This August, CBE International held its first-ever popular writing contest: Write for Gender Justice! Thanks to the creative gifts and enthusiastic participation of our diverse audience of writers, speakers, preachers, advocates, and story tellers, it was a great success!
We’d like to thank all the writers who participated. Thank you for being courageous and vulnerable with your stories; for taking a risk and showing yourselves to us and to this community of believers; for believing in something enough to stand strong and sometimes alone; for being shalom people who long to see wrong set right in a broken world. We honor you.
We intended to choose only ten winners, publishing three in Mutuality and seven in Arise. Call us indecisive, but we ended up with eleven winners, seven to be published in Arise and four to be published in an upcoming issue of Mutuality. You’ll see the seven submissions chosen for publication in Arise in coming months, along with many additional incredible submissions.
Congratulations to our top eleven winners (in no particular order)!
1. Stephanie Dyrness Lobdell
Stephanie Dyrness Lobdell is a Nazarene pastor, wife, mommy, teacher, lover of learning, and friend. She serves as co-lead pastor along with her husband as well as worship pastor at Mountain Home Church of the Nazarene, and blogs at www.stephanielobdell.com.
2. Heather Henderson
Heather Henderson is a “barely makes the cut” millennial, striving to live a kingdom life in the Washington, DC suburbs. She is a mom of three, wife of a brilliant IT guru, and associate pastor at a non-denominational church in Maryland.
3. Emily Summach
Emily Summach is a freelance writer and stay-at-home parent to Junia and Ezra. She studied communications and theatre at Providence University College. Her writing has also appeared in Geez Magazine. She resides near Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.
4. Kimberly Majeski
Kimberly serves as associate professor of biblical studies and Christian ministries at Anderson University and is a co-host for Viewpoint, a syndicated radio program for Christians Broadcasting Hope. Additionally, Kimberly is founder and CEO of Stripped Inc., a not-for-profit ministry empowering women in sex trade to walk out of fear and into love.
5. Amanda K Fowler
Amanda K Fowler recently relocated from Los Angeles to Michigan. Previously a small groups director for a large church, she is discerning what’s next ministry-wise and mentally preparing herself for winter. She is a graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary with a Master’s degree in theology.
6. Andrea Ackermann
Andrea serves as a pastoral associate and administrator at Christ City Church in Washington, DC and is currently pursuing a Master of Divinity at Fuller Seminary. She has a passion to see the church truly live into its calling, including empowering women to reach their potential. She lives in the H Street neighborhood with her husband and two daughters.
7. C.E. Hinkley
C.E. Hinkley is pursuing her MDiv at Princeton Theological Seminary, and was a member of a complementarian church for eleven years. She holds a BS in neuroscience from the University of Pittsburgh, and now lives in Princeton, where she schemes about ways to sneak cats into her dorm.
8. Kelci Straka
Kelci Straka is a Virginia native interning in Los Angeles with Servant Partners. She strives to live for Jesus and love others well while eating all the ice cream and other foods LA has to offer.
9. Rachel Williams-Jordan
Rachel Williams-Jordan is a victim advocate at the Sexual Assault Response Program where she has the opportunity to live out her passion for helping abused people find healing. She is a bibliophile, a closet novelist, a British television addict, and a Nutella enthusiast. She and her husband, Ben, live in Virginia. You can follow her blog at purposefullyscarred.com.
10. Shannon Greene
Shannon Greene is an ordained elder in the Church of the Nazarene. She has a passion for youth ministry and serves in her denomination’s global youth ministry department, Nazarene Youth International. She and her husband Randy and dog Oscar reside in Kansas City, Missouri. She blogs at sobecreation.com.
11. Valerie Geer
Valerie Geer is the founder and executive director of the House of Ezer, a nonprofit ministry caring for survivors of US domestic sex trafficking. She lives in the Pacific Northwest where she loves outdoor adventuring with her husband of seventeen years and their four sons.
