belonging, meaning, storytelling
I am Rev. Kevin W. Jagoe, a Unitarian Universalist Minister & Humanist Educator with more than a decade of experience as an organizational leader, communications professional, graduate education in nonprofit management & religious leadership, and deep connection to the Humanist and Non-Theistic movements in the United States. My work teaching and mentoring leaders has been growing in recent years.
My purpose is to expand what we think of as religious or intentional communities to help people create relationships and spaces that promote belonging, meaning-making, and telling our stories to one another and to the world. I do this through congregational ministry, creating ceremonies, and sharing my ideas in a variety of venues.
I'm so glad you found me!
My vocation as a minister brings me into relationship with people, communities, and movements in a variety of ways.
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I officiate ceremonies, teach, speak, and write as well as lead organizations and volunteer in multiple national movements.
If you'd like to know more about my academic and professional background click "find out more..." below. Feel free to explore by scrolling down this homepage or the rest of my site using the navigation up top.
Areas of Focus
The three through-lines of my various activities connect with my three interrelated passions -- experiences I seek to create and share with more and more people:
belonging &
community creation
A lack of belonging is a primary motivation for my work around creating community. Communities are also the places where we can practice meaning making, writing the stories of our lives, and forming our identities together.
Community comes in many forms from casual happy hours to long-term congregational life to those gathered together for a shared ritual or ceremony. All of these and more help us feel more connected and hopefully a sense of belonging, even for a moment or an evening.
meaning &
identity formation
Something that religion has done throughout history is assisted people in the intertwined projects of meaning making & identity formation.
Many of the rituals we take part in reinforce established identities or help us embrace new roles and aspects of ourselves. Rarely do meaning or identity happen all at once in a single experience but we often use rituals or religious language to mark when these things have already occurred.
storytelling &
movement building
Stories help define us and help us make meaning out of the experiences of life. We create community, identity, meaning, and belonging through the stories we tell. And these stories often become the movements we build for societal change and for finding belonging among others.
Rituals are stories acted out. Communities are stories told through relationships over time. Movements are made of communities which in turn are made of individuals and our stories are what tie us together.
