Marlene Walker is serving our congregation as Interim Minister, following the departure of Rev. Hilary Krivchenia for her new church.

“Fundamental to my understanding of ministry is that it is a shared enterprise. Ministry is not something I do to people, but rather a relationship that I enter into with people. The many dimensions of ministry: preaching, teaching, facilitating and counseling, are all based on my personal understanding of ministry as a mutual relationship with individuals, with a congregation, and with how we speak of what is holy, divine, and central in our lives.”

Rev. Walker is the parent of three grown children: Josh Walker, a management consultant for McKinsey & Co. in Palo Alto, CA; Noah Walker, an architect in Los Angeles, CA, and their half-sister, Kate Walker, the newly- called minister at the Mount Vernon UU Church in Alexandria, VA.

Rev. Walker and her spouse, Gloria Perez, are pleased to be moving to West Lafayette and delighted to be even closer to Gloria’s four adult children in the Chicago area as well as their three “soon to be four” grandchildren.

Rev. Walker was raised by a conservative Jewish family of Holocaust survivors in Boston. Her interest in other religions led her to join, at the age of 20, a traditional UU New England church, which had a Paul Revere bell and served communion once a month.

In the years following her ordination, she worked as a consulting minister, a new congregation minister, and interim minister on the East Coast, while completing a doctorate of Ministry at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, awarded in 1999.

While at EDS, Rev. Walker completed a yearlong course on Supervision for Ministry and was certified as a field education and internship supervisor through the Boston Theological Institute. She served the UU Church of Greater Lynn in Swampscott, MA as interim MRE for two years and as acting Parish Minister for one year. She ministered to a deeply divided and wounded congregation by focusing on being a pastor to all. Her ministry focused on healing and being a non-anxious presence in the midst of congregational conflict.  

In 2000, she became the Minister for Religious Education at the First Unitarian Society of Chicago, as well as the UU campus minister at the University of Chicago.

Rev. Walker then served as the first settled minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Grand Valley in Grand Junction, CO from 2003-2006. In 2006 Rev. Walker again entered the Accredited Interim Ministry program of the UUA and began serving a two-year interim ministry at Peoples Church UU in Cedar Rapids, IA.

Rev. Marlene Walker sees the UU tradition as a modern synthesis of liberal Christianity, humanism and influences from world religions:

“For many people, myself included, it allows us to be in a religious community and bring all of ourselves, the parts of us Jewish or Christian, Buddhist or earth-based or other traditions all of that together and not have to leave any of it at the door. It’s not that we are not Christian: we are that, and more. You become very multi-lingual, spiritually.”