Lonnie Snyder

“God is Still Speaking!”

There are many layers to my faith journey which began as a child raised in a Congregational Church in Connecticut. After my family moved communities my parents chose a Presbyterian church for us all to attend. During my teen years I participated in both the Congregational and Presbyterian Church programs for youth including camps and communicant’s classes. Eventually my parents went back to the United Church of Christ (Asylum Hill UCC in Hartford) which was the church where I was married to Phil, my husband now for 47 years.

At college I studied Medical Technology since my goal was to “save lives and stamp out disease.” After training in the Hartford Hospital I moved to San Francisco and worked at a hospital in the ‘60’s which was in the Haight-Ashbury district. It was there that I met Phil who brought me to Tulsa, Oklahoma, his hometown.

Culture shock was tremendous! As a scientist bombarded with explanations of the world using Biblical information I fell away from the church. However, with raising my four daughters I felt it was important to bring them into the church so I joined a Presbyterian Church. It was not until my fourth daughter was married that I decided to find a church which embodied my spiritual beliefs. It was 2001 when I walked into Fellowship Congregational Church UCC and realized that I was not alone. I began my seminary studies at Phillips Theological Seminary with an audit class in 2004 and eventually enrolled in the MDiv. program, graduating in 2013.

I am a Member in Discernment with the Kansas-Oklahoma Conference and have the privilege of working with Edith Guffey as the Committee on Ministry Administrator for the Kansas-Oklahoma Conference. I am also the Chair of the Stewardship Commission which makes me a member of the Conference Council for the K-O Conference and I am the moderator of Fellowship Congregational UCC. I love doing all that I do with the UCC!

I now have 12 grandchildren spread out across the country. My family enjoys spending summer time on Nantucket Island where we reunion with all our extended family, as well. My hobbies include reading, cooking, golf and travel. This past May I spent two weeks in Romania learning about the Romanian Orthodox Church and their icons. As beautiful and ethereal as the country and the churches are this experience showed me how special the UCC is to me and how fortunate that I am a part of it. I gifted a Romanian Orthodox Magistrate one of our UCC commas and told him that “God is still speaking – through all of us!” This I believe to be true for all of us as well.