 outStanding in
the Field
A
Lifetime of Speaking Out
 hen
Prathia Hall (’82B, ’84M, ’97D) was a
little girl, not tall enough to look over the top of the
lectern in Mount Sharon Baptist Church in north
Philadelphia, adults in the congregation lifted her up to
stand on a chair or table so that she could read
Scripture during the Sunday services. She was encouraged
early on to make full use of one of the talents that God
blessed her with—her speaking voice.
How
surprised and delighted the members of that small
congregation (some of whom probably remember her as a
youth) were when, last year, Hall was named the top
African American woman preacher by Ebony magazine!
While
Hall is honored to have been affirmed by her peers, she
is hesitant to claim the distinction. "Ebony
obviously hasn’t heard of all the African American
women preachers," she says. "And even if they
had, the way that I preach one day may be very different
from the way I preach the next."
It is
not only Ebony magazine that has acknowledged Hall’s
abilities, however. As a student at Princeton Seminary,
she was validated by W. J. Beeners, the Carl and Helen
Egner Professor of Speech Emeritus, who said of her
talent, "I didn’t do it! She was good before I
got her!"
In
fact, Hall, who identifies with the story of the prophet
Jeremiah, believes that she was called before she was
born.
"God
said to Jeremiah, ‘Before I formed you in the womb,
I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I
appointed you a prophet to the nations.’
"Like
Jeremiah, I have always had a sense that my life
wasn’t mine to simply do with as I please,"
Hall says. "My earliest memories have some spiritual
character. I have always been aware of God’s
presence in my life, and I knew that would have something
to do with how I would live my life."
"My parents
trained us in elocution. They stressed that gifts take
work. They put a great deal of effort into making sure
that we spoke well."
Hall
grew up in and was nurtured by the African American
church.
"A
wonderful part of the African American church tradition
has been the way in which it has nurtured children and
put children at the center," she says. "The
church helped build young people up to be strong in the
face of racism. It was a wonderful place for
growing."
She
was also encouraged and supported by her parents, both of
whom were very involved in the education of Hall, her
sisters, Theresa (now a health physicist in Pennsylvania)
and Betty, and her brother, Berkley. "They sent us
to schools outside our neighborhood, into the wider
society. We went to a music school for piano and voice. I
remember the woman who ran the school was married to a
plumber, and she would pack a dozen children into his
plumbing truck and take us to Rittenhouse Square [in
center city Philadelphia] to the Society for Ethical
Culture to attend concerts and sometimes to
perform."
Early
on, both her parents and Hall were aware of her being
blessed with the ability to speak well. "My parents
trained us in elocution. They stressed that gifts take
work. They put a great deal of effort into making sure
that we spoke well."
As
Hall matured, she became active in debate. In high
school, she was president of the debating society. She
also participated in many oratorical contests, sponsored
primarily by the Elks and the Masons, and won
scholarships that helped finance her college education at
Temple University in Philadelphia.
Then,
in the 1960s, she began to use her voice to speak out
against racism. In 1961, during the time of the Freedom
Rides, Hall joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC) and, with other college students from
Delaware and Maryland, participated in freedom rides
along the Eastern shore.
"I
had my first experience of being arrested in
Maryland," she recalls. "That was just the
beginning of a much more active role in college."
Hall
then went south to work with SNCC in Georgia and then in
Alabama, also becoming an itinerant speaker for the
movement.
Today,
Hall is dean of African American ministries and lecturer
in Christian ethics at United Theological Seminary in
Dayton, Ohio, where she has been since 1989. (Hall first
served at United as associate dean for community and
spiritual life and director of the Harriet L. Miller
Women’s Center.)
"I
love what I do," she says. "I love teaching and
being involved with the next generation of church
leaders."
But
her itinerant days are not over! She travels and lectures
throughout the country on womanist (Black female
liberationist) issues. In the month of April 1998 alone,
she traveled to Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, and
the Bahamas to speak.
"My
students say that I am the real itinerant," she
laughs. "They say that the Methodists have a lot to
learn about being itinerant from Prathia Hall."
