ucmadmin Uncategorized

Announcing UCM’s New Director

UCM’s Board of Directors recently conducted a search for our next director. We had a great response and interviewed several qualified candidates. We are pleased to introduce Mickey Hart as UCM’s new director. 

We were seeking a director to assist in our transition, to coordinate our Re-Envision UCM strategic planning process, to better bridge our spiritual growth and social justice missions, to expand our fund-sourcing efforts, to revitalize our internship program, to enhance our policies and procedures, to expand our website, to revamp our branding and communications, to grow our educational resources, to curate our history, and to develop future programs. We are confident Mickey has the foundation to do these things and more for UCM.  

Mickey is enterprising, thoughtful, and creative, which will be strong assets in evaluating how and what UCM offers to the community in the future. We look forward to how this will transform our building, programming, outreach, and fundraising. Mickey also has well-developed skills supervising others and serving as team leader. 

With a well-established record of compassionate servant leadership, Mickey has competencies working with college students, minority populations, rural communities, and Appalachian people. We are fortunate that Mickey has a strong knowledge of UCM, Athens, Ohio University, and Southeast Ohio communities. 

Mickey has more than 20 years of experience in higher education. He oversaw the growth and development of OU’s LGBT Center for 11 years. He elevated a ten hour a week programs coordinator position into a full-time director position and transformed the LGBT Center into a vital campus resource providing a wide range of programs, resources, and services to LGBTQA+ students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community members. 

Mickey has also served as a resident director for OU’s Department of Residence Life, the director of Campus Life at Antioch College, and the director of Residence Life and Housing at Columbus College of Art & Design. Additionally, Mickey leads interactive workshops on diversity and leadership related topics to college students and other audiences.

Mickey also brings a wealth of non-profit organization experience. Throughout his years in Athens, he served as a UCM board member for nine years. His service on our executive, personnel, and facilities committees gives him a strong understanding of UCM’s operations, systems, policies, and procedures. 

His non-profit experience extends beyond Athens; Mickey is a founding member of Equality Ohio and served on the board for three years. He helped to oversee the organization from a grass-roots concept to a statewide advocate for LGBTQ+ equality. Mickey capped off his time with both non-profit organizations by serving a term as chair of the board of directors.

Finally, Mickey’s passion for UCM and its mission are well established. The UCM Board of Directors feel fortunate to be able to welcome him back as director. Help us welcome Mickey. He can be reached via email at mickey@ucmathens.org or by phone at 740.593-7301.

Greetings From Mickey

Like countless other OU students, UCM has meant a great deal to me since my undergraduate education. Those early days, as part of the Athens Peace Coalition and Open Doors, were foundational to my education. What I know about community, grassroots organizing, consensus building, spirituality, the common good, archive collecting, and community service is due in large part to UCM. I am honored to serve as UCM director.

 My time away from Athens has been professionally fulfilling, personally rewarding, and educationally insightful, but having lived in Athens most of my life I sure did miss this unique community. I visited often over the past nine years, but it’s just not the same as walking these brick streets and pathways on a daily basis. I am glad to be back.  

I understand that I am joining UCM at a critical reflection period in its history. While there are challenges and thoughtful decisions to make ahead, this campus, community, and region need a place like UCM now more than ever. I will strive daily to enhance the reach and impact of UCM. 

ucmadmin Uncategorized

Updates from the UCM Board

(Sent to UCM email list on 9-22-21) We are writing to provide you updates in response to recent inquiries we’ve had as the academic year got underway. Due to the COVID pandemic, UCM became less active in the community than usual and the building was only open on a limited basis. The rise of the Delta variant continues to restrict us from opening fully, however we continue to offer carry-out versions of our free meal programs: Thursday Supper and Saturday Lunch. Later this semester, we will be hosting mission-driven spiritual growth and social justice discussion programs outside or online. Internally, the Board of Directors has been working on personnel transitions and reaching out to some of you as part of our process of re-envisioning what UCM will look like moving forward. This internal work continues and will be expanding this semester. 

We’ve also had inquiries related to concerns that two former UCM staff members raised about Lacey Rogers’s experiences while she was employed as Assistant Director and Interim Director. Due to legal and human resource policy restrictions, we cannot share specifics or share the Board’s assessment regarding the matter. We understand that this may not be a suitable response to some, however it is our reality at this time. 

