Posts

From the Board: DEI Consultant Contracted

Beloved of YCWI,  Over three-and-a-half years ago, I attended my first YCWI conference in Atlanta. At the end of the event, I was installed as part of the incoming class of Board members. As I stood before you, ready to take my promise to serve and to be covered in prayer, I looked around and […]

Stealth Queers

Stealth queers are all around you. Your gaydar won’t detect us. Your discriminatory church policies forget about us.  Are we closeted? Not necessarily.  We just go about our business — and you make assumptions.  You see me as a cisgender woman married to a cisgender man, and you assume that I’m heterosexual. I’m not. I’m […]

Update to YCWI Membership Policy

Young Clergy Women International has been, since its beginning in 2007, an organization for the professional development and care for the youngest of clergy women. Eleven years later, our commitment to the community of women under the age of forty who serve as clergy continues. YCWI exists to equip young women with spiritual and practical […]

Here I Sit

I have spent my final year on the Board editing the column, “Here I Stand.” It has been a joy and a privilege to share the stories of my sister clergy women, their convictions and the remarkable experiences of their particular and diverse contexts. As I come to the end of my time as a […]

“By the time you’re 35…” Young Clergy Women Edition

If you’re anywhere around age 35, you’ve probably heard by now that you should have twice your annual salary saved for retirement. You’ve likely also enjoyed the many responses to that sage advice, including the despair shared by a generation facing widespread financial uncertainty and a rapidly changing employment landscape. Young clergy women came up […]

“Out of the Bathroom, Into the World”

“You need to develop a pastoral identity. It comes with time. Don’t worry, it will come.” One of my dearest seminary professors told us this over and over, and I believed him. It would come: I would be able to see myself as a pastor, the more time I spent learning, watching other pastors, performing […]

Shared Leadership: Lessons from YCWI

After serving three years as a co-chair of YCWI, I am beginning my third month as “just a regular board member.” I am loving that I get to spend my final year on the board with the fabulous women of the editorial group. It is a joy to have the opportunity to lift up the […]

A Conference Story

As young clergy women gathered in Vancouver, Canada, for YCWI’s tenth anniversary conference earlier this July, the scenery was gorgeous and the weather was spectacular. The conference was uplifting, invigorating, challenging, and exciting. The keynote speaker, the Rev. Casey Fitzgerald, inspired us with her biblical storytelling and challenged us to consider where our stories intersect […]