Ministerial Transition Update
November 4, 2025
We are now three months into Rev Verdis’ ministry with All Souls. He has been preaching three Sundays/month since September and we are getting to know him through his thought provoking and inspiring sermons. At the same time, we continue to notice the absence of Rev. Carolyn and are allowing space to miss her. This is a tender and yet exciting time in the life of our congregation!
The nature of transitional ministry is introspective. Our focus shifts necessarily inward, as we tend to the needs of our beloved community within our walls. As such, a transitional minister cannot be expected to participate in all of the external activities and obligations that a settled minister might. We still hold dear our connections to the greater New London area, and where possible, lay congregants have stepped in to honor our presence in the community.
As we mentioned at the beginning of September, this is a time for relationship building, both with Rev Verdis and among ourselves. We have hosted five “Meet and Greets” so far – four in person at All Souls and one on Zoom. They have been well attended and have provided an opportunity for Souls to get to know Rev. Verdis and for him to hear our individual stories. They have also allowed everyone in attendance to learn a little more about each other. We have planned five more “Meet and Greets” before the end of the year, and these will be hosted by various congregants in their homes – a chance for folks to get to know other Souls in their neighborhood.
Along with these group sessions, there are plans to hold an additional round of “one on one” conversations in the near future. The first round was hugely successful, with over 100 Souls participating! These conversations are a great opportunity to get to know someone else in the Congregation in a deeper way, simply by talking with each other.
Over the next several months you will likely notice some changes in our order of worship or in other ways that you might connect with All Souls (eblast format, website layout etc). We are experimenting with different approaches and nothing is cast in stone at this point. We want to offer a variety of experiences to provide perspective for future discussions.
All of this is laying the foundation for our Congregational Identity Discernment process in the Spring. It will be at that time that we begin the discussion of “who we are” as a congregation – who we are separate from Rev. Carolyn, indeed who we are separate from any minister. What is it about our congregational life that we deeply value and what is it
that we might like to improve? This process will involve a series of small group discussions, each focused on a different element of congregational life e.g. our worship experience, our social justice outreach, our communication avenues, our online pew experience, our faith formation program etc.
We are not sure at this time how long this process will take. There will likely be other topics that come up as a result of our initial discussions. We want to allow sufficient time to process the many and varied opinions that may be expressed. In the end, there will be a report back to the Congregation as to what we have learned about ourselves
and what we see as our path forward with regard to the many elements explored. Only when our Congregational Discernment process is complete will we begin discussions about who would best serve us as a called minister. The earliest we might consider calling a minister would be the Spring of 2027.
If you have any questions about the transitional ministry process, please reach out to a member of the Board of Trustees.
A Transition in Ministry
On October 18, 2024, our senior minister Rev. Carolyn Patierno announced her retirement after 24 years of ministry at All Souls, effective at the end of June 2025. Click the link below for the June 3, 2025, letter from Rev. Carolyn to the congregation about what to expect from interactions with Rev. Carolyn after we release each other from the covenant we entered into at her installation in 2001.
Letter from Rev. Patierno June 3, 2025
The Board of Trustees had planned to follow Rev. Carolyn’s ministry at All Souls with a two-year interim minister hired through the UUA. This is a process that is held each spring for UU congregations in transition after the departure of a settled minister. We did not have a match with an interim minister in that process. Our ministerial search team continued their work and recommended, and the board hired, our new minister, Rev. Verdis LeVar Robinson. Rev. Verdis is a contract minister who will be doing the transitional work that our congregation needs with UUA support. However, since he is a contract minister, we are not constrained by the provisions of the UUA interim program. That allows All Souls to proceed organically with our transition, while all parties discern Rev. Verdis' role as we clarify our longer-term ministerial needs. We look forward to this new, shared ministry.
Five Key Tasks of Transitional Ministry
Transitional ministry helps congregations explore five areas:
Heritage - reviewing how the congregation has been shaped and formed
Mission - defining and redefining our sense of purpose and direction
Leadership - reviewing our member needs and the congregation's ways of organizing and developing leadership
Connections - nurturing our community relationships beyond our walls
Future - preparing for the next era of leadership
The following served on the Interim Search Team and are available at any time to talk about the ministerial transition:
Maggie Clouet maggieclouet@yahoo.com
Eileen Ego 4.girls@sbcglobal.net
Rebecca Graebner rjgraebner@gmail.com
Linda Sargent lindaesar@gmail.com
Additional Resources/links from the UUA
Transitional Ministry Handbook
