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Rev. Beverly Waring
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Born and raised outside of Buffalo, NY, Bev received her earliest religious education at St. Paul’s Roman
Catholic Church. She received an undergraduate degree in Computer Science at SUNY at Brockport and it was
her first engineering job at GTE that took Bev from Western NY to Massachusetts.
Bev met her spouse Donna in 1981, and it was through Donna that she was introduced to Unitarian
Universalism. With Donna’s encouragement and emotional support, Bev changed careers and earned her
Masters in Social Work degree in 1991 and then received her Masters in Divinity degree in 2009.
While waiting for her interview with the Ministerial Fellowship Committee, Bev volunteered her ministerial
services to her home congregation, First Parish of Sudbury, MA, in 2009-2010 working closely with her minister
and covering for her during a five week sabbatical. Within two months of receiving preliminary fellowship and
being ordained Bev was hired by First Parish in Wayland, MA as a temporary (one-year) second minister while
that congregation worked on a transition plan from a two minister and part-time DRE model; to a one minister
and full-time Director of Lifespan Religious Education model. Much of her time in Wayland was spent working
with the New Members and Community Life Committees, the Religious Education and Youth programs, the
Canvass Committee and providing pastoral care to children, youth and their families. She was also very involved
in the startup of a Capital Campaign designed to raise 1.6 million dollars for renovations, a building addition and
a new organ. “Working with the Rev. Ken Sawyer, a minister with 40 years experience and 36 of them in
Wayland, was an amazing way to start a ministry,” says Bev.
Bev describes her theological orientation this way: “I feel a kinship to much of what defines a Humanist. I
embrace free will, reason, ethics, and justice as essential for a moral code, and I reject for my own personal
theology the concept of a supernatural being as creator and/or protector. I also have an affinity with much of what
defines Religious Naturalism; an approach to spirituality that does not assume the concept of a supernatural
being but that is concerned about the meaning of life while being equally interested in living daily life in a rational,
purposeful way. The final piece of my current theology comes from Process Theology which asserts that the
unfolding present is not yet concrete, it is changeable, and we can influence it. In Process Theology, divine
energy, or the spirit of life, or God, is an energy, which lures us towards what is good.”
When not working, Bev is an enthusiastic puzzle-doer, enjoying jigsaw, Sudoku, logic and crosswords equally.
She is also an avid reader of almost anything in print, a beginner-level quilter, a writer, and a dog lover.
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