Reverend Jennifer Nordstrom

I am the eldest daughter of a close-knit family. My younger sister, Lisa, and I were raised by both our parents in a medium-sized factory town in Wisconsin. Our family lived about five blocks from Lake Michigan, and we went there often. Some of my happiest childhood memories revolve around the lake: gathering rocks and shells; swimming and playing on the beach in the summer; watching the fireworks over the lake on the 4th of July. I was raised in the Lutheran church. My family attended services and Sunday school every week, and I was confirmed at age 13. I was a member of the youth group, and my father was a chaperone for our social gatherings. The theology seemed strange, but the community was important to me, so I accepted it in order to be a good member. My father had a Lutheran sensibility, while my mother was more culturally Unitarian Universalist. I absorbed my liberal intellectualism from her, and a love of sports from my father. Both my parents shared with me a commitment to social justice, freedom of thought, and reason. Many of my school friends were Unitarian Universalists, and when I started going to church with them when I was 18, it felt like coming home, like I had finally found the place my people had been gathering.

I left my Racine, Wisconsin hometown to go to college in New York City, and went through a period of rapid growth as a person. At school, I learned about systemic oppression both in the classroom and in my organizing work. I majored in Women’s Studies and Political Science, and spent my time doing social justice work on women’s issues, racial equity, tuition hikes, and the war in Iraq. I fell in love with the work, and excelled at it.

After college, I became a professional organizer, and spent four years doing international advocacy for peace, conflict prevention, and disarmament. I began working as an organizer for an international organization that advocated for a comprehensive program to prevent war, including major efforts in peace-keeping, conflict prevention, and disarmament. From there, I moved to working full-time for nuclear disarmament. These four years were intense and busy. I gained respect as an internationally-known policy analyst, organizer, and advocate for nuclear disarmament. I traveled around the world giving speeches to diplomats and state decision-makers, but came home feeling disconnected. After two years of this, I knew something deep and important was missing from my life, and I left a successful international relations career to go find it.

When I left the world of international policy advocacy, I brought important skills and lessons learned with me. My ministry has been enhanced by the world of international diplomacy. I have had a front-row seat to international negotiations on one of the hardest security issues of our time: nuclear weapons. I understand how power works, how relationships and diplomacy work in the complex nexus of power, and how change is made. I have witnessed and been a part of negotiations that affect the future of our world, the balance of power among nation states, and well-being of the world’s citizens. As disproportionate as it might sound, I bring this understanding to church systems, to local, regional, and national negotiation and agitation for social justice, and to relationships among people doing that work. Nuclear policy negotiations carried the weight of nations and had the complexity of international systems, but they still occurred among people. I was able to witness the intersection of power and personality, the place where the system and its requirements meets up with the person and that individual’s strengths and flaws. I was able to learn that those interactions themselves are complex: sometimes a very talented individual can move a system, and sometime the complex network of power and disparate needs moves the individuals acting within the system. As one of those actors, I experimented with and learned how and when I could make change in the system. At the international level, I was surprised by the places love and hope broke through—and the places it did not. The experience continues to inform how I interact with systems, with individuals within them, and how I work in the world for transformation.

Throughout the time I was working for peace and disarmament at the international level, I was also actively engaged in spiritual seeking. My spirituality was a major part of my life and my justice work. When I was 19 years old, I had a transformative spiritual experience that ignited a process of deep searching. Although by then I had stepped outside the Christianity in which I was raised, I still longed for the meaning and purpose that came with religion. I began looking for some other version of religion that would align with my experience of the interconnectedness of being. I continued to attend the UU church in my hometown, which felt like being home and had the comfort of tradition. My seeking involved trying lots of new things and looking “out there” for an answer. I expanded my earth-centered practice, learned to meditate, deepened my yogic practice, embraced the theological premise of Taoism, and made friends with other young adult seekers. I learned a great deal, but nothing felt quite like home—except Unitarian Universalism. However, I did not think something so familiar could be the destination to which my journey was taking me.

