Office Hours: Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, generally between 10 am and 2 pm, or by appointment. Staff meeting is at 10 am on Tuesday mornings. You are welcome to call or come by on office days, though a call first is good idea.
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Telephone: 978-256-5555
Email: minister@uuchelmsford.org
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| The Reverend Ellen Rowse
Spero has served as our minister since August, 2002.
Ellen is a graduate of Brandeis University, University of
Maryland (with an M.Ed in Special Education) and Wesley
Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. She has served
as the Assistant Minister at the First Parish in
Lexington, MA, and as the Interim Minister at Hope United
Church of Christ in Alexandria, VA. Before entering the
ministry, she was a special education teacher in
Alexandria, Virginia. She grew up as a Unitarian
Universalist, attending the First Church Unitarian in
Littleton, MA. Office Hours: Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, generally between 10 am and 2 pm, or by appointment. Staff meeting is at 10 am on Tuesday mornings. You are welcome to call or come by on office days, though a call first is good idea. |
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From The Shooting Star, April 20, 2008. Copyright 2008, Ellen Rowse Spero. All rights reserved.
I will be taking a week’s vacation, April 21-27. The Worship Committee has asked three people: Martha Sherburne, Amanda Miller, and Jennifer Almeida, to share with the congregation their perspectives on the sacred and the earth, in celebration of Earth Day. I thank them all for providing worship while I take a Sunday off.
It has been quite a couple of weeks for me. I was down in Richmond, Virginia, at a training session on supervising congregational staff. It was one of the most helpful courses I have attended ever, and I hope that it will help me be a better resource and leader for the congregation and for the staff. While I was in Richmond, Mark Sullivan passed away. I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the love, care, and support you offered Mark and his family. Over and over again, his siblings and family told me what a caring, gracious and generous group of people we are at First Parish. In part, Mark made it easy for us to be so because he was such a caring, gracious and generous person himself. At the same time, I believe the spirit of welcome, of caring, of empowering and of trying to help heal our world is very real and I am thankful to all of you for making it so real and concrete.
I know that a couple of you missed Mark’s service because you did not get the word. I apologize. One of the growing pains we are experiencing is the need to be more intentional around communication and I lost sight of this in all the funeral preparation. Unfortunately, as the saying goes, experience is something you get after you need, and I have learned that we needed to set up a phone tree before a funeral or something like this happened. We will do our best to have it not happen again. Cindy Gist will be happy to take your name and phone number to put on a phone tree for such important and time-sensitive events. Please let her know if that is how you would like to be informed. I am still learning to practice what I preach about the need to be very intentional as a way of making sure we make everyone feel welcome and keep everyone connected. Because of the warm and friendly atmosphere and because for so long word of mouth worked pretty well, it is easy keep up the habits that served us as a smaller congregation, when everybody knew, or felt they knew, everyone else. I do not believe we need to sacrifice the sense of warmth and friendliness and welcome as we grow. We just need to go about it a little differently. For example, in order to accommodate more people in worship, we can give ourselves more lead-time to park and to get to the sanctuary. That way, folks don’t get stuck in the narthex for the first part of the service. We can make room, with a smile and a hello for one another in the pews (and please, don’t be a afraid to sit up front!). We can make sure that we communicate with Cindy Gist and Leila Pelosi when we are holding a meeting or training or class so that we know we have a room reserved and don’t walk in on another group. And we can be forgiving of one another, understanding as Larry Peers said, that we are working with the "we" rather than the "me" when it comes to creating and sustaining this religious community.
While I am on vacation, the Reverend Jackie Clemente will be covering for me for any pastoral emergencies. Her contact information is available on my office answering machine, at 978 256-5555. I look forward to this week with my boys. And I look forward to seeing you at the May Breakfast on May 3rd!
In faith,
Rev. Ellen