Our Ministers

Barbara and Bill Hamilton-Holway were called by our congregation as our co-ministers in 1996. Before coming to our congregation, they served as co-ministers in Salt Lake City, Utah. During this time, they helped expand Unitarian Universalism by serving as Organizing Ministers for congregations forming in Ogden and Park City.

Barbara is a graduate of Starr King School for the Ministry. Before ministry, she did graduate work in literature and for a decade she was a high school English teacher. Barbara also was a teacher as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Fiji Islands. She is grateful for her years parenting her now grown children Sarah and Ben. Walking, blue skies, sunshine, poetry, friends and family refresh her spirits. Barbara wants her ministry to encourage people to be true to themselves, to be who they can be, and to increase the odds on justice and love.

Bill graduated from Meadville/Lombard Theological School and the University of Chicago Divinity School. After graduation, he served as minister of congregations in Texas and worked for the Unitarian Universalist Association in Boston as Director of the Extension Department. During college a significant decision for Bill was registering as a Conscientious Objector. Bill's family roots in Unitarian Universalism go back many generations. His grandparents were founders of All Souls Unitarian Church is Tulsa and his parents are founders of Hope Unitarian Church in Tulsa. Unitarian Universalism is in his blood. Family, genealogical research, reading, writing, travel, and hiking are among his great loves.

Barbara and Bill like collaboration and team ministry and are grateful to work with the excellent staff and the good congregation of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley.

Photo credit: Jim Gasperini

Our Minister of Religious Education

Rev. Christopher Holton Jablonski, our Minister of Religious Education, is a lifelong Unitarian Universalist who is committed to the power and potential of Unitarian Universalism to change lives. He was born and raised just outside of Boston, and is a passionate Patriots fan and a deep appreciator of the epic saga of the Red Sox. Here at UUCB, he helps a passionate and committed group of lay leaders bring a dynamic, vibrant and engaging program for Lifespan Religious Education. He is committed to an empowering pedagogy, one which sees the task of Religious Education both for children and adults not as a process of indoctrination, not as a process of handing down iron clad beliefs and ideas, but rather a process of creative discovery and ethical imagination. Religious Education at UUCB sees that each and every person who comes through our doors, from the youngest to the oldest, holds a piece of the truth, and that the blessing and gift of religious community is that together we can all learn from the singular truth we each hold.

Photo credit: Mark Johnson

Our Community Ministers

Rev. Cathleen Diane Cox is a Unitarian Universalist spiritual director serving individuals, life partners and communities, both UU and interfaith, by offering guidance and tools for creating balanced, meaningful and relationally centered lives in this world and this age.

Her approach to spiritual development is eclectic, drawing on classical Unitarian and Universalist theology, current psychological and ethical paradigms of human development, as well as cross cultural wisdom traditions and world religions.

She holds the degrees of Master of Divinity (Starr King School for the Ministry) and Master of the Art of Teaching (U.C. Berkeley) as well as two California teaching credentials. She co-teaches Community Building at Pacific Central District’s annual Leadership School and has an extensive background in speaking, teaching, writing and workshop facilitation. She is certified as a dreamworker by the Institute of Advanced Archetypal Studies and is a 2002 recipient of the Margaret Fuller Award of the Unitarian Universalist Women’s Federation for her work on the archetypes of feminism.

Cox Photo credit: Blythe Greene

Rev. Jane Ramsey is a community minister affiliated with the Unitarian Universalist church of Berkeley. A graduate of Pacific School of Religion and an ordained UU minister, she is currently working on a Doctorate in Ministry with special emphasis on pastoral counseling at the San Francisco Theological Seminary. Jane facilitates a Grief Support group and a Facing Aging and Death group in the Berkeley congregation. She leads worship once a month on Thursday evenings as well. She is a member of the Pacific Central District (of the UUA) Board of Directors and facilitates the gathering of community ministers in the Pacific Central District. Jane performs weddings and rites of passage for people who are not affiliated with a church.

Rev. Lisa Sargent works as Chaplain at the Kaiser Antioch Medical Center, providing pastoral care to patients, their families, and staff. She received her Master of Divinity from Starr King School for the Ministry and completed her chaplaincy residency at John Muir Health Concord. Her love of chaplaincy is rooted in her beliefs that we can support one another through times of struggle and that we can experience God in one another. Lisa is a member of the UUCB Chaplains and co-leads a UU Christian worship service at UUCB once a month.