Who Am I?

Julie in front of two of her three churches.

I'm a second career pastor of three small rural churches in central Pennsylvania.   I was called to ministry in my 50s, attended Howard University School of Divinity for seminary and ended up in a part time pastorate in central Pennsylvania starting in February 2012.

The Brush Valley Fusion of Faith consists of three churches: St. Peter's UCC, on the left in my picture, St. Peter's Lutheran (ELCA) on the right in the picture, both located in Rebersburg, PA, and Christ UCC in Madisonburg, PA, four miles down the road.

I had a 30 year career in IT, as well, including 20+ years focused on machine reasoning of a variety of sorts, especially helping business people figure out technologies related to Artificial Intelligence.   In 2017 I retired from IBM, which I had been working for half time, and now am just the part time pastor (not that there are part time pastors).

I started in 2012, and I love my ecumenical, beautiful, mission-oriented congregation.  And together we have spent a lot of time revisiting scripture with a real focus on the context.   For us this means the context of the time that it was written in, and the context that we bring it to in the twenty-first century, as well as it's context in the library that is the bible.  Attending to the last, we have for the last four years followed the Narrative Lectionary, which follows scripture from beginning to the end, and follows a gospel from beginning to end, every year.  This has really given us new ways to think about our holy book, and about Jesus and our Creator.  It has breathed the Spirit into us.

But it is time for me, and for my community, to find new understandings.   I hope to do that during this sabbatical, to walk in the context of Jesus, to see the places where things happened, to experience a contextual depth for my scripture that is kinesthetic, visual, and situational.    More information about the contexts that I will explore in my next post!