|
Good Shepherd Community of Faith |
|
An American Baptist and United Church of Christ Welcoming and Affirming Congregation |
|
Rev. Dr. Barbara Hulsing |
|
Pastor’s Message |
|
I, the Rev. Dr. Barbara Hulsing, am Pastor of Good Shepherd. I am also a wife, mother and grandmother. My husband, Russ, and I met and married in California where he was stationed with the Navy. Our Navy years were spent in California, Brazil, Japan and the DC area. After 23 years, my husband retired from the Navy and took employment with a company headquartered in Buffalo. We now consider Buffalo home. I graduated from Seminary with a Master’s of Divinity in May of 2000 and was ordained on July 29 of the same year. From July 1998 through April 1999, I was Interim Pastor for another American Baptist Church. I have been with Good Shepherd since September 1999. In May of 2008 I earned my Doctor of Ministry degree from Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School.
|
|
Contact Info: |
|
My philosophy of ministry is based on 1 Corinthians 13—the love message. I like to think of love as an acronym for Leadership, Openness, Vulnerability and Empathy. First, love is a desire to guide, to teach, to inspire. One must want to provide the kind of leadership that will help people find their own ways. The Leadership that comes from love does not dictate and is not authoritarian. Instead it is teamwork—sharing responsibility. Next, to love openly is to be accepting. We must be able to accept that we are not all the same. But the Openness of love will allow us to accept the opinions, ideas and appearances of others, even if we do not fully understand them. Third, love means allowing ourselves to be Vulnerable. Sometimes, we think we need to hide our weaknesses. But true love allows us to show our frailties and be accepted in spite of them. Love is also Empathy. The Empathy of love is understanding, compassion, even emotional identification. It’s like seeing a homeless person and saying “There but by the grace of God go I,” and really feeling for that person’s plight. When a person meets the above four criteria, he or she should be a good pastor, but one must also remember that love is much more. 1 Corinthians 13 says it better than I can: “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things . . . Faith hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
|
