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Rev. Grace Imathiu hopes Bishop’s Retreat speeches prepare, energize pastors

September 3, 2019 / By Kathleen Christiansen

The Rev. Grace Imathiu will serve as the keynote speaker at the 2019 UNY Bishop’s Retreat, which focuses this year on the theme “Biblical Risk Takers.”

This year’s Bishop’s Retreat will be held Oct. 22-24 at the RIT Inn and Conference Center in Rochester, NY.

Rev. Imathiu said she is excited to return to the Upper New York Conference, where she previously led a Bible study during an AC session.

“It’s good to be back again,” she said. “I just want to come and hang out with my siblings out there.”

Rev. Imathiu was excited to be selected as the retreat’s keynote speaker, but she also acknowledged that these are “very difficult times to speak.”

“I just feel that we are all very spiritually exhausted … from all this upheaval in the denomination,” she said. “And, and so I hope that this can be a time of renewal, refreshment, and regaining our confidence in how Christ has called us to be as pastors.”

At the 2019 retreat, she’s excited to see what God will do in Upper New York.

“I hope to energize. I hope I'm also energized,” Rev. Imathiu said. “I hope I also equip ministers or the pastors, the preachers as they prepare for Advent, on how to face 2020 so that we can begin to … be proactive.”

To aid in preparing pastors for the coming seasons, Rev. Imathiu will use a Christmas story, lectionary readings for this year’s Advent.

“I'm hoping that there will also be the takeaway for pastors … to get a head start on preparing for Advent and Christmas Eve,” Rev. Imathiu said. “So this is also a time when people can have a takeaway for their ministry.”

She said she’ll also draw on the experiences and the history of the First United Methodist Church in Evanson, IL – where she currently serves after being appointed senior pastor in July 2018. One focus will be the Rev. Dr. Ernest Fremont Tittle, who served at the same church for decades and was the one “who really pushed the church to end segregation.”

“I'm just so blessed to be standing on the shoulders of Ernest Fremont Tittle,” she said.

Outside of her current church, she was previously appointed senior pastor of Community UMC in July 2012 after serving eight years as lead pastor in Brown Deer, Wis., and earlier as senior pastor at Green Bay UMC. Her reach has also extended globally, as she has served churches in Kenya as a church planter; as a superintendent minister overseeing 68 rural churches in Nkubu, and as an urban minister to an ecumenical congregation in Nairobi with strong outreach to the neighboring slums of Kawangware.

Click here for more information about the Bishop’s Retreat and/or to register.