NGLI 2026: Still Alive
Twice a year, Pastor Jenn attends a learning program called Next Generation Leadership Initiative. At each gathering she joins her cohort and other cohorts of young, promising clergy in the United Church of Christ for vitality treks, graduate-level intensive courses, and shared renewal. This April, Pastor Jenn traveled to Philadelphia for a four-day-long Vitality Trek during which she served meals to hungry folks, spent time with cherished colleagues and friends, found vitality in both Christian and Jewish worship settings, and was filled up with the Spirit once again.
I walked into NGLI this year looking for renewal, for support, for rest. I was tired. I hadn’t taken time away from church since the last NGLI gathering in November, which, looking back, was not the best idea. I’d been running on empty for a bit. I hadn’t been attending to my own spiritual life, to prayer or relationship with God outside of my work at church, and my soul was suffering for it. I walked into our first gathering in Philadelphia saying to a friend: I feel like a husk of my former self.
When I turned 33 on Easter Sunday, 2025, I had romantic ideas about what that year, my “Jesus year” was going to look like. My husband and I were finally going to get pregnant. I was going to step into a new phase of ministry and be better than I had been before. I was going to stand firm in my faith and preach the gospel and lead this church.
Instead, life turned completely upside down. Instead, there was heartbreak, infertility, mourning, the death of my father, emptiness, overwhelm, and so much impossibility. By the time I got off the train in Philadelphia, I was worn out.
Maybe you’ve had this experience, too. Maybe you’ve felt hollowed out by life. Maybe there has been too much, too fast, and you’ve needed a break to catch your breath. To breathe.
That’s what my time spent with NGLI afforded me. Time to breathe, to walk around a new city, to learn new things, to dive deep in conversation, prayer, and worship with my peers. There was time to have a glass of wine at a funky retro restaurant, and sit in a park and talk with dear friends. There was time to weep during worship. There was time to serve a meal to people who needed nourishment and company. There was time to be both. There was time to meet a church whose membership had dwindled, but who was alive and vital and faithful even in the coming end of their ministry together. There was time to greet the Sabbath at a synagogue. There was time to read, and learn, and bear witness. There was time to imagine new ministries, renewed practices, and invigorated vitality at North Church.
I didn’t expect it. I expected to leave more tired than I arrived. But as my birthday dawned on Monday, I tearfully and gratefully said goodbye to the year I’d survived, and welcomed in the new thing God is doing in me, in our church, in our world. I was able to welcome in the spirit of God’s love, to let it fill me and sustain me, and I was able to hear again: Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the Earth. He does not faint or grow weary.”
Though I grow weary, God does not. Though humans falter, God does not. Though life crumbles and changes and can be fickle and fleeting - God is not.
I have been given many gifts this week. Time, companionship, renewal, and above all the reminder that what has been does not have to set the course for what will be. I am informed by all I’ve known this year. That pain and weariness is etched into me, tattooed on my heart. But there is more beauty painted there, too. Alongside all the pain there is now a quiet assurance that all is not lost, hope is possible, resurrection is possible. It happens all the time, if I give myself the space to look for it.
I hope, in whatever way you will, that you will look for it, too. I hope that in your life you are finding glimpses of God’s love and compassion, of fearless, indomitable life making its way.
Love,
Jenn
