BREAKING NEWS!!

  The Revs. John and Sarah Millspaugh (Photo by George Joseph)   

On Sunday, May 4th,
 the Winchester Unitarian Society voted to call
the Reverend Sarah Gibb Millspaugh and
the Reverend John Gibb Millspaugh
as Co-Parish Ministers.
The vote was unanimous -
148 yes votes,
2 abstentions, 0 no votes. 

REV. SARAH GIBB MILLSPAUGH

Reverend Sarah Gibb Millspaugh is a fifth-generation Unitarian.  She has been in our church many times; her grandparents and her father were active in the congregation in the 50’s and 60’s, when Bob Storer was minister.  Sarah was born in North Carolina, and grew up as a UU in Nebraska and Colorado.  In addition to her Unitarian heritage, she has Jewish heritage as well, and celebrates many “sources of our living tradition.”

Sarah went to Colorado College in Colorado Springs to study physics, but while there, she was inspired more and more by her involvement in Unitarian Universalism.  She took a year off from college and moved to Boston to work full-time at the UUA in the Youth Office.  After she graduated from college, the UUA and United Church of Christ hired her to help develop, promote, and advocate for the Our Whole Lives sexuality education curriculum for three years as its Outreach Coordinator. She entered Harvard Divinity School in 2000 to study for the ministry. Her studies included placements as a chaplain at Mass. General Hospital and as a pastoral caregiver for people with HIV/AIDS at the Boston Living Center.

Sarah interned at First Parish in Needham, and was ordained there in May, 2005, with a standing-room only crowd in the sanctuary.  The Rev. Dr. John Buehrens, Minister of the Needham church and President of the UUA from 1993-2001, praises her with these words: “Her strength as a preacher and worship leader was such that my congregation still says, ‘Perhaps when John retires, we’ll be lucky enough to call a minister as good as Sarah!’  She has great sensitivity as a pastor and counselor, extraordinary gifts in organizational development and group dynamics, a strongly developed social conscience, exceptional wisdom as an educator, and an unerring instinct for healthy relationships and sound institutional development.”

For three years Sarah has been Adult Programs Director for the UUA, developing, authoring, and editing various curricula for adult religious education, including the first installments of the “Tapestry of Faith” lifespan series. She has fulfilled this role from California, where she moved in order to be the partner and now the wife of John Millspaugh, minister at Tapestry, a UU Congregation in Mission Viejo, CA.  For the past three years Sarah has also served as Affiliated Community Minister at Tapestry.  Sarah’s passion is parish ministry, and she is eager to begin this co-ministry with her husband. 

REV. JOHN GIBB MILLSPAUGH

The Reverend John Gibb Millspaugh is the son of two United Methodist ministers.  He grew up in Hawaii, Missouri and Minnesota.

John is a summa cum laude graduate of Macalester College, where he double majored in Ethical Philosophy and Religious Studies, and minored in Sociology.  He spent a semester in South Africa, where he lived with an indigenous Zulu family in a violent and impoverished township.  During these college years John’s religious journey included a period of agnosticism and atheism.  Then he was introduced to Unitarian Universalism, and “fell in love with … its aspirations, its commitments, its values, its methods, and its local, regional, and national communities.”   Pursuing his interests in both ministry and public policy, John received a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard Divinity School, and a Master of Public Administration from the Kennedy School in 2001.

John is now completing his sixth year as parish minister of Tapestry, a UU Congregation in Mission Viejo, California.  A small church of 87 members the year he arrived, during his tenure the congregation has doubled in size and nearly tripled in budget.  Tapestry’s visibility in conservative Orange County has increased tremendously, as John has applied his skills in media, publicity, and social justice advocacy to sharing the values of the congregation with the larger community. They have also become a more welcoming, more diverse, and more programmatically rich community during his time there.

John’s experience includes a summer as a Clinical Pastoral Education Chaplain at Mass. General Hospital, teaching RE to second and third graders in Cambridge, serving as part-time Community Ministries Intern at the UU Church of Medford, MA, and as Intern and Summer Minister of the First UU Church of San Diego.  In addition, in 1998 the Rev. Dr. John Buehrens hired John Millspaugh as his Assistant for Public Witness, a position which he held for three years.  He co-wrote numerous speeches and sermons with John Buehrens, helped draft UUA position statements, and communicated with political and religious leaders on matters important to UUs.  John won the Interweave Sermon Award in 2005, and served as President of the Pacific Southwest Chapter of the UU Ministers Association from 2005-2007.

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John and Sarah Millspaugh have known each other for ten years, as friends, classmates, partners, and now husband and wife.  They were married in the fall of 2006.   They flew from California to Massachusetts on National Coming Out Day, in order to be legally married here, in the only U.S. state with marriage equality for bisexual, gay, lesbian, and transgender people.  Two weeks later, they held a religious ceremony in California.

John is a writer; he is currently working on three books.  He is also an accomplished magician!  He enjoys swimming, bodysurfing, and nature photography.  Sarah’s hobbies are birding and genealogy.  Together John and Sarah enjoy camping, biking, music and film.  Together they also contributed to the UUA’s new Coming-of-Age curriculum for middle schoolers (to be published Fall 2008)—Sarah was lead author for the curriculum, and John wrote the four Social Justice workshops.

With great enthusiasm, the Search Committee recommends John and Sarah Millspaugh as our Candidates for Parish Co-Ministry at WUS. 

(All photos of John Millspaugh are by George Joseph)