Minister
Rev. Alex J. Richardson (RevAlex)
How I Know Myself
On a hot summer night back in 1970, I sat with my father and some friends on the courthouse square of the small south Georgia town in which we lived. We were there with others from the community to give public display to our desire to live in peace with one another.
The public schools of the county were to be desegregated that fall. In the weeks just prior to our gathering, several buildings in town had been set afire to protest the plans for our schools. Other nearby communities experienced sizable destruction.
The governor was saying he would soon declare martial law. My friends and I were afraid.
We also felt we were at the center of something that mattered very much.
We talked of what mattered as we sat there with my father. We talked about what it would mean if the authorities declared martial law.
We talked about how our town could be burned.
We talked about the possibility of blacks and whites fighting one another in the streets, of dying and of heaven.
And at some point, my father, who was enjoying this energetic discussion, did a big laugh and told me, his oldest son, that I sounded just like "an agnostic Universalist".
That comment started me on my path towards identification as a Unitarian Universalist.
Within two years, I educated myself around what Unitarian Universalism was and self-identified as one.
Five years later I moved to Charleston, SC, and for the first time in my life lived in a city with a Unitarian Universalist congregation.
I attended that church with great pleasure. My new wife did not. Over 14 years of marriage that followed, I developed a practice of attending Unitarian Universalist churches while my wife worshiped elsewhere.
I traveled a great deal on business and would often visit churches across the country on these travels. I called myself a "backpew UU" - someone who slipped into a church at the very last minute and stayed only long enough to hear the sermon and throw money in the plate before bolting. I was at church to have my head teased. It was over a decade after leaving Charleston before I made emotional connection with a UU congregation.
During those years I started a career as a social worker but then chose to become a secondary science teacher.
While in graduate school I had a lab teaching assistantship that I enjoyed. I became an outspoken advocate for lab based learning instructional opportunities for children of all abilities at all grade levels.
In 1982 I received a job offer from a major educational publisher to work with school districts towards integrating more activity-based science into textbook applications.
In 1987, another commercial group offered me a job consulting on National Science Foundation developed, activity based, elementary science curricula. With this new position, I relocated to Lancaster, PA.
My son, Spencer, was born in Lancaster in October of 1987. I was very glad for his birth but knew my marriage was not going well. While I was in denial about being homosexual, my wife and I were beginning to explore the options we had before us. To outsiders at the time, my life appeared to be successful - just what you'd expect of a "big white boy". Owning that my marriage wasn't good and that sexually I wasn't what I had pretended to be for all my adult life was difficult for me. I found myself yearning for community. Other than in my profession, I had not done a good job of being open to community since college.
The new job didn't require weekend travel. I "backpewed" at UU Lancaster most Sundays. I would slip in and out without ever talking with anyone. I didn't want to share about how I was turning my life upside down as I left marriage and as I claimed my homosexuality. I maintained this way of doing church in Lancaster for several years.
In 1992, a new minister arrived. Kit Howell was his name and he was good for me as he "preached from the heart". Unitarian Universalism was touching more than just my head for a change. But I still kept slipping out - until the Sunday morning when Kit moved down from the pulpit before fully finishing his sermon, moved to the back and blocked my early exit. His simple comment of hospitality was, "Don't you think it's time I bought you a cup of coffee?" I turned him down that day but did promise I'd come visit later. When I did, he said he'd noticed me doing that "backpewing" routine. He wanted to know why I was afraid to stick around. Initially I was less than truthful when I said I was too busy to do coffee. Later, as Kit shared more and more of his reality, I shared of mine. I quit "backpewing". I went downstairs and did coffee. I told people who and what I really was. I became authentic not only to myself, but also to a community of caring people. I became part of the community. I felt loved.
From my childhood religious experience I knew that feeling loved within community was what church is supposed to be about. My UU Lancaster experience reawakened me to this understanding. That I was fortunate enough to live in a place where there was a UU church in which I could become more real is something of which I'll never lose awareness. My hope is that we can provide more and more space for people to become authentic in loving community.
How Others Know Me
To be a UU minister and work toward that hope is a tremendous privilege. The privilege of ordination to Unitarian Universalist ministry is a gift from the congregation at Lancaster. It is also a responsibility. Many individuals from the congregation in Lancaster worked with me along my way to ordination. So too did persons from the congregation in Harrisburg, PA, where I did my professional internship.
Both congregations taught me much. Both gave me much love. Both infused me with their vision of what we are and can be as liberal religious community.
The congregations at Salisbury and Chestertown, MD, were my first two placements. My half-time ministry in Salisbury began in September of 1997 and continued through December of 1998. My quarter-time ministry in Chestertown began in January of 1998 and continues through August of 1999.
These two congregations offered opportunity for professional ministry to me before my ordination in May of 1998. Both groups added to my learning and my sense of privilege. They will always be "my first". They lived and worked with me "fresh out of seminary."
Biographical Sketch
Members of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Greensboro (UUCG) voted overwhelmingly to call Rev. Alex Richardson as their minister in May 2001. Having graduated from Lancaster (Pennsylvania) Theological Seminary in 1997, he interned in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and served congregations in Salisbury and Chestertown, Maryland, while receiving advanced training from The Alban Institute. He was ordained in May 1998.
Alex Richardson's path to ministry was a gradual one. The son of a Christian minister from Louisville, Georgia, his social conscience drew him to Unitarian Universalism in his 20s, as his career took him from social work to education, first as a secondary school science teacher and later as a consultant for the National Science Foundation in Lancaster.
During the first decade Richardson attended UU churches, he chose to keep to himself, content to slip in and out of back pews without getting involved in congregational life. Then, in 1992, a new minister arrived at the UU Church in Lancaster.
Rev. Kit Howell made Richardson realize there was a deeper, feeling aspect to his religion, something holy that opened him to far greater possibilities. For the first time at church, he became a full participant.
Two years later, he answered the persistent call and enrolled in seminary.
Now he wants to open others to the sort of awakening he experienced at Lancaster. "I was fortunate to live in a place where there was a UU church in which I could become more real. I felt loved," he said. "My hope is that we can provide more and more space for people to become authentic in loving community."
As a UU minister, Alex Richardson wants, above all, to make genuine connections with and among congregants. The word he uses most often to describe his ministry is "relationship." He brings it to all aspects of his work, as evidenced by his open office door and his willingness to implement a variety of events and programs to bring congregants into a deeper relationship among themselves and in support of intentional liberal religion.
He has made a special point of connecting to the children of UUCG; his affection for them is obvious, and he fully supports the religious education department. Another division that is dear to his heart is the Pastoral Associates, trained in 1998 to assist with ministering to members in crisis-a must for a growing congregation.
He was also impressed with the church's steady growth, increasing programs geared to a variety of needs, and professional Music and R.E. directors. With its large contingent of activists, he sees UUCG poised to assume greater visibility and leadership in the community. He is delighted to be back in his native South.
His former associates speak highly of him. "Alex is self-confident, conscientious, well-organized… [with] an open and inviting pastoral style" says Belva Brown Jordan, one of his professors at Seminary. Alex has a 'summery spirituality' that is full of innocence and bliss," wrote Rev. Stanley F. Sears at the conclusion of Richardson's internship at the Unitarian Church of Harrisburg. "I heard nothing but positive comments about his 'people' skills. He has a playful and ebullient pulpit style. He was an asset to our church and a calming presence during a turbulent year."