Suzanne Says Yes!
At the Special Congregational Meeting held on Sunday, April 20, the members of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Cheyenne overwhelmingly voted to call the Rev. Suzanne Meyer to be our Settled Minister. Soon after the meeting, the Search Committee called Suzanne. Suzanne accepted the call and will be our new settled minister. She will move to Cheyenne soon, but will not start at the church until August.
The Search Committee did a wonderful job and we thank you.
Yippee!
Mike Shonsey
President
Our Interim Minister
Reverend Linda Bunyard
The Reverend Linda Bunyard is with us for a second year of interim work as we seek a settled minister for 2008-09. This is her fifth interim ministry, having also served one settled ministry and one consulting ministry in her sixteen years in the field. She graduated with a Master of Divinity degree from Starr King School for the Ministry, in Berkeley, California, in 1991 and was ordained that same year by the Unitarian Church of Davis, California, where she did her parish internship.
The Universalist Unitarian Church of Joliet, Illinois, was her first interim experience in 1992-93. As an interim minister she worked with a congregation of eighty members that had once been four hundred members. She loved the Universalist history and spirit of the church and helped them seek a new building in a growing part of the city.
From Joliet, she was called as the settled minister at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Eau Claire, Wisconsin. They had just experienced three years with an Extension minister. In her four years there she worked with them to keep the church grounded in local the local community, reaching out to university students and addressing the needs of poor and homeless people that came to the soup kitchen in the basement of the church each week. Interim ministry called again and she moved to Laramie, Wyoming, in 1997 to take a one year position following the resignation of their half-time minister. The Laramie congregation had a wonderful problem: they were running out of space for their children and the programs they wanted to offer. During that year they were able to explore their options and seek another church building.
From Laramie she was called to a two-year interim ministry at the Unitarian Univeralist Congregation of Phoenix in Paradise Valley, Arizona, from 1998 to 2000. The congregation had experienced conflict since the retirement of a beloved minister almost eight years before. She took advanced training in conflict management as well as personnel management and learned much about ministry in a congregation of three hundred and fifty members.
The next interim was across the Phoenix metropolitan area in Chander, as interim minister of Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, following a ministry of six year. Since Valley UU had been started out of the Phoenix church she was able to understand their history quickly. They had the same problem as the church in Laramie: they had been out of adequate space for years and began exploring their options during the interim year.
Wanting to stay in Arizona Reverend Bunyard began working with two congregations part time in 2001: the West Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Glendale, in the Phoenix area, and the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Green Valley south of Tucson. She stayed with the Green Valley congregation for six years, moving to Tucson in 2002. During her time there the congregation led the community in action and education and humanitarian aid for migrants crossing the border. One of her favorite accomplishments there was starting the first Sunday School for children in that retirement community congregation.
Reverend Bunyard is back on the interim journey currently taking extra training to become an Accredited Interim Minister(AIM). She is now an Accredited Interim Minister in Training.
Born in Denver, raised in Pueblo, with a BA from the University of Colorado in Boulder and graduate work at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, she is a "true blue Western girl." She is enjoying this time in Cheyenne within a day's drive of family and old friends in Colorado. Growing up in Colorado she always looked at Wyoming as the Wild West. Now she is getting the opportunity to explore Wyoming culture, history and beauty.