Welcome, Rev. Melissa O’Keefe Reed!

Melissa was born in Goettingen, Germany while her parents studied theology. She was raised throughout the New England Synod, the daughter of two Lutheran pastors, where she learned the power of community to nurture active, curious, relentless faith in an incarnate, relational God. This faith would agitate her at Boston College (BA in English), through work in a Lutheran Community Services group home, and at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley, CA (MDiv, 2008) where she encountered faith-based community organizing in Oakland. Suddenly, the resurrective power of this relational God who dwells most profoundly in the world’s wounds came alive in flesh and blood.

In Portland, Oregon, among her internship congregation, Redeemer Lutheran, she personally experienced the liberative power of the gospel lived out among a congregation who intentionally shared their stories with one another and their neighbors, listening and responding to God’s call stirring in their collective woundedness. Melissa was then called back to work with a team that would midwife the intentional death of Redeemer into a new community and organizing Body — Salt & Light Lutheran Church and Leaven Community (leaven.org) where she served as a mission developer and then pastor, community organizer and co-executive director until September 2019. Leaven teaches Melissa what it means to be fully human and to move together in the eternal.
Melissa is married to Deacon Matt Smith, a hospice chaplain, fifth grade basketball coach, and backyard contemplative gardner. They have two children — Jack Francis (11) and Brigid Clare (5), and two dogs — Mookie the chihuahua and Gracie the pitbull.
Melissa leaps out of bed in the morning to accompany, resource and bless beloveds, particularly those on the margins of the church and the world, to come alive in the discovery of the power of their stories in relationship and in their response to their call. She sprints to develop the leadership of teams to lead their people in developing and enfleshing vision and action that grows from shared vulnerability. She dances to co-create process that weaves faith communities and neighbors to do the work of Life. She is a strategy wonk, recently fell in love with 90-Day Plans, and loves to prepare liturgy that is public action and public action that is liturgy. Her spiritual practices include kitchen dancing, relational one-to-one conversations, and friendship. She trusts our trickster Seamstress-Spirit to mess with any irrelevant or vicious line we humans draw and to thread our lives in ways beyond expectation. And, she trusts such Spirit is present and at work throughout the Oregon Synod.