I am a lifelong Presbyterian. I grew up at First, Pine Bluff, where I spent a summer in my early 20’s as their youth director. After marrying my high school sweetheart, Jeff Price, I was re-hired as Pine Bluff’s youth director. During that time Jeff and I learned about a new program at Colombia Theological Seminary and we graduated from there with a Master of Arts in Youth Ministry (MAYM). We served churches in Georgia, Mississippi, and Arkansas doing youth and family ministry. Along the way, we had two children, Tanner and Becca, and Jeff went back to school and earned his MDiv and was ordained.

For over 18 years now, Jeff and I have been at Trinity in Little Rock where I have served as the educator. In 2020 I received an email from the presbytery advertising a new job opening for a “Connector” that had a very open ended job description. It wasn't a lot to go on, yet, somehow, I felt drawn to it. So, I applied and, lo and behold, was hired.

That was almost a year ago now. I started this new job as the Presbytery Connector on March 1, 2020 and covid-19 officially came to Arkansas 10 days later and we all shut down and went virtual. It has been quite a year and I, like the rest of you, have learned to do a whole lot of new things. I now talk about webinars, URLs, uploading and landing pages. I have attended hours of zoom meetings where I have learned about all kinds of Presbytery stuff and started getting to know lots of wonderful people. I have listened to your needs and worked to think outside of the box to try to help you meet at least some of those needs. For instance, at one of the pastor/church professional meetings I heard pastors with children express their struggles during COVID-19 trying to pastor a church and be a teacher to their children. From that came conversations, emails and zoom gatherings for church leaders dealing with those situations.

I create Presbyark Updates on Constant Contact twice a month and am regularly updating and re-designing our website, Presbyark.org, to help you stay informed. I search for curriculum, ideas, webinars, and more to help resource your ministries and make these available to you on resource lists you can access in the Update, on the website and at Presbyark Connect on Facebook. I organize virtual Presbytery webinars like the Lenten Share Forum and in person events like the Pastor/CRE Retreat for Restoring the Soul. When we come out of this pandemic, I also want to plan regional and statewide gatherings for connecting, learning, and resourcing. I serve as the staff resource to the Mission of the Church and the Resource Center sub-committee.

I hope this gives you a better idea about the kind of things I do. I hope that it also will spark questions and ideas that you will share with me. These days I work from home, generally on Tuesday through Friday and can be reached on my cell at 501-626-6477 or at julietannerprice@gmail.com.