We feel so fortunate that our previous ministers were with us since 2018. We wish them well and will miss them dearly as they enjoy thier retirement years. Please read below for the message from Reverend Kerry Mueller and Reverand Hunter for their last Message from the Ministers for June 2022 and their message to us when they started their ministry with UUFP.
From the Ministers Desk
From the Minister’s Desk — June 2022
Dear Ones,
Grief and glee. That’s what I’ve been feeling lately, since Dave and I announced that it was time for us to retire from parish ministry. Glee because other needs are tugging at us — relationships, family history, art and music making, reading, community responsibilities here at White Horse Village. And as we age, ordinary householding and bodily maintenance become ever more time consuming. It will be good to do all these things with more energy and attention. But sorrow is coming to the fore. How we will miss you! In these short three and a half years, attenuated by being very part time, blighted by the shutdowns and restrictions of covid, we have come to love you all.
So we offer you these five expressions of farewell:
We Love You. We Forgive You. Please Forgive Us. Thank You. Goodbye.
We love you, individually and collectively. You are a valiant small congregation, living your faith, caring for each other.
We forgive you. Well, there’s not much to forgive, so let us reiterate that despite the struggles in being a small congregation in difficult times, you have kept going, making progress, reaching out. Please forgive us. We are sorry for all we have not accomplished, for moments of inattention and carelessness. Please release us from the burdens of our failures and frailties.
Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to serve you, to get to know you, to laugh and cry and eat and sing with you, to love you. You have enriched our lives and deepened our experience of ministry.
Goodbye. We will let you go, knowing that you are in good hands — your own, and each others’, that you will work together to become the congregation that you are meant to be. With the help all of you working together, leaders and elders and children and youth, newcomers and long-timers, with denominational advice and encouragement, and mostly with your own deep spiritual resources and commitment, you will continue to bless the world.
And please forgive me if I weep at our last service.
Love, Kerry and Dave
Message from Ministers in October 2018: Greetings, it feels good to be part of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Pottstown.
We are one of many clergy couples engaged in Unitarian Universalist ministry – Kerry ordained in 1995, Dave in 2003. In the recent past, we were the co-ministers for the UU Fellowship of Fayetteville, Arkansas, from 2006 to 2011. In 2011 we retired and returned to the Philadelphia area, rejoining the Main Line Unitarian Church in Devon (the church in which we were married in 1980). Within a year of our return, the UU congregation in Gettysburg was in need of a new part-time minister, and we decided to delay or compromise our retirement to serve them. After five years of two weekends a month in Gettysburg we decided it was time to retire again, but we continued to do occasional guest preaching and rites of passage and thus were with your congregation from time to time. When you were ready for a new minister we realized that the ministerial itch was greater than the Siren call of retirement (and Pottstown is much closer to home than Gettysburg), so here we are together. We hope the relationship has been and will continue to be fruitful, inspiring, and fulfilling for both you and for us.
By way of background, Kerry grew up in a Unitarian (pre-consolidation) family, while Dave’s family was Presbyterian (and he has a Presbyterian minister great grandfather). Kerry has degrees from Bryn Mawr College, Temple University, Cornell University, the Wharton School, and Wesley Theological Seminary; Dave has degrees from Princeton University, the Harvard Law School, and Wesley. We have two adult children (from Kerry’s first marriage) and four granddaughters. Kerry has served congregations in Bowie MD, Newport News VA, Finksburg MD, Silver Spring MD, and Media PA; Dave the congregation in Cumberland MD; and the two of us together in Bordentown NJ as well as Fayetteville and Gettysburg. Kerry’s complicated preministerial resumé includes teaching Latin at Council Rocks High School and time with Conrail and the U.S. Railway Association. Dave’s legal career included five years at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and twenty five years at the Department of Justice, in the Civil Rights Division’s Voting Section.
In our pre-ministerial UU lives we were both active lay members of the UU Church of Arlington VA, and Dave had several different roles in the Joseph Priestley District. Dave is now the vice president of our area’s chapter of the UU Ministers Association and treasurer of the UU Retired Ministers & Partners Association. In their spare time, Kerry takes pottery classes at the Community Arts Center and occasional workshops at Pendle Hill, both in Wallingford, and Dave sings in the Wayne Oratorio Society.
What do we hope or expect to accomplish during our time with you, you may be wondering, and how long will that time be? Good questions – we will find the answers together – answers that will undoubtedly evolve over time. Regardless of the specifics, we trust that together we will nurture spiritual journeys, embrace diversity, celebrate community, and turn our UU values into action.
Yours in faith,
Kerry & Dave