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Massachusetts Newspaper Profiles Rev. Elizabeth King '83

Massachusetts Newspaper Profiles Rev. Elizabeth King '83

September 30, 2004

1stChurchWenham.jpgSeptember 30, 2004, Greencastle, Ind. - "Although she'd grown up thinking ministry would be in her future, the physical trauma she survived as a 16-year-old in 1977 changed her occupational direction," states an article in Massachusetts' Hamilton Wenham Chronicle of the Reverend Elizabeth A. King, a 1983 graduate of DePauw University. "After high school, she embarked on a pre-medical program at DePauw University in Indiana and considered becoming a doctor." King has become the interim minister at First Church in Wenham, Massachusetts.

Rev. King tells the newspaper, "I went to college to become a doctor so I could help make sure that what had happened to me, physically, wouldn't happen to anybody else. In high school, I kept going to church because my parents made me, but I'd stopped praying, stopped singing and stopped having what was once a constant dialogue with God... I worked with a surgeon one summer and realized I wanted to go about healing in a different way, one with more of an emotional and spiritual focus."

King, who studied at Harvard Divinity School, has "logged 16 years in ministry: five in Methuen, nine in Salem and, most recently, two as an interim pastor at West Parish Church (Congregational) in Andover," writes Bill Woolley.

The minister, who "played preacher" on a tree stump as a three-year-old, feels she's found her calling. "Part of what I love about ministry is that every single day is different. I'm constantly meeting new people, constantly called to develop new skills. Nothing is ever boring or dull about this job," she said. "It also feels like a privilege to get to be with people at the most important moments of their lives, whether marrying, baptizing a child, burying a loved one... It's such a privilege when people invite us into those places."

Read the complete article, which includes a color photo of Rev. King, by clicking here. Visit the First Church of Wenham online by clicking here.

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