Thirty years ago this past August, I began working as a director of religious education (DRE) at a Unitarian Universalist congregation. I’ve been working in UU congregations in one capacity or another ever since: as a DRE (twice), an interim religious educator, an interim associate minister, a minister of religious education (twice), and as a parish minister (twice).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over thirty years and nine congregations, I’ve never seriously considered switching careers. The pay isn’t great (when I moved to Massachusetts, I discovered that I qualified for low and moderate income housing). The job security isn’t all that great (not any more). But I’ve stuck with it, mostly because congregations do a lot of good in the world. For example, research shows that kids who are part of a congregation are less likely to engage in risky behaviors (substance abuse, suicidal ideation, etc.), and are more likely to have good mental health. It’s pretty good having a job where I feel like I’m helping make the world a better place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it is kind of odd to think that it’s been thirty years….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Thirty years ago this past August, I began working as a director of religious education (DRE) at a Unitarian Universalist congregation. I’ve been working in UU congregations in one capacity or another ever since: as a DRE (twice), an interim religious educator, an interim associate minister, a minister of religious education (twice), and as a … Continue reading “An anniversary”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[669],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memoir"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11737"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11738,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11737\/revisions\/11738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}