Biography

Robert Reed Newberry Ross was born in Neptune City, New Jersey on January 25, 1941 to Dr, Milton R. and his wife Linda Newberry Ross.  He was raised in nearby Little Silver, NJ where his father practiced dentistry and attended Rumson public schools.  Ross was admitted to Amherst College in 1959 and studied in France at Université d'Aix-Marseille during his junior year.  Upon graduation from Amherst, Ross worked at the Titanium Corporation in Hanson, Massachusetts during which period he completed a STB degree from Harvard Divinity School. On July 13, 1968 Ross married Susan Jane Loudis, a speech therapist for Stoneham Public Schools, at Harvard’s Memorial Church and commenced work at the Divinity School on a Ph.D. in Theology. At the Divinity School Robert researched the theology of Paul Tillich and published several articles about Tillich’s philosophy. After completing his dissertation Tillich on the Existence of God in 1972, Ross was hired to be a philosophy professor at Skidmore College where he served as a student counsellor, trained in crisis intervention, and administered the college’s religious life program. In the 1980s Ross left academe for employment in the business world as a Consulting Engineer at Digital Equipment Corporation in which endeavor he filed for multiple computer network design patents. At Digital Ross also enhanced his interpersonal dynamics consultation skills as the company’s manager of Quality Education and Collaborative Technologies.

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At the end of his tenure at Digital in the mid-1990’s Ross again contemplated a career change. He related that “"Toward the last years at Digital, I thought again about doing ministry….  I simply inquired with the Unitarian Church and went through the process.”  In short order, he was ordained at Attleboro’s Murray Unitarian-Universalist Church in 1996. Ross decided to leverage his corporate group dynamics experience by specializing in interim ministry. In the ensuing decade Ross served as a transitional minister at First Parish in Cohasset, Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship of Falmouth, First Parish Church in Taunton, Eliot Church in South Natick, and First Parish in Plymouth. Thus in the spring of 2005 when Bruce Clary was ending his ministry at First Church, Ross was available to step in as First Church interim minister. As the Transition Team gathered, Ross introduced himself to First Church congregants in May 2005 as “a college professor, writer, crisis manager, technical consultant, administrator, EMT, fire and prison chaplain, systems manager, counsellor and leader of a Zydeco band.”

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Early on in his interim ministry in Dedham, in the fall of 2005, Ross announced that he would coordinate a series of workshops with church leaders and congregants that was to have a lasting impact on First Church. Ross related that his workshop methodology, Value Analysis, “uses small teams and simple visual tools to prioritize major goals, identify barriers, and develop consensus about strategies to best use the talents and creativity of members to shape the future.” The first of multiple workshops was attended by the Parish Committee in October 2005, the second was held for congregants in January 2006, and the third March 2006 meeting gathered members from both groups to further refine and prioritize the goals and strategies identified in the first two workshops. The upshot of these deliberations was the selection of eight goals, supported by proposed actions to be driven by teams of specific congregants. The goals included, improving church finances, increasing membership, making governance more effective, creating a church mission and vision, enhancing the physical plant, encouraging worship participation, making the congregation more like a loving family, and involving the church in more social action. Ross also proposed that First Church establish a Caring Community to respond to congregant and community needs Some of these proposed goals would be implemented by First Church with dispatch, while the culmination of others would await settlement of a new minister, and still others would not be enacted for diverse and telling reasons. 

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First, the Values Analysis goals that were first to bear enduring fruit, not surprisingly, concerned church governance, finances, and communication. At the first Values Analysis Workshop these goals had been prioritized by church leaders who then volunteered to constitute their implementation teams. Revision of First Church By-Laws updated and clarified the roles, responsibilities, rights, and decision-making procedures of church officers for the first time in 20 years. Moreover, Workshop participants also created a comprehensive 25-page Personnel Policies and Procedures Manual and began work on a guide for Committee Chairs. In addition, a standing Finance Committee was established to get basic finances in order, including planning for Stewardship campaigns, framing church budgets, and reporting on expenditure needs. In 2006 important developments in church communication were achieved with the launching of a First Church website, monthly publishing of PC Minutes in the Parish Record, and the installing of a Wayside Pulpit on High Street to intrigue and attract passersby with pithy weekly liberal religious messages.

