Dr. J. Elise Brown believes that every congregation has a mission and that every community needs a powerful and progressive faith witness within it. Her passions and skills include helping congregations and organizations create ministry plans that work—and then working those plans to produce abundance and fruitfulness. With over 30 years of ministry experience in diverse communities, she understands the factors needed to move congregations toward greater, more authentic diversity and mission impact.
Dr. Brown was born and raised in Des Moines, Iowa, and completed her undergraduate studies at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. She continued her education at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, earning a Master of Divinity degree, and at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, earning a Master of Theology in Ethics. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from The Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 2014 and is currently on the faculty at Lehman College in the Bronx, NY.
She serves as the Executive Minister at Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan and will continue that Word and Sacrament call alongside her role as Chief of Staff for the Metropolitan New York Synod. Marble Collegiate is dually affiliated with the Reformed Church in America and the United Church of Christ—both full-communion partner denominations of the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.