All of the Fun, None of the Work?

“All of the fun, none of the work.” It’s the phrase I frequently hear from clergy when I tell them that I’m an Associate Rector. It’s the “truth-in-jest” description of associate clergy. You don’t have the highest level of responsibility and the buck doesn’t stop with you, so you don’t have to deal with the […]

Can You Ask Them If They’re Okay With a Woman?

“Can you ask them if they’re okay with a woman?” It was late morning on the Friday after Christmas.  It was one of what feels like only a small handful of days each year when I didn’t have anything really pressing on my to-do list, so I came into the church that morning determined to […]

Not So Silent: Christmas Worship with Children

Dearest church people, Get ready. In two days it’ll be Christmas Eve. Your congregation will welcome people in for one of the biggest nights of the year. You may be blessed with an overrun of visitors, and I hope some of those visitors will be children and their parents. In the spirit of preparation (it […]

Making Coffee Kind Again

“Smile, sweetheart, the c*** lost,” he said. Not exactly how I pictured starting my morning the day after the election, the first day into a President-elect Trump world. “It’s inappropriate to speak to me in that way,” I said, before walking away from the man in the infamous red hat. Yes, that red hat. It […]

The Choice to Look Away

I do this thing in the mornings. I wake up and check the Rubycam in the nursery, and if Ruby is still asleep, I spend a few minutes in my bed on my phone, checking various email inboxes and my calendar for the day, usually scrolling through Facebook, before I go wake her up to […]

The Stranger to You Shall be as the Native: A Rabbi’s Reflection on the TYCWP Conference

The summer before entering sixth grade, I joined a youth choir. On the first day, we received a folder filled with the music that we would be singing. I looked it over and immediately spotted a possible problem. That night at dinner, I raised it with my parents. I explained, “There’s a lot of Jesus […]

Welcoming New TYCWP Board Members

Each summer, TYCWP welcomes a new class of fabulous women to join in the leadership of the project as Board Members. Board Members generally come in to serve a three-year term, and some women stay for a second, three-year term after their initial service. We are so thankful for the women who have served TYCWP […]

Dear Celebrity

Dear Celebrity, The first time I met you was a very memorable occasion. I’d met celebrities of your stature before, but they’d all been a meet-and-greet sort of thing or strictly business—the kind of official interactions where it didn’t matter at all who I was. Honestly, I haven’t liked many of them. So when I […]

Leading with Presence: TYCWP’s 2016 Conference

My first few months as a solo rector were a strange combination of familiar ministry that I was confident I could do well and bewildering new challenges. Design curriculum for adult education? I’d done that a number of times as a first-call associate. Visit members in hospitals and nursing homes? Clinical Pastoral Education taught me […]

A GIF From God

I pushed back from the table, breathless at what I had just seen. It was July 2011, and I was sitting in a room at Duke University with dozens of other female ministers. We were gathered for the last morning of The Young Clergy Women Project conference, and keynoter Winnie Varghese had invited us all […]