Board of Directors, individually and collectively, are committed to further examining systemic racism and associated biases and attitudes in our lives, in society, and at UCM. Our goals in undertaking this work are to make UCM a better employer for all employees and a stronger social justice advocate in the future. Our first step in this thoughtful process of change is to hire a diversity and inclusion consulting group to work with us for the remainder of the academic year and longer if necessary. We anticipate this consultation will involve several trainings, book readings, discussions, assessments, and policy enhancements. We are making inquiries of who will best serve our needs in this role and we will share more details once we secure a consulting group. 

Presently, the Board of Directors is a group of six volunteers, but we hope to increase the size of the board to the past standard of 10-12 members over the next two years. As we grow the board, we will do so with a greater focus on diversity: race, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, class, and faith tradition. Our focus is on the betterment of UCM, its mission, and its future. We invite you to be part of this work. If you are interested in being part of a re-envisioning listening session, ecumenical and interfaith discussions, social justice discussions, potential board membership, or volunteer opportunities, email us at connect@ucmathens.org. 

UCM is an old organization with deep community roots and a long history of spiritual growth support and social justice advocacy, yet with an ever-rotating board and staff UCM is simultaneously an organization in a state of constant learning and growth reflective of our society. With a little grace, this upcoming period in UCM’s history will be about learning, un-learning, and re-learning in regard to a host of diversity and inclusion topics—most especially race. We appreciate your patience, involvement, and on-going support.

Sincerely,

Shannon Stewart – Chair, Barb Harrison – Vice Chair, Nancy Pierce – Treasurer, Natalie Wilson – Secretary, Chris Quolke – Member, Katherine Jellison – Member

ucmadmin Uncategorized

Community Meals Continue

May 2021

United Campus Ministry continues to provide meals to the community every Thursday Evening from 5:00 p.m. until 7:00 p.m. and every Saturday afternoon from 1:00 p.m. until 3:00 p.m. The meals are currently being packaged “to-go” due to Covid-19 restrictions. However, as policies change federally and locally we will begin to offer outdoor socially distanced seating (weather permitting).

We are looking forward to the return of face-to-face meetings and meals. We will post changes as they occur. Thank you all for your continued support.

ucmadmin UCM Athens

UCM Closing Due to Coronavirus

In response to the expanding COVID-19 pandemic, we have some changes to announce in UCM’s staffing and operation:
  1. Starting this week and until further notice, Thursday Supper will be offered as a take-out option; Saturday Lunch has been canceled until further notice. Guests at the meal can expect distribution of some of UCM’s store of perishable food, as we seek to ensure that food resources we have been able to accumulate do not go to waste.
  2. For all other purposes, UCM is closed until further notice. This includes regular UCM programming, as well as meetings of community groups scheduled to take place in UCM’s building.
    UCM staff will be periodically checking our voicemail and email, and will respond to contacts as quickly as we are able.
    Because we want to help where we can, we’ll be sharing information and resources on social media and via email as it becomes available, and we want to hear from you what you know and what you need that we might be able to help with.
  3. UCM staff will be periodically checking our voicemail and email, and will respond to contacts as quickly as we are able.
  4. Because we want to help where we can, we’ll be sharing information and resources on social media and via email as it becomes available, and we want to hear from you what you know and what you need that we might be able to help with.
If you want information (or want to share information) about community food resources or our meal programs, email Assistant Director Lacey Rogers (lacey@ucmathens.org); for other UCM and community questions or topics email Executive Director Evan Young (evan@ucmathens.org). Stay safe, stay connected, and work together–together is how we’re going to get through this!
ucmadmin UCM Athens

A Prayer for MLK Day 2020


On January 20, UCM Executive Director Rev. Evan Young delivered a prayer at the beginning of the 20th annual MLK Silent March at Ohio University. It was an extemporaneous and heartfelt prayer, and it has taken us some time to find a recording and transcribe it for sharing. We’re indebted to Athens NEWS Associate Editor Conor Morris for sharing with us a recording of the event, our transcription of which we now share with you.


