Alumni News
Ashley Popperson (STH’14) is New Associate Minster at Old South Church in Boston
This was originally published by Old South Church in Boston, and can be found here.
Dear Old South Church in Boston,
At the culmination of this wondrous season, we'll hear again the beloved phrase "tidings of great joy which shall be to all people" - the Christmas angels' song of annunciation to the shepherds as they abide in the fields, keeping watch. But I'm writing with unabashed glee to get a jump on the angels with an annunciation of a shepherd - to a congregation that's been doing its share of abiding and keeping watch!
I'm so very pleased to introduce you to the Rev. Ashley J. Popperson, the unanimous and enthusiastic choice of the Associate Minister Search Group as our nominee for the pastoral position on our staff that has been vacant since Shawn Fiedler concluded his ministry with us in August. On November 20 the Council unanimously approved the nomination, and Ashley will begin her ministry at Old South in February, following the completion of her current commitment as Associate Pastor of the United Church of Christ in Norwell, MA.
A native of Evergreen, Colorado, a Theology & Religious Studies major at Seattle University, Ashley has Master's Degrees in both Divinity and Social Work from Boston University (2014) - and subsequently completed a unit of Clinical Pastoral Education at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Serving in Norwell since 2018, Ashley has overseen the Christian Formation program for children, youth, young adults and families; has helped to guide the church through the beginnings of its anti-racism work; and has been a creative worship leader, an admired preacher and a deeply appreciated giver of pastoral care. Prior to her call in Norwell she worked as a program manager at Episcopal Divinity School, as Lead Pastor and Minister of Liturgical Arts at The Crossing (at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. Paul), and as sabbatical supply pastor for four months with our Back Bay neighbors at Church of the Covenant.
Ashley will serve at Old South as our Associate Minister for a Designated Term: a two-year, full-time appointment that can be renewed for another specified term if Ashley and the Council so-choose. (If at some point the Council should decide to create a position for a "settled" (i.e. open-ended) Associate Minister, Ashley will be eligible to be an applicant if she chooses.) The designated term call was designed, in consultation with Associate Conference Minister Alex Shea Will, as a way of providing critical continuity to our congregation and our ministries through the conclusion of the current period of pastoral transition and well into the settling-in of a new Senior Minister.
Ashley comes to us with a keen interest in urban ministry, a heart for pastoral care, a love of liturgy and an appetite for administration and organization. She says that she views the planning of liturgy as a means of empowering people to use their gifts for God’s glory and the coming realm of justice and joy. And she says she's never happier than when she's working on a to-do list! A former stage manager, she says, about her love of planning and organizing, "A well run structure gives peace, so that artists have room to play." Her current colleagues say: "The empathy she shows is amazing. You feel deeply heard by her. It’s her authenticity that makes the difference." "I would trust her with any pastoral care situation." "She makes beautiful prayers - she really surrenders to the Spirit."
She and her wife, the Rev. Lindsay Popperson, live in Jamaica Plain; Lindsay is chaplain at Sherrill House and a pastor at the Old North Church in Marblehead. They are foster parents for young children and have a beloved dog, Pope Joan. Ashley is an aspiring distance runner and a lover of growing, cooking, and sharing good food. She loves a good novel and the New York Times Tuesday Crossword puzzle. She looks forward to trading in her car and returning to bike commuting to Old South!
This milestone moment is the right time for a few concluding words of appreciation from me - for the marvelous company of the members of the Search Group, Randy Billings, Sarah Cowles, Eliette Hilaire; for Katherine and Kate (and all our colleagues) who have tirelessly and gracefully risen to the challenges of being pastorally short-handed for the past few months; for all of the candidates we met during this search, each a gifted and committed servant of the church; and to Ashley, for hearing the same call we did to embark on this new chapter in Old South's life.
But I'll leave the final words to her - from her Profile - so you can begin to sense God's strong hand in this call:
“May our shared ministry brighten our hearts, and lead us closer to God. May our journey together transform us, to be more courageous, more loving, and more faithful. May our church become known as a place of thriving, where joy is found and healing abounds. May our ministry reflect the no-matter-what-ness of God, that all might find a truly radical welcome among us. May our church be a home for all who seek meaning and grace, for all who question, for all who seek spiritual belonging. May we work together, giving ourselves to God's dream of justice and joy, right here and right now. Amen.”
Faithfully,
Rick Spalding
Interim Senior Minister
Jamie Webster (STH ’17) is the New Interim Campus Minister at Maryville College
This was originally published by The Highland Echo on November 18, 2022, and can be found here.
