After spending last Fall in dialogue with our community and working for the past three months from an initial roster of seventeen ministerial applicants — through interviews, research, reference checks and pre-candidating weekends — we have a candidate! The Search Committee is excited to announce that our candidate for UU Santa Monica’s next settled minister is the Reverend Diana Smith.
For the past six years, Rev. Diana has served as settled minister at the UU Society of Iowa City in Coralville, Iowa. Prior to that, she served a two year interim ministry at the UU Church of Woodinville, WA (2018-2020), and a two-year ministerial internship at First Church Boston (2016-2018), where she was ordained in 2018. She received her Master of Divinity degree from Andover Newton Theological School, and she also haw a Master’s degree in Community and Environmental Planning from the University of British Columbia. Before her call to ministry, Rev. Diana worked for local and state environmental programs in Washington State. As a volunteer during that time, she also ran a local non-profit that operated a crisis line, and was an active member of the Olympia UU Congregation as an RE teacher, worship associate, and fundraiser.
Rev. Diana matches UUSM’s aspirations for settled ministry in many ways. For one, her ministry is strongly “heart-centered,” to use a phrase that topped our congregational survey results and also came up in talking to colleagues who know her well. She has a warm and welcoming presence and preaching style that emphasizes UU values of love, generosity and inclusion. Services that connect the “head and heart” are important to our congregation, and Rev. Diana’s approach to sermons embodies what she terms “mind and spirit.” She describes her own theological orientation as drawing on panentheism, religious humanism, training in Buddhism with an emphasis on Vipassana meditation, and a deep spiritual connection to the natural world.
Our UUSM community sees itself as having strong programs and lay leadership in many areas, and has expressed hope for a settled minister who will embrace much of who we are and what we have built in a spirit of collaboration, while also providing leadership and guidance. Rev. Diana describes herself as passionate about collaborative leadership and shared ministry. During her time at UUSIC, she has worked on team-building and strengthening committees and relationships, and she often approaches worship services collaboratively and creatively with her worship associates and others.
Additionally, she is praised for her skills at pastoral care and is known as a deep listener. She is no stranger to dealing with conflict, having arrived at UUSIC after a history of difficult ministerial departures, some tension over theological differences, staff departures and shifting governance structures. Her colleagues and congregants say that her approach to conflict is direct and compassionate, and that she is adept at bridging differences and bringing people together.
Rev. Diana’s current congregation is similar in size to UUSM. When she began her ministry there, at the height of the pandemic, the congregation had recently moved into a newly-constructed building (both beautiful and expensive) and was facing some financial challenges. During her tenure, they worked to balance their budget and they even paid off the mortgage on their new building early. A former board president told us that one of the reasons they had called Rev. Diana was her prior organizational experience running a non-profit, and they felt that the skills and knowledge she brought had been assets.
Also in line with UUSM’s values and aspirations, justice is a central focus of Rev. Diana’s ministry. In the last few years, her preaching at UUSIC has often been at the intersection of what is happening in the community and what is unfolding in the wider world. She often speaks about ways for communities and individuals to engage with current events, as well as to develop personal and spiritual resilience during these unprecedented times of rising authoritarianism.
In the larger Iowa City community, Rev. Diana was a co-founder and leader of the Johnson County Interfaith Coalition, which connected UUs, Jewish communities, local Black churches and others for justice advocacy. She worked with her congregation to create Freedom School-type programs to teach youth about topics of race, gender and sexuality that were banned in Iowa public schools. And more recently, her congregation has been engaging in workshops on the latest UUA Common Read, “Social Change Now.”
At UUSIC she has worked to implement anti-racist and anti-oppressive awareness and practices. This has included work to bring a diversity of voices into the pulpit and leadership, work around hiring the congregation’s first trans staff member, and efforts to strengthen the congregation’s role as a beacon and a refuge in the face of the state’s increasingly anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and discriminatory climate.
Rev. Diana says that anti-racism/anti-oppression (AR/AO) work infuses everything she does as a minister, and her colleagues agree. An advisor of hers who was also a leader in the Beloved Conversations program (in which several dozen members of UUSM participated), describes Rev. Diana’s ministry as being deeply informed by and committed to these principles.
We could see Rev. Diana’s strong commitment to UU values when, this past January, she traveled to Minneapolis to be with the UU contingent of the interfaith clergy mobilization there. When we met with her in person during a pre-candidating weekend in early February, she was fresh from that experience, and related to us some of what she had seen and learned about being part of a protest movement in a city that was effectively under military occupation.
Support for a flourishing children and youth RE program (CYRE) is another priority for our congregation as we look to the years ahead. Rev. Diana views CYRE as something to incorporate holistically throughout congregational life, and looks forward to collaborating with our Director of Religious Education. She has regularly led or co-led Time for All Ages and multi-generational services, and she makes it a practice to visit each classroom at least once, if not twice, per year. She has supported an annual youth-led worship, fostered youth worship associates, and found ways to engage youth in music programming. During her ministry at UUSIC, membership and Sunday attendance have grown, and this has included an increase in the number of younger families with kids.
Rev. Diana lives with her mother, Esther, and beloved dog, Sydney, who will both be moving with her. She loves outdoor activities such as hiking, camping, and kayaking. She enjoys making art of various kinds and is an avid, accomplished gardener. She has family in Southern California and is excited about making the Los Angeles area her new home.
You can read more about Rev. Diana on her personal website: revdianasmith.com. We are excited for you to hear more about her and from her soon on the two Sundays she will be in our pulpit, as well as at other events during Candidating Week starting April 18th. In the meantime, Rev. Diana wanted to say hello with a brief video message that you can watch below.
As always, contact us with any questions at search@uusm.org.
