Laura Everett didn’t intend to go into institutional ministry. She attended seminary presuming she would serve a local congregation. But after ordination in the United Church of Christ, she went to work at the Massachusetts Council of Churches and discovered that she fit into institutional life.
“We who serve the church lead in a time of deep institutional suspicion. We attend to the paradoxical reality that our institutions are vulnerable even as people assume they will be ever-present,” she wrote in an essay on Faith & Leadership. “The gift of serving a Christian institution is that I get to keep the big, audacious goal before me: full, visible unity of the body of Christ.”
She has taken part in two programs offered by Leadership Education at Duke Divinity. In this video, Everett explains why the concept of traditioned innovation from Foundations of Christian Leadership has been important in her ministry.
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