UBU Ministries is a Universalist Free Church promoting the everyday application of the "Golden Rule".
Our membership is open to all persons of every cultural or religious background.
UBU Ministries began in 1984 in Detroit, Michigan, organized by Reverends Gregory and Katrina Lowrey. The original church name was People for Peace. The thrust of the ministry at the time was to create music, art and literature promoting personal and social responsibility via strict exercise of the Golden Rule.
At the same time, Rev. Gregory was in extensive consultation with world political leaders, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, promoting voluntary peaceful relations and designing and ultimately convincing one of those parties of a radical plan that in 1986, ended the cold war.
Over the years, the name of the ministry has changed a few times and it's primary activities have altered to suit the changing needs of the membership and community. UBU has always operated charity schools, health clinics and social services, helping people discover and develop their God given gifts to support themselves, enjoy the exercise and growth of their personal potential and make a contribution to their culture and the world. UBU has also provided studies, lectures, healing and counseling services to members and the public in scheduled private and public meetings and on demand.
Our church is Universalist. To us this means that we accept the personal and socially developmental teachings of any group or individual. To us there is one standard and universally applicable test for all thought and behavior, the Golden Rule.
As we hold each person's spiritual perspective and practice must be individually derived to be authentic, we must eagerly accept those kindred souls and the many divergent paths that eventually delivered us to the same crossroad in life.
So, it is of little consequence to us if a person is Buddhist or Baptist, so to speak. We are all creatures of the same creative force, call that what (or whom) you will. We must regard others in the same manner as we would choose to be treated ourselves. That said, it is critical that we work tirelessly to eliminate short-sighted and selfish thinking from our personal and community repertoire.
UBU, while decidedly different from most traditional christian churches, is led by devoted disciples of Jesus, finding their foundational teachings expressed in nearly every religion and philosophy worldwide.
UBU Ministries is a FREE CHURCH.
Free churches are those who are not state owned churches. Churches who (since 1954) have opted to request oversight from and limited control by the IRS by becoming 501.c.3 organizations, have essentially become state churches who must conduct their religious behaviors according to government rules.
Among other things, this relationship hobbles the church from performing two of religion's most basic and historic responsibilities, social morality and political activism.
State control of churches is a violation of the United States Constitution, yet because such relationships are established at the request of the churches themselves, this illegal behavior is tolerated.
UBU is an unincorporated association run by a board of trustees who are all ordained ministers in the UBU church. Reverend's Gregory and Katrina Lowrey serve as the pastors of the church and Rev. Gregory is the current CEO.
Reverend Gregory has received three formal ordinations at ages, 12, 19 and 34, serving as a self-supported full-time missionary (1975 - 1977) after voluntary service in the USN during the Vietnam conflict. He considers his "spiritual" call to serve as the only truly legitimate "call and ordination", and is generally opposed to the religious politics of contemporary organized religion.
Reverend Katrina, who prefers no titles, determined at age 5 to devote her life to service to God, accepting ordination through UBU later in adulthood.
Both were raised in the Mormon faith, operating the ministry as an adjunct to their Mormon membership, until severing ties to Mormonism in 2002.
Doc and Kita, as they are more generally known, married in 1984 and raised a blended family of 6 children together (1 boy / 5 girls). They are now happy grandparents to 13 wonderful children with their 14th grandchild due in 2017.
Kita is a graphic artist, author, gourmet cook, seamstress, webmaster and businessperson, studying computer aided design in her young adulthood while working as an advertising and marketing manager.
Kita has been an avid student of health and herbology since the late 1980's, operating from 1998 to 2001 a health product service primarily benefiting those under Doc's healing care while he operated a full time charity health clinic for the ministry in Lehi, Utah.
They became vegetarians in 1978 and raised their children as sugar free, raw-food vegans since 1987 ending their own vegetarian practice in 2011.
Read about why as of 2011 we have given up vegetarianism.
In addition to healing, counseling, performing charity work and teaching application of the Golden Rule, the ministry considers tattoos and piercings to be spiritual emblems and their application to be a spiritual service.
Receiving tattoos or piercings are optional and not a requirement of membership. However, over her 20+ years of tattooing, Kita (known in the tattoo world as Kita Kazoo) she has gained international notoriety for her technical and artistic excellence.
Kita and Doc have operated award winning ministry studios in Michigan (Royal Oak Tattoo) and Utah (Happy Valley Tattoo), both transferring to private ownership as the ministry made major relocations.
Doc was born to a third generation chiropractor, Dr. Thomas Lloyd Lowrey, who interrupted his practice before Doc was born, becoming an insurance underwriting executive and corporate auditor/hatchetman, before returning at age 53 to the practice of chiropractic, developing the largest "single-doctor" practice in Michigan before dying tragically in 1985.
While watching Frank Sinatra play drums in "The Man With The Golden Arm" at age 7, Doc decided that he was going to be a strip club drummer.
An aunt who had played kettle drums in her high-school marching band encouraged him and gave him her old practice pad and a pair of drumsticks.
He played incessantly, by 7th grade earning and maintaining the 1st chair position in his school against 20 other drummers, and by age 13, just moved to Detroit, Michigan (1967) joining a local rock band (the other band members were all 12 years old) until joining the Navy at age 18.
From around age 8 or 9 Doc had also developed an interest in topics his father and grandfather would discuss about health-science, the new idea of public fluoridation was one, but chiropractic adjusting by personal energy, including long distance treatments, which his grandfather had switched to with great success, particularly caught his interest.
As a youth, Doc excelled at any task he put his mind to, enjoyed hard physical work, chess, reading, individual and group sports.
He was an eagle scout and later a scoutmaster.
At age 15 he became the youngest person in the world to be awarded an Instructor Certificate by the American Red Cross and taught weekly classes in 1st Aid for the Michigan Construction and Safety Council from age 15 till he went in the Navy at age 18, grading his last classes final exam papers from Boot Camp in San Diego, California.
After the pullout from Vietnam and the end of his military service, Doc had a personal, cataclysmic spiritual experience which moved him at age 20 to dedicate the remainder of his life to God and public service.
With personal savings and family donations Doc served a two year teaching mission in and around Las Vegas, Nevada, returning to Michigan to begin Pre-Medical studies so he could attend chiropractic college and learn to heal.
He did not expect his practice of spiritual healing and his studies of scientific healing to converge, but in 1979, while a student in Davenport, Iowa, they did.
Doc eventually decided that his healing method was of a science that most people would prefer to consider spiritual.
He has been healing and counseling formally since 1978.