Building a Spiritual Community That Changes Lives

Through its years of development, working from a couple of temporary facilities, Pathways has grown into a self-supporting, growing congregation that moved into leased facilities in June, 2006.

Our welcoming members and friends come from a wide variety of traditions and represent the spectrum of spiritual belief. Read more about the Significant Events of Pathways' History and the history prepared by the Ministerial Search Committee.

2000-2003 Pathways Church is begun by the Unitarian Universalist Association as an experimental attempt to start a large UU congregation from scratch. Land for a future large church building in Keller is purchased on Pathways behalf by a local UU endowment fund. A few generous and visionary UU families in the DFW area fund a $1,000,000 grant to lease office space and hire five full-time staff members to create and market seeker-friendly liberal religious programming to the NE Tarrant community. Rev. Anthony David is employed by the UUA to serve as Pathways Senior Pastor/CEO.

January 2004 Small groups and occasional worship services begin.

September 2004 Weekly Sunday worship begins in an old “rent-by-the-hour” intermediate school cafetorium. Staff hiring is completed.

January 2005 The Religious Education program for children and youth is launched.

February 2005 Funding from the original grant is predicted to end by December 2005 due to unforeseen costs and growth delays. UUA promises Pathways staff that the grant funding will be extended by six months (through June 2006) to give Pathways staff a full year to implement programming and transition gradually into the possible loss of staff for the following year.

September 2005 UUA unexpectedly withdraws the February 2005 offer to extend funding beyond December 2005. During the Fall, Pathways abruptly shifts from five full-time staff members to one pastor (who takes a significant pay cut); a lay/volunteer administrative and programming structure is designed and implemented; members commit themselves deeply and passionately to the survival and future of the church.

Spring 2006 Volunteer members take over the leadership responsibilities previously handled by former staff members. Pathways places the Keller land on the real estate market and also directly secures some local funding. A search is conducted for 24/7 space for both worship and offices/meetings. Stewardship campaign yields $140,000 for FY2007.

June 2006 The Keller land is sold for a $300,000 profit. A three-year lease for Nolen space is signed, and Pathways moves in.

July 2006 Pastor (Rev. Anthony David) is employed with additional compensation, Director of LifeSpan Religious Education (Lisa Efthymiou) is employed at 75%-time pay, and Office Administrator (Stefanie Newton) at 50%-time pay.

March 2007 Lisa Efthymiou submits intention to resign as Director of LifeSpan Religious Education, effective June 30, 2007, in order to pursue career as Montessori teacher

April 2007 Rev. Anthony David submits intention to resign as Pathways pastor, effective June 30, 2007, in order to lead a much larger UU church in Atlanta.

May 2007 Board hires Interim Minister Rev. Kathy Schmitz (for 2007-08) and begins forming search committee for Settled Minister (to be employed beginning summer 2008). DRE search committee recommends Julie Lambert as new DRE beginning July 1, 2007.

Pathways History
The Experiment
The history of Pathways Church in Southlake, Texas is shorter than some auto
loans. It stretches back about 234 weeks or approximately 55 months. It was
founded in 2003 as an experimental large church startup with a million dollar grant
from the Unitarian Universalist Association. The experiment was to see if a UU
mega church could be grown from 0 to 600 members in three years by following
selected tactics from Evangelical Christian mega churches.
Specifically, Pathways experiment would:
● Start the church with a full staff
● Develop a comprehensive small group structure that
would support rapid growth
● Purchase and hold land with the intention of building a
home for the congregation as quickly as possible
● Implement a major marketing campaign and speaker
series
● Delay weekly Sunday worship until 300 would be in
regular attendance
● Create a policy governance structure in which the Board of Trustees
delegates responsibilities to the lead pastor and staff
Pathways had a rented office and a pastor before it had any members. The original
staff included a lead pastor, a worship/spiritual development pastor, a Family Life
pastor, an executive director, and a musician/office manager. With the exception of
the musician/office manager, all of the original staff were employed by the UUA.
The original staff members were:
Anthony David
Lead Pastor, served from July 2003 to June, 2007. He left Pathways to
become Senior Minister of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of
Atlanta.
Christine Tata
Associate Pastor for Worship and Spiritual Development, served from
April, 2004 through December, 2005. Christine was laid-off when the
UUA funding ended.
Robert Moore
Associate Pastor for LifeSpan Religious Education, served from August,
2004 to December, 2005. Rob was laid-off when the UUA funding
ended. Rob and his family are now members of Pathways Church. Rob
is leading several of our Adult RE classes and the leadership
development training program.

