Karen O’Connell received her degree in theology in 1986 from the College of St. Benedict, St. Joseph, Minnesota. In 1990, she received her Master of Divinity from CDSP, a seminary of the Graduate Theological Union, in Berkeley, California.

Following graduation, Karen worked for five years at Congregations Concerned for Children (CCC) – a program of St. Paul and Minneapolis Councils of Churches. While at CCC, Karen’s areas of interest were “Fostering Resilience in Children;” “Theology of Children,” “Child Abuse Prevention” and “Creating Welcoming Congregations for Children.” From CCC in 1993, Karen moved to Plymouth Congregational Church in Minneapolis as Director of Children and Youth. In 1997, she became Plymouth’s “Minister for Children, Youth and Families” and was ordained by the United Church of Christ in 1998.

While at Plymouth, Karen helped pilot an original curriculum, adapting Godly Play and Rotation Model teaching methods. She helped coordinate the Choir School and added a Youth Choir program. Leading retreats, service experiences, mission trips, wilderness trips, month-long arts experiences and leading Children’s Chapel were all part of the creative mix. Karen helped to found the Summer Theater Playshop program. In 2002, Karen left Plymouth to lead a UCC congregation in southern Minnesota. However, she missed working with kids. Karen came to Judson Church as Minster for Children and Youth in June of 2004.

Karen’s goal in Christian education is to help people experience God and the Sacred and to deepen their relationship with the living Spirit. Karen feels that religious education is a process of equipping individuals to be spiritually discerning. In learning the stories of Jesus, Karen hopes people will interact and live with the narrative and be guided by their sense of what is true. Her hope is that moderate and progressive Christians can reclaim the Christ story for themselves by using current biblical scholarship in conjunction with their own faith journey.

When designing a class, seminar or a learning experience, Karen attempts to provide a variety of avenues of access to spiritual knowledge. As a general framework she relies on Westerhoff’s five guidelines. He writes: “I have five guidelines for sharing our faith with our children from birth through childhood: 1) We need to tell and retell the biblical story-the stories of faith together. 2)We need to celebrate our faith and our lives. 3) We need to pray together. 4) We need to listen and talk to each other. 5)We need to perform faithful acts of service and witness together.” (from Bringing Up Children in the Christian Faith, Winston Press, 1980, p. 36)

The guidelines imply that we learn about faith within the context of community, through a wide variety of experiences, employing various learning styles. The only thing that Westerhoff misses, in Karen’s opinion, is that we need to encounter and learn from God’s creation - the natural world. If we do these six things, we will employ each of the differing intelligences. By using all the senses, we keep body, mind and spirit engaged. This leaves room for a great deal of creative exploration.

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