“When I accepted the invitation to perform this service, I acknowledged that it felt a little bit odd to be a white man offering an invocation on this particular day, on this particular occasion, around this particular issue in our lives and in this historical moment. But I was reminded recently of the words of Nelson Mandela, who said, much more eloquently than I could hope to, that “the oppressor and the oppressed must both be liberated.” So it is in this humble spirit of acknowledging both my own complicity in and my own oppression by the systems and structures that Dr. King crusaded against, that I invite you into prayer with me:

For ourselves, for each other, for our communities, local to global and beyond, for any God or power that lives in our hearts and lifts up our spirits, we offer this prayer. Lord, this road we have been walking has been long, and like so many roads it has had its straight stretches and its torturous stretches, its difficult and dangerous passes, and passes in which we are tempted to sink into comfort and forgetfulness. This particular passage we’ve come to feels in many ways dangerous. We have witnessed the rise of sentiments and systems of white supremacy; we have witnessed the increasing permission felt by some of us to act on and argue for the otherness, oppression, and marginalization of many of us. And yet we know, because we have been shown by so many before us, that however long, however difficult our road is, there is an end, a destination, that is better, more whole, more holy than this place. And we know, today, in this group, that there are many who continue on that path with us, carrying that same vision in their hearts. May our feet be guided on the path toward justice. May our hearts be buoyed up by our companions on that path. And may we return with steadfastness and resolve to the work of making that road by walking, so that all may experience the liberation that some have promised and that is our common vision. This we pray in all the names we give to you who have ever been beyond naming. Amen; blessed be.”

ucmadmin UCM Athens

Transformative Social Justice Work and Ecumenical/Interfaith Campus Ministry

One of the great challenges of doing social justice work in the present age is that the pace of our information economy undermines the spiritual discipline of memory. In the 24-hour news cycle that increasingly defines our experience, today’s news effectively displaces and erases yesterday’s news, and renders us both rootless and directionless. As the great labor historian and folk singer Utah Phillips said, “the long memory is the most radical idea in this country. It is the loss of that long memory which deprives our people of that connective flow of thoughts and events that clarifies our vision, not of where we’re going, but where we want to go.”

In the conservation and transmission of that long memory, no tool is more important than the story. Our stories, told well in community, offer our experience in all its complexity in a form that invites not debate or disputation, but identification and solidarity. Hearing your story, I look in it for that which resonates with my experience—and my understanding of your need and what would meet it is deepened, calling forth my compassionate response. This is why UCM focuses on “listening people into speech,” evoking their stories and sharing them in contexts that make a difference.

UCM’s story is rooted in the modern ecumenical movement within Protestant Christianity. The modern ecumenical movement was founded on a call for Christian leaders throughout the world to work for peace and justice. This call was a new expression of a millennia-old yearning for a return to unity within the Christian Church—unity that perhaps never existed, and certainly had not existed since the 4th century of the Christian era. The most important—and potentially fruitful—locus of that unity was in our shared ethic of service and restoration. So the movement sought to continue, expand, and integrate efforts of unifying the church globally around the idea of helping all those in need, whether that need be physical, emotional, or spiritual. The movement promoted an understanding amongst the churches that, despite difference, they could join together to be an element of great change in the world, an agent of hope and peace amongst the chaos and destruction that humans seem to create.

This is where UCM comes from, and why we look the way we do. This is the history that underlies our programming and our ministry. This is why there’s a Thursday Supper and a Saturday Lunch, this is why there’s an Appalachian Ohio alternative spring break service/learning trip. And ultimately, as our understanding and identity have expanded beyond the traditional bounds of Christianity, this is why we’ve devoted ourselves to building interfaith relationships of understanding and trust—to addressing our common need to be welcomed, accepted, honored, and attended to within the communities in which we live. This is the story we continue to tell, to invite others into, and to pass on as our heritage of transforming love.

ucmadmin Better Together

Better Together’s My Sister’s Place Fundraiser

Happy Friday! We hope you all are looking forward to the weekend. As we enter March, Better Together has a new project to share with you all. Currently, interns Saraya Abner and Sam Houtchens are leading a fundraiser in support of My Sister’s Place.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with My Sister’s Place, MSP is a domestic violence agency in Athens, OH that serves the Athens, Hocking, and Vinton Counties. MSP provides a 24/7 hotline, outreach counseling, and an emergency shelter. If you look on MSP’s website (http://www.mspathens.org/), you can view the organization’s current needs, which ranges from clothing to toiletries to cooking and cleaning supplies.

