Our Minister

The Reverend Sam Teitel

Rev. Sam was born in the tiny farm town of Freestone, California. Spending the first decade of his life as a farm kid is still an essential part of who he is. Farm communities are tight-knit, and Rev. Sam was taught from the very beginning to always look out for the people around him and take care of the Earth on which we live. These values formed the foundation of his Unitarian Universalist faith and they are still important to him.

As a teen and young adult, Rev. Sam lived in the Boston area and attended college in Western Massachusetts. (He likes strong coffee and the Boston Red Sox.) After college, and a few years performing and touring as a slam poet, Rev. Sam decided to go to seminary and pursue ordained Unitarian Universalist ministry.

He entered Andover Newton Theological School in the fall of 2012 and earned a Master's of Divinity and a Master's of Arts in Global Interreligious Leadership. While at Andover Newton, Rev. Sam also met his brilliant and supportive wife, Sandra, who is a minister in the United Church of Christ.

A minister, when you get right down to it, is someone who helps create sacred spaces. In everything that Rev. Sam does as a minister, he believes that helping to create these sacred spaces is his most important responsibility. This might be a little easier to imagine in spaces like a Sunday morning worship service, but even while giving pastoral care or during a staff meeting, Rev. Sam believes it is always the job of the minister to invoke the sacred and to serve as a reminder of the commitments we have all made to our Unitarian Universalist principles and to each other.