By 2004, I had all but sworn off church forever. After a brief stint in an SBC church in rural Kentucky where women couldn’t preach, serve as deacons, or even usher, and a conservative Christian high school experience on par with the movie Saved, I found myself at the University of Louisville and free from exclusionary rules and religion. Yet, nearly every conversation I had found its way to God and the idea that churches had forgotten about God’s love. The boiling point came one day when my friends and I were walking across campus and saw a fundamentalist preacher yelling that “fornicators and homosexuals are going to hell.” What followed was a debate — and probably my first sermon — on God’s love. My group finally walked away asking ourselves, “Are we the only ones who think that God is love?”

My sister convinced me to try one more church. That Sunday, I stepped through the doors of Highland Baptist Church and heard Joe Phelps preach a wonderful sermon on God’s love. Redemptive tears welled in my eyes. Finally, I could throw off the shackles of idolatry — as the God previously presented to me symbolized the human idols of selfishness and fear. I made an appointment to see him. The discussions that followed on worldview, theology, and personal experience revealed a calling to share the message of God’s love and justice with others. Entering Wake Forest University School of Divinity, I found mentors in Alliance ministers Richard Groves and Susan Parker at Wake Forest Baptist Church. While interning at the Baptist Joint Committee in D.C., I visited Stan Hastey and Jeannette Holt who welcomed me with open arms, provided me with research material for a divinity school project, and invited me to the next Convocation as I asked questions and became an individual member.

I began attending convocations and found many more ministers, seminary students, and laity like me dedicated to spreading a message of God’s love and justice. Conversations with Chris Copeland encouraged me throughout my ordination process with Wake Forest Baptist. I now work as the Ministry Support Manager for CBF of North Carolina fulfilling my calling of working on racial reconciliation and economic justice issues, and I am blessed to continue work striving to do “justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God” [Micah 6:8] in my journey with both entities and the dually aligned Alliance/CBF churches of which I have been a part. Alliance churches not only welcome those wounded by a distortion of scripture, but also encourage them by being a place to find calling, community, acceptance, and healing. It supports chaplains — my husband Ryan Eller was endorsed as a Navy chaplain candidate by the Alliance in 2006 — and missionaries who embody God’s spirit of hospitality in a broken world. I encourage you to support this vital entity that will nurture the callings of many more ministers and laity to bring God’s love to the world.