MSP has requested that Better Together raises at least $500 to purchase a cookware set. So far, Better Together has raised $210 towards this goal. However, if you view the GoFundMe page for the fundraiser, you will notice that we have set our optimal goal at $2000. Given that Better Together functions under the umbrella of United Campus Ministry, we are aware of the trials and tribulations that come with organizing, supporting, and fundraising towards a nonprofit’s efforts. In hopes to support My Sister’s Place on an organizational level, such as in providing funds towards MSP’s support staff and internship program, we intend to exceed our original goal of $500.

This is where you come in. We are asking friends, family, supporters of UCM, and the Athens and OU communities to donate towards our fundraiser and to help us promote, share, retweet, blog about, and talk about this fundraiser everywhere. You can find our fundraiser here: https://www.gofundme.com/my-sister039s-place-fundraiser

We thank you for reading, for investing your time into supporting UCM and Better Together, and of course, for donating to our My Sister’s Place fundraiser!

ucmadmin UCM Athens

On the Day After the 2018 Election

The temptation to engage with politics as political theater, to see oneself as primarily a spectator in the political process, is strong. And we’re encouraged to do so by moneyed interests and the media they control. I know that at times I’ve succumbed to that temptation—and that those times have felt significantly less empowering than have the times when I’ve been engaged in pursuing my heartfelt mission and vision of a different, more compassionate community and world.

In many ways, elections are to politics what Christmas and Easter services are to Christian churches. They bring out a lot of people we never see at other times. But if enough of the people we see a lot do enough planning and preparation that what’s on offer at those big events is compelling, there’s a good chance we’ll see some of those new faces again. Which is, today (given the narrow scope of the electoral offerings, and the much broader scope of the individual and collective efforts toward transformation I’ve seen and been part of), both a sobering and a hopeful thought.

Gauging the success of organizing and coalition-building work by electoral success is a case of measuring things that can be measured because we can measure them. The things elections measure best are not the things we’re most interested in changing: hearts, minds, understanding of the interdependent nature of our existence in this place and on this planet. Working to transform those things is the kind of life-giving activity that springs from a much deeper well of passion and purpose, and that has always been UCM’s primary work.

I was reading, in the November 2018 issue of The Sun, an interview with Stacy Mitchell, a thoughtful critic of big-box-store economies and monopolistic online retailers like Amazon, and she made a powerful point about the impact of those institutions on the fabric of our communities and our propensity for civic engagement: “Economic relationships often involve other types of relationships, too. When you shop at a small business, you’re dealing with your neighbors. You’re buying from someone whose kids go to school with your kids. That matters for the health of communities. . . . The true value of having a vibrant local economy isn’t just in the bottom line of small businesses and the specific jobs they create. It’s also the notion that place matters. A community can nurture active citizens and help people realize their dreams and potential.” This sounds a lot like the Athens community I know—people who are connected and empowered by the multifaceted relationships they have with one another, and who carry that empowerment into the public and political spheres to drive real social innovation, inclusion, and transformation.

Today is a good day to breathe, to visit, to share a coffee or other beverage with a friend and comrade, and to reflect on the transformative work your relationship is doing in each of your lives. I know my relationships with the folks I’ve been working with for the last two years have changed me in deep and lasting ways. And for that, today I’m giving thanks and praise.

And in case you still need a little quantitative validation of the transformative work you’ve been throwing your heart and soul into all election season, I offer these significant milestones, shared by our friends at Equitas:
Shattering the previous record, at least 114 women won statewide or federal seats across the country—including 94 US House seats, 12 US Senate seats, and 8 Governorships. These women include a number of firsts: the country’s first Muslim and first Native American women elected to Congress, the youngest women elected to Congress, Massachusetts’ first black congresswoman, the first woman Governor of Guam, and the first two Latina congresswomen from Texas.  
Colorado elected the country’s first openly gay Governor.
In statehouses across the country 129 LGBTQ state legislators will soon take office—including Ohio’s own Senator-Elect Nickie Antonio, who will be the state’s first openly LGBTQ State Senator.
 Shift happens. Thanks for helping it along.
ucmadmin UCM Athens

On the Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting

Rev. Evan Young, Campus Minister

Like you, I am horror-struck by the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh this past weekend. Heart-sick, dismayed that such a thing happened, could happen, anywhere in this country but particularly in a city and community I’ve visited and loved, where people I know and love are reeling and hurting and grieving together. The impact of such a thing happening in a place of worship that serves as sanctuary and community center is beyond my power to imagine. And that all I have to offer is my sympathy seems very weak tea indeed.

