We are pleased to announce our incoming (and first ever full-time!) Executive Director, Rev. Rob Gregson! Rev. Gregson’s first day of service with the Legislative Ministry will be on July 5. We look forward to an exciting future for the UULMNJ with Rev. Gregson at the helm!
The Rev. Rob Gregson comes to the Executive Director position of the UU Legislative Ministry of New Jersey with years of experience in the fields of nonprofit management, social justice activism and the liberal ministry. A 1990 graduate of Amherst College, Rev. Gregson received his Masters of Divinity in 1999 from Harvard Divinity School. He worked for 3 years in the early 1990s in the Dept. of Social Justice/Office of LBGT Concerns at the Unitarian Universalist Association in Boston MA, a year as the first full-time interfaith chaplain at the Boston Alzheimer’s Center, and seven years as parish minister at the First UU Fellowship of Baptistown (Hunterdon County, NJ).
Rev. Gregson’s most recent professional experience was to serve as co-founder and first Executive Director of SimpleGifts: Unitarian Centre for Social Action in East London, United Kingdom. This innovative program, located in an area with the highest child poverty rate in the UK and facing intense public scrutiny as a majority Muslim immigrant community, served over 150+ children, parents, elders and recent immigrants each week through innovative after school parent/child clubs, Community Cohesion senior hot lunches, teen service groups, free English as A Second Language (ESL) programs and a Mums and Toddlers social enterprise initiative.
Writes Rev. Gregson, “I look forward to working alongside the many talented volunteers and affiliated UU congregations who make up the Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry of New Jersey. I inherit a social justice ministry in the Garden State that is at once daring and forgiving, pastoral and prophetic, where the joy of being together in our congregations is also informed by our concern for the poor and all those living life on the margins. I invite you to join with me and many others as we raise our voices in Trenton and across the state in service to the larger mission of bringing ever more hope, ever more joy and ever more justice into this corner of the world we call ‘home.’”
Rev. Gregson and his two children make their home in South Orange, NJ.
Help us ensure Rob’s success by contributing to and sharing our Faithify campaign, “Growing Justice & Equality in New Jersey” today! We need $100 more dollars to make it to $2,000 and have until May 31 to raise the needed $8,000!
On March 14 New Jersey took a step in being a leader in gender equality with one of the most comprehensive pay equity bills pending in state legislatures around the nation. S922/A2750, the New Jersey Pay Equity Act, sponsored by Senator Loretta Weinberg and Assemblywoman Pam Lampitt, will give women formidable tools to combat pay discrimination and remedy an injustice that has gone on for far too long. With a growing number of New Jersey women responsible for supporting their families, pay equity is not only a matter of justice for themselves, but also a matter of economic security for their families.
