Meet the DLTs: Carrie Wolfe’s Ministries

June 20, 2019 / By Rev. Carrie Wolfe, Cornerstone District Leadership Team / .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) / 1 Comment

Hello Upper New York, Grace and peace of Christ to all! 

My name is the Rev. Carrie Sturtevant Wolfe. I am a deacon in full connection and a member of the Cornerstone District Leadership Team. I am appointed to Christ UMC in Olean, NY where my primary responsibilities are as Director of Children’s/Youth/Young Adult Discipleship, Curriculum Coordinator/Writer, Worship Coordinator, and Chair of the Warming House Advisory Board (local soup kitchen). I am a NYS certified teacher who in addition to having taught kindergarten, spent time working in the business sector doing staff development.

In Simon Sinek’s recent book, Start with Why, he calls us to rethink leadership. He claims that all great leaders build trusting and meaningful relationships by leading with their WHY instead of with a WHAT or a HOW. He calls this inside out leadership and challenges his readers to clearly define their WHY or their purpose and then allow their WHAT/result and HOW/process to flow from that WHY.

My WHY is to declare in thought, word, and action Christ’s call to respond to the reign of God’s love with child-likeness so that we, together, play and grow in the kindergarten of God.

This is my inside and it is what I have to give out.

In the past we have been asked to think of our leadership through the lens of a mission statement that as Laurie Beth Jones, author of The Path posits acts as both a harness and a sword – harnessing us to what is true, and cutting away all that is false.

So, in terms of a mission statement, I am called to nurture, affirm, safeguard, and reclaim, among God’s children of all ages, the child-likeness Jesus Christ proclaimed to be the hallmark of the reign of God’s love.

I am harnessed to the truth of the need for the further development of a theology of childhood and the notion of play as social justice; both of which I believe to be sacred pursuits with transformative results. And inherent in those developments, I am committed to cutting away the false and irreverent sentimentalization of Christ’s call to live under the reign of God’s love as a child.

However, in the end, through the power of the Holy Spirit, I am simply one transformed child of God trying to lead others to follow Jesus on purpose.

Please let me know how I can deacon you.