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The concept of shared ministry is ascendant within Unitarian Universalism today. It means sharing leadership by transcending hierarchies, and rethinking traditional divisions among the roles of ministers, religious educators, music ministers, lay leaders, and others. Shared ministry is an approach—collaborative, interconnected, less strictly hierarchical—that lives into the faith’s highest values.
"Shared ministry means sharing in the responsibilities of the community," says Dr. Janice Marie Johnson, director of the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Ministries and Faith Development staff group.
It is about recognizing that everyone has gifts and skills to share, valuing everyone’s contributions, and realizing that while there may be different levels of authority, supervision, accountability, and reporting, at the same time, no one is more important than anyone else.
Shared ministry is a concept that is decades in the making, fostered by the work of many UUs and UU organizations. In the aughts, the UUA's Mosaic Makers program brought together teams from congregations to work on building multicultural community, a critical foundation for cultural change, Johnson says.
In 2012, three UU professional groups—the Liberal Religious Educators Association, the UU Ministers Association, and the UU Musicians Network (now the Association for UU Music Ministries)—convened the Task Force for Excellence in Shared Ministry to identify best practices and opportunities for nurturing collaboration. "Shared ministry is the net result of religious professional collaboration," the task force wrote in its 2013 report, which also resulted in a resource tool for congregations.
"In shared ministry, we work together to bring out the best in one another."
Some task force recommendations were adopted quickly, such as creating shared ministry worship at General Assembly each year. But shared ministry means more than sharing worship services; broader aspirations for true shared leadership were slower going. In the ensuing years, music ministers pushed for recognition of their contributions as true and equal-status ministers.
Religious educators also made demands for recognition of their essential role in congregational life, and General Assembly 2018 voted to give religious educators automatic delegate status, a proposal put forth by LREDA. But widespread changes to reimagining the traditional roles around ministry weren’t as fast to occur.
Then in spring 2017, the UUA Board of Trustees made a groundbreaking decision to appoint a three-person team of interim co-presidents that included clergy and laity: Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt, Rev. William G. Sinkford, and Dr. Leon Spencer. Also that year for the first time, the UUA moderator role was shared between two co-moderators, Rev. Mr. Barb Greve and Elandria Williams.
"These were huge changes!" says Johnson, adding, "Many, many of us all over [began] to look at new ways of being in relationship and to look at what being in relationship actually means, and I think a lot of the siloing fell by the wayside for the greater good."
In another big change, GA 2017 marked the first time a woman—Rev. Dr. Susan Frederick-Gray—was elected UUA president. And six years later, she was succeeded by Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt, who "is a great proponent of the notion of shared ministry," says Johnson, "so this is a great time to bring that forth and center all that could mean."
'Widening the Circle of Concern' Report Urges Shared Leadership Approach
In 2020, the Commission on Institutional Change, appointed to analyze white supremacy culture in Unitarian Universalism, urged recognition of the essential role to congregational life and the faith in general of all religious professionals in its report, Widening the Circle of Concern.
BIPOC religious professionals are more likely to serve in non-ministerial professional roles, it found, and it urged a "team approach" to close the gap between ministers and other religious professionals, including educators, music professionals, and membership and administrative professionals.
Johnson herself is an exemplar of the dissolving of walls and hierarchies, she says. While she previously shared leadership of Ministries and Faith Development with Rev. Dr. Sarah Lammert, she became the solo lead when Lammert retired in 2023. As such, Johnson is the first person to head MFD who is not an ordained minister, although she holds a doctorate in ministry.
"Since 2017, there has been so much cross-pollination across groupings of people at the UUA that is wonderful," Johnson says. "I don’t feel as though I’m siloed just working within MFD, because there are areas where I work closely with Congregational Life or Stewardship and Development. That feels refreshing and good."
Over the coming years, "I think we’ll dive more and more [into] infusing shared ministry into our culture," says Johnson, adding, "we’re working in tandem with each other in new ways, slowly learning to build trust across the many divides, and now it’s time to make it real, to have it permeating the entire faith community."
Adapting to the COVID-19 Pandemic Shifts Congregational Leadership Approaches
Unitarian Universalists at the 110-member congregation in Las Vegas say the change is working for them. Here’s how they did it.
Within congregations, the pandemic was a powerful catalyst for breaking down traditional roles. For example, with ministers overburdened with pastoral care during that time, religious educators—who couldn't hold in-person classes during lockdown—shared the work in many places, says Rev. Sarah Gettie McNeill, professional development programs manager for Ministries and Faith Development's new Professional Development and Credentialing Team.
"There’s been a huge shift, especially post-COVID, as far as sharing responsibility for those components of congregational life historically deemed belonging to ordained clergy," says McNeill. "I think COVID broke down some siloes out of necessity" and helped the faith "move into the vision set by the shared ministry report all those years ago. This feels like a time we can act on that vision."
McNeill and her team are witnessing "a lot" of co-ministries developing in congregations, she says.
And a number of religious educators are going to seminary, although some are choosing not to follow a traditional path to fellowshipped ministry. Instead, they are being ordained as interfaith ministers or going through clinical pastoral education in order to develop spiritual care skills, she says.
Lay leaders are taking advantage of robust online offerings by the UU Institute to deepen their faith while serving their congregations in more significant and skilled ways. One example is the Lay Spiritual Care training that McNeill, the UUA's Faith Innovation Specialist Rev. Marisol Caballero, and Congregational Life Consultant Rev. Renée Ruchotzke created in the spring of 2020, anticipating a greater need for pastoral care during the pandemic. More than 400 people have taken the twenty-hour training as part of their congregational lay pastoral care teams.
These shifts have had positive momentum, but inertia remains in the movement forward, according to McNeill and others.
"There are plenty of our religious professionals who don’t necessarily have those collaborative ministerial relationships yet. There is pain there for some folks for whom power is not shared in a way they would hope it to be," says McNeill. "I think we are making great strides, but we have a ways to go yet in reaching the vision of the Shared Ministry Task Force of many years ago."
Nao Bethea, the UUA's Lifespan Faith Engagement co-director, agrees: "With a paradigm shift it takes so much unlearning of old ways. It’s difficult to change the ways we do things, especially when they have been passed on to us from previous generations. While it's important to honor how we got here, Unitarian Universalism continues to explore even wider paths when we imagine and create together."
"I think shared ministry has the potential to bring thriving to our congregations and to our worn-out religious professionals in the form of deep collegiality. I am a huge believer in shared ministry as a transformational means of thriving," says Lammert, who helped support the work of the Shared Ministry Task Force. "It is nice to see [the Task Force’s] efforts come 'off the shelf' and get reconsidered in today’s context."
Says Johnson, "Collaboration as shared ministry has come into its own."