Embodied Blog Tour – Guest Post

Guest writer: The Rev. Dr. Kathryn Nichols Campbell is the pastor of Fellowship Presbyterian Church in Greenboro, North Carolina.

I am a lot of things: a child of God, daughter, sister, friend, wife, and now mother. My journey into motherhood isn’t unique, I’m sure, but isn’t typical. Our daughter was born in 2012 and we just welcomed our son in January of this year.

I am all of those things while also serving God through my gifts as pastor. How could I do both? My congregation hadn’t had a female pastor “with child”…well, ever – and they couldn’t wait to claim this baby as their own. Because of the love and support of the families, I was able to do both.

It hasn’t been easy – the roots that my daughter grew with the (now previous) congregation were difficult to upturn. But the life lesson that came from it was that members of mommy’s new church could (and do) love her and her new brother with the same amount of gusto as the church where she spent her first seven years. God loves us with this same gusto, no matter where we are.

This guest post is part of the book launch blog tour for Embodied: Clergy Women and the Solidarity of a Mothering God. Embodied includes reflection questions at the end of each chapter, to instigate conversations that lead to support and new perspectives. The book is available this September from Bookshop.org, Amazon, or Cokesbury.