IT’S A GOOD TIME TO LOOK BACK. 2024 has been a big year for GOOD NEWS Associates. We’ve been scattering and tending seeds of God’s goodness as faithfully as we know how. Our ministries happen in diverse places and in very different forms. Our efforts grow big, small, and completely hidden fruits, and we trust the Spirit’s guidance through it all. Normally, you’d read in SEEDS about individual Associates’ unique ministries. To review the whole panorama at a glance is a joyful gift of being the new Executive Director. Hope you’ll agree as I summarize:

Rosemary Zimmerman — Healthcare on the Margins

In her first year as a GOOD NEWS Associate, Rosemary has set up and begun to offer health care where most providers, clinics, and hospitals can’t or don’t reach in Albany, New York — to the uninsured, homeless, and people with complicated diagnoses discharged from hospitals without followup resources. She goes the extra miles — literally and figuratively — to contact and followup wherever her patients may be found, from sketchy apartment blocks to the sidewalk in front of the public library. She slips notes under doors, calls back until she reaches someone, and is tenacious when others throw up their hands. Read more stories here.

All this happens on her “week off” from a full-time job as a hospitalist nurse practitioner. It’s a lot to juggle! This fall, she got training to use a mobile ultrasound device that’ll make her roving clinic more effective. Donations made it possible for the machine to arrive in her hands this month. Rosemary wants to focus on people needing care, so GOOD NEWS Associates provides a non-profit channel for funds that pay for medical supplies, necessary insurance and electronic records, as well as offers discernment and encouragement for her faithfulness.

Emily Provance — Traveling Ministry and Election Violence Prevention

Emily lives on the road like the Quaker ministers of old. On planes, trains, and busses, she’s constantly weaving between places and groups, across the U.S., and even into Europe and Africa. All this while also meeting online with dozens more communities and individuals. There’s no space here to list all her efforts and impact. Generally, she’s got four or five hefty irons in the fire at any one time. Find resources and updates on her blog.

2024 has been an important year for Election Violence Prevention. Emily has researched deeply, taught on it, spoken, written, and attended around a dozen regional Quaker gatherings over the summer. She’s also got a book under contract about the life cycle of faith communities; Meanwhile, she’s researching for another potential title on the testimony of community that synthesizes wisdom from Quaker faith and practices across the globe. That’s the topic for her Swarthmore Lecture at the end of May. You’ll be able to livestream it on Woodbrooke’s YouTube channel. Quakers in New York Yearly Meeting officially “recorded” Emily as a minister in June, recognizing the power of God’s leading in her life and work.

This year alone, more than 65 individual donors supported Emily in faithfulness through GOOD NEWS Associates, many of them giving monthly. With her Quaker meeting’s generosity, other grants, and honoraria, she has been able to give her all to ministry for nearly six years now without a permanent home address. Her energy and commitment are extraordinary.

Jan Wood — Teaching, Speaking, Spiritual Direction, Retired Director of GNA

Jan’s wisdom and faithfulness have a long reach, although she’s stayed closer to home this past year. Her ministry of prayer continually holds individuals and our broken nation in God’s heart. She meets with people in spiritual direction, and has offered vital leadership in her local Quaker church. Her speaking has moved many. If you’ve never heard the story of the birth of GOOD NEWS Associates, she shared it in a message during worship at North Seattle Friends Church, October 6th.

It’s been a huge task to transition GNA from Jan’s 26 years of leadership. Working with the President of the Board, in spring she passed along the financial books. At the annual Board retreat in June, she helped discern and call the new director through a surprising upwelling of grace. Then this fall, she’s introduced me to GNA’s infrastructure and the wondrous community of donors that make it all possible.

As Jan often says, GOOD NEWS Associates was an “experiment” to support people in ministry beyond the usual institutions of faith communities. In her words of October 6th:

I thought of all those people who have ministry written on their hearts, but they had no way to actualize that. …We aren’t rich, and we didn’t have any capital. So we had to figure out a way that collaboratively we could support one another and make this happen. Which we did!

With gratitude and joy, we celebrate all that GNA made and makes possible through Jan’s faithfulness!

Christine Hall — Retreat facilitation, Writing, Spiritual Direction, Way of the Spirit program, Director of GNA

GOOD NEWS Associates has made so much possible for me over twelve years of prayer, discernment, and practical support in faithfully following the Spirit’s lead. The surprising news in 2024 was the Board’s call for me to direct GNA as Jan retired. I’m experiencing the new role as a sweet continuation of my desire to nurture others’ spiritual growth and faithful action. I’m learning a lot about GNA’s financial root system, and I look forward to serving this mighty-in-Spirit organization.

I also continue to offer spiritual direction/accompaniment to individuals and small groups, with occasional Way of the Spirit retreats on spiritual formation topics. In 2025, I’ll be serving as “congregational companion” in a pilot program to revitalize Quaker faith communities through Friends World Committee for Consultation (Quakers). Around the edges of things, I continue to reflect on my blog and write for wider publication.

Graced Variety

If you’ve followed one of the Associates, you may not know the others. I wonder what you notice and what surprises or touches you.

Today I’m appreciating the graced variety of Associates’ ministries, with an exciting synergy during monthly meetings for prayer and mutual support. I’m grateful for how God works with our particular gifts and circumstances. No one person does everything! I recall the apostle Paul’s letter to the Corinthians with the image of body parts working together (1 Corinthians 12). But returning to the metaphor of fruitful fields: We do our bit, growing wheat, apples, or humble potatoes. We tend what’s ailing, or help heal broken irrigation systems in dozens of thirsty plots. We spread hope for a new way of living aligned with Divine goodness. GOOD NEWS Associates celebrate each other and the Spirit’s leading and providing.

We welcome your prayers, encouragement, and financial contributions to individual ministries, or the ground that nurtures them, the GNA general fund. You are an important part of GNA’s field work. Thank you for all the good you do in the world.

Photo Credit: Sveta_Fedarava from Freerange Stock

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