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The Rev. Todd M. Strickland (1966–) is a Unitarian Universalist minister who was the chaplain at University of Colorado Hospital during the night of the 2012 Aurora movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado. Prior to that, he served as the Minister for Lifespan Religious Experience for seven continuous years of significant growth at Jefferson Unitarian Church in Jefferson County, Colorado and then served as a consulting minister during another period of significant growth to the Namaqua Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Loveland, Colorado. After 10 years as a congregational minister, he turned to chaplaincy in 2011. At the time of the movie theater shooting, he was on call on the hospital grounds when a call came for him to come down to the Emergency Room immediately. He organized a triage center at the hospital to help people connect with loved ones who had been brought to the hospital emergency room in the immediate aftermath of the shooting and later led a debriefing with staff impacted by the shooting.

Personal History [edit]
Rev. Strickland was born in Columbus, Ohio and raised in the Church of Christ while growing up in Westerville, Ohio but discovered Unitarian Universalism shortly after graduating from Oberlin College. He was ordained in 2000 after graduating from Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley, California in 2000. Strickland graduated from Oberlin College in 1989 with a major in Religion and a minor in Black Studies and History. During his time at Oberlin he underwent a religious transformation that led him away from the fundamentalist Christianity of his childhood and toward a liberal religious humanism that led him to find Unitarian Universalism after he moved to Cleveland after graduation. Immediately after graduating from Oberlin College with a degree in Religion, Strickland worked as the Communications Director for the peace organization Sane/Freeze of Greater Cleveland. During this time, he organized a campaign that defunded the B-2 Stealth Bomber at a time when the nation was beginning to talk about a possible “peace dividend” with the fall of the Soviet Union. Relying heavily on a grassroots campaign to lobby then Ohio Senator and former astronaut John Glenn, Strickland organized a postcard campaign in this pre-internet area which persuaded Senator Glenn to take a leadership position to end funding for the B-2 Bomber. In 1996, he enrolled at Starr king School for the Ministry where he graduated in 2000 with a Master of Divinity and a focus on religious education and pastoral care. As graduation approached, his former classmate and friend, Rev. Peter Morales, encouraged him to bring his ministry to Jefferson Unitarian Church where Rev. Morales was already a settled minister. Strickland accepted a call to ministry at Jefferson Unitarian Church that spring and began his ministry there in August. During his seven years of continuous ministry to the congregation, the congregation doubled in size as did the religious education program for children and youth. This growth continued even when Rev. Morales left the congregation for two years to serve the Unitarian Universalist Association in Boston.

In 2004, he met his future wife, Christine, and they were married in 2005. They have two children, a son and a daughter, who were born in 2009 and 2011, respectively.

In 2007, he left his called position at Jefferson Unitarian Church and worked as the campaign manager for Colorado State Representative Andy Kerr in 2008. As that campaign was wrapping up, he accepted a position to serve as consulting minister to Namaqua Unitarian Universalist Congregation, a young congregation in Loveland, Colorado that was undergoing some struggles after the departure of their first called minister. During his time in Loveland, the congregation gained more solid footing by moving into a new building and doubling its membership. After two years of ministry in Loveland, he encouraged the congregation to call a minister who would live among them in Loveland rather than commute from an hour away as he had been doing. The congregation called a permanent settled minister at the end of his third year of ministry as he prepared to move his ministry to the chaplaincy at UCHealth.

At UCHealth, he worked in his first year as the chaplain to the Neonatal ICU, the high risk labor and delivery unit, and the Cardiac ICU. After that, he accepted a placement as a chaplain at the Center for Dependency, Addiction, and Recovery (CeDAR), the recovery center attached to UCHealth. During his tenure there, he established a teaching ministry to train chaplains in the unique skill of addictions chaplaincy. After six years at UCHealth, Strickland resigned his position at CeDAR to come home and devote time to his family as a stay at home father to his children.