Minister and congregation begin new chapter

Our ancestors understood the importance of stories. It was the way values and mores were passed to future generations before college courses, genealogy searches and the Internet.

Above: The Rev. Virginia Harocha-Ernst interacts with a group of young people at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Lincroft. Below: The UUC's new minister stands beneath a stained glass window in the Earth Room at the meetinghouse. For the new minister at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Monmouth County (UUCMC), home with its many evocations was the center of her first sermon, but the subtext was about stories, hers as well as the congregation's.

The Rev. Virginia Jarocha-Ernst is cognizant of the 53-year history embedded in the one-story building on West Front Street in Lincroft that serves as home for the 300-member congregation.

The richly colored quilt that hangs in her sunny office was made by members of the congregation when the former minister, the Rev. Kathleen Hepler, was installed. And hanging outside her office is a portrait of the first minister, the Rev. Harold Dean.

"This is a story that I think you need to know about me," Rev. Jarocha-Ernst told the congregants. She set up the story line by starting with her parents, who grew up in the Black Forest in Germany.

"They were farmers and vintners. Both came of age as Hitler came into power," she said, thereby beginning the story of how she came to be a minister in a liberal religious congregation.

She explained that her father's family supported and agreed with Hitler, and her father attended the Hitler Youth Camp.

"He was indoctrinated with hate for anyone who wasn't German."

The story on the other side of her family was very different.

"My great-grandmother refused to support Hitler and helped German-Jewish families," she said, adding that when Hitler wanted to create a pure German race, he went looking for young girls to recruit to the cause. Her maternal grandparents were told that since they had three daughters to work on the farm, one of the girls would have to leave the farm and join the movement.

The parents decided to send one daughter to America instead. But which one?

"One daughter hated working on the farm. That was my mother. She volunteered to sail to America, where an aunt brought her to Seaside Heights. She got a job at a hamburger stand on the boardwalk," Rev. Jarocha-Ernst said.

Eventually, her mother got a job working as a maid for a family, and when she was old enough, she went to work in a factory.

"She was dependent on the kindness of strangers. Fortunately, there were people who helped her and became her family," she said.

In the meantime, her father was drafted into the German army. "He eventually wound up in Tunisia. When the opportunity came to be captured by the Americans, he gladly took it," she said, "and was sent to a prison in the South. Mother heard that a boy from her hometown was in America. She found out where he was and wrote to him. Oscar and Julia were engaged by letters."

Rev. Jarocha-Ernst's father spent almost six years in prison in the United States and later in England. He learned to speak English, and after 10 years the engaged couple finally met in Germany. By that time, Julia was an American citizen, and so she returned to the U.S. and Oscar joined her six months later. The couple had four children.

"I'm the middle daughter. I was founded in 1956, like the UUCMC," she said.

Rev. Jarocha-Ernst said the lesson she took most to heart is that you have to think for yourself and question assertions before accepting what others say is true. She added that her father became one of the most liberal-minded people in her childhood and never stopped learning.

"I thought a lot about how good and evil is everywhere, but people can shape how they become, how they can tell true stories about themselves. We make the meaning out of our stories," she said.

Rev. Jarocha-Ernst, who studied art at Montclair State University, said that while growing up, she was attracted to art because "it was a language I could speak."

But she was also interested in religion.

"At the Union Public Library, I found one paragraph in a book on comparative religions about Unitarianism and knew that I wanted to become a minister. The first UU congregation that I attended was in Orange, where I was married."

She joked that at one point she felt the urge to go west, just like her mother, so she crossed the Delaware River and moved to Pennsylvania before moving back to New Jersey to take the position in Lincroft.

She brought with her a plate from Germany that hung in her mother's house. It says in German, "Why is home always so beautiful?"

She also brought with her the guardian angel that hung over her bed as a child, the minister's stole that her children made for her ordination, and a box of crayons that she encouraged the congregation to sniff. She called it "important medicine."

While Rev. Jarocha-Ernst didn't travel very far in terms of miles, she has journeyed a long way from her beginnings as a Catholic child growing up with German parents whose story began in Nazi Germany and ended up in Union, N.J.

The congregation has 300 adult members attending Sunday services and about 150 children taking religious education classes. A search committee considered candidates for the position of minister, and after a process that included preaching at the pulpit and being interviewed by the congregation, Rev. Jarocha-Ernst was unanimously accepted in a congregational vote.

Freehold Township resident Skip Lieb was a member of the search committee.

"After reviewing nine candidates, the committee felt that the Rev. Virginia Jarocha-Ernst was the right person for the job. We were impressed with her honesty and integrity, her warmth and intelligence. We considered her to be a very grounded person, secure in the knowledge of who she was and what she can accomplish in the ministry," he said.

Three weeks into her ministry, the buzz is that she is wonderful. Longtime member Liz Tortorella said, "My impression of Virginia is that she seems like a woman of quiet strength."

Rev. Jarocha-Ernst lives in Marlboro with her husband, Chris, a computer support specialist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, and their dog, Aurora, and cat, Serra. They are the parents of two children, Alex, 27, and Beatrice, 24.

Before entering the ministry, Rev. Jarocha-Ernst worked for 25 years as an artist and educator, primarily in clay, paint and mixed media. She has taught pottery and sculpture at the New Jersey Center for the Visual Arts in Summit and is the recipient of a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship in Interdisciplinary Arts.

After moving to Pennsylvania, she was director of religious education at the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Lehigh Valley for seven years, and from 1997 to 2001 served as director of religious education at the start-up Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Somerset Hills. She graduated with a Master of Divinity degree from the Meadville/Lombard Theological School, Chicago, in 2001.

Rev. Jarocha-Ernst says she reached a turning point after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, especially in dealing with issues of life and death. After finishing a year as a district religious education program consultant assisting churches from central Pennsylvania to Washington, D.C., "I realized that I belonged in a congregation. So I became family minister at the Main Line Unitarian Church outside of Philadelphia.''

And after seven years as a family minister, Rev. Jarocha-Ernst had a similar moment of truth when she realized that she wanted to lead a parish.

"I was drawn to this church because my work as an artist and religious educator is valued here," she said. "This is a congregation of free thinkers and one that is very social justice-oriented. They are trying to make the world a better place.''

Rev. Jarocha-Ernst can be reached at UUCMC at 732-741-6111 or minister@uucmc.org.