THE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF MANSFIELD

REV. DR. RUTH E. SHAVER

Interim Pastor

Several of you have said on the Facebook page that my name sounds familiar; you're probably right if you were active in the UCC and/or what was then the Attleboro Area Council of Churches in the early 2000s. I was the Minister of Christian Education and Family Life at Second Congregational Church, UCC, in Attleboro from 2001-2006 (ordained in 2003); I was on a couple of Association committees and the Old Colony Board of Directors for a term. I was an active board member/executive officer of the AACC for a good part of my time in Attleboro, as well. My direct connections to The Congregational Church of Mansfield are that I preached for Ted one Sunday in the summer of 2005 and that he and I, along with our colleague and friend Bob MacFarlane, took a group of confirmands from our respective churches to Washington, D.C., in the spring of 2006.

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Ted was also the very first person to say to me that once I had served as either a solo or senior pastor, I should consider interim ministry as a vocational track. That I am following him here is evidence both that God grants prophetic vision on occasion and that God has a sense of humor in the very best way. Between Attleboro and Mansfield, I served for 10 years as the Pastor and Teacher of The United Church of Schellsburg in the Penn West Conference; I was active in the Juniata Association and with conference youth activities as well as leading annual meeting worship planning for several years. I crammed an additional 5 years of life  into those 10 calendar years because I did my Doctor of Ministry at Lancaster Theological Seminary during my time in Schellsburg, at the end of which I was exhausted and on the ragged edge of burnt out.

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I came "home" to Massachusetts, attended Second Church to sing in the choir and play handbells, and spent three semesters substitute teaching in Mansfield, Attleboro, North Attleboro, and Franklin. Rested and refocused, I then went to my first official interim (there's a story for another time about the unofficial interims) at First Church of Christ, Congregational, UCC, in North Conway, New Hampshire. We were the first congregation in New England to call a settled pastor virtually: the pandemic delayed us six weeks. Without that delay, I don't think the wheels would have aligned to bring me here. Funny, that...

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I'm a military brat, a Texan by nature and nurture but the New England genes run strong in me, and please, God, someday, let there be the Superbowl I can't lose between Dallas and New England. I was a Soviet and East European Studies major at Boston University when the Berlin Wall fell, which my mother still says was God's way of getting my attention so I'd go to seminary, also at Boston University. I've always loved science and got to pursue deeper understanding of the field very broadly for my D.Min. and later as a Sinai and Synapses Fellow. My parents and my brother live in Corpus Christi, Texas, where it's just too hot for too much of the year for me to live, but it's a beautiful place to be from. I have a collection of close friends and "second" family members scattered from Franklin to the Cape who are delighted to have me back for Friday dinners and game nights...whenever that becomes safer, of course!

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I can't wait to start meeting you all (or "all y'all" in Texan, which, yes, you will hear fairly regularly) via ZOOM until such time as we can gather in person. May God bless us with patience, wisdom, grace, and laughter for our journey together.