I certainly see what you're saying. My local UU church hired an activist couple as co-ministers in 2018ish. They certainly embraced the social justice agenda, but failed to recognize that a certain amount of ministering was required from the role of minister.
In addition, there was a period from 2020 until just recently when local UU churches wouldn't even consider hiring a cis-gender, straight, white male as a minister. This left selection committees with an unfortunately small candidate pool. All three of the hires made during this period had the right identities, but none of them lasted more than 2 years.
I'm concerned that the UU seminaries (Mead and Starr King) have been taken over by the activist agenda and have neglected the spiritual formation of the congregants. Perhaps this will change... We can only hope.
We hired a minister out of school in 2016. The minister was not a success. The minister pushed the social agenda, not strongly, but the pressure was there. The minister got a higher paying gig after a year and departed. We hired a backslid Lutheran, and he has been super-great for our church. Part of the reason is that the single largest group in church is ex Lutheran ministers - in our small church, we have 5 members (of 60) who used to be Lutheran ministers.
When the failed minister was leaving, I made a few comments about the preaching style - I recommended outlining the sermon and practicing. Our best interim minister would stay at our house occasionally (from out of town) and he would go over his message 5,6,7,8 times. My comments were not received with grace.
I certainly see what you're saying. My local UU church hired an activist couple as co-ministers in 2018ish. They certainly embraced the social justice agenda, but failed to recognize that a certain amount of ministering was required from the role of minister.
In addition, there was a period from 2020 until just recently when local UU churches wouldn't even consider hiring a cis-gender, straight, white male as a minister. This left selection committees with an unfortunately small candidate pool. All three of the hires made during this period had the right identities, but none of them lasted more than 2 years.
I'm concerned that the UU seminaries (Mead and Starr King) have been taken over by the activist agenda and have neglected the spiritual formation of the congregants. Perhaps this will change... We can only hope.
We hired a minister out of school in 2016. The minister was not a success. The minister pushed the social agenda, not strongly, but the pressure was there. The minister got a higher paying gig after a year and departed. We hired a backslid Lutheran, and he has been super-great for our church. Part of the reason is that the single largest group in church is ex Lutheran ministers - in our small church, we have 5 members (of 60) who used to be Lutheran ministers.
When the failed minister was leaving, I made a few comments about the preaching style - I recommended outlining the sermon and practicing. Our best interim minister would stay at our house occasionally (from out of town) and he would go over his message 5,6,7,8 times. My comments were not received with grace.
Agree- sadly