Pastor P's Page:
After nearly two decades of separation from the church, Rev. Phyllis was reunited in Christian fellowship in 1994 under the pastoral leadership of Rev. Dr. Frank A. Thomas of New Faith Baptist Church. Rather immediately, and while working in the field of violence against women in the arena of sexual assault and domestic violence, she began to respond to God’s calling her towards ministry which she had discerned earlier and had intuited as a child. While discerning God’s call, Rev. Phyllis initially faced opposition to her attempt to enter into the Deacon Ministry. Although, accepting her call to ministry as well as her sexual orientation proved difficult for some, it was during that time of challenge and through that opposition that she heard God calling her to ordained Pastoral Ministry. With the encouragement and support of Pastor Frank, Rev. Phyllis began to wholeheartedly embrace her call and to pursue ministerial training.
In 1998, Rev. Phyllis completed a Chaplain Internship at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. It was an incredible ministry experience that pointed her in the direction of further pastoral training which led her to completing a one year Chaplain Residency at Advocate Christ Hospital. Assigned to the Surgical & Neurological ICU and the Cardiac Care Floor, it was during these training experiences that Rev. Phyllis began to intensely deal with issues of death and dying and providing pastoral care. In fact, during one pastoral call for a family of an African American woman in her early fifties who were facing the decision of disconnecting life support, Rev. Phyllis heard God calling her to “pastor God’s sheep.”
While completing her Chaplain residency at Christ Hospital, Rev. Phyllis applied and was accepted into Chicago Theological Seminary (CTS) where she studied until completing her
Master of Divinity in May of 2004. Rev. Phyllis chose CTS for many reasons but there were three things that primarily drove her decision. CTS promised to not “teach her what to think theologically but how to think theologically,” they were acutely aware that “who one studied with was as important as what one studied” and they encouraged students to ask the question, “who made the rules and how do I change them?” Additionally, Rev. Phyllis is the 2002 recipient of the Carlos Castenada Scholarship for the LGBT seminarian who shows the most promise for ministry and the 2003 inaugural recipient of Chicago Theological Seminary’s G. Campbell Morgan Award for Preaching.
