December 5, 2025

Something For the Moment 

Ministerial Search Webinar for 2026: Friday, December 12, 2025, 12-1:30pm ET/ 11am-12:30pm CT/10am-11:30am MT/ 9am-10:30am PT If you are considering entering search this year for any kind of settled, contract, transitional, or developmental ministry, you are warmly invited to join us for a webinar to help you with your preparations. Melissa Carvill Ziemer will host Congregational Transitions Director Christine Purcell, Transformational Interim Ministries Director PK Curtis and Interim Settled Ministries Director Eric Kaminetzky, who will offer reflections about changes and dynamics in this year’s search cycle. Click here to read a letter from the UUA staff with follow up from the October Transitions Office listening session here. 
Since last winter, UU organizers and strategists have been diligently working to sharpen our denominational impact and meaningful engagement for Immigration Justice. Multi-organization collaboration moves at the speed of trust and consent, but we are now ready to announce a wider launch of the UU Solidarity Initiative (UUSI).

UUSI is a nationally coordinated effort of UU and UU-adjacent organizations to provide resources and opportunities to build strong communities of solidarity with immigrant communities who are under attack. Our primary purpose and goal is to coordinate the resources of UU organizations to do more impactful and accountable immigration work. For example, consider joining the National Stop Avelo Action Hour on December 10th.

Currently, our core members include: BorderLinks, UUA Side With Love, UUMA, UURISE, UUSC, and UUSJ. We invite your attention and warmly ask you to join us, see our sign-up.

Something for the Journey

Michelle Favreault, MFN Program Manager

This week the Ministerial Formation Network is hosting a conversation alongside our colleagues at Starr King School for the Ministry for internship supervisors to share strategies and talk about aspects of time when it comes to supporting aspirants and candidates for preparing for vocations in UU ministry. When it comes to time, some issues are practical and pragmatic, like the achievement of 1000 hours in an internship and numbers of course credits or the meaning of full time ministry when there is no time clock that one punches into with expectations of over time pay. How we count time in ministry and are accountable for time has a mix of ethical, spiritual and emotional components. So we’re spending some time talking about how we manage our own expectations and capacities. Exploring a bit about what we teach/model and define as appropriate or enough while grappling with what time signifies in our aspirations to counter oppressions.

On the 16th of December, our colleague Lois Van Leer will be guiding ritual space with our MFN community as we acknowledge the passage of time and the experience of grief and loss that is inherent and particular on the way to becoming – and being – a UU minister. The long drawn out, or very abrupt shift from being a lay leader, applicant, student, and intern to the arrival in fellowship and offering a benediction at one’s ordination. The time, it flies. Unless it’s the middle of finals week and time is dragging as that one last paper gets written and submitted. 

As my calendar pages flip quickly – like in a movie scene – to 1/1/2026, I am deep in the feels – letting go of much…trying to hold hope and possibility. Throughout 2026, we’re planning some celebrations of 10 years of the Ministerial Formation Network. For those who moved into ministry before 9/11/2001 the experience was in so many ways different from that of folks who experienced a path in the context of visits with the Regional Subcommittees on Candidacy in the times from 2001 til about 2016 when that program ended. This past decade has included so many more shifts and changes in how UU ministry appears in the world. Not to mention what goes into our credentialing experiences. Then there are the many, many shifts in how UU’s are called into ministry within and beyond the parish. I have no doubt that these closing days of 2025 will offer opportunities to reflect on the past, and as we enter into 2026 I hope to hear more of your stories about time as we plan for what we can’t fully imagine as people of faith. 

Something for Action

Opportunity for Direct Support: Our colleagues at UUSC are helping support unaccompanied immigrant children who need rides to their court appointments, through their program Solidarity in Motion. More information about this program is sensitive and can only be accessed through our website if you are signed into your UUMA account.

Something for 2026 (wait, what?) 

How to Read Our Contract and Why it Matters: Friday, January 9, 2026 for 90 minutes at noon ET/ 11am CT/ 10am MT/ 9am PT
Offered by members of the Good Offices Contract/Call Negotiation Support Team. This session will be especially helpful for people who will be in search this year, but all colleagues who would like to build their skills in reading their contract are warmly invited. This training was offered last year and is being updated to reflect the new Unified Ministerial Agreement. 
 

Ending Well: Friday, January 16, 2026, 12-1:30pm ET/ 11am-12:30pm CT/10am-11:30am MT/ 9am-10:30am PT
If you think ending a ministry may be in your future in the next few years and you’d like to reflect on how to end your ministry well, this session is for you. Melissa Carvill Ziemer will host Transformational Interim Ministries Director PK Curtis and Interim Settled Ministries Director Eric Kaminetzky, as well as a few experienced colleagues (settled, contract, interim) with recent experience of working to conclude their ministries well. There will be time for your questions and we will record and post the session for those unable to attend.
 

MFN Retreat: The Arts of Farewell: A Retreat on End-of-Life Rituals: Saturday, February 28, 12-3pm ET/11am-2pm CT/10am-1pm MT/9am-12pm PT The three-hour online retreat, led by Rev. Mary Ann Macklin, will serve as a professional development opportunity, bridging theoretical study with real-world ministerial competence, including emerging end-of-life practices in the 21^st century.