As a mother of three with a full-time job at Allendale United Methodist Church in St. Petersburg, Victoria “Tori” Edwards knows that time is a precious commodity.
But that didn’t stop her from pursuing her calling.
“Growing up in a fundamentalist Baptist church, I was always told I would make a great pastor’s wife,” she said. “When I moved over to the Methodist church, I was given a different message — that I could be the pastor. That got me thinking, even if it took a while for me to actually embrace it.”
After taking courses online toward a Master of Divinity through Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., Edwards and her family recently relocated to the nation’s capital to complete the three-year program in person.
The move wasn’t an easy one. Her husband, Khyre, left his job as a case manager with Pinellas County Human Services, and they are living with a relative in Maryland until they find their own place. It means new adjustments for them and their kids — 6-year-old Makena, 3-year-old Naomi and 20-year-old Emelia, who was adopted by Edwards when she was 26 and Emelia was 18.
The financial challenges of moving to an expensive part of the country are also daunting. Edwards’ income will drop from her full-time pay as children’s director and director of engagement at Allendale to part-time work as a paid intern for Capitol Hill United Methodist Church. Khyre will be searching for a new job, hopefully in politics.
Though the couple has some money in savings, they will depend largely on scholarships provided by the seminary and the Florida Conference, which will pay the bulk of her tuition.
She’s also depending on several grants, including $5,000 from the Passing the Torch Fund.
The fund is a joint initiative between the Florida United Methodist Foundation and the Florida Conference. Since 2015, the partners have provided scholarships to students of color and culture to provide relief with seminary costs and grants to clergy so they can take short-term renewal leaves. The fund has also provided $2,500 to each newly ordained Florida Conference elder during the five-year effort.
With the announcement of the 2021 scholarship recipients, the Passing the Torch Fund has concluded its successful run, and the foundation’s $1 million commitment has been distributed.
“The grants have made a difference in so many lives,” said the Rev. Sara McKinley, director of Clergy Excellence for the conference. “We know how much students struggle with seminary expenses. And we also know long-serving clergy may need a break but can’t afford to take one. We were able to step in and help a lot of people over the years.”
McKinley says she’s still hoping to find a new source of funding but coming out of a pandemic may not be the best time.
She calls the ending of the Passing the Torch Fund “a real loss” and said the investment in Methodist students and clergy provided a good return.
Edwards agrees. “Every penny helps,” she said. “The cost of books and other fees on top of everything else can be overwhelming. I’m very grateful to all the people, including the ones at the foundation, who believe in me and want to help.”
A vision for the future
Despite the challenges, Edwards, 29, is keeping her attention on the bigger picture.
“This is a huge leap of faith,” she said. “It means I’ll be serving God in the way I’m supposed to. I thought that working on a church staff would be enough, but I finally came to accept that I needed to do more than that.”
That Edwards is now aligned with a denomination that supports and nurtures women on the path to ordination is certainly something she never knew was possible. As devoted to God as she was growing up, she felt her fundamentalist faith sent mixed messages.
“I heard a lot of teachings that somehow didn’t translate into actions,” she said. “There seemed to be a lot of hypocrisy on social issues that mattered to me, like racial justice and immigration.”
She credits Harry Potter with leading her to The United Methodist Church. A friend invited her to attend a “Finding God in Harry Potter” book club at Allendale. When she and her husband attended a service there, they immediately felt at home among the diverse congregation, which includes all ages and income levels, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ community.
“This is where I’ve felt welcomed, loved and mentored,” said Edwards, who joined the staff in 2019. “And this is where the pastor took me aside and said he had a dream that I would go into ministry. He planted that seed.”
“We know how much students struggle with seminary expenses. And we also know long-serving clergy may need a break but can’t afford to take one. We were able to step in and help a lot of people over the years.” — Rev. Sarah McKinley, director, Florida Conference Clergy Excellence
He also encouraged her passion for organizing prayer vigils in remembrance of victims of gun violence, protests against white supremacy and police brutality, and volunteer work with several Get Out The Vote campaigns.
For her community efforts, she was given a 2021 “Angel of Unity” award and $3,000 scholarship from the onePULSE Foundation, which honors the 49 people who were killed and 68 injured during the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando in 2016.
Edwards doesn’t know what plans God has for her after ordination. She does know her focus will be on reconciliation.
