Rachel Baker Ordained at First Parish Church in Bedford

By Meredith McCulloch

Newly-ordained Rev. Rachel Allen Baker who grew up in Bedford with Virginia Spencer during the ordination ceremony at First Parish Unitarian Universalist - Courtesy image
Newly-ordained Rev. Rachel Allen Baker stands with Virginia Spencer during Baker’s recent ordination ceremony at First Parish Unitarian Universalist’s historic meeting house on Bedford Common, the church where she grew up – Courtesy image

Rachel Allen Baker, a 1989 Bedford High School graduate, was ordained into the Unitarian Universalist ministry at a ceremony at First Parish in Bedford on March 15.

Within the Unitarian Universalist religious tradition, while ministerial credentials are evaluated and recognized by the Ministerial Fellowship Committee of the Unitarian Universalist Association, the authority to ordain lies wholly with a local congregation. Having grown up in First Parish in Bedford, Baker asked that church to ordain her.

During the ceremony, the Rev. John Gibbons of First Parish gave this charge:

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“When you preached here last December, in your sermon you remembered being in Sunday school plays in this room and you were told to hold your head high, and to speak up and to “speak to the clock.” Rachel, in your bold and beautiful and sensitive and sassy way, I want you to speak up and speak out and preach and teach and pastor and prophesy to the clock.” 

Following the ceremony Baker said, “I am deeply grateful, honored, and humbled by the privileges and responsibilities that come with ministry. This day has been a long time coming. I am excited about my future serving a congregation.” Currently, she is interviewing with congregations seeking a minister.

Following high school she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at Massachusetts College of Art and Design and later worked in New York for a few years. Baker’s life took on a serious turn after 9/11/2001. She was working in Manhattan when the Twin Towers fell and witnessed much of the destruction from a few blocks away.  Afterward, she realized as far as she knew she had only one life to live and had better hurry up and start doing all the things she meant to do.

“I recalled that I always wanted in live in a foreign country, to learn the language and get to know the people.” This conclusion ended in a three-year stint in the Peace Corps in Guinea, serving first as a teacher of English to high school students and later as an HIV/AIDS and gender education coordinator in Conakry, the capital.

Returning to the states Baker lived in Waltham for two-years and attended the First Parish in Waltham. It was there that she felt a call to ministry and after talking to friends and mentors, applied to Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley, California. Three years of study were followed by an internship with North Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Lewis Center, Ohio. She currently serves as Director of Membership and Communications at First Parish in Concord, MA.

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