Category: Alumni Spotlight

Alum Spotlight: Joanna Harader, M.Div. ’08

Joanna Harader, M.Div. ’08, serves as pastor at Peace Mennonite Church in Lawrence, Kansas.  She is currently on sabbatical from this ministry while she engages in renewal, as well as study and discernment exploring ways other congregations integrate in-person and online worship.  In recent months Joanna has participated in The Well: Central Alumni Thriving in Ministry, as well as the Training for Conflict Transformation Trainers through Central’s Buttry Center for Peace and Nonviolence.  About that experience she expressed her deep appreciation for “getting to learn not only from the trainers, but also from the other participants. I continue to process the wealth of resources I gained in the training and look forward to using them in an array of ministry contexts.”  Most recently, though, Joanna has celebrated the release of her first book entitled Expecting Emmanuel: Eight Women Who Prepared the Way.  This daily devotional for the advent season also includes resources for worship and small group discussions.  Dr. David May, Landreneau Gillory Chair of Biblical Studies at Central, writes that Joanna “offers reflective prisms to see the unique hues of each woman’s story, and in those stories, she reveals the sometimes messiness of our humanity and what it means to have ‘God with us’ in the midst of the messiness.”

Joanna will be available during Centralize 2022 to sign copies of her book (register here).

Congratulations, Joanna, and thank you for gifting the world with your advent reflections!