...

Hello !

You know, sometimes when we start something, we get both a lot more and a lot less than we were expecting. It happens in every profession and so many new beginnings. Pastor Debbie, who is one of the participants in the Learning Pastoral Imagination Project had just that experience in her first pastorate. She was serving a congregation in a very small town on the Iron Range. Debbie was completing her required year of Lutheran internship as a solo pastor in a small Lutheran church. 
 

She told us, “The last two years I felt like the character in Office Space, the main character, who goes into hypnosis and says, `Every day you see me, that’s the worst day of my life.’” Her ministry peers in the interview laughed at the reference, but Debbie went on. “I was really not happy about the Lutheran year, and when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, then my internship year happened. And it was worse.”
 

In spite of very difficult circumstances in that year, Debbie reached out for help, and she came away from the experience having further cultivated and grown in her pastoral imagination.

How do we teach pastoral imagination? I’ve been thinking about this for well over a decade, and in today’s podcast I give you some ideas about how you might learn it for yourself or teach it to others. Start with the book.

We also created some one-page flyers to help you think about how to incorporate pastoral imagination into courses you teach, small groups you facilitate, or supervisory meetings with student pastors. If you are wondering how you can facilitate conversations that focus on pastoral imagination, I’m always happy to respond to your questions! I hope you might start here with this six minute podcast to get your ideas going!

If you are a seminarian, or you know one, I hope you’ll share this back-to-school blessing with them. It begins, "Welcome to your disorientation." You read that right: DISorientation. Seminary is a really wonderful time, and it is also likely to upend most of the ways one thinks about church and faith and God and ministry. But by trusting the process – learning and taking risks with one’s own curiosity and vulnerability – many of those dimensions of your life and faith will come back together in new and empowering ways. 

New State of Clergy Report

My back to school story is different this fall. Here is my news:

NASHVILLE, TN – Dr. Eileen Campbell-Reed has won two grants to revise and expand “The State of Women and LGBTIQ Clergy in the U.S.” Data collection begins August 1, as Campbell-Reed takes a new one-year position with Vanderbilt Divinity School. She expects to release a newly revised report in late 2026. 

This short video (11 min) of my conversation with The Writing Table on August 1 is a recap of my story of applying and receiving two grants to update the State of Clergy Report and finding a new institutional home for 2025-26 at VDS.

All of you reading this are welcome to tell me about: 

• information
• stories
• data
• books
• articles
• blogs
• news reports 
• elections of bishops or other church leaders
• conferences and events
• people we should interview
• questions you must have answered! 

All contributions will be independently verified before including them in the report. 

My questions for you this Monday morning: 

Recall your own aha moments of learning as you 

cultivated your identity as a minister or teacher? 

How does that moment inform your work now? 

Mercy and peace,

Eileen

The retreat includes: 
* short teaching sessions each day about writing craft and habits
* daily time for writing in community

* evening sessions for sharing brief excerpts of your work
* individual coaching with Eileen is available (discounted fee)  

Q: Did this event meet your hopes and expectations? 

"More than! Such a deep rich weekend that I think I will 

be a gamechanger for my project. So grateful!" 
-retreat participant 2024 WT Retreat

Q: What did you value the most about it?

"Eileen's guidance, the hospitality of Kirkridge - 

so comfortable and welcoming!"
-retreat participant 2024 WT Retreat

I hope you might consider joining us this fall!

Remember, , what you do and who you are matters! I believe in you, and I hope you will let me know how I can support you!

.