Senior Minister

Rev. Allison Bright (she/her) was raised in a rural Missouri congregation that trusted young people with real ministry. When that trust led her to the pulpit as a teenager, she discovered the work God called her to. She spent most of her twenties studying storytelling and scripture, first through rhetoric at Truman State University and later at Brite Divinity School, where she earned her Master of Divinity and was twice named a Walker Ministerial Preaching Scholar.

During seminary, Community Christian Church became part of Allison’s story when she served as Seminarian in Residence, though she was more affectionately known as “the Young Jedi.”  Community walked with her through seminary’s biggest questions, the disorienting years of the  pandemic, and ultimately her ordination in May 2022. Soon after, Allison studied at the World Council of Churches’ Ecumenical Institute at Bossey in Switzerland, where sharing classrooms, meals, and worship with Christians from around the world widened her imagination for God’s Church and deepened her identity as a Disciple. She still gets to live some of that work on behalf of the denomination through the Disciples–ELCA Bilateral Dialogue Team.

Outside of work, Allison shares life with her fiancée, Karen (she/her), a therapist who is rarely far from a good book. Much of Allison’s spiritual practice happens in the garden, where she talks to God with her hands in the soil and God answers in the scent of tomato plants and the slow surprise of a zinnia blooming. That same trust in slow, faithful growth shapes the way Allison thinks about returning to Community now. Community met Allison while she was still becoming the minister God had called her to be. Several years and many stories later, she returns with a deeper sense of her own voice, plenty still to learn, and a real curiosity about what God might dream up next at Community and Park Hill Christian Church.