Sunday, October 29, 2006

First Military President?

Due to the resignation of our President, I have become the Acting President of my congregation. I wonder if there are any other active duty UU board presidents, or if there ever have been before? Is this worthy of attention from other UU's - say an article in the UU World?

Along those lines, Rob Keithan of the UUA Washington Advocacy Office has asked me to write a brief reflection on Veterans' Day for their website. Maybe it will actually be used this time! He might be interested in input from others - give him a shout here.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

There have been so many prominent Unitarian members of the military that I have no doubt active-duty folks have been presidents of plenty of Unitarian churches in the past. However, you asked about UU churches, not Unitarian ones, so I'm not as sure about the answer. I'm also not sure how we'd even go about determining the answer, other than asking the questions as often as possible in as many venues as possible and hoping someone would chime in with an anecdote about their church's active duty president.

Jenn said...

Greg: We UU's need to seek common ground from differing models of leadership and can only benefit from your perspective. How real, for example, is The Unit's Sgt. Major Blane? Good Luck in the interim!

Greg said...

Great comments! Tom, I'm glad to know I'm not alone. I have also been very well supported by my congregation. I first joined the board by invitation in July 2004, then like you I had to resign because of an IA billet. I was elected as Ministry Director in July 2005, and I'll finish out my two years as Acting President.

Anonymous said...

Nope, you're not the first active military member to be the president of a UU church. The first for us (All Souls UU church, Colorado Springs, CO) was AF Col Dave Porter, elected in the late '80s. However, he was preceeded by a military wife in the late '70s/early '80s. Before that, who knows. I served on our board as an at-large member, then treasurer while on active duty, but wasn't elected to be our president until after I had retired. Cheers,
Lew