The Rev. Rhett D. Baird was called in the spring of 2004 by the High Street Church to be its third settled minister and the first minister to experience the beautifully renovated 100-year-old building on the corner of High and Orange in the historic district of Macon. Rev. Baird was officially installed as High Street’s settled minister in March of 2005, at the beginning of the Cherry Blossom Festival.

Rev. Baird began his ministry in Macon in August, 2004 after completing a ten-year ministry in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where he was named Minister Emeritus of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Fayetteville in recognition of his work there. He is married to Rhonda Rook Baird of Atlanta, and they have three adult daughters, two sons-in-law and one granddaughter.

Immediately prior to leaving Atlanta for Fayetteville in 1994, Rev. Baird served as a chaplain for a year at the Emory University complex of hospitals with an emphasis in the neuropsychiatric and geriatric areas. He completed his studies for the ministry at Emory’s Candler School of Theology, where he graduated with honors. Part of his preparation for the ministry included an internship at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta.

As an avocation, for thirteen years prior to going to theology school at age forty nine, Rev. Baird was a country-circuit-riding lay minister, serving five small Universalist churches founded mainly in the 19th century in three states: Clayton Memorial in Newberry, S.C. (1907); Rockwell Universalist in Winder, Georgia (1869); New Harmony (1888) in Loganville, Ga.; Harmony Universalist (1838) in Senoia, Georgia; and the First Universalist Church (1846) in Camp Hill, Alabama.

Rev. Baird brings to the ministry and to Macon a variety of professional and vocational experiences: Financial officer for the Center for the Visually Impaired (formerly the Atlanta Area Services for the Blind); director of the Atlanta Region Open Housing Coalition, a component of the Atlanta Community Relations Commission; Director of the North Fulton component of Economic Opportunity Atlanta; Assistant to the President, Abbey Life Insurance Company of Canada; Asst. General Manager, Abbey International and Abbey Overseas in Nassau, Bahamas; Asst. Treasurer, Abbey International Corporation, an international insurance complex owned by Georgia International Corporation and ITT; Asst. Secretary and manager of the mortgage loan and statistical department of Piedmont Southern Life Insurance Company in Atlanta. This last position was held at a time when Macon’s Reginald Trice was the Chairman of the Board of Directors. During that time, Trice was Rev. Baird’s mentor in many ways.

Rev. Baird’s formal studies prior to theology school were at Emory College and Georgia State University. He holds an undergraduate degree in economics and has worked toward M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in economics. During his ten years in Fayetteville, home of the University of Arkansas, Rev. Baird, as an avocation, audited one class every semester, especially in the areas of literature, the humanities, and drama. He places a high value on a life-time of learning.

Rev. Baird brings to his new position in Macon a variety of experiences and honors from his previous community, including serving a term as president of both the local ministerial association and the University of Arkansas Council of Religious Organizations; as interim chair of the NW Arkansas affiliate of the National Conference for Community and Justice (NCCJ) and as chair of the county Transitional Employment Assistance (TEA) Coalition. He also served terms on the boards of a community homeless shelter, a rape crisis center, and a local worker center sponsored by the National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice.

He has also been a member of the local chapter of GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network, a national organization), The League of Women Voters, the NAACP, the local chaplains’ alliance in N.W. Arkansas, the Arkansas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, and the Fayetteville Rotary Club where he was recognized for his outstanding work as chair of the Rotary International Youth Exchange Committee.

In 2002 and 2003, he was honored by being asked to represent the New York City Pension Fund’s 10,000,000 shares of Wal-Mart stock by introducing a human rights-related resolution at the annual Wal-Mart stockholders’ meeting.

Rev. Baird’s work and commitment to justice and fairness with respect to advocating equal treatment under the law, without regard to affectional orientation, was profiled in the January, 2003 issue of The Advocate.

In the spring of 2004, Rev. Baird shared with his former congregation a “Peace and Justice Hero Award” given by Fayetteville’s OMNI Center for Peace, Justice and Ecology. In addition, he was selected by the faculty of the School of Social Work at the University of Arkansas to receive their first annual “Honorary Social Worker of the Year” award.

Rev. Baird is currently a clergy member of the Association of Professional Chaplains, the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association, the Emory University Alumni Association, the Macon Rotary Club, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Heart of Macon Pride, and the Macon Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In February, 2005, Rev. Baird was elected to the Executive Board of the Macon NAACP and appointed chair of the Clergy Committee.