Can this book change your life? In Journey to the Well, Bishop Vashti McKenzie offers lessons in spiritual transformation - Interview

Black Issues Book Review, Sept-Oct, 2002 by Kathryn V. Stanley

"September 11th was a defining moment for this country and for us as individuals. Before September 11th, we lived lives that said that he or she who gets the most toys wins," observes McKenzie. "Now, our friends and families are important. We no longer put-off saying `I love you.' We are sure to say `goodbye' before we leave. Many of us have stopped putting our lives on hold and begun to embrace what is really meaningful," she says. "It is within defining moments like these that we live differently and we begin to seek new meaning for our lives."

So how do you know if you have found the meaning in life that you seek? "You will know when you have arrived at your created purpose because your spirit will soar," says McKenzie."

"If you had told me when I was a little girl that I was going to be preacher, I would have told you that you were crazy," she says. "But when I became a pastor and started to preach, I realized that everything in my life had led me to that point. When I am in the pulpit, I soar. When I am pastoring, I soar. When I see women who were anonymous women suddenly emerge from the background, find their voice and enter their own lives, my spirit soars. And I know that this is what I was created to do."

An Atlanta-based freelance writer, Kathryn V. Stanley's work has been published in Essence and Emerge magazines. She is a regular contributor to BIBR's "Faith" section and serves as a staff writer for The Smiley Report, a quarterly newsletter from Tavis Smiley Enterprises. Stanley, a former attorney and an intergenerational preacher's kid, oversees the community development ministries of Big Bethel AME Church where she is also a member. She jumped at the chance to sit down with Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie, the AME Church's first female bishop, to discuss her new book, Journey to the Well.