Guest Profile

Ellen Debenport

Ellen Debenport was 8 years old and looking for something to do one afternoon when her mother, the schoolteacher, sat me down at the kitchen table and told her to write a poem. She wrote a dozen before bedtime. She's been writing ever since.

It led to a journalism degree from Baylor Universitythen jobs reporting for United Press International and the Tampa Bay Times, where She covered campaigns for president and governor eventually working in Washington, D.C.

No one was more surprised than Ellen when "the call" came for ministry. It really was a calling, a voice within, a pull toward a life she had never imagined from the press plane. She never expected her hunger for spiritual connection to yield a new career.

So now she's focused on spirituality full time, in particular the spiritual strength it takes to move through change and transition. Her next book, Hell in the Hallway, Light at the Door, is in the works. "When one door closes, another one opens, but it can be hell in the hallway."

Ellen is also an ordained Unity minister. After serving at Unity of Dallas for a long time, she ended up in the Texas Hill Country outside of Austin, ministering at a small church of smart, delightfully wacky people in Wimberley. As it turns out, her experience as a reporter, listening to people tell their stories all those years, prepared her to understand the lives of her church members.