Baptized & Ordained:
How Women and Queer Clergy 

are Changing Ministry for Good   

My next book is underway. And I want you to be a part of it!

The research and writing for Baptized & Ordained has been in the works for several years, and now it is my main writing focus every day. Perhaps you saw my recent blog on women thriving in ministry? Or read “No Joke: How A Culture of Disbelief Keeps Clergywomen Pushing Uphill”? 

Maybe you've already read my book Pastoral Imagination about learning the practice of ministry or my earlier Anatomy of a Schism? The #PandemicPastoring Report or the State of Clergywomen in the US? Every one of these reports and books has been leading to Baptized & Ordained.   

I still have so much more to say.

And I don't want to say it alone. That is no problem. Because I have been interviewing clergywomen, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people called ministry, people from many different social locations who are both baptized and ordained. And many more who are indeed baptized and called, yet for them ordination has been elusive. 

If you are here considering the baptized and ordained community, you might be one of those women-identified or queer people. And here is what I know about you. In the last 60 years you have changed the church for good. You've changed the practice of ministry for better. And it's time to tell your stories and show the strategies that make the change possible. 

Maybe you are a man who has spent your career supporting women in ministry? Or a lay person who has been changing your mind and learning to support women and queer people who are called into ministry. Whatever your own social location, I want to invite you to be part of this baptized and ordained community.

It is time to gather. It is time to talk. It is time to put our best understanding together because the church and the practice of ministry desperately need all that women and queer people have to offer right now.

What does this invitation to the Baptized & Ordained community include?

• An opportunity to read portions of my next book and give me feedback. Everyone I interview has a chance to tell me if I got it right, if I captured their story, if I articulated their experience in the way they meant it. In the way they told me. You don't have to be interviewed to give me feedback about this book, to tell me if it resonates with your experience. This is a rare opportunity to give an author feedback in real time.
• A community that has already been gathering for the better part of five years. In this amount of time we have collected people from all over the US and Canada and Great Britain and Europe and even further beyond. People are gathering who want to understand what is happening with the practice of ministry, how is it changing, who is changing it, and what really works. 
• A private Facebook group and live events will give us opportunities over the next year to get to know one another. And make lasting relationships!
• The published book will be delivered to all members of Clio, Thalia, and Polly levels.** all kinds of other thank you gifts are available at other levels including writing retreats and events especially for you and me to meet one another, T-shirts and tote bags, and all of this is thanks to you for being part of this community.

How will it work? 

• Each month you will receive a document with 1500 to 2000 words from a draft chapter.
• I will ask two to three specific questions and invite your comments and feedback.
• Posts will arrive around the 15th of each month. 
• We will also send other book updates, post questions and inspiration in the Facebook group
• And occasionally we will invite you to live pop-up events. 

Why does this book matter?

• We need a better understanding of the puzzles that keep women and queer clergy marginalized year after year, and decade after decade. 
• We also need to understand what makes for resilience among so many of them. 
• We need stories that dig deep into the dynamics of what happens to queer clergy and women clergy. We need to see what strategies they are using to make enduring change, and how they are moving the dial on shifting cultural values. 
• I know from hundreds of interviews over the last two decades that this work is challenging. 
• I also have witnessed and want to share with you how women and LGBITQA+ clergy are making the church and the practice of ministry better. 

Baptized & Ordained is going to address all of this and much more.

For over 20 years, my research, teaching, and speaking brought me into the lives and stories of hundreds of Black, white, indigenous, immigrant, Asian and asian american, latina and latinx women and queer people. Now in the final phases of writing, I want to invite as wide an audience as possible to be part of this growing conversation and a gathered community! 

I want you to join me!

The time is short, to become part of this community, you need to choose a level and join by October 1. Then this opportunity to be part of this experience will close.

When you join, you are making a year long commitment. You may choose to pay by the month or all at once! You have three levels of support from which to choose. Pick the one that is right for you! 

Questions? Use the blue button at the bottom of this page, and send them to me! I can't wait to be in conversation and gathered community with you!

Blessings and peace, 
Eileen Campbell-Reed 

Select a Membership Level

* Join the 12-session course and experienced Baptized & Ordained. Move through the course at your own pace. 

** Where did these names for each level of support come from? They are all Greek muses, ideal figures who inspire and motivate writers and creators. What could be better?  Clio (history and music), Thalia (comedy, poetry and flourishing), and Polly (sacred writing, dance, eloquence, and the pastoral/agricultural).

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