Still,
there is a part of Hall that yearns for the time to walk
by the ocean or in the lovely Shenandoah Valley in
Virginia, where her mother grew up. She looks forward to
the day when she will have time to catch up on her
reading. (She is especially interested in the Black
women’s literary tradition and authors like Toni
Morrison and Maya Angelou.) She anticipates immersing
herself in recordings of jazz, classical, and gospel
music.
In the
meanwhile, she is busy. Busy preaching. Busy teaching.
Busy at Mount Sharon Baptist Church where she is a member
of the team for ministry. There she works especially with
the children.
"I
bring them to the altar and pray for them by name,"
she says. "I minister to them personally, looking
into their faces and eyes and with the laying on of
hands. I try to give them the message ‘you are our
hope for the future.’ To let them know that they are
special. To give back to them what the church gave to
me." z
Prayer and
Presence
Kathy Crane
Practices the Attentive Life
 pirituality
is an awareness of God’s presence in our lives, and
ministry is the way we live out that awareness. Ministry
is more than what we do in church," says Kathy
Crane, who earned her Master of Arts degree in Christian
education at the Seminary in 1982.
"It
is more about being than doing," she continues,
"recognizing that God acts in and through us."
Crane
has devoted decades of her life to helping individuals
and congregations develop, or renew, their relationship
with God. "We need to be connected to God in order
to know what we are called to do and how we are called to
help others."
Her
interest in spiritual renewal deepened in 1980 when she
represented New Brunswick Presbytery at the
moderator’s prayer retreat held at Princeton
Seminary and led by the Reverend Dr. Howard Rice, who was
moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian
Church (USA) that year. It was during one of the three
week-long retreats organized by Rice that Crane had what
she now understands to be a defining moment in her own
renewal.
"For
a week, we spent seventeen of twenty-four hours a day in
silence," she recalls. "That had a profound
effect on me. I rediscovered the life of the
Spirit."
 Since
that experience, Crane has both explored her own ministry
and helped others, particularly the laity, to discover
their sense of call. In 1993, she was the director of a
conference on the ministry of the laity held at the
PCUSA’s Montreat Conference Center in North
Carolina; in 1992, she taught a weeklong course for the
Seminary’s Institute of Theology titled
"Ministry of the Laity: Revitalizing the
Church." She has taught workshops, given lectures,
and led retreats on the topics of prayer and evangelism,
spiritual renewal, preparing for ministry in the
twenty-first century, and the ministry of the laity. And
she has loved every minute of it.
"It
is important to help people connect their faith with
their life," she says.
Many
times that connection and the subsequent discernment of
God’s will is rooted in pain, or what Crane calls
"burning bush experiences." In her workshops
and retreats, she encourages participants to examine
their own deep pain or need because, as she says, that is
where God frequently calls us to our ministry.
"Through
our own healing, we help others," Crane observes and
offers several examples. "Thomas Edison was afraid
of the dark. Alexander Graham Bell’s mother and wife
were both deaf. On a more anonymous level, one of the
women who participated in my workshops identified her
affinity for sixteen-year-olds, and then recalled that
her own father had died when she was sixteen."
If
pain enables spiritual growth, what impedes individual
and collective renewal? Crane identifies two dominant
issues. First is the human tendency toward busy-ness,
which is rooted either in the desire to be in control or
in the (misguided) belief that "whoever has the most
toys (degrees, money, cars, awards, etc.) wins."
Lives grounded in activity and acquisition have little
space left for God.
A
second obstacle to spiritual renewal is lack of
awareness. "We don’t realize what we are
missing when we live our lives apart from God," says
Crane.
When
Crane leads a workshop or retreat on spiritual renewal,
she emphasizes the personal nature of the experience,
rather than the institutional one—even when she is
working with an entire congregation. She reminds
participants that, first and foremost, renewal comes from
God. "It is not something we can do or make
happen," she says, "but we can focus on some
experiences and practices that make us available for the
Holy Spirit to work in our lives."
