"A MISSION BORN OF MYSTERY
(Culture’s Simplest Gift To Community)"

Unitarian Universalism has been in a state of languishing for over forty years.
Compared to general population growth we are losing membership.
Few people know that we exist.
What has happened in our religious movement to cause this state of constant diminishment?
Why are we moving steadily into the backwash of culture recognition and power?
Our keynote speaker will focus on both what has caused this trend and how it can be reversed.

The Rev. Latham will also be conducting a Saturday morning "TRANSITIONS WORKSHOP"
Please see the Program schedules and descriptions on this web site.

ROBERT LATHAM is a native Texan, having been born in Wichita Falls. He grew up in the Southern Baptist tradition. He began preaching at the age of thirteen, was leading revival meetings during his mid-teens and ordained at age eighteen. Robert has a BA from Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He has two Master of Theology degrees. As a result of a challenging educational experience in seminary his religious view of reality was transformed. And, as a result of an equally shattering experience in Vietnam, his cultural perspectives were also transformed. On the wake of these transformations he discovered Unitarian Universalism and officially entered our professional ministry in 1969.

His engagement as a minister has ranged from such varied experiences as a prolonged battle with the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina during the nineteen sixties and serving the Pacific Northwest and Western Canada districts as International Minister at Large in the nineteen eighties. He created the Committee On Ministry concept and had what is now called a Worship Associates program back in the late nineteen seventies. As a UU he as been the settled minister in Davenport, IA, Ft Worth, TX, Brookfield, WI, and Golden, CO. He has been an Interim Minister in Plano, TX, San Francisco, CA, Oakland, CA, Princeton, NJ, Tucson, AZ and Wilmington, DE. He presently takes on special projects and heads the Phoenix Consulting Service.

His published works consist of The Unitarian Universalist Extension Manual (1985) and Moving On From Church Folly Lane (2006). He is presently completing a book on personal and cultural mythology entitled: A Tale of Boxes.

Saturday Night Banquet Speaker • Rev. Victoria Safford, Senior Minister
White Bear Unitarian Universalist Church, Mahtomedi, MN

"OPEN WIDE THE WINDOWS"
Our free faith tradition is rooted in proud soil, centuries old. Can it flourish in, and speak with power to, this 21st-century world unfolding all around us? Is Unitarian Universalism still a relevant – and reverent – religious way? What “simple gifts” do we uniquely bring to the interfaith conversation?

VICTORIA SAFFORD is minister of White Bear Unitarian Universalist Church. A native of New York State, she came to Minnesota in 1999, following a ten-year ministry at Northampton, Massachusetts and five years of work with the American Friends Service Committee as a community organizer and activist. Reverend Safford is a graduate of Vassar College and Yale Divinity School and the winner of numerous sermon awards, including most recently the UUA’s Annual Program Fund award and that of the Unitarian Universalist Sunday School Society. She lives in Mahtomedi with her husband Ross and their daughter, Hope.

Saturday Evening Entertainment • Roy Zimmerman!
"Funny Songs About Ignorance, War, & Greed!"

What's funny about war, poverty, ignorance, bigotry, neo-conservatism, homophobia, greed, lust and fear? Ask Roy Zimmerman. He's been writing satirical songs for twenty years. The Los Angeles Times says, "Zimmerman displays a lacerating wit and keen awareness of society's foibles that bring to mind a latter-day Tom Lehrer."

Tom Lehrer himself says, "I congratulate Roy Zimmerman on reintroducing literacy to comedy songs. And the rhymes actually rhyme, they don't just 'rhyne.'"

Joni Mitchell says, "Roy's lyrics move beyond poetry and achieve perfection."

There's a decidedly Lefty slant to his lyrics. "We used to have a name for Right Wing satire," he says. "We called it 'cruelty.'"

Zimmerman has played clubs across the country, and shared the stage with George Carlin, Bill Maher, Kate Clinton, Dennis Miller, Sandra Tsing Loh, kd lang, Andy Borowitz and Paul Krassner. He's done several shows with The Pixies' Frank Black, swapping songs in a solo acoustic setting. His up-to-the-moment topical songs are featured on American Public Media's syndicated broadcast "Weekend America" and Sirius Radio's "West Coast Live."

He's currently touring a one-man show called "Faulty Intelligence." It's a ninety minute theatrical presentation of Zimmerman's original songs and comic commentary - an inidictment of the Bush administration to accompany Patrick Fitzgerald's.

For more on Roy, see http://royzimmerman.com/index.php

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Last update: 2008/02/06 - 15:34