I very recently moved to Pittsburgh (alone and am trying to get a read on local churches.

UU’s are so welcoming that it I had no worries about trying out churches, meeting people, etc. Unfortunately the first minister I reached out to was not welcoming on multiple levels.

I don’t want to be gossipy but I do want to explain why I’m on edge about all this. The minister with whom I corresponded refused to see if anyone in her congregation would meet for coffee, saying that UUs were introverted. She said that unless I attend services in person then she wouldn’t think I am ready to receive community.

FWIW, my hesitation to attend services is based on not having transportation, being immunocompromised, and living with chronic severe pain.

I won’t go into the rest; I just wanted to explain my cold feet and see if any ministers here have more empathy.

Feel free to PM me if you have anything you don’t want to share publicly.

I’ve never read anything about this and I’m curious because I tend to overestimate others’ authority.

I’m guessing this has been discussed-/what the ideal balance is, how much members should defer, etc, and I’d love to hear some of the most common takes.

I really like my minister, but we had a bad conflict recently and I'm not sure how to work through it.

I don't want to get into the whole issue because my question is about rebuilding trust.

To try to condense it, I'll say I was in a very stressful situation and my minister deferred to a policy I didn't know about. The end result was that I lost a support and went into full PTSD over all of it. I set up a zoom call for tomorrow, and I'll try to explain the context and that it was a PTSD trigger. I'll listen to her as well, of course.

But I don't know how to move on because I feel so betrayed. Instead of taking the time to understand, I felt like she deferred on policy that seemed arbitrary, and she was defensive and inflexible. I'd never seen those traits in her.

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I don't want to still be mad and hurt, but I am. She can't turn back time and is rigid on this issue, so in a way it seems pointless to talk knowing there won't be resolution. But I would like us to be on better terms.

What would you do?