Kimberlee C. Runnion

I sat in a meeting recently where a fellow church member said that the Church has to acknowledge that we've failed. She was speaking in terms of youth ministry and the Church's inability to keep up with the times, but I thought her statement was more profound than that. Rather than closing the door on the conversation (Well, good try folks, but oh well!), she was using failure as an opening ... an opening to try again, to try harder, to do better. Being a Christian isn't like

Luke 1: 26 - 38 (NRSV) 26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, 27 to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin's name was Mary. 28 And he came to her and said, "Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you." 29 But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. 30 The angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with

Following the e-mail I sent to many in my congregation last week, I was confronted by another member in church. She was distressed that I had sent such an angry and hateful e-mail to "half of the congregation!" I calmly spoke with her, listening to the pain and fear in her voice as she described the last time our congregation discussed queer issues. A former pastor was asked to resign after performing a same-sex union without permission from the congregation (this was abou

The election happened. The results are real. Once again, the popular vote doesn't matter. Donald Trump will be in the White House. Here's the good news: I'm still breathing. I'm even keeping food down again. This week, I found myself returning to an article from a Presbyterian pastor whose blog I follow religiously (pun intended!): Why Even Progressive Christianity Must Own its Complicity in Anti-LGBT Violence. And I realized that despite being an openly queer Christia

I’m a pastor’s daughter – a female pastor’s daughter to be precise – so I have gotten the question for ages, “Are you gonna be a pastor when you grow up?” Of course now that I’m old enough that it would be rude to say “when you grow up” (though I certainly don’t feel grown up), I get the statement, “You should be a minister.” Now that I’m attending a church of my own rather than attending the church my mom is currently serving, many people don’t realize who my mother is, so

Update: I received some wonderful feedback from a friend of mine that is an important update to this post. Thank you, Brige Mendes for calling me out and helping me learn! As a reminder to my readers, I am not an expert, and I so appreciate feedback like this. I have removed my use of the asterisk but have kept the poster simply to explain what the trans community includes. "I really love this post to but thought you might want to know some of the info is a bit outdated Th

Someone recently said to me, “The church has come a long way, but I think the one thing that will never change is male pronouns for God. God will always be the Father.” Being the insufferable know-it-all that I am, I obviously had to give her as many examples as I could of times when I have heard other names/pronouns for God used in worship. I still don’t know if she was lamenting the “fact” she shared or upholding the belief that God is indeed our Father. But it got me t

“You’re being too sensitive!” “You have to understand that we didn’t mean anything by it.” “That’s obviously not what we meant.” -- Sound familiar? Too often, these are the responses to any attempt to dismantle systems of oppression. Rather than being open to criticism (even when it is shared in the kindest of manners) and learning from marginalized voices, people immediately become defensive, refusing to believe that they are part of an oppressive system or perhaps that th