Kathryn Mitchem: Champion of Scarritt to be Honored at Radical Change Banquet
Kathryn Mitchem will be honored as a Champion of Scarritt at the Radical Change Banquet on October 16th.
The Scarritt College alumni are launching a special giving campaign in her honor to raise $20,000 to update and enhance the campus Peace Garden and Labyrinth which are sacred spaces for Kathryn.
Her legacy is more than a memory—it’s a living legacy in communities down the street and across the country.
Kathryn devoted 41 years to the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries. In that time she traveled extensively yet held singular focus: to serve small, rural congregations across the U.S. through the Church and Community Workers program.
Kathryn joined the faculty of Scarritt College as department head for the Church and Community graduate program. In later years, she was a frequent volunteer in Scarritt’s Library and Archive, where she cared for the preservation of some of the most valuable items in the collection.
Mentor, educator and friend to generations of students, her passion for teaching and unwavering support for her students left an indelible mark on our community.
Gifts made to this campaign will directly support Kathryn’s lifelong devotion to sacred spaces and endow her legacy of delivering transformative education embedded with creative learning opportunities at Scarritt College.
Radical Change Banquet tickets are on a first-come, first-served basis.
Click here to reserve your spot!
Kathryn Mitchem . In Her Own Words
On September 1, 1962, I left Iowa to begin assignment as a Methodist US-2 (young adult mission program) and continued for a total of 41 years as a Church and Community Worker with the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries. Church and Community Workers use the skills of leadership development, Christian education, community organizing, and social work toward the goal of enabling clusters of small congregations to be in mission with the communities where they are located.
My missionary journey began among the nine small Methodist churches of the Union County Cooperative Ministry in the mountains of north Georgia for two years, continued at Cookson Hills Center and surrounding seven churches in the mountains of eastern Oklahoma for four years, after which I took time for three years of seminary at Duke University and commissioning as a United Methodist Deaconess, the lifetime relationship for lay women.
Next I served at Robeson County Church and Community Center and its surrounding sixty congregations among seven denominations in southeastern North Carolina for three years. From there my context widened, first as a Church and Community Professor and Department head at our United Methodist Scarritt Graduate School in Nashville, TN, for fourteen years; and then as nationwide interpreter and resource developer for the whole of Church and Community Ministry for fifteen years, contributing similar assistance to the GBGM office of Deaconess for a number of those years.
The spring of 2003 I clearly ‘heard’ the guidance that forty-one years was enough, that part of the journey was complete, and I retired as of September 1, 2003. I continue an active volunteer relationship with both the GBGM Church and Community program and the Women’s Division Deaconess-Home Missioner Office, alongside volunteer roles with Edgehill United Methodist Church and Scarritt-Bennett Center, Nashville, TN, and Penuel Ridge Retreat Center near Ashland City, TN, (of which I was a founder in 1984).
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