Meryl Gunter
Executive Director, served from July, 2003 to December, 2005. Meryl was laid off when the UUA
funding ended. Meryl and her family are now members of Pathways Church. Meryl participates in the
Our Whole Lives programs and other aspects of the RE program.
Laurie Simmons
Music Coordinator/Office Manager, served from August, 2004 to December, 2005. Laurie was laid off
when the UUA funding ended.
In 2004, three small “journey groups” were formed and began meeting in member’s homes. This original
group of approximately 40 members was also responsible for creating the original Pathways DNA
document. Pathways Church's mission statement and DNA are the most commonly cited reasons people
are attracted to the congregation. The DNA has been a defining document for both decision making and for
living together as a community.
Later in 2004, the first Board of Trustees was created. Since Pathways had no bylaws, policies, or
procedures, these original Board members were invited onto the Board by Pastor David. Much of the work
of the original board was to create all of the bylaws, policies, and procedures.
Pathways began holding weekly worship services, called
SpiritSong, on Sunday September 19, 2004, in the cafeteria of an
empty middle school. There were 140 people present. However,
many of the people attending that first worship service were well
wishers from other UU churches. We were growing much slower
than the UUA experimenters had expected.
In February, 2005, Religious Education was launched. A second
service, called Simple Gifts, started in September, 2005. The
Simple Gifts service was a more traditional church service that
included the use of hymn books in a more contemplative
environment. This was in contrast to the contemporary style of the
SpiritSong service.
The Pathways experiment with its fully funded staff was expected to last through June, 2006. However, in
September of 2005 the UUA advised the Pathways Board of Trustees that funding would end sooner than
expected. By December, 2005 all UUA funding had stopped and all of the staff except Pastor David had
been laid off. The experiment was over.
Pathways Rebirth
These were dark days in the history of Pathways. For a time it was unclear whether Pathways would even
survive. Our monthly financial pledges would barely cover
the cost of a full-time pastor plus the hourly rental on the
school cafeteria. The Simple Gifts worship service was
canceled and RE was held concurrently with the church
service. This allowed us to reduce the cafeteria rental to
only two hours per week. We were in survival mode. It’s
true what they say “that which doesn’t kill you makes you
stronger.”
We are extremely grateful for the initial funding of Pathways
Church by the UUA. One of the many benefits of this
largesse was that it allowed Pathways Church to hire consultants who helped shape the foundation and program structure
that we now have. It also helped establish an innovative worship style,
small group ministries, and leadership development opportunities.
In retrospect, it was during this time period that Pathways Church
transitioned from being a UUA-directed experiment to being our church.
Faced with the possibility that Pathways might cease to exist, the
members stepped up and took control of Pathways with their time,
talents, and money. In 2006, Pathways Church had the highest
average per-member pledge rate ($2,563) in the denomination.
With only one remaining paid staff member (the lead pastor) and
meager financial resources, the leadership rebuilt programs and
governance using volunteer lay leaders. Rather than die, as it might
have, the congregation came to life after this event. The congregation
officially called Pastor Anthony David as our settled minister. Pathways
voted to affiliate with the UUA, Southwest District, and NTAUUS. Lay
leaders stepped up to take on responsibilities of former staff members.
It is gratifying to note that several former staff members have returned
to Pathways as members and are serving in significant volunteer roles. Policy governance was abandoned
for a more appropriate representative democratic governance structure, and members were empowered to
create their own church.
It became clear that if Pathways was going to become a viable congregation we had to get out of the school
cafeteria and into a space we could occupy 24/7. That’s when
we caught two big breaks. First, we received a significant
grant from a Dallas area UU church member. Second, as part
of the UUA experiment NTAUUS had land-banked a parcel of
11 acres in our name. We sold that land in May, 2006, for
approximately $300,000 net profit. Although the Church at first
considered purchasing buildings or land with the profit, we
decided against that. We believe that Pathways’ mission is too
big to play small. Instead, we are using the land sale profits to
fund programs and staff for the near term, with the conviction
that we will grow so as to serve the people who are hungry for
our message of hope and acceptance. In June 2006, we
moved into our current space, which we occupy full time.
It could be said that in June, 2007, the last piece of the “scaffolding” that helped hold us up during the UUA
experiment came down in the form of the resignation of Pastor Anthony David. We are currently enjoying
the services of Interim Pastor Kathryn Schmitz as we search for a new settled minister.