Vanessa was ordained to ministry in 1995 upon graduating from Harvard Divinity School.  Her first settled ministry was five years as a minister at The Universalist National Memorial Church in Washington D.C. She served an interim year in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, before being called to serve our congregation in the spring of 2001.

Since arriving in Summit, Vanessa has seen our church through the building of our new extension and a reinvigorated focus on our programming and outreach. In an effort to nurture broader ministry within the congregation, she launched a lay ministry of individuals who assist in worship and others who serve as pastoral care givers. She has also spearheaded a “covenant group” program in which members get a more intimate worship experience as participants in small groups that meet twice a month over the course of a church year.

In the spring of 2004, Vanessa worked with a number of local organizations to coordinate an eight-week forum, called “You are Not Alone,” on issues related to fertility, infertility and family building. Sessions ranged from “Options in Assisted Reproduction” to “The Basics of Adoption” to a forum on religious beliefs about infertility.  Her efforts were covered in a New Jersey Star Ledger article on March 4, 2004 that declared: “Infertility, sex and conception aren’t the typical topics of discussion between pastors and parishioners but that’s exactly what 35-year old reverend and Summit resident, Vanessa Southern has been preaching about lately.”

In explaining her personal theology, Vanessa has written: "...For me there is something beyond and within and between us all that is more than just flesh and blood, intellect and will. It is what I call God (although I am with the Buddha on this one in believing we each grab hold of only one part of this elephant and would be wise not to draw any grand conclusions from our single handful). So I know and speak from what I have experienced, open to what others have experienced, humbled always by what ultimately is mystery and paradox to me..."

Growing up, Vanessa lived in Los Angeles until age eight and then moved to Manhattan, where she worshipped at All Souls Unitarian Church. She graduated from Stanford University in 1990, with a degree in philosophy and religious studies. During her graduate work at Harvard, she interned at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Mass., Morgan Memorial/Goodwill Industries in Boston, and The First and Second Church in Boston.

At Universalist National Memorial Church, Vanessa was called as Associate Minister in July 1995 and then was called as Minister in June 1998. In recalling her time at UNMC, she has said she served a church "that had had a near-death experience, and that was saved by a few tenacious souls." During her tenure, that urban church saw a 30% growth in membership, to about 130 members.

While in Washington, Vanessa spearheaded the organization of the Campus Ministry Program for Unitarian Universalists (CAMPUUs), a program to serve UUs and others seeking liberal religious community on college campuses within a six-state region. In addition, she helped set up the Dark Nights Play Readers, a group that brought together members of the UNMC congregation and others in the local community to discuss and produce works of theatre, and which spawned WIT (Washington Improv Theater Group), an improvisation troupe that still competes and performs in the Washington area and around the country.

Vanessa is married to Rohit Menezes and has a daughter, Leila, who was born in May of 2004.  Vanessa serves as Chair of the Southeastern Regional Subcommittee of the Ministerial Fellowship Committee (a group that interviews seminarians during their formation).

A book of Vanessa's meditations, titled This Piece of Eden, was published by Skinner House Books in 2001. Here is an excerpt:

“What would happen if each of us were to find out that we were the creation of someone else’s dreams?  I wonder: Would that change the way we live our lives? Would we spend less time thinking about what we don’t have or aren’t?  Would we spend more time cherishing who we are?  Would we approach life a bit like a treasure hunt, and spend our time looking for the gifts the dreamer had hidden in us?  Perhaps we would stay awake at night, not worrying, but wondering – wondering what great works or wonders this dreamer had made us capable of making real?”

Click here to order Vanessa’s book.