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Other Values Analysis goals resulted in less comprehensive sets of actions. For instance, Goal 2 Membership Growth did lead to the revitalization of the FC Membership Committee and the hiring of the very popular and long-tenured Music Director Linnea Bardardson in October 2005. However, the ambitiously multi-facetted Woburn Grant proposal for funding to recruit more ethnically and culturally diverse church members was ultimately rejected by the UUA. Likewise, efforts to carry out actions in support of Goal 7, i.e. Making the church a more loving family were similarly only partially successful. The still extant Safe Church policy that upheld appropriate standards of behavior for all engaged in church activities was indeed crafted, a weekly Meditation Group was convened, and after-church adult discussion groups to ponder such questions as” What does it mean to be a UU? What does it mean to be a church and parish? What does it mean to be a person of faith?” were held.  However, the proposed UUA Odyssey Project to create a church history timeline to help congregants both reflect on key points of FC development and assess the impact of these events simply never got off the ground.  Lastly, Goal 6 to encourage greater participation of congregants in worship services did result in monthly opportunities for church member to share their Joys and Concerns, but the Call Book placed in the Meetinghouse vestibule has as yet not elicited an outpouring of requests for follow-up calls from ministers and the proposal to remove cushions from pews to impel parishioners to sit closer together was a non-starter. 

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Still other significant and long-lasting initiatives were initially undertaken during Ross’s interim ministry. One example is the beginning of the process of making First Church a Welcoming Congregation. Another would be extensive repairs to the Meetinghouse including interior painting and replacement of carpets undertaken with the guidance of church member and noted architectural conservator Andrea Gilmore. Some other Values Analysis actions, such as creating events signage on the Green and becoming a green congregation would not be achieved until the tenure of Ross’s ministerial successor Rali Weaver. In addition, First Church Religious Education thrived under the leadership of DRE Susan Sennott and a vigorous RE Committee. Coordinator Bailey Stoler and the Youth Group undertook such social action projects such as preparing Dignity Dinners to homeless guests at Boston’s Arlington Street Church. Other RE classes engaged in such Cool Deeds as collecting funds to feed Darfur refugees, purchasing livestock for needy African farmers via the Heifer Project, donating clothing to needy children through Cradles to Crayons and banding together with Needham Sunday School in the Empty Bowls Project to fight international hunger. 

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In addition to his 2005-07 First Church duties, Ross participated in a voluminous and frankly head-spinning list of extracurricular activities during his time in Dedham. In the field of social service, Ross was a member of the Massachusetts Corps of Fire Chaplains, volunteered for the Bristol-Norfolk County Critical Incident Stress Debriefing Team, and trained as an EMT. In the role of professor, he taught two courses for the Religious Studies Program at UMASS-Boston, one on comparative religions and the other on Intelligent Design and gave a timely paper at the American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting on Marriage, State, and Equality. He was also invited to present a paper at the AAR’s November 2006 Meeting titled “From NOLA to Springfield: Ethics, Race, and Urban Reconstruction”. And he still found time to perform gigs with his Cajun Zydeco band “les cigognes” (The Bayou Herons) and compete in regional kayak races. 

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Ross concluded his interim ministry at First Church with little fanfare other than a short coffee hour reception after his last service on June 10, 2007. He was already transitioning into his new interim ministry at All Souls Church in Braintree that he held until the Spring of 2009 after which he moved on to a two-year interim stint at New Bedford’s First Unitarian Church. Subsequently, Ross signed on as minister to the Universalist Unitarian Church of Brockton, a position he still holds, while he occasionally acts as a visiting minister conducting services at the Unitarian Church in Fall River, Rhode Island’s Westminster Unitarian Church, and First Unitarian Church of Providence. Ross continues to enhance his academic CV as professor at the University of Massachusetts/Boston, the Graduate Theological Union in Oakland, and Starr King in Berkeley, California, teaching courses on philosophy and religion. Since departing from Dedham, Ross has also written another book, namely Walking to New Orleans. Ethics and the Concept of Participatory Design in Post-Disaster Reconstruction (2008). When asked recently about Ross’s impact on First Church, one church leader who had worked closely with Ross opined, “Rob Ross’s interim ministry brought some new ideas to First Church and Parish in Dedham that continue to this day. He helped us define areas that needed strengthening as we prepared to call a new minister.”

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Bibliography
Chapter 3: Odyssey Writing: A Guide for Participants | From the High Hill | Faith Curricula Library,Tapestry of Faith | UUA.org
First Church Parish Record, 2005-2007, First Church Dedham
HOLLIS - Robert R. N. Ross
Interim minister's mission is to serve congregation, community
Greater Brockton - 541 Rev. Dr. Robert Ross : Brockton Community Access : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive Home
Jul 08, 1968, page 9 - The Daily Register at Newspapers.com™ - Newspapers.com™
May 02, 1961, page 2 - Asbury Park Press at Newspapers.com™ - Newspapers.com™
New Jersey, U.S., Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey, Church Records, 1700-1970 - Ancestry.com
Taking Risks: The Sage of Sophia - First Unitarian Church of Providence
Robert R. N. Ross Inventions, Patents and Patent Applications - Justia Patents Search
Tillich and Plato | Sophia | Springer Nature Link