BIRTHING A CHURCH: OUR FIRST 10 YEARS

A history of the beginnings of Mission Peak Unitarian Universalist Congregation in the Fremont, California area, as told by Barbara Meyers, a founding member, May 2004.

There had been a Unitarian Fellowship in Fremont that disbanded in the late 1960's, so I am told. But by the time I discovered the Unitarian Universalist faith, it was long gone, so I traveled to Hayward every Sunday to attend the nearest Unitarian-Universalist services. I am deeply indebted to the Starr King Unitarian-Universalist Church in Hayward for providing a place where I could attend church and feel at home, and for giving me lots of support while I was recovering from a major depression. I felt that the Unitarian-Universalist movement had such an important message to the world that when I heard that there was a possibility that a new congregation would be forming in Fremont, I embraced the idea of helping found it because it simply had to be done and I was in a position to help.

The Mission Peak Unitarian-Universalist (UU) congregation started in the Spring of 1992 when Joel Miller, a newly ordained UU minister who lived in Fremont but who hadn't yet been called to a church, attended an organized play group with his 2-year-old son Eric at a Fremont park. There he happened to meet Tracy Barnett and several other mothers with children in the play group. Tracy had been brought up going to a Unitarian Sunday school class, and when the subject of religion came up, she, Joel and some other mothers decided to see whether it would be possible to organize a new UU church in Fremont. They contacted Bev Smrha, co-district executive in Berkeley for the Pacific Central District (PCD), the regional organization of the national Unitarian-Universalist Association. The first meeting was in Tracy Barnett's living room with Tracy, Joel, and other participants and their families. Starting with this meeting, other roughly-monthly meetings took place until September 1992. (One reason that our congregation had so many pre-school children of the same age is due to our play-group origins.) When my husband Tom and I started coming in August 1992, the other adult participants were Steve and Kathy Wallcave, Denise and Nelson Whitney, Linda Sheehan and Roger Perkins, Tracy and Ron Barnett, Ray and Barbara Crain, Joel Miller and Wendy Bachuber, Jeanette Berman, Ursel Bloxsom, Jim Sese, Suanne Stone, Roxanne White, and Drew and Janet Wilson.

In September 1992, we started holding worship services on Sunday evenings twice a month. I was in charge of worship and arranged for members or others to speak. Services were held in the Centerville Community Center near Washington High School in Fremont. Because services were in the evenings, some of us continued to attend the Hayward church on Sunday mornings. In hindsight, I believe that it was a mistake to have worship services so early in our development; it drained scarce energy from important work that needed to go on to create the church, such as community outreach, committee organization, setting of goals, etc.

At this early stage, we created a steering committee of Tracy Barnett (chair), Kathy Wallcave (who focused on religious education), Denise Whitney (treasurer), Joel Miller (who gave overall ministerial direction), and myself (who organized worship services). We held an important meeting in December 1992 at Bev Smrha's house, in which we formed our first mission statement and a set of tasks that needed to be done to form the church. Shortly after this meeting, Joel received a calling to become extension minister at a new UU church near Denver, Colorado. We were sad to see him go, but we were happy for him and his new opportunity. In March or April of 1993, Tracy, pregnant with her second child, had significant health problems and was forced to drop out of our steering committee.

It was at this point that our energy was at its lowest. Worship services attendance was about 10, with a high of about 20 and a low of 2. We had lost our minister/member and our steering committee chair. It would have been easy to drop the whole effort, but some of us were just plain stubborn and kept going. My attitude was that I knew it was possible to create a new church, and if what we were doing wasn't working we would try various ways until we found something that worked.

The turning-point was in May 1993, when Kathy Wallcave and I attended a UUA-sponsored New Congregation Training session in Boston. We met others who were also trying to start churches. And we came home with the following: (1) We regained confidence that this would work. (2) We created a timeline with specific tasks and goals for forming the church. In our case, the timeline stressed community outreach to enlarge our membership, and community-building activities to create an extended-family feeling. (3) We formed links with three other covenanting UU congregations (Hayward, Palo Alto, and San Jose) to give us advice, support, and funding. And lastly, (4) we stopped having worship services for the time being.

Also pivotal was the hiring of Ben Meyers (no relation to my husband Tom or me). Recommended by Bev Smrha as a quarter-time consultant, Ben was in his last year at Starr King School for the Ministry (a UU seminary in Berkeley). Ben had been recommended by Bev Smrha. In June 1993, Linda Sheehan, Jeanette Berman, Denise Whitney, Steve Wallcave, and I interviewed Ben. We enthusiastically agreed that he would be an excellent ministerial consultant. Following this, Ben also attended a New Congregation Training session in Boston.

