About Us
Ministerial & Administrative Staff
• Rev. Kim K. Crawford Harvie • Senior Minister
• Rev. Yvonne Schumacher Strejcek • Acting Associate Minister
• Seanan Holland • Military Chaplain Intern
• Lama Surya Das • Esteemed Guest
• Jeffrey Bouchard • Church Administrator
• Mark David Buckles • Director of Music
• Erick DuPree • Religious Educator
• Rev. Eugene B. Navias • Associate Minister Emeritus
• Brad Nobles • Sexton
• Ed Thomas • Former Church Administrator
• George Whitehouse • Minister at Large
• Rev. Dan Kane • Former Interim Assistant Minister
• Music Staff
Rev. Kim K. Crawford Harvie • Senior Minister • office@ASCBoston.org
The Reverend Ms. Kim K. Crawford Harvie was raised in Concord, Massachusetts and graduated with honors from Middlebury College (Vermont) and Harvard Divinity School. Ordained into the Unitarian Universalist ministry in 1984, she spent the following year as an intern at First Parish in Brewster, Massachusetts. In 1985, she was called to the Universalist Meeting House in Provincetown, Massachusetts, which she served until 1989. In 1987, she received the Maximilian Kolbe Award for Community Service and, in 1988, she was named Provincetown Citizen of the Year. In 1989, she was called to Arlington Street Church in Boston, Massachusetts, where she continues to serve as Senior Minister.
In Boston, Rev. Crawford Harvie co-founded two non-profit organizations: In the Best Interests of the Children, dedicated to providing educational and material assistance to young people and families affected by pediatric HIV/AIDS; and The Shared Heart, a traveling exhibition and book of photographs (released in 1997 by William Morrow) of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender teenagers with accompanying text in their own words, designed to support the Massachusetts Safe Schools Initiative.
In 1992, Rev. Crawford Harvie was the recipient of Harvard Divinity School’s First Decade Award. In the same year, Rev. Crawford Harvie also received distinguished alumnae awards from Middlebury College and Concord Carlisle High School. In 1996, the Legacy Foundation named Rev. Crawford Harvie Uncommon Woman of the Year. In 1999, Rev. Crawford Harvie was named one of ten delegates from the United States to Women Waging Peace, an international women’s peacemaking initiative. In 2002, the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union of Boston honored her as one of 100 outstanding women in the Commonwealth.
Rev. Crawford Harvie resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her wife, Kem Morehead, and their three daughters.
Rev. Yvonne Schumacher Strejcek • Acting Associate Minister • office@ASCBoston.org
The Rev. Yvonne Schumacher Strejcek — newly fellowshipped, newly ordained — comes to us from the Unitarian Church of Harrisburg (PA) where she served as Acting Associate Minister (2008–09) after a year there as Intern Minister (2007–08).
She’s a lifelong UU who earned her MDiv from Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley in 2008. She received her BA in sociology and psychology from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She grew up in suburban Detroit and began attending the Unitarian Universalist church in downtown Detroit at an early age. She was active in LRY as a teen in the ’60s.
Yvonne will be working half-time with us this year. She’s been a congregation president, a new congregation organizer, district president, and Acting District Exec in the UUA’s Pacific Central District. She was a board member of the UU Legislative Ministry in California and has served in numerous lay leadership positions in UU congregations and the Pacific Central District. She received three treasured awards from PCD, two for outstanding service at the congregation and district levels and one for speaking the truth with love. Yvonne’s previous careers were in audiobook publishing, editing/proofreading, and federal civil rights enforcement with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the US Commission on Civil Rights.
She moved to the Boston area from Pennsylvania this summer with her husband Barry Strejcek and their cute little Havanese dog Bounder. Their adult son Brendan lives in Toronto with his partner, Chenbo Zhong.
Seanan Holland • Military Chaplain Intern • office@ASCBoston.org
Seanan Holland attended Meadville Lombard. He was raised by schoolteacher parents in the Canal Zone in the Republic of Panama, and from the age of eight nursed a passion for aviation. When he left Panama for Northern Michigan University in 1987, he had already considered military service. In his sophomore year of college, Holland joined the Marines.
