Women’s Stories Day 2019

The third annual Women’s Stories Day at New Brunswick Theological Seminary, co-hosted by the Reformed Church Center and the RCA Office for Women’s Transformation and Leadership, will be held on Saturday, 2 February 2019 (snow date 9 February 2019). This year’s theme will be: “Taking a Stand,” featuring stories of RCA women advocating to change their world.

The day will feature the 2018-2019 Hazel B. Gnade presentation in RCA Women’s Studies.

	Elizabeth Colmant Estes, the 2018-2019 Hazel B. Gnade Fellow, is a graduate of Union Theological Seminary in New York, where she won the Hitchcock Prize in Church History, the Muilenberg Prize in Biblical Studies, and the Union Traveling Fellowship. A chaplaincy resident at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, NJ, and an elder at the Reformed Church of Highland Park, she serves on the RCA Commission on Theology. Her presentation—part of her larger work on persons, office, and the local church—will focus on those who took part in a retreat at Stony Point, New York, in the early 1970s, committing to work together to open the office of Minister of the Word and Sacrament to women.
	Patricia Sealy is a graduate of New Brunswick Theological Seminary and pastor of Mott Haven Reformed Church in the Bronx. She is director of Children’s Haven: A Place of Healing and Hope, and will be speaking about ministry to and advocacy for children whose parents are incarcerated.
	Karen Jackson is a specialized RCA minister who serves as the Director of Recovery and Community Initiatives at Project Hospitality, an interfaith social service agency committed to feeding the hungry and housing the homeless. She also administers the Staten Island Long Term Recovery Organization, founded in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, and leads the Staten Island Inter-Religious Leadership coalition, organizing local clergy to respond to the social justice issues of our times. She will share her work with Project Hospitality in her address “Here I Am, Lord: The Call to Local Advocacy.”
	Liz Testa serves as the RCA’s denominational leader for Women’s Transformation and Leadership.  She is a pastor, creative innovator, visionary leader and community builder who is passionate about biblical hospitality, the importance of story sharing, encouraging, and equipping others to live into their God-given gifts and callings, and she will be leading all of the participants in a process of sharing their own stories.
	Anna Jackson, a native New Yorker who grew up at New Lots Community (Reformed) Church in Brooklyn and has served several RCA commissions, task forces, councils, and congregations, will be the worship leader for the day. Anna and her husband, Dwayne, are the co-pastors of Second Reformed Church in Hackensack, NJ.  She is an avid reader, loves jigsaw puzzles, social media, animals, travelling and playing her cello.

Everyone is welcome at the Women’s Stories Day event. There is a suggested donation of $10.00 for lunch, but everyone is welcome to join in regardless of ability to pay—all seminarians will be served for free. Reservations are extremely helpful, however: please respond to jbrumm@nbts.edu by Tuesday, 29 January if you plan to attend.