Meet Our Staff
Emily Jones
Director of Religious Education
Emily has been an active Unitarian Universalist for more than a decade. Before serving Allen Ave, Emily served as Director of Religious Education at First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church in Kennebunk, Maine for four years. Prior to moving to New England, Emily was a lay leader at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Little Rock, Arkansas where she was active in religious education, worship arts, and choir.
You can reach Emily by phone, email, or Zoom on Wednesdays and Thursday afternoons and in person at church on Sundays.
Dale Churchill
Music Director
In addition to overseeing our music program, Dale plays the piano for our Sunday services and directs the choir.
Dale graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Boston and has been the music director at the Dean Junior College Theater Department in Franklin, Massachusetts, at the Massasoit Community College in Brockton and at three UU churches in Massachusetts. He also taught music in the Marshfield, MA public schools. A long-time teacher of piano to children and adults, Dale is currently on the faculty at the Portland Conservatory of Music and Waynflete School. His extensive performance experience ranges from cabaret to college music theater, from classical to jazz.
Margaret Steward
Assistant Administrator
Margaret is a native of Maine. She was born and raised in Manchester, Maine. She left her hometown in her early twenties and moved to Portland. She and her spouse, Kelli Fox, have been married for twenty-four years and have two lovely children. Kai, who is nineteen and a daughter, Devan, who is finishing her senior year at Portland HS, and hopes to continue her education at UNE. Her spouse currently is the Associate Director and Field Education Director of the social work program at the University of New England.
Margaret studied computer science and spent her earlier career as an IT and Telecommunication technician. Later, she put her tools down and started a career in the social services field as an administrator and advocate. She and her spouse owned and operated a substance abuse and mental health agency for ten years then sold it and continued their work in the community agencies.
Margaret became self-employed for the past six years, because she wanted to be able to be around more for her growing teens. She had many clients and did an array of duties for them, from home management, home projects, basic home maintenance, gardening, doctor appointments and companionship. Now that her children are older, she is ready to go back to work part time and continue her commitment to a few clients.
Margaret and her family enjoy, biking, hiking, traveling, snowboarding/skiing and much more. In her free time, she enjoys being outside with her dog, amateur guitar playing, motorcycling riding, reading and being with family and friends.
Tirrell Kimball
Director of Religious Education Emerita
Tirrell (she/her) was Allen Avenue’s first professional Director of Religious Education, serving from 1976 to 2001. She joyfully built a program including more than one hundred kids, enough to help require the building expansion that opened in 1991. Tirrell played a large personal part in her program, working with two youth groups, leading sexuality courses, taking Coming-of-Age graduates to Boston, and more – while also volunteering as a church member in many other areas of A2U2 life.
This petite ball of energy was thought by some to be the fastest moving person in the place. No prospective RE leader ever escaped her. On the national level, Tirrell and her husband, Rick, developed a rich series of religious education curricula distributed through their own Green Timber Publications company to UU congregations throughout the country and beyond. Together they advanced the cause of liberal religion by leading creativity workshops for RE leaders from Maine to California and England.
In 2003, Tirrell received the Angus MacLean Award, presented by the UU denomination to an outstanding religious educator chosen from a national pool. In June of 2010, her congregation named her Director of Religious Education Emerita.