Marlena Graves – Her Story Speaks

Marlena is a writer, pastor, deep thinker, and speaker who is passionate about the eternal implications of our life in God. She is a lover of beauty and a seeker of justice seeker. Marlena deeply believes that spiritual formation and justice should never be separated. She is most concerned with those who profess to follow Jesus but speak and behave so unlike him. As a Puerto-Rican influenced by many streams of the faith, she feels as if she dwells on the borderlands of Evangelicalism.

As an Hispanic-Latina women born into a poor family that was plagued by the effects of generational poverty and mental illness, she has spent much of her life in despair over the hand she was dealt. In our conversation today she shares her journey of bidding farewell to worldly status and learning to look to God to fill her hungry and empty self.

Marlena received her M.Div. from Northeastern Seminary and is pursuing her PhD in American Culture Studies where she is researching the influence American culture has on Evangelicals’ view of immigration, race, and poverty. She has been a bylined writer for Christianity Today, (in)courage, womenleaders.com, and Our Daily Bread. She is also the author of “A Beautiful Disaster” and her most recent book, “The Way Up is Down.” She lives with her husband and three daughters in Toledo, Ohio.