Leaders & Staff

Rev. Dr. Debra Haffner and Rev. Joel Miller, Co-Ministers

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Rev. Dr. Debra Haffner (she/her) and Rev. Joel Miller (he/him) are senior co-ministers.  They share worship responsibilities and pastoral care as well as working with the Operations Council and with the Board of Trustees. Rev. Joel serves the chief of staff and has primary responsibility for religious education, operations, building and supporting FUUSN’s Lay Ministers. Rev. Debra has primary responsibility for community relationships, stewardship, social justice, communications, and membership outreach.

Rev. Dr. Debra Haffner has been a UU minister for 22 years, and previously served congregations in Huntington, NY, Santa Cruz, CA, Reston, VA, Westport, CT, and Hastings-on-Hudson, NY. She is the President Emerita and co-founder of the Religious Institute and has written numerous books, including Beyond the Big Talk, From Diapers to Dating, and What Every 21st-Century Parent Needs to Know. She is the creator of the Sexually Safer Best Practices Initiative used by the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA).

Rev. Joel Miller has been a UU minister for 34 years and has served many congregations in interim and settled ministry, including congregations in Morristown, NJ, Indianapolis, IN, Rochester, NY, Buffalo, NY, and Littleton, CO. He is a co-founder of the Unitarian Universalist Trauma Response Ministry and has been a thought leader in Unitarian Universalist Interim Ministry.  His focus on trauma response ministry is rooted in Rev. Miller’s personal experience serving the Littleton, CO, Unitarian Universalist congregation during the aftermath of the Columbine High School mass shooting.

Anne Watson Born, Director of Music Ministry

Anne Watson Born (she/her/hers) has been at FUUSN since 2007, and it has been a mind-altering and wonderful experience from the beginning. Ms. Watson Born is a credentialed UU music leader, and she was the chair of the Music Leadership Certification Committee for 7 years. She has served on two UUA committees on Shared Ministry and was recently a member of the UUA’s Worship Wave Cohort. She conducted the Living Tradition Singers at GA in 2014 and the GA Choir in 2018. She is also in her 20th season as Music Director of the Nashoba Valley Chorale, a non-auditioned community choir with 90 members that performs choral-orchestral repertoire.

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Karen Hurley, Nursery Care

Linnea Bardarson, Organist/Pianist

Linnea Bardarson (she/her/hers) grew up in Seattle, the youngest in a large family where all the kids took music lessons, and the guitar was often brought out for after-dinner folk singing. With a classical violinist mother, a father who loved the blues, two church-musician grandparents, plus another grandmother who wooed her suitor by playing the harp and singing, “Dear One, The World is Waiting for the Sunrise,” she has had a variety of musical influences to inspire her own musical journey – a journey which over the years has included playing chamber music, accompanying Chorus pro Musica and Koleinu, playing nightly gigs at the old Café Budapest and Colonnade Hotel in Boston, touring Spain with an orchestra, recording piano concertos in the Czech Republic, and leading church choirs for over twenty years. After taking time off to raise her twin boys, she now teaches piano at UMass/Boston and Dedham School of Music. She enjoys playing the banjo and leading singing workshops on Star Island.

Linnea received her Bachelor of Arts from Mills College and her Master of Music in piano performance from New England Conservatory of Music.

As a child she attended East Shore Unitarian Church in Bellevue, Washington. For the past fifteen years, First Church and Parish, Unitarian-Universalist, Dedham, has been her church home. She served as Music Director there from 2007-2018. She is very excited to be here at FUUSN. Linnea lives in Dedham with her husband, Joel.