Our Ministers
Rev. Charlie Ortman, Parish Minister
 For me, ministry is working collaboratively with colleagues and congregants to promote ever greater opportunities for transformation - individually, in the community, and in the world. Ministry is promoting the possibilities and probabilities of goodness in what often seems like a broken world. The efforts of my ministry to individuals promote a sense of spiritual wholeness and healing while establishing connections to the world around us and to those in it. Reaching out beyond ourselves and our homes, the strength of the religious community is where I find the greatest hope for working cooperatively and sustainably with other like minded persons in helping and healing our communities and our world.
Judy Tomlinson, Minister of Religious Education
 I was born in South Jersey but because my father worked for oil refineries, our family began to move around the world when I was two years old. As a child, I lived in Indonesia, the Phillippines, California and Panama. I graduated from Coco Solo High School in the Canal Zone and began college at Christian fundamentalist school, Wheaton College in Wheaton, IL. In my second year I left to get married and moved to Southern California. My husband and I had a gardening business for ten years that supported our volunteer work at the Unitarian Church of Orange County in Anaheim, CA as well as the Anti Nuclear and Freedom of Information movements. It was at UCOC that I became a Unitarian Universalist and an active religious educator.
For three years I was Co-Director of de Benneville Pines Unitarian Universalist Camp and Conference Center. I served the Orange Coast Unitarian Universalist Church from 1989-1992 and the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica from 1992-2000 as Director of Religious Education. I began my preparation for the ministry in the Modified Residency Program at Meadville/Lombard Theological School. In 1996 I transferred to a school closer to home. Upon graduating from Claremont School of Theology and passing the Fellowship Committee, I moved to Montclair, NJ to begin my ministry. Happily I was called, ordained and installed this year.
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