Marlena Graves

Marlena has published over two hundred articles in a variety of venues. She is the author of the award-winning ‘The Way Up Is Down: Finding Yourself by Forgetting Yourself’  which received Christianity Today’s Award of Merit in Spiritual Formation 2021 and the award-winning A Beautiful Disaster: Finding Hope in the Midst of Brokenness (Brazos Press, 2014) which received Hearts and Minds’ Best Book on Spiritual Formation by a First-Time Author in 2014. She is author of Who’s My Neighbor: Loving Our Neighbors As God Loves Us  (The Discovery Series, 2020) and most recently 40 Days on Being A Nine: Enneagram Daily Reflections (IVP 2021). Currently, she is an adjunct professor at Winebrenner Seminary and pursuing her PhD in American Culture Studies at Bowling Green State University where she is focusing on Evangelical Christianity and inequality. She has worked in pastoral roles in several churches and  has been in leadership positions at non-profits. Prior to her doctoral studies, she worked for the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) alongside migrant farmworkers, immigrants, and the African American community in seeking their human rights. She has also long been active for immigration reform and spear-headed the 2018  #NotWithoutMyChild campaign to help end child separation. She also works to end systemic racism in her local, national, and church communities, as well for women’s rights in the Church. Marlena is a member of Ink: A Creative Collective, board member of Evangelicals 4 Justice, and received the 2021 Distinguished Alumna of the Year Award for Northeastern Seminary. Marlena lives just outside of Toledo, OH with her husband Shawn and three daughters.