An excerpt from the article:
A native Tennessean, Webster holds a Bachelor’s in History with a minor in Religious Studies from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, where she also completed a post-baccalaureate in Elementary Education. Eight years ago, she moved with her husband and kids to Massachusetts for his job.
“[I was thinking] what are we going to do if we move to Boston for my husband’s job,” Webster said.
After all, her whole life and career were based in Tennessee, specifically in Blount County where she’d worked as a teacher and community organizer. Those two were not always mutually exclusive either; Webster worked as a teaching artist for multiple nonprofit and underserved youths’ organizations with the majority of her early career in service to the Community School of the Arts in Knoxville, Tennessee.
At the community school, Webster recalled how rewarding and humbling it was to be both teacher and student. She was teaching dance and movement curricula, but she was also learning how to show up “as a better support [and] a better ally”.
Beyond the classroom, Webster also worked in the Blount and Alcoa communities to welcome and help integrate immigrating families into the community, especially families for whom English was not their primary language. In 1991, she worked with the grassroots-turned-statewide organization Save Our Cumberland Mountains, a civic engagement organization then primarily based in Middle and East Tennessee.
For one year, Webster worked through a grant-funded outreach position to connect Middle and East Tennessee teens with their West Tennessee counterparts. She organized and led summer camps at both Middle Tennessee State University and Maryville College.
There was, however, one thing that Boston had that Blount County didn’t: seminary. For 25 years, she had been considering what her next steps in the church might be. And although the move was uprooting, it turned out to be everything she needed.
“I really loved being on campus again,” said Webster, who received her master’s in divinity from the Boston University School of Theology. “It wasn’t a long jump for me to realize [that] campus ministry would be such a wonderful fit for my interests, and that brings us to here and now.”
Read the full article here.
Students of a Harvard Kennedy School Course Created by Reverend Cornell Brooks (STH ’87) Campaign to Honor the Memory of Callie House
This was originally published by the Harvard Kennedy School on October 14, 2022, and can be found here.
Excerpt from the article:
Callie House, a pioneering civil rights leader at the turn of the 20th century, founded the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty, and Pension Association- but was later wrongfully accused of mail fraud and imprisoned, her legacy tarnished and minimized. Through Professor Cornell William Brooks’ course “Creating Justice in Real Time: Vision, Strategies and Campaigns” (MLD-375), a group of Harvard students has partnered with the Trotter Collaborative for Social Justice and the Harvard Law School Criminal Justice Institute to posthumously right the wrongs suffered by House.
“Creating Justice in Real Time” is a course designed to allow students to directly address social injustices. Students across Harvard apply to gain on-the-ground experience through a semester-long project, in which student teams are paired with external clients to develop and execute an advocacy campaign. Four of those students—Abby Brafman EdM 2022, Didier Dumerjean MPP/MBA 2024, Victoria Ennis EdM 2022, and Elam Jones MDiv 2019/GSAS PhD 2026—spoke to the Center for Public Leadership about their involvement in the Callie House project, which culminated in a petition to posthumously pardon Callie House submitted to the U.S. Office of the Pardon Attorney.
Read the full article here.
Ludwig Noya (STH ’18) Gave Lecture on “Reconsidering the Liberative Aspect of Sabbath”
This was originally published by the Spectrum on November 2, 2022, and can be found here.
“Reconsidering the Liberative Aspect of Sabbath” with Ludwig Noya
On October 30, Noya gave a presentation based on his dissertation project, "Rest as a Site of Struggle: Reconsidering the Sabbath Transgression Narratives in the Hebrew Bible." He is a PhD candidate at Vanderbilt University in religious studies, specializing in Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel, and has master's degrees from Boston University and the Ecumenical Theological Seminary in Jakarta. In his research, Ludwig is interested in interrogating texts with specific attention to their social, economic, and political contexts.
You can watch the presentation on YouTube.
Frances M. Nosbisch (STH ’93, ’94) Retired as Director of the Cardinal Kelvin Felix Archdiocesan Pastoral Center in St. Lucia, West Indies
Frances M. Nosbisch (STH '93, '94) retired from her position as Director of the Cardinal Kelvin Felix Archdiocesan Pastoral Center in St. Lucia, West Indies in September of 2021. She had served in ministry there for 13 years. She now resides at Mount St. Francis Center in Dubuque, Iowa.
