About Joshua Lewis Berg, MBA, MDiv, BCC (he/him/his)
Pacific Unitarian Universalist Church in Rancho Palos Verdes, CA is pleased that Pastor Joshua Berg accepted our call, and became our settled minister commencing September 2024.
Joshua was raised in the suburbs of Detroit, MI. He studied Japanese language at the University of Michigan, where he received his undergraduate degree. Throughout his schooling, Joshua lived and studied in Japan as well as Russia.
After graduating college and living overseas for a few years, Joshua returned to work as an actor and producer of theater in New York City. He went back to school at Metropolitan College of New York for an MBA, specializing in Media Management and produced theater in New York and London.
Joshua met and married his wife, Tisha, in New York and had their first child, Sosie. A year later, they moved to Los Angeles and Joshua began working as an administrator for Stephen Wise Temple in Bel Air where he spent the next decade. During that time, Joshua and Tisha welcomed their second daughter, Sage.
In 2015, Joshua became a Humanist celebrant, studying with the Humanist chaplain at Stanford. From there he began formal Clinical Pastoral Education to work as a chaplain. In 2018, he entered Meadville Lombard Theological School, the Unitarian Universalist Seminary in Chicago where he completed a Master of Divinity degree.
In 2022, he was ordained a UU minister and was welcomed into Preliminary Fellowship with the UUA. His ministerial experience includes two years as the intern minister at Northwest Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Michigan, six months as the sabbatical minister at Emerson Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Canoga Park, two years of residency as a chaplain at Children’s Hospital, Los Angeles and freelance preaching and pastoral care nationwide virtually and in person. As of 2024, Joshua is also a Board Certified Chaplain with the Association of Professional Chaplains.
Joshua was raised Jewish, including attending Hebrew school and having a Bar Mitzvah. As an adult he came to identify as a culturally Jewish Humanist. Through formation as a Unitarian Universalist minister, he found his overarching faith conviction in our UU principles and values centered in love. Joshua feels his lived experiences and education could not have brought him to a better place than Pacific Unitarian.