Our first publicly advertised meeting was in September 1993 at the Tri-Cities Children's Center (TCCC). We modeled this meeting after one described to us at our New Congregation training. We did a lot of planning and publicity prior to the meeting to make it a great success. We shared our growth timeline, and in fact have kept pretty close to that time-line as the church has formed. About 60 people attended, many of whom signed up to be on the committees we were forming. A large number of people joined us. Two years later, most are still with us and remain active members.

During the Fall of 1993, we met regularly for potlucks and committee work. Our first worship service led by Ben was on Thanksgiving 1993. The next service was on Christmas, and we began regular Sunday morning services in January 1994, with Ben preaching and Sarah Rahman playing the piano.

May 1, 1994 was our Charter Sunday. About 50 people signed the membership book with much fanfare in front of a crowd of about 100 from our covenanting churches and the community at large. Shortly after this, we became an official member congregation of the Unitarian Universalist Association. We chose the name Mission Peak Unitarian Universalist Congregation because we wanted to stress we were serving all of the communities looked over by Mission Peak, and not just Fremont. We wanted to be called a "congregation" rather than a "church" because many members were Jews and didn't feel comfortable being members of a "church".

Later highlights were the ordination of Ben Meyers in January 1995, and our acceptance into the UU extension program in mid-1995. This meant we could afford to hire Ben as a full-time minister starting July 1995. In 1997, Julia Kocs, who was a Unitarian minister from Transylvania came to our congregation for a year. She brought a strong pastoral presence to the congregation and to the community at large with her volunteer work at a local homeless shelter. Julia led a wonderful Christmas program in 1997 with the children enacting a play about a typical Transylvanian Christmas.

Throughout our history, we demonstrated an important commitment to our children by hiring a part time Director of Religious Education (DRE). Our first DRE was Kate Walker, a seminarian at Starr King School for the Ministry. After 3 years, she was followed by Jenny Johnston, the wife of a seminarian, and then a year later by Sally White, another seminarian with a strong background in Religious Education in a number of church settings. Sally was followed in turn by the Rev. Lynn Ungar, by Carolyn Steinhaus, and then by Sally Ahnger, our present DRE.

The years 1998-1999 were difficult for us. Ben announced that he and his wife Patti were getting divorced and that Patti was leaving the church. Both the church members and Ben had a difficult time adjusting to this situation. Some members left the church. Ben resigned in May of 1999, an event that was painful for all of us. We hired an interim minister, Howard Dana, who had just graduated from Starr King School for the Ministry, and began a search for a permanent minister. Howard kept a steady hand on the helm, at one point offering a ceremony of healing, so we could move beyond our difficult time.

Our search ended successfully when we voted unanimously to call the Rev. Dr. Chris Schriner, who had been minister at Laguna Beach in southern California to become our minister starting September 1999. The church started to feel some of the same excitement that we had at the beginning of our history.

Today with our congregation now at 10 years of age, our Sunday services are of high quality, and we have a dynamic church board that oversees the activities of the committees and the direction that we are going. There are adult and children's religious education programs, a YRUU teen group, a choir called "The Peak Performers", a lay Worship Associates program, a lay Pastoral Associates program, a Social Concerns Associates program, yearly all-church spiritual retreats, a Spirit Buddies program, and nearly everyone in the congregation has been trained to welcome newcomers. In addition to monthly social pot luck gatherings, every year we have a Black and White dessert gala and service auction, which is a social highlight of the year. We went through the process of becoming Welcoming Congregation, thus making ours a church that is friendly towards members of the gay, lesbian and transgender communities, and received an award from PFLAG for this work. Members of our congregation have been active in local peace efforts, and in support of children's issues such as donating to support Kidango children's center. And, we have adopted a flexible long-term plan which leads to acquiring our own building.

I think that the work that I have done to help found this congregation is as important as anything else I have done with my life. It has led directly to my deciding to change my career and enter the seminary to become a minister, myself. Sometimes during worship services, I close my eyes and remember when we had just 10 people attending and were struggling to keep our effort going. And then I hear the sounds of many voices singing a beautiful hymn and I'll realize that it all has come true, and tears come to my eyes. For me, these are special moments.

Back to Top