“One of my greatest passions is creating space for those who have been pushed out of other church communities to find a spiritual home,” she said. “I will strive to represent Jesus in a way that all people can be welcomed and join in.”
Having Passing the Torch recipients like Edwards bodes well for the future of the church, McKinley says.
“She comes out of a very forward-thinking congregation and will take that mindset wherever she lands,” McKinley said. “Tori is bright and articulate, and that’s just what we need in our future leaders.”
Equality and justice for all
Alejandra Salemi, 24, remembers the moment her activism came alive.
In her junior year at the University of Florida in Gainesville, she learned that Richard Spencer, considered by the Southern Poverty Law Center as one of the country’s most prominent white nationalist leaders, had a speaking engagement on campus.
The controversial event came on the heels of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, which turned deadly when a counter-protester was struck by a car and killed.
The Colombia-born Salemi, who moved to the United States when she was 6 and became a citizen in 2005, says she felt threatened by Spencer’s visit on many levels — as a woman, a Latina, an immigrant. In her role as a staff member at Gator Wesley, the Methodist campus ministry at the university, she was encouraged to take a stand of silent solidarity.
But she felt that wasn’t enough and decided to make her voice heard.
Instead, she created a sign on poster board and went to a protest against Spencer. She calls it one of the “scariest things I’ve done in my life.”
“I wasn’t sure what I was walking into. It was surreal,” she said of the snipers standing on top of the building and Spencer supporters looking at her with disdain. But after that night, Salemi says she learned a valuable lesson.
“Our faith is meaningless without action,” she said
The next year, Salemi founded Act Justly, a social justice ministry at Gator Wesley. She coordinated more than 20 events with speakers and educators to teach about micro and macro injustices and provided a platform for marginalized voices, from formerly incarcerated people to undocumented farm workers.
And in her fifth and final year at the university, she began an internship in social justice with the Committee on Religion and Race, led by the Rev. Dr. Sharon Austin, director of the Florida Conference Connectional and Justice Ministries.
That opportunity allowed her to create events for fellow students to join her in field trips to witness firsthand the struggles underserved or minority populations face and hear from experts trying to find solutions. They covered many issues, from human trafficking and food deserts to climate change and sustainable farming practices.
Salemi’s student life has been equally high charged.
She earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in public health and is now a student at Harvard Divinity School, pursuing a Master of Divinity. She has applied to change her track to a master’s in theological studies, with a concentration in religion, ethics and politics, but that won’t be processed until the fall.
The cost of the three-year program is prohibitive. Harvard has provided substantial aid, and she’s juggled multiple jobs, including a year-long position as a public health contractor for the Florida Conference. In that role, Salemi helped churches navigate issues of health justice, public health and antiracism through conversations and research. She now works as a research assistant for the Harvard Center for Health and Human Rights.
Earlier this year, Salemi was awarded a $5,000 Passing the Torch grant.
McKinley says investing in Salemi is a “sure bet.”
“She’s incredibly well-spoken, well-educated and thoughtful. A real firecracker,” McKinley said. “She’s going to change the world. In fact, she’s already doing that with her work, which has made an impact on our conference and at the district level.”
And Salemi isn’t done. When she completes her current degree, she has another goal — a doctorate in public health, focusing on the intersection of public health and religion. She hopes to pursue that course of study at Harvard.
“The pandemic exposed so much about the inequities of our public-health system and how COVID-19 impacted communities of color so disproportionately,” Salemi said. “It was a perfect storm that highlighted a system that was already broken.”
She says the combination of theology and her background in health studies will enable her to be a bridge builder between the two worlds. She believes religious leaders can impact health outcomes with science-guided leadership, such as encouraging congregants to get (COVID) vaccines.
“The two worlds need to be able to talk to each other and work together,” she said.
Ideally, she says, she would like to be part of educational initiatives spearheaded by the denomination’s General Board of Global Ministries or Church and Society or even return to her home country to work on religious reconciliation and health access.
And while she is grateful for her church’s support and belief in her, she says her biggest inspiration has been her mom, now a realtor in Tampa.
“I saw the racism she endured when she first came to this country, so when I work for racial justice, I’m doing it for what she went through,” Salemi says. “She has always been my cheerleader and told me to never give up. Knowing she always has my back just makes me work that much harder to change the world.”