Reverend Ben Fowler

Reverend Dr. Ben Fowler joined the Nottingham Community Church as its full time Pastor in September of 2006. His long and varied background as a musician, educator and counselor has made him a good fit for our community and offered us an opportunity for stability and Pastoral care that has been a much needed boost to the church.

Ben Started life as a folk musician in Portland, Maine and until age 26 made his living playing music as a solo musician and as a front man for a puppet troupe in Providence, R.I., where he and his wife lived while she completed art school. In 1978, Ben received an MBA from the University of New Hampshire, and went on to work as a business consultant, educator and trainer for businesses of all sizes through out the New England area. He became a full time professor at the University of New Hampshire’s Thompson School of Applied Science, where he continues to work, teaching courses in strategic management and supervisory management.

In 1992 he completed a Certificate of Advanced Graduate Study in Counseling, also from U.N.H., and for ten years ran a private practice in counseling. In 2000, he went on to study at the University of Creation Spirituality in Oakland, California, from which he received a Doctorate in Ministry in 2003. He was ordained as an Inter-faith minister at the All-Faiths Seminary International, in Manhattan, in 2004.

Ben has been a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church since 1997. Though his background is varied he sees his work life to be “of a piece” putting him on a spiritual path that has slowly come to fruition over the decades, ultimately resulting in his work at the Nottingham Church.

“I think of my ministry as an effort to reduce people’s ability to understand their spiritual journey to a few understandable principles and concepts,” Ben says of his goals. “I do not believe that anyone has to believe in a proscribed doctrine, but that each person needs to find their own spiritual path. I hope to facilitate their journey; to support them as they seek whatever it is that gives them a sense of the inner divinity that each of us has. Unitarian-Universalism offers a valuable set of universal principles as touch-stones that are strong aides in helping one find a spiritual path that fits for them. We all must also challenge ourselves to see the world through a spiritual framework so that we share with the world the spiritual core that is common to every person.”