Dr. Shelly Matthews (STH ’87) Co-edited Race and Biblical Studies: Antiracism Pedagogy for the Classroom
Dr. Shelly Matthews (STH '87) co-edited Race and Biblical Studies: Antiracism Pedagogy for the Classroom published October 2022.
The book overview states:
The biblical studies classroom can be a site of personal and social transformation. To make it a space for positive change, the contributors to this volume question and reevaluate traditional teaching practices and assessment tools that foreground white, Western scholarship in order to offer practical guidance for an antiracist pedagogy. The introduction and fifteen essays provide tools for engaging issues of social context and scriptural authority, nationalism and religious identities, critical race theory, and how race, gender, and class can be addressed empathetically. Contributors Sonja Anderson, Randall C. Bailey, Eric D. Barreto, Denise Kimber Buell, Greg Carey, Haley Gabrielle, Wilda C. Gafney, Julián Andrés González Holguín, Sharon Jacob, Tat-siong Benny Liew, Francisco Lozada Jr., Shelly Matthews, Roger S. Nam, Wongi Park, Jean-Pierre Ruiz, Abraham Smith, and Kay Higuera Smith share their experience creating classrooms that are spaces that enable the production of new knowledge without reproducing a white subject of the geopolitical West.
Find a copy of the the book here.
Reverend Kate Galop is Massachusetts State Police’s First Female Chaplain
This was originally published by the MSPNews on October 14, 2022, and can be found here.
Massachusetts State Police Colonel Christopher Mason on Wednesday, Oct. 12, welcomed Reverend Dr. Kate Galop as
a new member of the Department’s Chaplain Corps.
Reverend Galop, the MSP’s first female Chaplain, serves as the Pastor of Faith United Methodist Church in Chicopee.
Colonel Mason said Reverend Galop’s appointment is part of an effort to expand the MSP’s Chaplaincy mission to “create more opportunities for officers to engage” clergy as they deal with the stresses and challenges of the law enforcement profession. Colonel Mason said the mission of police Chaplains is an important component of overall officer wellness.
Reverend Galop was sworn-in in Colonel Mason’s office at General Headquarters in front of five of the Department’s six other Chaplains.
Prior to being ordained as Pastor at Faith United Methodist, Reverend Galop served as Senior Pastor at Westport Point United Methodist Church. Previous to that she served as assistant to the pastor of Northside Methodist Church in Brewster. She holds Doctorate of Ministry and Master of Divinity degrees from Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary in Lynchburg, Va., and earned an ordination certification from Boston University’s School of Theology.
Dr. Yara Gonzalez-Justiniano (STH’14,’19) Publishes Book: Centering Hope as a Sustainable Decolonial Practice: Esperanza en Práctica
Dr. Yara Gonzalez-
Justiniano (STH'14, '19) published Centering Hope as Sustainable Decolonial Practice: Esperanza en Práctica on Septermer 23, 2022.
The overview of the book states:
Where is the hope? What does it look like? Is the Christian church providing a hope that materializes in the grounding of people’s thriving? These questions posed the catalysts of this work where the author sets up a journey that parses the definition of hope within Christian theology as an ontological category of the human experience. Through ethnographic research and ecclesial study of diverse congregations in Puerto Rico the work moves from an articulation of context, hope, practice, and future to reveal its aim of liberation through a hope that can be sustainable in time and space. She analyzes the operations of political systems that suppress hope in the island. Weaving the theme of a theology of hope, with the fields of ecclesiology, memory studies, postcolonial and decolonial theory, liberation theology, and the study of social movements she builds a model that puts hope at the center of socio-economic practices and moves toward a recipe for a hope that is sustainable in practice.
Find a copy of the book here.
Tom Reid’s (STH’19) Blog Post: Memory Problems
This was originally published by the Patheos on October 4, 2022, and can be found here.
Excerpt from original article:
Parashat Ha’azinu (Deuteronomy 32:1-52)
Why did I choose to write on this particular parashah? As I read it again, I find myself struggling with several passages in this portion.
Perhaps struggle is appropriate during the Ten Days of Teshuvah (Return, Remorse, and Renewal), this season of soul-searching (heshbon-nefesh), which calls the Jewish community to grapple with the fullness of life, including its challenges.
And as a Presbyterian pastor, taking on Ha’azinu affords me the opportunity to do a mitzvah of sorts, by giving my rabbinical friends and colleagues some breathing room, as they prepare their Yom Kippur services and sermons, while still recovering from the many hours of tefillah (prayer) leadership over Rosh Hashanah!
