Something for the Journey
Janette M. Lallier, UUMA Director of Operations & Finance
 Thank you. In this clergy appreciation month we at the UUMA wish to acknowledge, name and appreciate what it means to minister in and to the world today. In these turbulent times your ministry brings hope and healing and is needed more than ever. The UUMA strives to help you navigate stormy waters, celebrate the moments of calm, and be a port of respite and renewal. In addition to the 2026 Institute (rates increase soon: Register now), ongoing programs like the MFN, Good Offices, and Chapters and services like Zoom, Email and now Find-A-Minister and Virtual Hymnal subscriptions, I want to lift up a two things that may not be on your radar.
In partnership with the UUA Professional Development Office, we have begun to plan for the next Community Ministers Retreat. If you are a Community Minister interested in serving on a planning team to help design the details of this offering please send a note to Julica by Friday Oct 10. Initial dates have been set and we hope all Community Ministers seeking an opportunity to tend to the landscape of your ministry will mark your calendar now.
For those of you working in congregations, I am very excited to announce the publication of a reorganized model agreement. Some history. For years we have received feedback from folks entering into ministerial contexts other than Full-time/Solo/Called ministry about the challenges of having multiple versions (or none at all) of the UUA/UUMA model agreement. A few years ago the UUA’s Jan Gartner and I began a project to create a central template that gave consideration to and recommendations for these different contexts. Jan is an amazing thought partner. As the months ticked by, we struggled with the best way to organize, format, and publish the information. We settled on an imperfect attempt to consolidate the existing templates into one document. Knowing we would do better as a team of three we invited a UUMA Member and Contract & Call Good Officer, Rev. Ruth Van Lillian onto our team.
The charge for the creation of the, renamed, Unified Ministerial Agreement Template was to provide considerations for various types of ministry, not to revise the primary guidance. While an overall content review will happen in a future phase, in addition to a few minor wording adjustments, there are three notable amendments that have been made since we began this project. These changes are explained in the cover letter (which the UUA will distribute and is published at the UUMA here). The one change I wish to lift up here is a very practical example of the advocacy work of the UUMA Board of Trustees. Between 2022 and 2024 the Board spent time in member engagement to listen to the ways to help make paid, professional ministry more sustainable. The work was rich and as one result, the new guidance under ‘Work Week’ is for ministers to be given 2 days per week free of congregational responsibilities. Assuring ministers of this weekly time apart from their congregational obligations supports healthy boundaries and optimal mental health and work/life balance. We strongly recommend that all congregations and ministers amend their existing agreements to take these changes into account.
We are grateful to all those at the UUA and UUMA who gave feedback on this new format and we look forward to continuing to revisit this document so that it may remain a useful resource for those entering into agreements with congregations. Finally, thanks to Ruth Van Lillian who, in addition to helping us get this done, will be briefing our Good Offices Contract/Call Negotiation Support Team this fall and working with that team to offer a “How to Read Our Contract” webinar for all members later this winter. Keep an eye out here for details.
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