Cynthia Mackey

The Heart of the House – Cynthia Mackey

The recent installation of Prayer Chaplain Cynthia Mackey is the culmination of 10 years of studying Unity’s foundational teachings and principles through attending classes and reading the works of Charles Fillmore and other Unity authors.  She has served and continues to serve on the Board of Directors and, for nearly seven years, taught every Sunday in Youth Ministry, a position she has resumed in retirement.

Cynthia retired last June from a remarkably diverse teaching career.  A graduate of the University of South Florida with a Bachelor’s degree in History and a Master’s in Aural Rehabilitation, she taught deaf students of all ages, primarily in Pinellas and Hillsborough County high schools. Her knowledge of sign language also extended to teaching students in the Youth Ministry to sign “Silent Night” and The Twelve Powers of Man.  As a diagnostician for Pinellas County’s Career Assessment Center, Cynthia evaluated all varieties of exceptional high school students for transition after high school and recommended students to begin vocational training during high school.  In 2006, when federal funding for that program was cut, she was transferred back to the classroom at Countryside High School, where she taught Learning Strategies to Exceptional Students and later World and U.S. History.

A Floridian since she was 14 years old, Cynthia was born near Detroit and moved south with her family to escape the harsh Michigan winters.  She came to Unity for the first time for a wedding in 1991.  A Presbyterian with questions, she was ready for a change, and, here, she began to find answers.  In 1997, she and Mike Mackey would choose UCC for their own wedding.

The mother of Geoff Mackey, who was raised at UCC, Cynthia has three stepdaughters and seven step grandchildren, plus a beautiful black and white tabby cat named Princess.  A frequent traveler, Cynthia, with Mike and Geoff, has visited the Mediterranean, Alaska, both the east and west coast of Canada and Mexico, California, Washington, D.C., New York City and practically every accessible island in the Caribbean, as well as the Panama Canal. Through a federal grant, she also had the opportunity to study the Civil Rights Movement on an 8-day bus tour through the South, replicating the Freedom Rides of the 60’s. She got to visit numerous Civil Rights sites and to meet people who had actually participated in the Freedom Rides.

The opportunity to study Unity principles has been, Cynthia says, “a life-changing experience,”  the commitment to Unity very much a family affair for the Mackeys.  All are active participants in their beloved church home.  While Cynthia, on any given Sunday, may welcome congregants with her reading of the Daily Word, her husband and son are aptly lodged in the media loft, skillfully controlling the sound system and facilitating the audio recording production of  that day’s service.