The UU Ministers Association “Ministry Days” conference closed in its usual way today with the Berry Street Essay. My UU ministerial colleague, The Rev. Don Robinson, was the minister selected in 2013 to deliver remarks. Don is a Community Minister and founder of the Beacon House, an outreach ministry that is working to address the needs of at-risk children and youth living in the Edgewood Terrace community of Washington, DC. Edgewood Terrace is a community that Don described as a “Sacrifice Zone”, an area of the country that has been destroyed economically, environmentally and socially by corporate greed.
Rev. Robinson is the first UU community minister to deliver the Berry Street Essay (a community minister is one who serves the needs of others primarily in a setting other than the congregation).
The first Berry Street Essay dates back to May 30, 1820 when Unitarian Minister Rev. William Ellery Channing (considered to be the Father of American Unitarianism) invited all Massachusetts ministers known to be liberal to meet in the vestry of his church, whose entrance was on Berry Street. At the meeting Channing delivered a prepared address where he urged upon his colleagues a “bond of union” among liberal Christian ministers, within which they might meet to exchange practical ideas for strengthening their ministries.
The next evening, those ministers adopted a few simple rules for ensuring free and broad discussion at an annual conference. They also agreed each year to ask one or two of their number to come with prepared remarks – or an essay. Thus the Berry Street Conference was born. The Berry Street Essay, delivered each year since except during World War II, is the oldest lecture series on the North American continent.
As from its beginning, its purpose is to contribute to the practical strength of liberal ministries. The convening of the Berry Street Conference, for the delivery and hearing of the Berry Street Essay, has for many years now been the last event of the annual meeting and conference of the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association.
Thank you, Don, for the work you have done and are doing . . . and the Berry Street remarks that were so inspiring today.
(History on the Berry Street Essay was excerpted from the UUMA website.)