October 2015, I started working at Episcopal Relief & Development. I originally planned to be a priest – but that didn’t quite work out. Instead, the Spirit and communities of mentors set me on a path of lay employment that I could not have planned. All we can do is see where our great desires meet God and community’s greatest needs.
It wasn’t long before the Asset Map Coordinator became a Program Officer for disaster response in the US. In this role I saw how liberative leadership models could remind people of faith about the ways that God can use the mud to make lotus. And if we are brave enough, we will build God’s kin-dom together. But I also noticed the fear of the ordained. So I decided to go to Seminary and learn more.
The opportunity for theological exploration and biblical study has forever transformed my life and built a spiritual maturity that again, I could not have planned. My thesis, Ordaining the Disinherited, was a wonderful healing space to understanding my own process of discernment and how important those liberative models of leadership impact our ability to be Church. With the world still under lock down and no classes to attend, I decided to continue my research by interviewing people about their purpose. I wanted to not only know what it meant to pursue one’s calling to the priesthood, but one’s calling to everything. And so was born, pursuing call – a place where we explore what God is up to in our lives so that we can participate in God’s mission for the world.
Here we are September 2024, and it remains my passion to support clergy and truly all church folks in new ways. So on a whim I applied for a job that seemed to be a new way to follow’s God’s call and I got the job! So on October 2nd I will end my time at Episcopal Relief & Development and join the Business Relationship Management team at the Church Pension Group as the Director of Faculty Management and Training. I will miss the relationships I have cultivated these 9 years and the amazing ways we fulfilled Matthew 25 together. And I am also excited to put that degree to work and find new ways to support leaders who feed their flock because they have taken the necessary time to eat and be nourished.
I believe that this next chapter will offer me opportunities for pouring more into myself. Working on disaster response has been an amazing ride. And thinking about what terrible thing has happened today how can the church respond takes a toll on my body and on my spirit. I would love to be blissfully ignorant of weather patterns and fire temperatures and FEMA policy changes again. I will of course take those new skills into what happens next, but I will leave some of the anxiety and high blood pressure behind. And I will continue to pray for my colleagues that remain doing the Holy work of supporting and responding to trauma and terror around the world.
Pursuing Call 