notes of...

This is written for those of us on the sidelines of Harvey, not those of you struggling with the effects. To those of you struggling, we send love and support. The devastating flooding in Texas and Louisiana has sparked a lot of conversation and speculation from those not...

The violent events coming out of the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville two weekends ago have the country on edge. The dangerous rise of white supremacy was on full display as men with tiki torches marched on the campus the night of August 11 and clashed with anti-fascist...

Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it. - Buddha Siddhartha had been raised in privilege and opulence. He had been pampered and protected from the horrors of the world. When he found himself in the real world, where there was death,...

At General Assembly this past year in New Orleans, I was very honored to be asked by Dr. Mark A. Hicks, the Director of the Fahs Collaborative at Meadville Lombard Theological School to be a part of a their experiential workshop on Beloved Conversations. Several of us were asked...

I love getting emails from the Church of the Larger Fellowship. They start off with “Our faith alive in the world!” That phrase makes me smile every time I see it. I’ve been concerned about the health and life of our faith and Association in the last few months. Since the US...

"Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans.” — John Lennon According to evolutionary theory, life, as we know it, is the result of unfathomable numbers of small changes taking place over eons of time. An intriguing element of the theory is that if you...

“The only thing that is constant is change” Heraclitus My, my, my, but have we been surrounded with change?! If change is truly the only constant, then we had better get comfortable with it. We are swirling around in it. It is so, that currently, if someone asks me how I am...