One of the very few regrets I have is that I took down Unitarian Universalist Nightmares. Only a tiny fraction of it remains on the Wayback Machine, and there's very little left in which to link. Oh well...
While the blog had existed for a half-dozen years, what got Unitarian Universalist Nightmares started was a streaming service from the Arlington, VA church. This was in January 2015.
What I saw when I watched this streamed service was an energetic minister who it seemed had some vision and sparkle, Rev. Aaron McEmrys, being upstaged by the associate minister Rev. Linda Olson Peebles.
I'll never forget this performance because it seemed that the only point of Rev. Peebles "talk" was to upstage the actual called minister of the congregation. She just rambled on and on to the point where my partner, another former minister, turned to me to ask if I thought she was drunk. No, I didn't think she was. But that disgraceful performance was such that I could understand the comparison between Rev. Peebles in the pulpit and a babbling wet-brain drunk.
I predicted at the time that Rev. McEmrys was at the end of his ministry as it appeared that Rev. Peebles was marking her territory by excreting all over the place. (Mental and verbal excretion is still excretion.) Turns out that I was wrong. Rev. McEmrys was six months into his brand new ministry as senior minister of Arlington.
At the time I made a few observations:
- Rev. McEmrys ministry was in some serious fucking trouble.
- The associate minister demonstrated that she didn't understand her place in a team...
or didn't give a shit. - The congregation appeared clueless; this was all just a regular Sunday morning.
What I didn't say then but will now is that watching that revolting display in the pulpit triggered the PTSD I received from my experience with my last church. I've seen this shit before, up close and personal. I've seen it countless times in other ministries with the colleagues I've known. This is not isolated behavior, in fact Associate Ministers usurping the authority of the congregation (in the guise of the Senior Minister the congregation called and authorized) appears to be the norm.
What we saw in the pulpit that Sunday seemed to both of us to be a clear turf statement that the associate was not going to tolerate this or any future senior minister with "vision" or "ideas" to change a nice sinecure into actual work. Really, was there any other explanation for such a childish display?
Flash forward three years later: Rev. McEmrys has resigned his position mid-year...
suddenly...
placed on "administrative leave"...
a complaint against his ministry was/is being investigated... [LINK HERE]
While a year previously, Rev. Peebles had "retired" and been made Minister Emerita of Arlington. I say retired because she's serving as an interim minister at another congregation. I guess the ministry shortage [which we'll probably revisit soon] is still very real.
In any case, Arlington's rid of that one, maybe the next minister will get a shot.
Nah... this is Unitarian Universalism.
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| Newsletter, Jan 4, 2018 [LINK HERE] |
suddenly...
 |
| Newsletter, Jan 11, 2018 [LINK HERE] |
placed on "administrative leave"...
 |
| Newsletter, Jan 18, 2018 [LINK HERE] |
a complaint against his ministry was/is being investigated... [LINK HERE]
 |
| Board of Trustees Update, March 15, 2018 (the ides of March) [LINK HERE] |
While a year previously, Rev. Peebles had "retired" and been made Minister Emerita of Arlington. I say retired because she's serving as an interim minister at another congregation. I guess the ministry shortage [which we'll probably revisit soon] is still very real.
 |
| Board of Trustees Update, March 15, 2018 [LINK HERE] (Compare the above statement against observations #2 and 3 above, kinda proves both, doesn't it?) |
In any case, Arlington's rid of that one, maybe the next minister will get a shot.
Nah... this is Unitarian Universalism.
The norm is to get rid of a minister who appeared to have something on the ball (a bit of vision and the like), investigate his ministry, appear to reward bad behavior in all of those who surround said minister, all the while a ministry shortage is happening. What could possibly go wrong?
Question to which I don't have the answer: Was bad behavior rewarded in this situation? I don't know but am open to hearing the truth of what happened.
Your Old Pal,
Devilhead
By the way, I'm back. You won't believe how Unitarian Universalism is killing itself! I'm back to help my readers enjoy the decline. There's lots to enjoy.
And my email traffic has increased a bit lately. This blog is beginning to get the interest that Unitarian Universalist Nightmares had, and for much the same reason. Thank you.
UUism is a cancer on the world. It serves NO useful purpose, which is a tragedy as it WAS such a great tradition. But, when brain dead idiots are allowed to run the show....
ReplyDeleteUpdate: The church sent a letter out revealing why Rev Aaron resigned. He admitted to affairs w/ two congregants. Not good.
ReplyDeleteParadoxically, Aaron a few years prior gave a scathing sermon at his previous UU church in Santa Barbara condemning a former pastor there for having affairs with congregants. "Shame on you!" he yelled at the pulpit. "Shame on you!"
ReplyDeleteAnd now here he is a few years later resigning for exactly the same thing.
Now Aaron is not one of those hypocritical Jimmy Swaggart type pastors. Aaron is a very caring deep thinker, who always dared to go into subjects where others wouldn't have the balls to tread. The Santa Barbara UU congregation swelled in size under Aaron because he pushed the boundaries and had us look at the scary parts of ourselves that we didn't want to look at, with the care and kindness that only a very special pastor could muster.
Obviously something is wrong with our model of human nature and how we expect humans to behave, since according to our model what just happened should have been impossible -- and yet the impossible happened.
Rather than be disappointed in the person, we should be disappointed in our model. We obviously don't understand ourselves very well.
And that is exactly what church is all about -- understanding ourselves.
Now Aaron is poised to learn something radically new about ourselves and human nature from his own experience, and I want to hear what he has to say when he figures this out, because it's going to be something that will benefit us all.
We need to learn to understand ourselves and each other in a very different way that is far more useful and productive. I have no idea what that new way is going to be, but I'm confident Aaron will figure it out. Aaron has the Idealist personality. He was born to figure this out for the rest of us.
Aaron is as human as any of us, and that is precisely the point. None of us can live up to the model of human nature we have created for ourselves, and it's destroying us. We need a better model. Our future survival depends on it.