I turn my attention to the opening of this week’s portion. For context, Moses, nearing the end of his life, exhorts his people to remember the past in its entirety—the good, the bad, and the ugly. No one can claim ignorance as the nation marches ever closer to the Promised Land.
“This poem shall confront them as a witness,
since it will never be lost from the mouth of their offspring” (Deuteronomy 31:21).
The poem begins beautifully reinforcing the interconnectedness of the universe, which is entirely bound up in God:
“Let the earth hear the words I utter!
May my discourse come down as the rain… like showers on young growth,
like droplets on the grass” (32:1-2).
Yet, Moses quickly turns from God’s faithfulness to the faithless and crooked responses of God’s children. The prophet describes how God, vexed and pained by their behavior, will turn away from Israel, hiding the divine face. As a result, it is punishment that will rain down upon the wayward.
To be honest, I am troubled by this sudden turn in the text and the poem. Why the abrupt shift? Why did Moses feel the need to issue a stern and ominous warning at this time? When faced with imminent death, these are the words that come forth from the mouth of this sagacious leader? And his exhortation is directed not only at the current generation, but future generations as well.
Perhaps he is afraid. After all, he is being told that his death is imminent and that he will not be allowed to enter the Promised Land despite his efforts to guide the people there through countless obstacles. He could understandably be afraid of what will become of him as an individual. Perhaps he fears what will happen to his children and his family after he dies. And perhaps he is afraid for his tribe (the Levites) and the Israelites as a whole. He is too keenly aware of the past missteps of the Children of Israel and the consequences of their selfishness, greed, anger and fear. Despite his work to be faithful and to keep them faithful, this human instinct—to fall back on idols and spiritual technologies that are believed to be more of a “sure thing”—is often too great a force for a mere mortal to contend with. Maybe this is why the prophet calls on heaven and earth to bear witness to his words.
Read the full article here.
Reverend Yunki Kim (STH’12) Appointed to Gales Ferry Church
This was originally published by the The Day on October 1, 2022, and can be found here.
Excerpt from original article:
Ledyard ― Through his childhood and into young adulthood, Yunki Kim identified how society labeled him: He was a Korean immigrant living in Egypt, the pastor’s kid, the one going to a nice college. But that changed when he was doing the two years of military service mandated in Korea and he was assigned to assist the chaplain, counseling soldiers.
“That’s when I really got to hear the diverse stories of where these folks were coming from, so that was a life-changing experience for me,” Kim said.
But it would hardly be the last time that Kim reflected and reassessed. Going to the Boston University School of Theology gave him “theological direction of who I’m going to be as a pastor,” which was as someone who is more progressive and “yearning for a more inclusive way of being a church.”
It’s a mindset that Kim, 39, has brought with him to his new role as pastor at the United Methodist Church of Gales Ferry. He started July 1 and lives in the parsonage with his wife, Hyoeun Song, and kids Noah and Zoey, 9 and 5. Dan Reilly, lay leader of the United Methodist Church of Gales Ferry, said this is the first time since the 1970s that the parsonage has had elementary-aged children.
“He jumped right in and he’s providing a great new vision for us on a lot of things,” Reilly said, adding that Kim is singing with the choir and Song is ringing handbells. He said Kim is relatable, has good personal stories, and is easy to listen to.
“It’s nice to have someone with a diverse set of tools, and a diverse background, to lead the congregation in a way that makes sense to him and to us,” organist Jake Troy said, adding that Kim “has quickly adapted himself to our love of music, and making sure that he is using that to his advantage when reaching out to the congregation and the wider community.”
Kim said there are about 75 people in attendance on Sundays and 15 tuning in online, and Sunday school just started back up for children and adults. He praised the strong music ministry at the church.
His sermons have been more introductory so far, with the message that “the blessing that we have is we have each other, and we’re going to do it together.”
He’s still learning about Gales Ferry and Ledyard ― and about the community in relationship to Norwich, Groton and New London ― to know what kind of ministries to offer.
Kim, who is the first nonwhite pastor of the church, also said he’s interested in learning about the land on which the church sits, about the Native American history.
His vision for the church is to help everyone experience peace and love regardless of their background, immigration status, gender identity, age, or political views. But on a global level, there’s division within the United Methodist Church over LGBTQ rights.
In 1972, the General Conference ― a body of representatives that meets every four years ― voted to add the language that “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.” According to the UMC website, pastors can’t conduct same-sex wedding ceremonies.
Kim said he hopes the language is changed or removed altogether at the next General Conference in 2024. His dream is for a church where both progressive and traditionalist voices can have space.
Read the full article here.