Welcome to Rev. Jenna Crawford, Acting MRE!

The DRE Search Team has been reviewing and interviewing candidates for our half-time religious educator position since the spring. We were unanimously thrilled to receive an application from the Reverend Jenna Crawford, and the Parish Committee enthusiastically voted to hire her to be our Acting Minister of Religious Exploration for this congregational year (with the shared interest in discerning whether to extend her employment past June 2024).

Rev. Jenna will begin as Acting MRE this Sunday, November 17th, when she’ll come to the service and get acquainted with our current children’s RE program.

For those of you who have joined First Parish in the last two years, Rev. Jenna Crawford (she/hers) was our Ministerial Intern between fall 2020 and spring 2022; she was ordained by First Parish in June 2022. Rev. Jenna went on to serve our UU congregation in Marblehead for the last two years. While she’ll be with us as our half-time Acting MRE, she’ll also be working part-time at Bentley University as their Chaplain for Inclusion, Belonging, and Dialogue, helping to launch an interfaith fellowship oriented around bridging the differences that divide us. Rev. Jenna graduated from Boston University School of Theology with her Masters of Divinity in Interfaith Leadership in 2021, and from Hamilton College with a BA in biochemistry in 2017. Before seminary, she worked as a field instructor and backpacking guide in western New Mexico and eastern Arizona, and has a soft spot in her heart for the mountains, deserts, and canyons of the Southwest. Rev. Jenna lives in Malden with her partner Ben and loves trail-running in the Middlesex Fells, canoeing along the Ipswich River, attempting the NYT crossword, and exploring new restaurants around the city.

Rev. Jenna shares: “I am so over the moon delighted to be coming back ‘home’ to First Parish as your half-time Acting MRE. To our young ones, youth, and families, I’m so excited to reconnect with you all this fall and to meet those of you I haven’t yet. In an ‘acting’ capacity, part of my job will be to work with the RE committee and staff to help you all discern the next chapter of your RE program. As such, my contract is presently set to run from November to June, and we will be in mutual discernment about anything beyond that. My first day will be THIS Sunday (yahoo!). It will be so good to be together, especially during this moment of national heartbreak. As for what draws me into this work, I believe in the power of spiritual practices to ground and steady us, the power of liberal religion and Unitarian Universalism to offer us the moral clarity and courage to keep finding new paths forward, and the power of communities like these to help hold and heal our broken and hurting hearts. I look forward with so much anticipation to this year of worshipping, learning, sharing meals, and having FUN together. See you on Sunday!”

Welcome back, Rev. Jenna!