3 Minute Ministry Mentor

Listen in as host Eileen Campbell-Reed shares her experience of unearthing treasure while she cleaned out her parents’ house in the spring and summer of 2024. Like so many of us, Eileen’s family held onto lots of things. Sifting through these things brings a wide range of emotions to the surface. We might ask what do these feelings and digging through history teach us about the practice of ministry? In this episode, Eileen suggests...

How can a writing community support the creative work of developing a book? How can we approach writing in a sustainable and wholehearted way? Rev. Callie Swanlund talks with Eileen Campbell-Reed about how writing in community worked for her, and some key practices she used in writing her most recent book. 

Swanlund's new book is called From Weary to Wholehearted: A Restorative Resource for Overcoming Clergy Burnout. 

Swanlund i...

What does it mean to live into ministry in a sustainable and wholehearted way? Here are two big keys needed for unlocking ministry that is sustainable. Rev. Callie Swanlund. talks with Eileen Campbell-Reed about what burnout can look like and what it means to live into a sustainable and wholehearted ministry.

Swanlund's new book is called From Weary to Wholehearted: A Restorative Resource for Overcoming Clergy Burnout. This book is...

Remembering her ordination is necessarily tied up with stories, Eileen Campbell-Reed tells us. It means tending to the legacies of love that nurtured a calling, and being intentional about the ways we might carry out that legacy in these impossible times. 

Have a listen to this story of ordination, and consider what following a calling means. This story of celebration and remembrance is also a day of celebration for the thousands o...

Imagine advocating for a place where women and lgbtiqa+ people preach and lead most Sundays. A place where seminary students seek to learn from wise pastors. Where every age person from youngest to eldest has a place and a role in the ministry, education, and worship of the congregation.

Eileen Campbell-Reed offers 10 questions to inspire our #pastoralimagination to advocating for women. Have a look at more questions for better adv...

Whatever ministry we are considering, it is profoundly important that we ask the children. After we ask them, we must listen.

Eileen Campbell-Reed discusses her recent experience in a cohort to prioritize the well-being of children. The Children’s Defense Fund shaped this thriving congregations cohort to recalibrate our ministries by listening to young people. Rev. Dr. Starsky Wilson, president and chief executive of CDF is aski...

You who are called by God. We know you have heard it.

Someone saying surely you misheard. That you don’t know what you are doing. You see the problems in the Church and the world, and you are ready with thoughtful and creative ways forward.

They may say you are too young. Too old. Too busy raising children. Or too single. Too ambitious. Driven. Too distracted. Too much.

They miss out on seeing you. The full you. The person God is c...

"You're feeling vocational grief." 3MMM Host Eileen Campbell-Reed shares this realization, and what it meant for her. In this episode, an excerpt from our All Saints Day Virtual Service, we invite you to take time to honor your loss and grief. 

You may want to gather up a piece of paper and a marker or pen. As you listen, let yourself pay attention to your own spiritual well-being by giving a little space to your vocational loss...

How do women thrive in ministry? Eileen Campbell-Reed explores this question by imagining a future where women in ministry are thriving - 5 "future stories" that look like this:  

• Women  thrive  in  ministry  because  churches  pay  equitably
• Women  thrive  in  ministry  because  leadership  is  collaborative. 
• Women  thrive  in  ministry  when  men  focus  on  care  for  themselves  and  all  people.
• Women  thrive  in  mini...

Episode 87: Baptized and Ordained 

Eileen Campbell-Reed tells about how women and queer clergy are changing ministry for good. Baptized and Ordained is a year-long community, advance reading and feedback group, opportunity for live events. Sign up and find out more: https://BaptizedAndOrdained.org 

Questions answered in the video: 

0:20 A new book & community 1:45 How women and queer clergy are changing ministry 2:38 You ...

3MMM | Podcast #86: How Women Thrive in Ministry

Three Minute Ministry Mentor (3MMM) host Eileen Campbell-Reed is answering the question, how do women thrive in ministry?   She shares 5 ways to imagine future stories in which women are thriving. 

This conversation opens up more about Eileen's latest book: "Baptized and Ordained" (working title).  This book will explore how women clergy and queer clergy are changing the practice of ...

Have you ever  simply run out of words? 

3MMM Host Eileen Campbell-Reed tells us about how she did. And how she "learned to pray in God’s language" of silence. Perhaps you would like to give it a try?

How to Start Meditating - a simple, step-by-step guide to a practice of silence and prayer.  More: 3MMM Episode 199: Pray, Read, Write

How will you notice the quality of silence in your life? What is your calling in this season?

+ Dow...

In this episode, we offer a Mother’s Day prayer. Yet, it is not like the ones Eileen Campbell-Reed grew up hearing.

This prayer is more of a psalm and a lament. It lifts up to God the painful and unspeakable facets of mothering and #mothersday. It also honors the gifts and graces of mothering. God in her wisdom sees and hears it all. There is no truth we cannot pray.  

+ For the full text of this prayer, go to eileencampbellreed.or...

Episode 83: Finding Our Way

Has anything changed over the past three years in your ministry? If your answer is yes - check out this new resource. 

Our goal in studying and seeking to understand the lives and practices of Christian ministers over the last 20+ years is to make this work more understandable. To support the people called to it. And, after the last three incredibly stressful and unprecedented years, to help renew the ...

Episode 82: Talking Through Tragedy

How do we talk children through tragedy? What about parents and teachers, especially when the tragedy has impacted children and the places where children go, like schools or churches? And what about caring for congregations as a whole? 

Last week in Nashville, we experienced what is reaching epidemic proportions in the form of another school shooting. This episode invites us to think about how we...

Episode 81: Beauty of Motherhood

There is beauty in parenting. Not because the work is all glamorous or easy, but because God’s presence and grace is woven through it, even when it is messy and fraught and full of pain and tears and uncertainty.

In this FULL CONVERSATION with Erin Strybis, Kimberly Knowle-Zeller, Erin Robinson Hall and Eileen Campbell-Reed, find out what these mothers claim about rising in the dark, fears about the...

This week we are talking once again with Kim Knowle-Zeller and Erin Strybis about their new book, The Beauty of Motherhood.

3MMM Host Eileen Campbell-Reed tells us: There is beauty in parenting experiences. Not because the work is all glamorous or easy, but because God’s presence and grace is woven through it, even when it is messy and fraught and full of pain and tears and uncertainty. 

Download a copy of the #PandemicPastoring Re...

Graceful parenting. That’s not a description but rather an aspiration and a need.

Authors Erin Strybis and Kim Knowle-Zeller  talk with Erin Robinson Hall and Eileen Campbell-Reed about their new book. The Beauty of Motherhood: Grace-filled Devotions for the Early Years, written especially for progressive Christian parents. We want share the first part of our conversation.

Erin Strybis says when she was a new mom, the devotional bo...

We are talking about the mental wellbeing of our children and teens.

These years of forming identity, re-modeling the brain, and flying further from the nest are already a big challenge. Add three calendar years of isolation, disrupted schedules and rites of passage, missed friendships and opportunities. Then stir in what Dr. Joyce Ann Mercer calls the “triple pandemic of Covid-19, racial reckoning, and climate crisis.” The result ...