Unitarian Universalist Church of Flint
A WELCOMING CONGREGATION
service at 10:30 a.m. Sundays

Biography: Reverend David Carl Olson

Minister
Rev. David Carl Olson

Church Administrator
Peggy Sexton

Director of Lifespan Learning
Amy Derrick

         
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David Carl Olson’s first profession was as a singer, actor and director in music theater and opera. While still a student at Brown University, he trod the boards at Highfield Theater in Falmouth, Massachusetts as a tenor in the vocal ensemble of College Light Opera Company, an adventurous summer stock music theater that performs nine operettas and Viennese and Broadway musicals in a nine week season each summer, performing with a full orchestra six performances a week. Over the course of three summers, he performed nearly all the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, appeared in embarrassingly modest dance costumes, and stayed up too many nights helping techies finish building, focusing and sewing. After college, David went to Boston to study with noted teacher of singing Clara Shear, who allowed him, after three years, to audition for the biggest little theater in Boston, the Next Move, where he was immediately cast in a long-running musical adaptation of a commedia dell’arte frolic. David was then introduced to nationally-known acting teacher Maxine Klein, and quickly became a leader of her working-class political theater company Little Flags Theater. Upon Dr. Klein’s retirement, David became Producing Director of Little Flags for ten years. Throughout his theater career, David has served as Artist in Residence in numerous urban schools and community centers in Massachusetts, creating with children, youth and senior citizens original theater pieces. In 1987, he created with 120 sixth grade students in Lawrence, Massachusetts an original musical about the 1912 "Bread and Roses" textile workers strike. David brings his musical gifts to his role as cantor and liturgical musician in liberal Christian and Jewish congregations, retreats and conferences. In 1999, he was cantor to the General Synod of the United Church of Christ. During his years at Andover Newton Theological School, he served as a Worship Leader of the student-led service "Worship in the African American Tradition." He holds ordained ministerial standing in the Unitarian Universalist Association and the United Church of Christ. David earned a Certificate in Clinical pastoral Education at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts under the supervision of Rev. Tom Sullivan. Father Tom, an Episcopal priest who loved the "smells and bells" of high liturgy but embraced an existentialist philosophy, demanded of David a practical theology which allowed him, a skeptic around the notion of God, to fully pastor to people of more traditional theologies. For Father Tom, the question was not one of beliefs, but of the possibility of effective personal connection between human beings; the demand on the chaplain was overcoming one’s own defensiveness of a "position" on God, and getting positioned to meet another human in a deep place of woundedness and resourcefulness. This resonated strongly with the improvisation of David’s theater background, and marked a break through in his pastoral ability. In 1998, Rev. David Carl Olson became the Leader and Minister of the Community Church of Boston, the "free pulpit in action" founded after World War I by Universalist Clarence Russell Skinner, Unitarian John Haynes Holmes and social activist Mrs. Gertrude Winslow. Community Church of Boston became a founding member of the largest broad-based community organization in New England, Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, which organized interreligious solidarity with largely Latino janitors and mainly Haitian nursing home workers in their struggles, while bringing attention to the Boston housing crisis and securing $135 million in new state funding for affordable housing development in Massachusetts. During his three-year tenure as President of GBIO, Rev. Olson became known as "pastor to the workers" on picket lines, at rallies and while observing negotiations with CEOs. Rev. Olson for six years represented the Unitarian Universalist Association on the Strategy and Action Commission of the Massachusetts Council of Churches; sits on the Steering Committee of the Boston Clergy and Religious Leaders Group for Interfaith Dialogue; and facilitates an interreligious prayer service at the Episcopal cathedral on New Year’s Eve, and celebrations throughout Boston of the freedom of same gender couples to marry in Massachusetts. A member of Pastors for Peace, he serves on the National Board of the US-Cuba Sister Cities Association. Rev. Olson was widowed in 1996 with the death of his partner Dionicio Santos Ureña; and he treasures his large Swedish and Irish family of origin in Rhode Island and his Dominican in-laws in Boston and Santo Domingo.

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2474 South Ballenger Highway
phone: 810-232-4023   fax:810-232-4221
office hours: 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m., M-F
e-mail: office@uuflint.org
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