Rev. Anna Strickland
Creative Partner & Operations Support
What is your role in the ministry of A Sanctified Art?
Since I started as a seminary intern in 2019, my role has always been to expand our capacity to serve churches, whether by offering patron support in our inbox, writing blog posts, or creating new resources. These days you’ll typically see my name attached to children’s resources (curriculum and coloring pages), music resources (original hymns and hymn compilation blog posts), and supplemental liturgy. Behind the scenes, I also contribute to theme development, keep operations running smoothly, and create other offerings for our patrons, such as the social media content calendar.
How do you serve the greater Church in other ways?
Prior to having my child, I served for six years as the Minister for Spiritual Formation and Communications at Labyrinth Progressive Student Ministry, an inclusive college ministry at the University of Texas. Sanctified Art is now my primary work, though I also lead retreats around the country when invited. Additionally, I am an active member of University Baptist Church in Austin, where I was born, raised, baptized, and ordained.
What identities or life experiences inform your work?
When I was young, my church was disfellowshipped from the Southern Baptist Convention for ordaining a gay man as a deacon. This was a huge, public ordeal which meant that my formative years in the church were filled with messages about two things: what it means to be Baptist, and God’s radically inclusive love. These two messages are still foundational to my faith. My adult faith has also been shaped by my embodied experiences, from being a 20-something living with debilitating chronic illness to carrying a child through pregnancy to being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at age 34. Ministering to, with, and among many trans, nonbinary, neurodivergent, and queer people has also expanded my understanding of God’s beauty made manifest in diversity.
What is the impact you hope SA will have in the Church & world?
When I’m creating resources, I view my work as ministering to the ministers. My mother-in-law was a children’s minister for decades, and I’ve watched her struggle to find children’s curriculum that is inclusive, theologically-sound, and usable with minimal edits. She would spend hours and hours rewriting curriculum for Sunday school, Vacation Bible School, and children’s camp—hours she could have been using to reach out to families or dream about the future. It’s my hope that our resources give back precious time to ministers whose plates are always full, allowing them to connect and create and dream bigger.