My route home to Unitarian Universalism and ministry came through my social justice work. After a soul-searching break from social justice, I came back to doing more of it—this time at the national level, which brought me to Washington, DC. I still yearned for a way to connect my work to make the world more just and loving with the source that inspired that work: my deep love for this world. I began attending All Souls Unitarian Church in DC, and found the place more spiritually alive than any church I had ever experienced. It was, and still is, a place where spirit, community, and social justice met intentionally. Although I had lightly considered ministry before then, it had always seemed impossible or incomprehensible. Worshipping and being in community at All Souls opened the space for the idea to blossom. It finally emerged one night in a conversation with friends when I was able to notice myself putting obstacles between myself and following a call to ministry. I saw how I had been obfuscating and ignoring my home in Unitarian Universalism because of its familiarity. I noticed myself inventing flimsy reasons to not follow my heart’s call. Because I noticed what I was doing, I paused, and the path became clear. I began moving towards Unitarian Universalist ministry the following day, and entered Starr King School for the Ministry the following year.

I graduated with a Masters in Divinity from Starr in May of 2013. In my studies, I focused on preaching, pastoral care, and theology. I already had a great deal of fundraising, organizational development, and management experience from my years working in non-profits. My time at Starr King taught me about excellent worship and the particularities of managing congregational systems. I developed a pastoral ministry of presence. Most importantly, I gained access to a well of theological depth and clarity from which I draw my preaching.

I did my Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) at a healthcare facility for seniors in Milwaukee, WI, that provides the full continuum of care, including independent living apartments, assisted living, and nursing care. I primarily served the nursing care unit, though I did shifts in all the units. From my CPE experience, I gained an understanding of the ethical and spiritual issues facing older adults and their families. It also gave me deep sense of love and respect for the creative, compassionate, and intelligent ways older adults face the challenges of aging and death.

During the 2013-2014 church year (Aug 2013-June 2014), I served as the Hallman Ministerial Intern for Unity Church-Unitarian, a large UU congregation in St. Paul, Minnesota. In addition to the specific ministry experiences I am carrying forward from my time at Unity, I bring an understanding of large church systems, and the particularities of large church ministry, into a new ministry.

I am presently serving as the Interim Minister for Third Unitarian Church, a progressive Humanist congregation on Chicago’s Westside. During my time with the people at Third Unitarian, we have focused on mission and vision, discerning meaning and purpose, and congregational systems. Third is a deeply Humanist and social justice-driven congregation. In addition to the specific ministry lessons I carry forward, I bring my experience at Third of serving a primarily Humanist congregation to a new ministry. I am a theist, and my relationship with Third has been beautiful, inspiring, and love-filled. We have learned from one another, taught one another, and created a relationship of respect and mutuality. During my time at Third, I developed their first Worship Associates’ program, a program in which a group of lay leaders work collectively with the minister to develop the overall topics for the worship services, and work one-on-one with the minister to collaboratively shape the individual services for which they serve as the Worship Associate. This program involves training on liturgical design and purpose, theological reflection, and worship best practices. Also during my time with Third, I have worked with the lay leadership to clarify Third’s mission, vision, and purpose. Together, we have examined Third’s reason for being, its particular call to love and transformation in its corner of the world. We have worked to strengthen and improve relationships with Third’s neighbors. I have worked with the Board clarify what the appropriate roles, responsibilities, and patterns of accountability should be at Third Unitarian. We are in the middle of a year-long program of honing the specifics of TUC’s policy governance system.  I have also worked with the leadership at Third to move them through the transitional moment in which they find themselves: I hired and trained an entirely new staff team; created new formal staff supervision and evaluation, and evaluated church systems.

Being a minister is wild in both wonderful and challenging ways. I am a different person now than when I began this work, and different in ways I never would have imagined. I have grown and deepened in my spiritual practice; I have experienced deep loss and seemingly constant transition; and I have answered theological questions that plagued me throughout my life. I love the work more than anything I have ever done. I am hungry for it, and it challenges me and teaches me new things every day. It is both enlivening and exhausting. It is the work of my heart.