July 18, 2011
Women Clergy Need Girlfriends
After completing the Lilly Residency Program at the First Presbyterian Church in Ann Arbor, MI I took a call as an Associate Pastor in a small city in Michigan. Knowing that the adjustment would not be an easy one, and reflecting on what I had learned from my time in the Lily program, I decided that the first thing I needed was colleagues who could also be friends. So, I went in search of colleagues in the hopes of also finding friends. Knowing I would have a colleague in my Head of Staff, in other clergy in town, and in my governing body, I wanted to seek out colleagues who were in a similar place in ministry—so I sought out young women clergy. In my first few months in my new call I compiled a list of the young women clergy in my denomination in my area, there were about a dozen of us in our first call within a 2 hour drive of each other. At our first meeting we gathered for lunch at a one woman’s home, eight of us arrived...