Meet Rev. Michael DeSantis, Our New Settled Minister!

On May 3, 2026, CVUUS members voted overwhelmingly to call Reverend Michael DeSantis as our next settled minister! Rev. Michael, who uses they/them pronouns, is now a Ministerial Resident at the First Unitarian Society of Denver, CO, covering most of the senior minister’s duties while that minister was on sabbatical for five months.

About Rev. Michael

Michael completed their Master of Divinity studies at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where they worked as a chaplain for hospital patients, nursing home residents, and college students. They served as Intern Minister at Jefferson Unitarian Church in Golden, CO, and then as a Summer Minister in Residence at the UU Church of Boulder, CO. Michael was ordained on April 18 at the Jefferson church. You can watch a recording of their ordination here (click on the link in the top right corner).

The Search Team was introduced to our candidate through Michael’s Ministerial Record, a 30-page document consisting of their responses to questions from the UUA Transitions Office. We immediately knew this was someone we wanted to meet. We learned that Michael hopes for “many years of good, shared ministry,” and is “especially excited about the possibility of staying in one place for a while, really becoming rooted in the wider community, and forging deep pastoral relationships within one congregation.” To them, “worship should always be a space of both consolation and inspiration,” and pastoral care is central to ministry. Social justice is “core” to Michael’s work, and their experience advocating, holding vigils, and getting arrested while protesting inform their approach to parish ministry. Everything in that record resonated with us.

Our interviews with Michael, both on Zoom and in person, solidified our conviction that we would be fortunate to have them as our minister. We discussed deep ideas and more practical matters and shared a fair amount of laughter. Michael’s references were uniformly positive, tending toward glowing.

Here is Michael’s own video message to the congregation.

Candidating Week: April 25-May 3

Rev. Michael arrived Candidating Week late on April 24. They preached on April 26 and May 3. In between those two Sundays, they met with members, friends, and staff in various settings:

May 3rd: The Vote

On Sunday May 3, after the worship service, Rev. Michael left the building and CVUUS members met to take a vote: do we want to call this person to be the next settled minister at CVUUS? Just about 99% of the members present said yes!

How We Got Here

The CVUUS congregation approved a Search Team at its June 2025 Annual Meeting. The Team includes Becky Strum, Ben Long, Priscilla Bremser, Andrea Sambrook, Dorothy Mammen, Hannah Sessions, and Elio Farley (L. to R. on the bus below).

The Search Team had a retreat in August. We drafted a covenant for our work together (see it here), got familiar with details of the search process, and decided who would have which roles over the course of the search.

The Team decided to meet on Monday evenings, mostly via Zoom. Recognizing that our work in the fall centered around gathering input from CVUUS members and friends, we chose to refer to this period as our “Listening Tour.”

We distributed an online survey, using a template from the UUA Transitions office. Read the survey results here.

On September 21, we led the worship service, which you can watch here.

We hosted 18 Cottage Meetings, mostly in October, to hear from small groups about their hopes for what a new minister might mean for CVUUS. A total of 83 individuals took part. See an overview of those conversations here.

On Saturday November 8, 44 congregants attended the Breaking Barriers, Building Beliefs workshop led by Rev. Eric Kaminetzky from the UUA. Rev. Kamintezky preached at CVUUS the next day.

We submitted the final version of the CVUUS Congregational Profile to the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Transitions Team in December. This document was made to potential applicants who had registered with the UUA search system.

After all of the team’s visible activity in the fall, we went quiet as we considered applications in detail, keeping in mind what we heard from congregants in the fall. We interviewed six candidates for an hour each via Zoom, and then brought each of three to Middlebury for a stealth weekend visit, including meals together, over five total hours of interview time, and a Vespers service just for the Search Team in the CVUUS sanctuary.

We found a match! We were excited to learn that we had matched with Michael, who accepted our verbal offer to come be our settled minister (pending congregational vote; see below) on March 26.

On Sunday, April 5 (Easter Sunday), at the end of the worship service, the Search Team told the congregation about Michael, including their name and a bit about why we are so glad to have matched with them. The entire service is available here. Our words about Michael start at about 52:40.