Rev. Dr. Paul Shupe, Senior Pastor of Hancock United Church of Christ in historic Lexington, Massachusetts, has fully settled in to his new ministry. Shupe celebrates the completion of two full years at Hancock in August, having arrived from Madison, Wisconsin (and before that, Portland, Maine). Hancock is a large church, with 750 members and nearly 200 children, and the burgeoning church is also served by Associate Pastor Dana Allen Walsh.

Shupe became involved in a Clergy Community of Practice - one of the cornerstones of the MACUCC's Pastoral Excellence Program (PEP) - almost immediately after coming to Hancock. It was a move he would enthusiastically recommend to his colleagues and to churches who want to support their ministers.

"The pool of wisdom and experience is tremendous. I shudder to count how many years of pastoral experience are present [in the room]," he said. "And the support extends beyond the meetings, because I now have connections to these colleagues. I can call [someone] and say, 'Look, you are experienced in this area. What do you think?' There is constant discussion of best practices, ideas that are meaningful. We push each other to take good care of ourselves, to rest, to recreate...it is a place where self-care is encouraged."

Shupe had participated in similar groups in other locales, but said the MACUCC Pastoral Excellence Program is different in some significant ways. Shupe recalls, "In Maine, six of us formed our own program, engaged a pastoral counselor to facilitate it and help us help each other. It was expensive and difficult because no one else was going to support it, and our facilitator was not trained in it - we had to train him as to what we wanted - and we had to pay for it ourselves.