It might be a good time to share some news from our Young Preachers Leadership Team. Two women who rotated off the Team have celebrated major life milestones.
Kara Hildebrandt was ordained in December at the First Presbyterian Church in Bowling Green, Kentucky (the church where she serves as associate pastor). Kara was also selected to represent the Academy of Preachers on the centennial planning committee of the National Council of Churches–youth initiative, called New Fire.
In February, Caela Simmons Wood gave birth to her firstborn, a son named Maitland. She posted a long introduction to the name on her Facebook page. Her pregnancy, in addition to her ordination to the gospel ministry under the auspices of the United Church of Christ, prevented her from attending the inaugural Festival of Young Preachers.
Word comes from Winterbourne Jones, of Washington DC and a senior at Fisk University that he has received the Presidential Scholarship offered to incoming students at Colgate Rochester Crosier Divinity School. It is the school, he writes, of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Howard Thurman.
Tanner White continues his students at Christ Church College of Oxford University, in Oxford, England, a commitment which also entailed his missing the inaugural Festival of Young Preachers. Brother Thomas Gricoski, a member of the Benedictine Abby of St. Meinrad in Indiana, will graduate in May from the seminary there and move to Belgium to pursue a doctor of philosophy (PhD) degree in philosophy. (Sounds redundant, doesn’t it?)
Jonathan Scott, a student at Oakland City University in Indiana, is the pastor of Francisco Church of the Nazarene and Scott Claybrook is on the ministerial staff of Northwest Baptist Church in Atlanta.
That’s all the news I have (and some of that is not really news, as it happened last year!). But as I learn more about the 6 new members of the Leadership Team I will share that with you.