Community invited to installation ceremony for minister

Eric Sucar
The ceremony during ordination and installation of the Most Reverend James Francis Checchio as the fifth Bishop of Metuchen during a ceremony and mass at the Church of the Sacred Heart in South Plainfield on May 3.

EAST BRUNSWICK – The Unitarian Society (TUS) invites the greater community to attend the installation ceremony of its seventh settled minister.

The Rev. Karen G. Johnston will officially be welcomed at 4 p.m. on April 30 at the church, 176 Tices Lane, East Brunswick.

In addition to TUS congregants, statewide Unitarian religious leaders, as well as local clergy and leaders, including East Brunswick Mayor Brad Cohen, are expected to be in attendance.

“I was thrilled to receive my first call from TUS,” Johnston said in a statement prepared by UTS. “They have a scrappy spirit that leads to caring for one another, building radically inclusive communities, explicitly welcoming members of the GLBTQ communities, and continually finding ways to transform the world for the better.”

She said that the TUS congregation “offers Central New Jersey ways to engage the world spiritually without being constricted by narrow dogma or having to leave reason or science behind.”

The installation sermon will be delivered by the Rev. Erika Hewitt. Dinner will be served after the ceremony, provided by Global Grace Café, the Highland Park restaurant where food is prepared by refugees, asylees and asylum seekers.

Johnston accepted the call to ministry from TUS in May 2016 after a two-year search process resulted in a unanimous vote by the congregation, according to the statement. A licensed clinical social worker and published poet, Johnston was ordained in 2016 in Northampton, Massachusetts. Her theological orientation and spiritual practices are strongly informed by Insight Meditation, a Western form of Buddhism.

For more information visit www.unitariansociety.org.

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