Holland relished the challenge of the Marine Corps, and was also “impressed by the sense of responsibility that our instructors imparted to us about demonstrating the high values that we in turn could expect of each other,” he says. Upon graduation, Holland was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps, and after six months of basic training he set off for flight school.
Enter Unitarian Universalism. Having never truly connected with his Roman Catholic upbringing, Holland reports noticing “a personal ‘hole’ in my life” at flight school and knew that “it had something to do with spirituality.” On the advice of a Baptist friend, Holland visited and quickly felt at home within a local Unitarian Universalist church. “I only visited a couple of times,” he recalls, “but I felt like I had found people who were speaking my language. Everywhere the Marine Corps assigned me, I looked up the nearest Unitarian Universalist congregation.”
It was toward the end of Holland’s first tour as a helicopter pilot that he began considering Unitarian Universalist ministry. “It started out as a very small question in a quiet voice,” he says. But as Holland’s military career progressed he continued to ponder this vocation, until by 2001 he had begun to financially plan for seminary.
But then 9/11 happened. As he watched military friends deploy to Iraq, Holland knew it wasn’t the right time to leave the Marine Corps. He completed his tour as an instructor, and three years later, in 2004, Holland himself left for Iraq.
When Holland returned in 2005, he still couldn’t shake the call to ministry. “I was still unable to free myself of the question of whether or not I was doing the thing my inborn talents would make me most suitable to do,” he says. Six months later, he enrolled at Meadville Lombard. Now an intern at Arlington Street Church, Holland has “gained a sense of clarity about my calling to ministry and my desire to return to the Navy as a chaplain. There’s a special gratification in being able to serve the two organizations I believe in,” he says.
Written by Leah Rubin-Cadrain, www.uuworld.org
Lama Surya Das • Esteemed Guest
Please join Rev. Kim in welcoming to Arlington Street her beloved and esteemed friend, Lama Surya Das.
Lama Surya Das is one of the foremost Western Buddhist meditation teachers and scholars, one of the main interpreters of Tibetan Buddhism in the West, and a leading spokesperson for the emerging American Buddhism. The Dalai Lama calls him “The Western Lama.”
Surya has spent thirty-five years studying Buddhism with the great masters of Asia, including the Dalai Lama’s own teachers, and has twice completed the traditional three year meditation cloistered retreat at his teacher’s Tibetan monastery. Founder of the Western Buddhist Teachers Network with the Dalai Lama, he is also active in interfaith dialogue and social activism and regularly organizes its international Buddhist Teachers Conferences.
Surya Das is the author of many bestselling books, including Awakening the Buddha Within: Tibetan Wisdom for the Western World, and, most recently, The Mind is Mightier Than the Sword.
Ed Thomas • Former Church Administrator • EThomas@ASCBoston.org
Raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Ed graduated with a BA in philosophy from Lakeland College in 1975. He then moved to Massachusetts to attend Harvard Divinity School and study under a Fund for Theological Education fellowship.
For over fifteen years Ed was employed as an audio engineer, at Bose Corporation, National Public Radio affiliates WBUR and WGBH in Boston, and international short-wave and public radio operations for the Christian Science Monitor. He earned an MBA from Bentley College in 2000 and has since worked with not-for-profit organizations including Peace Games, the New England School of Acupuncture, Crispus Attucks Children’s Center, and United Leaders. He has been the recipient of a training grant from National Public Radio, and listed in Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in Media and Communications.
Ed is the father of four and a recent grandfather. He lives in Cambridge with his wife Katharine who is employed by the Institute for Health and Recovery.
Jeffrey Bouchard • Church Administrator • JBouchard@ASCBoston.org
Jeffrey David Bouchard is the Assistant to the Administrator at ASC. He is responsible for coordinating building usage by the congregation and the public, maintaining church property, ensuring security and fire systems are operating properly, and giving tours of our facilities to the public and UU youth groups. Jeffrey schedules numerous weddings, concerts, lectures, and meetings at ASC every year.
Jeffrey, the son of a Pentecostal minister, was raised in the Belfast/Searsport, Maine area. For many years he taught Sunday School and played piano during the worship services at his father’s church. Prior to coming to ASC, Jeffrey was the sexton/Assistant to the Administrator at the Park Street UU Church in Bangor, Maine, where he became a Unitarian Universalist. His current favorite vacation playland is Provincetown, which he visits a few times a year.