Among
those practices that she sees as central to renewal are
living in the present, because that is where we meet God,
and paying attention to interruptions. "The Bible is
full of stories of people whose lives were interrupted by
God…. When we read through the New Testament, much
of Jesus’ ministry was ‘on the way.’ He
was willing to be interrupted."
Crane
also suggests reading and being read by Scripture, a
practice known as lectio divina. "I view Scripture
as a mirror and let it reflect back its meaning to
me," she says.As a note of encouragement to those
engaged in spiritual renewal, she says, "The more
you practice, the more you want to be quiet, to turn off
the music, and to listen for God within. Practice
increases both our hunger and our desire."
This
concept of daily practice was introduced to Crane when
she was at seminary by then-president McCord during one
of his Monday morning chapel teachings. She recalls his
words: "He said, ‘Remember to pray every day.
It will be the most important thing you will do.’
"
McCord
was just one of the many memorable teachers whom she
encountered at Princeton. Years later she still recalls
Bruce Metzger’s course on the Sermon on the Mount
(Matthew 5–7). She feels indebted to Bernhard
Anderson "who taught [her] to love the Old
Testament." She speaks of Freda Gardner as "a
model teacher who gave me excellent ideas on how to
teach." Gardner, whom she knew before coming to
seminary, remains a good friend.
After
graduating from Princeton, Crane became the director of
Christian education at Crescent Avenue Presbyterian
Church in Plainfield, New Jersey (a position that Freda
Gardner held before coming to Princeton). From 1985 to
1988 she served at the First Presbyterian Church in
Cranbury (also in New Jersey) before she was called to a
pioneering position in the denomination as coordinator of
lay ministry at the First Presbyterian Church in Ithaca,
New York. (Gardner preached at her installation in Ithaca
in 1988.)
"I
felt that this was a real call, and I wondered how to
develop the position," Crane recalls. "I prayed
and read a lot of books by Elizabeth O’Connor [the
author of Journey Inward, Journey Outward and Cry Pain,
Cry Hope, among other texts]. I was convinced that I
needed to develop ministry of the laity based on renewal,
and I implemented programs that turned the congregation
around 180 degrees in its understanding of what ministry
is all about.
"Most
of us have grown up hearing that ‘ministry’
means ‘the clergy.’ But the word laity comes
from laos, which means ‘all the people of God,’
and ministry belongs to all the followers of
Christ," Crane says.
She
challenged members of the congregation to become actively
engaged in praying for all of the ministries within the
church. In order to acquaint members of the congregation
with the diversity of ministries, she developed a series
called "Ministry in…" that sought to link
work and faith. During the series, which ran for
three-and-a-half years, participants discussed ministry
in a diversity of careers including law and government,
health care, office work, education, homemaking, and
business."We need to serve God in the world, not
just in the church. We need to live out our relationship
with God by serving people wherever we are," Crane
says.
In
1991, Crane left Ithaca, but her commitment to the topic
of spiritual renewal has not wavered. That same year she
became active in the Coalition for Ministry and Daily
Life, an international (mostly North American),
ecumenical organization composed of educators, pastors,
lay people, writers, publishers, and more, both Catholic
and Protestant, who are advocates for the professional
ministry of laity.
Crane
is currently teaching, writing, and leading retreats. She
is also maintaining her own renewal by participating in
the group leaders program at the Shalem Institute of
Spiritual Formation in Bethesda, Maryland. There she
practices the contemplative tradition—praying,
reading Scripture, and practicing centering prayer.
"When
I was a little girl," Crane remarks, "I felt
called to live a life that fulfilled God’s
purposes."
In
reflecting on her life today, Crane expresses deep
gratitude for the opportunities that she has had to grow
deeper in her faith and to teach and lead others in their
spiritual development. She carries with her an awareness
of God’s presence and blessing in her life.
© Copyright 1998 Princeton
Theological Seminary
The URL for this page is
http://www.ptsem.edu/read/inspire/3.3/outstanding.htm
webmaster@ptsem.edu
| last updated 08/18/98
|
