NEWBURYPORT – While the First Religious Society Unitarian Universalist Church (FRSUU) on Pleasant Street is celebrating the beginning of its fourth century serving this city, it is losing its beloved minister, the Rev. Rebecca Bryan.
Rev. Rebecca, who is beginning her eighth year as the senior pastor, has decided to leave the church in June to explore what the next chapter in her life will be. She will leave after the church’s annual meeting. This timeline allows the church to move forward with an interim ministry next fall.
It also gives her and the church members time to say good bye, grieve and assess what the church needs in a minister.
Asked for his and the congregation’s reaction, Bob Higgins, chair of the parish board, said, “First, I cried. It was a shock to all of us. We are saddened.”
Replacing her will be a challenge, Higgins said. “She has an amazing ability to connect with everyone. It is like losing a friend.”
In a letter to the congregation, Rev. Rebecca said, “Our shared ministry has been exquisite. It is both tender and brave, forward-looking and honoring of the past. Together we have weathered many changes within and beyond our church and thrived while doing so.”
She leaves the church larger and stronger and a greater force for community good. The supporting members and friends have doubled to about 600, “bucking the trend” in New England of declining church memberships, she said.
“It’s the same beautiful building, but it is not the same church,” she said in an interview last week.
The First Religious Society, which embraces pluralism and diversity, has long had many individual members who were active in the community, serving on boards and committees, fighting for justice and equality. Now, she believes the church has grown to be more committed, as an organization, to activism in the community.
The church opened rooms in the building to host the 11-member Mirzayee family from Afghanistan at the end of the war. Under her leadership, the church survived the pandemic, when other churches had to close, and the accidental death of an affiliate minister. Members, representing the church, march in the annual Gay Pride Parade, and the church offers free wedding services for members of the LGBTQ plus community because their rights are under attack. It also actively supports the annual Indigenous Peoples’ Day celebration on the waterfront.
“We have remained faithful to our legacy of being a beacon of liberal religion in the Newburyport region for 300 years, at a time when fear and division have taken hold in our country. Our work and commitment to justice have grown along with us,” she wrote.
The church’s first full-time female minister, Rev. Rebecca serves as a member of Newburyport’s Diversity Equity Inclusion Task Force and was the past chair of the Greater Newburyport Clergy Association, where she learned that the greater Newburyport community has a strong respect for the clergy.
What attracted her to the church, she said, was its combination of commitment to tradition and openness while being innovative and embracing the new. She treasured the church’s preservation of the past, while still being open to change.
Rev. Rebecca, a Unitarian Universalist for 50 years, graduated in 2015 from the Andover Newton Theological School where she was a member of the Jonathan Edwards Honor Society and a recipient of the Unitarian Universalist James Luther Adams Award for Excellence in the Study of Liberal Theology and the Gabriel Fackre Award for Excellence in Constructive Theology.
She was ordained as a Unitarian Universalist minister after a 25-year career advising and assisting nonprofit groups in organizational development and helping raise money through capital campaigns.
Before coming to FRSUU, Rev. Rebecca served as the interim Senior Minister for First Parish in Brookline and contract minister for the Unitarian Universalist Parish in Monson.
Higgins, the parish board chair, wrote “Let us open our hearts to the emotions we might be feeling: sadness, confusion, hurt, perhaps fear or even anger, and of course gratitude. Rev. Rebecca, I’m sure, would counsel us to sit with those feelings, to share them and to love and be there for each other.”
He appreciates that she is not leaving until mid-2026. Because the church and the community have changed in the last eight years, the search for a successor “will be different,” he said. “We can’t clone her, but we can take the best of what she is.”
Higgins said changes will have to be made. “We need to learn and grow from this.”
As for her next chapter, she has no strategic plan. She is excited to see what awaits her. With her talents and skills, Rev. Rebecca “will be in great demand,” Higgins said.
Rev. Rebecca is the author of an instructive, inspirational book, Guided By Love, A Minister’s Thoughts on Love, Hope and Justice, which can be found at Jabberwocky and Illume book stores or at the church.
She has also launched a podcast as a companion to the book, with “an amazing” producer Nick Place, she wrote. You can find her podcast, Guided by Love, wherever you listen to podcasts, she said.
“It has been my great honor, responsibility and joy to be your minister and to love and grow together over these years,” she wrote to the congregation. “FRSUU is a remarkable church with a stand-up history and a bright future. We have done good ministry, my friends.” ♦
