…Indiana, convened by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. There, her own talents for ministering ignited. Realizing that ministry was her calling, in 1999 Ingram enrolled in Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia and relocated there with her children to become a full-time college student. She graduated with her Master’s in Divinity in 2006, and one year later, accepted the pastorship of St. Michael’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, located in Philadelphia’s racially and socio-economically diverse Germantown neighborhood.
“People know that they can bring their burdens here and I when I counsel them, it’s with honesty,” she says of her leadership at St. Michael’s. “I speak frequently about drugs, AIDS and other problems which are associated with sexual promiscuity.”
Her message resonates far and wide. In 2011 she was the keynote speaker at the Lutheran AIDS Network Biennial Conference, where she thanked God “for anointing her life, as broken as it was,” she recalls.
Although her depression still lingers, Rev. Ingram says she refuses to wallow in self pity, and her mother and now-grown children provide her with emotional support. In between ministering to others she’s even writing her memoir.
“We don’t see the fullness of what God is working out,” says Rev. Ingram. “We never know exactly what plans he has for us, or how His Divine purpose will unfold.”
Rev. Andrena Ingram: Ministering to Others While HIV-Positive was originally published on blackdoctor.org
