A Note from the APNC

Eleven months ago, you entrusted this Associate Pastor Nominating Committee (APNC) with the responsibility of hiring an Associate Pastor for Practice and Formation, someone who would help lead and care for our congregation. You have prayed and waited faithfully…and waited some more! We, in turn, have been meeting, praying, discussing, discerning, and waiting as well. We have felt your support throughout this journey, and we thank you for it.

Now it is with great joy that we introduce to you Dr. Charlene Jin Lee, our Associate Pastor for Practice and Formation nominee.

Charlene is an experienced teacher and pastor whose ministerial career path began in 1998 in the field of Education. During the next several years, while obtaining her Master of Education and Ph.D. in Christian Education degrees, Charlene served as a children and family Pastor and a Director of Christian Education. For the past ten years, Dr. Lee has served on the Advanced Pastoral Studies Faculty at the Graduate School of Theology at University of Redlands, California. Her colleagues and the APNC members describe her as faithful, compassionate, strong, and hopeful.

For Charlene, practice and theology always remain in dialogue with one another. This is clear in a story from her time serving as a hospital chaplain in the early, terrifying days of Covid. She wrote of her experience on Ash Wednesday that year, “On the floors…that day, I had begun sensing the holy mystery of rituals as I marked those waiting for healing and those accompanying the sick with dust of our common mortality.”

Charlene blends her educational intelligence with a strong faith and gift of compassion, a firm foundation for her role as our associate pastor. We cannot wait for you to meet Charlene, her husband James, and her children Harold, Frances, and Kate, and to join with them in God’s work.

Faithfully,

Regina Hunt, Chair

Carol Ferguson

Becky Gruchalla

Reuben Herriage

Frances Knipp

Peter Sehnert

Jim Welch