Religion and the Black Church

Rev. Michelle E. Armster is an activist, artist and the co-director of Mennonite Central Committee's Office on Justice and Peacebuilding (OJP) in Akron, PA. She provides resourcing, consulting and training for churches, agencies and communities. She has many years of extensive training and experience in meditation, facilitation, conciliation, restorative justice, arbitration, victim/offender mediation, anti-racism and alternatives to violence. She has served on various community boards and currently serves on the PRASI Leadership Council, the board of The SpiritHouse Project, former board chair of the Lancaster Mediation Center, where she also serves as a volunteer mediator, and former member of the Executive Committee of Lancaster NAACP. She graduated from Lancaster Theological Seminary's Masters of Divinity program. She has also completed an Eastern Mennonite University's Graduate Certification program in Conflict Transformation. Equally as important, Michelle Armster is a creative soul, weaving song and drama through all dimensions of her life. She has brought creativity to the variety of places in which she has found herself along her life journey: from her current one-woman show: "God's Image Carved in Ebony: The Testimony of Mrs. Amanda Berry Smith, the Singing Pilgrim" to, presently, copastoring at St. Andrew United Church of Christ in Lancaster, PA.