COMMUNITY MINISTRY PROGRAM

The CM program's underlying theory comes from these theological and experience based understandings:

  • "Public ministry”–serving the world’s needs – is the proper work of the Church.

  • Successful public ministry requires leaders who can motivate church members to become involved in such ‘external’ work.

  • This motivation will require the leader to be able to nurture the members adequately so they are able to look beyond their own needs.

Thus, to be successful, “public ministers” must have two sets of skills – in parish work and in social change work – and know how to integrate them in practice. Standard theological seminary training does not provide this type of training, nor is it currently being provided in this form by any other training program in the United States of which we are aware.

 

2024-2025 Community Ministers

 

Dorothee Benz (she/her) is a writer, organizer, and strategist who has spent decades on the frontlines of social justice struggles.  Before entering Union Theological Seminary, where she is a third-year MDiv student, she served as communications director at the Center for Constitutional Rights and chief communication officer at Lambda Legal.  She has a PhD from the City University of New York, with expertise in social movements, and has published numerous popular and scholarly articles. Her writing has won many labor journalism awards, and she is a sought-after speaker, preacher, teacher, and facilitator.  As a Judson Church Community Minister last year, she concentrated on immigration, spending two months at the US border doing humanitarian aid work as well as working with Judsonites to deepen their immigration advocacy.  In her spare time, Benz climbs mountains and builds sand-castles.

 
 

Emily Farthing (she/her) is a third-year Judson Community Minister who graduated from Union Theological Seminary in May. She has a Master of Divinity from Union and honors in Theology and the Arts with the Robert E. Seever Award. Emily hopes to use her third year to dive deeper into discernment of call within the United Church of Christ and continue photographing and supporting Judson Arts Wednesdays and greater congregational activities. Emily loves exploring the Bible through play and Creative Exegesis and is currently exploring Genesis. If you’d ever like to be photographed within a Biblical story - talk to Emily, she’d love to chat! When not at Judson, Emily is a fashion and branding photographer here in NYC!

 

Rev. Lisa Holton (she/her) is an interfaith minister. She was ordained by One Spirit Interfaith Seminary in June 2024. She is currently the board chair of Judson Commons. Lisa’s first career was in publishing. As head of Disney Global Children’s Books, she co-founded Jump at the Sun, one of the first imprints celebrating African American culture. She has  also served as a nonprofit executive director, faculty at the Institute for Nonprofit Practice, and board member of the New York Women's Foundation, the Feminist Press and the Eric Carle Museum. She is the proud mother of Kate Gibbel and James Gibbel. She lives in Brooklyn and loves playing soccer

 

Elæ Moss (they/he/ze) is a multimodal artist-researcher, information worker, and system builder dedicated to radical collective care and interdependent infrastructure design. As creative director of Autonomous Mechanics Design Studio and founder of The Operating System and Liminal Lab, they seed Speculative Solidarity programming and media production across sectors. Elæ is enrolled in Interspiritual Seminary at OneSpirit, following two years as an MFA Public Action Fellow at Bennington, both the culmination of work approached as equally art and sacred service: over twenty years of creating sanctuary tools and spaces for seekers, rooted in commons-driven social justice organizing. A practitioner of Tantric Buddhist and Q’ero medicine traditions, Elæ is also a certified Quantum Touch healer, mindfulness facilitator, and officiant of radically reimagined human rituals. They teach at Pratt Institute and are committed to retrofitting faith institutions for liberatory futures.

 

Rev. Anike Rabiu (she/her) is an eclectic and effervescent follower of the teachings of The Carpenter. Anike is a newly ordained Interfaith / Inter Spiritual Minister from One Spirit Seminary and also  serves as an ordained Deacon/ Spiritual Leader at First Corinthian in Harlem.  Anike’s current call to Ministry is to Serve The Servers as she explores the various aspects of being of Sacred Service. Artistically,  as a signed artist, Anike lends her creative talent using hair as her medium on print, digital and live action productions and campaigns. Anike is very excited to being a Community Minister.

 

PROGRAM BACKGROUND

Soon after Donna Schaper was called as Judson Church’s Senior Minister in 2006, she proposed a new program to train a small group of seminarians in the kind of progressive, inclusive, world-serving ministry that both she and Judson Church had been doing for many years: a “Training Program on Public Ministry from a Parish Base”. Judson’s lay leaders agreed to try this idea and created a pilot program for the 2006-07 academic year, with five students, financed by spending down a donor-designated fund from the church’s small reserves.

That pilot program, which is now familiarly called the “Community Ministry” program, proved successful and Judson was eager to continue it, but could not, without significant outside funding. The E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation came to the rescue with a generous grant that completely underwrote the 2007-08 academic year, and 10 students were trained that year. In subsequent years, the Community Ministry program has tried varying formats and class sizes – all with continuing partial funding from the Carpenter Foundation, plus gradually increasing funds from additional sources – for all of which Judson is immensely grateful.

The Judson program assigns the students to work at least 15 hours a week, including attending Judson worship on Sundays and participating in a weekly three-hour seminar led by Judson’s two clergy and two lay leaders, at which a combination of formal instruction and mutual discussion helps students solidify their learnings from their experiences of the prior week. The rest of their time is spent on their assigned tasks, both standard pastoral tasks (which can include aspects of worship leadership, education, pastoral care, and administration) and also external ministry tasks. Students are paid a small monthly stipend for the academic year and receive regular individual supervision from the clergy.