There’s a temptation hiding in my response to this tragedy. I’ve heard it voiced about this tragedy, and about others as well; maybe you have too. It sounds like this: “This isn’t who we are. This doesn’t represent our community. We’re better than this.”
I understand the sentiment. I’ve shared it. I’ve said these words. But right now, in the wake of this latest act of terrorism, I’m coming to grips with its essential dishonesty. Because in fact, this is precisely who we are—who, in this historical and cultural moment, we have become.
I believe in community writ large. I believe the shooting at Tree of Life synagogue is not something that happened to that faith community, or to the community of Pittsburgh, or to the Jewish community. I believe it’s something that happened to (and in) my community—and yours. Because we’re all connected, because we’re interdependent, because the quality of community each of us enjoys depends on the quality of community all of us create.
And the fact is that the community we have all participated in creating is one in which bigotry can thrive. In our America today, it thrives to the point where bigots feel empowered to make their bigotry concrete and real in acts of violence—acts directed against people of color, against Jewish people, against LGBTQ+ people, against Muslims, against immigrants.
In a community where this is true, it’s not enough to simply be someone who doesn’t perpetrate those acts, doesn’t hold those beliefs, doesn’t say those things. It’s not enough to feel bad for the victims of those violent words and deeds, to send them thoughts and prayers, to long for a better time past or future. When we say we “stand with,” we must mean that we “act with,” and “advocate for,” those among us who are suffering. And that we “engage with,” and “differ with,” and disrupt the empowerment of those who would, and do, oppress through their power and privilege and bias.
When I talk about resistance, this is what I mean. Not resisting the rule of a politician, or a party, with whom I disagree. My resistance is about resisting—and confronting, and combating—ideas and actions and worldviews that presume humanity is rightly divided into a favored “us” and a disfavored, less-than-human “them” upon whom the favored can practice all manner of oppression. That’s what the gunman did this weekend; that’s what the pipe-bomb-mailer has been doing; that’s what “proud boys” all over the country are doing; that’s what our nationalist-in-chief is advocating when he proclaims himself a nationalist. And my resistance to what they’re all doing springs from a deeper well than my political affiliation. It springs from my faith, from the way I understand our participation in a larger whole of which we are part, on which we depend, and for the well-being of which we are therefore obliged to work.
Resistance like this is ultimately an act of faith, one that requires us to start where we really are and move toward a better, wholer, holier vision. It means embracing the possibility that this is, in fact, who we now are—however horrifying that prospect might be. And then throwing your body and soul into moving us all in the direction of the community we could be, because to do less would be to deny who you are, and whose you are.

ucmadmin UCM Athens

On “trans*”

This week began with news of an ongoing effort within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to roll back recognition of and protection for trans* people under federal civil rights law, by defining “sex” as either male or female (i.e., binary), unchangeable, and determined by the genitals a person is born with. According to a New York Times story published on October 21, the Department specified their proposed redefinition in a memo drafted this spring and circulated since then: “Sex means a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth. . . . The sex listed on a person’s birth certificate, as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of a person’s sex unless rebutted by reliable genetic evidence.” 

To put it as clearly as possible: we at UCM believe this is wrong. And hateful. And hurtful. And we will neither accept, nor support, nor comply with it. Trans* friends, we see you, we welcome you, and we affirm, support, and defend your right to be fully and fearlessly who you are. For us this is a moral, ethical, and spiritual commitment that goes beyond politics. And we deplore both the dehumanizing intent and effect of this proposed move, and the cynical use of gender identity as a political wedge issue to manipulate voting blocs. Good people don’t treat real people this way. And we’re here for everything that will make this better.