Rev. Dan Kane • Former Interim Assistant Minister
The Reverend Dan Kane has been a Unitarian Universalist since discovering the First Unitarian Church of Oakland, in Oakland, California, along with his life partner Darin Jensen, in 1992. He is a 2008 graduate of Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley, California, is in preliminary UU ministerial fellowship, and was ordained by Arlington Street Church in early 2009. His ministry has taken him back to the San Francisco Bay area.
Dan graduated from The George Washington University Elliot School of International Affairs and the University of California Hastings College of the Law. Dan was born and raised in Upstate New York and has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1981. His passions in ministry include shared (lay) ministry, pastoral care, small group ministry and lifespan religious education. His passions in life are his nieces and nephews, food, gardening and travel.
Brad Nobles • Sexton
Brad Nobles has been Sexton at ASC since 1995. He is responsible for the upkeep of the building, including preparing the sanctuary and the Parish Hall for its many, many uses. Brad sets up for events, concerts, and weddings. He provides a knowledgeable presence and helping hands for our congregation, guests, and renters. Brad also helps the volunteers who set-up and staff the weekly Friday Night Supper Program.
Brad was born in New York City and raised in Boston. He loves jazz and sports. Before he came to ASC, he worked for twenty years in movie theatres, which he truly loved. He was a motion picture operator at such grand old theatres in Boston as The Orpheum, The Opera House, and The Strand in Dorchester.
Rev. George G. Whitehouse • Minister at Large • GWhitehouse@ASCBoston.org
The Reverend George G. Whitehouse was appointed Minister-at-Large by the Arlington Street Church under the Reverend Jack Mendelsohn in 1969. He attended Northeastern University and Harvard Divinity School and was ordained by Arlington Street Church. Since 1969 he has represented ASC in many social outreach programs involving students, children, families and several Juvenile Criminal Justice start-up programs. George is currently on the board of the Bethany Union for Young Women (a subsidized housing facility in Boston for young women between the ages of 18-30), the Unitarian Universalist Women’s Heritage Society, and the Tuckerman Coalition (a consortium of UU’s advocating for legislation affecting families and children living in poverty). He has also been the resident Campanologist at ASC since 1961.
Mark David Buckles • Director of Music • MBuckles@ASCBoston.org
Mark David Buckles, conductor, composer, music educator, and multi-instrumentalist, is a native of Beverly Hills, Michigan. Mark received his Masters of Music in Conducting at the Boston University College of Fine Arts and his Bachelors of Music in Composition from the University of Michigan School of Music.
Mark serves as Adjunct Professor of Music Theory at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell and as Music Director Emeritus of Juventas, the acclaimed Boston-based New Music Ensemble dedicated to performing the works of young composers, which he co-founded in 2005.
In 2003 and 2005, Mark participated in the European American Music Alliance in Paris, where he received honors for his studies in counterpoint and harmony. Mark is also a 2006 graduate of the Conductors’ Institute at Bard College.
A prolific composer and arranger of choral, vocal, and instrumental music, Mark has received commissions from the University of Michigan Women’s Glee Club, the University of Michigan Honors Convocation, Miller College, and Dixboro United Methodist Church. His works have been performed and recorded by the University of Michigan Chamber Choir, the Boston Choral Ensemble, the Boston University Concert Chorus, the Saint Petersburg String Quartet, and various other ensembles.
Erick DuPree • Religious Educator • EDuPree@ASCBoston.org
Erick DuPree is please to join Arlington Street Church! Erick is the author of Universally Unique: Homilies, Lessons, and Lore, and is excited to infuse Unitarian Universalist principles with the world’s religious teachings as religious educator. Known for the development of religious education curricula, Erick has taught nationally and abroad doing extensive work with children. Erick brings a dynamic Montessori approach to teaching, creating a setting that empowers children to explore their ideas about God, faith, and the future.
Erick received his BA in Religious Education from Lubbock Christian University, and graduated suma cum laude with a MA in Literature from Queen’s in Canada. He is pursuant of a Doctorate in Education from the University of Massachusetts. Erick spends his time away from church singing with the Boston Gay Men’s Chorus, voraciously reading, and studying Zen Buddhism.
Updated September, 2009