|
Dr. Reverend Mark Belletini - Senior Minister
Mark Belletini was ordained into the Unitarian Universalist ministry on September 22nd, 1979. 
He he began his ordained ministry by serving the First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco as Assistant to Rev. Diane Miller. Then he served the Starr King Unitarian Universalist Church as minister for 18 years. He has been senior parish minister at First Unitarian Universalist Church of Columbus since August 1st of 1998. He has also covered for Rev. Laurel Hallman while she was on Sabbatical from First Church, Dallas, and has had the privilege of several weekend ministries with our gathered Unitarian Universalist congregations in the European Union.
Mark served as the chair of the Hymnbook Resources Commission which produced the present hard-bound worship book for the Unitarian Universalist Association, and he has served four two year terms on the Ministerial Fellowship Committee of the UUA, our ministerial credentialing body. He chaired the two year committee that prepared international and interfaith worship celebrations for the 1987 International Association for Religious Freedom Congress at Stanford University, with Maya Angelou as one of the featured speakers.
Mark has taught in a number of seminaries, including Meadville-Lombard in Chicago, which awarded him a Doctor of Divinity in 1994, and Starr King School for the Ministry, which is his alma mater. He has taught worship and celebration, Unitarian Universalist history, gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans-gender studies, and the Gospels from a Unitarian Universalist perspective. While he was in seminary he was a student minister at our Walnut Creek CA congregation for almost two years, and a six month intern at our church in Rockford Illinois.
Mark has written papers for conferences and study groups, including a paper on radical theology for the Unitarian Church in Prague, a paper on Jesus as a Torah based Prophet, and an historical study on our Unitarian ancestor, Arius of Alexandria. He has also written a number of song texts and hymns for various occasions, and writes poetry for both his ministry and himself.
Mark is godfather to five extraordinary young folks, and calls one remarkable young man, Tony Hess, son. He counts his friends to be his mainstay, traveling often to see them...and vice versa. He is an artist since he was young, loves the cooking of the world, studies up on his own Emilian Italian heritage frequently, enjoys modern opera, runs a life-drawing group, and has learned gladly from the privilege of travel from Moscow to Jerusalem, from London, to Paris to Berlin, from Mexico City to Santiago de Chile, from Rome to Venice, and Vancouver to Quebec City.
Rev Eric Meter  - Associate Minister
Eric Meter has been with First UU since May 2008. Born and raised Unitarian Universalist, Eric comes to our congregation after ten years of ministry in northern California and an interim ministry year in upstate New York.
After completing his Masters of Divinity at Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley, and then a ministerial internship under the late Rev. Dan O’Neal at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Santa Rosa, Eric served the Unitarian Universalist Church in Livermore, California until 2007. During his tenure there he was president of the local Interfaith Council, and co-chaired a marketing campaign of 17 UU congregations the San Francisco Bay area. Other highlights of his ministry there included travelling twice to visit his congregation’s partner church in Transylvania, leading a youth service trip to New Orleans to help in the post-Katrina rebuilding efforts and preaching in Soweto during a sabbatical month in South Africa. In 2007 Eric received the Distinguished Service Award from the Pacific Central District of the UUA.
Prior to answering the call to ministry, Eric was a VISTA volunteer with the Minnesota Literacy Council in St. Paul, MN and also worked with the Twin Cities’ Southeast Asian refugee and immigrant communities. During that time, Eric was also active in both local and district UU young adult programming.
|
