Kelly Fryer (M.Div., MTh) is an entrepreneur who brings her work as a small business owner, environmental activist, high school teacher, and redevelopment pastor to renewing organizations. Kelly has served on the faculty of the Nonprofit Management Graduate Program at Spertus College and Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. A natural story-teller who believes in the power of narrative to inspire, teach, and transform, Kelly has published several books and articles. She is a member of The National Speaker's Association and in demand as a keynote speaker across the U.S. and Canada. A managing partner at A Renewal Enterprise, Inc., Kelly is one of the original architects of The Renewable OrganizationTM.
A graduate of Valparaiso University's honor college, where she studied economics, Kelly has worked as a high school Spanish teacher, group home parent, environmental activist, telemarketer, bank teller, and muffin-baking entrepreneur. She has visited nearly every state in the U.S. and traveled in more than a dozen countries; and she has lived in rural, urban, suburban, and exurban communities. Her background has helped Kelly learn to take context seriously but it has also convinced her that people everywhere want their lives at work and in this world to make a difference.
Kelly's passion for helping people make a difference led her to the Lutheran Seminary in Philadelphia, where she earned a masters of divinity degree. She has served as pastor of two congregations including, for over a decade, a congregation in the Chicago exurbs. When she arrived in 1992, this congregation was on the verge of closing. By 2002, the membership had grown by 500% and the congregation was operating in the black; they had purchased a fifteen-acre site and built a new 11,000 square foot community center. They had also started up three successful nonprofit operations including a bookstore, a preschool, and a counseling center. Along the way, Kelly earned a second masters degree from the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago. She served from 2003-2006 as Assistant Professor of Congregational Mission and Leadership at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota.
A prolific writer, Kelly is the editor and/or author of over a dozen books, articles, and resources that are being used by congregational leaders across the US and Canada, including Dancing Down The Hallway: Spiritual Reflections for the Everyday (2004), No Experience Necessary: Everybody's Welcome (2005), and Reclaiming the C Word: Daring to Be Church Again (2006). Kelly was the primary scribe for The Future Starts Now: The Renewable Organization for Faith-Based Groups (2009) and co-scribed, with Dave Daubert, Seeing With New Eyes: Using the PAWN Process With Faith-Based Groups (2010).
"Much of what I've learned about leadership has come from mistakes I've made," Kelly admits. "Everything else has come from the people I've worked with. And one of the things I've learned is that it doesn't matter if you're the CEO of a Fortune 100 company, a school principle, a rabbi, or the manager of a fast food restaurant: Great leaders leverage the power of purpose, participation, place, play, productivity, and possibility."
LinkedIn at: http://www.linkedin.com/in/kellyfryer
Tweeting at: http://twitter.com/kfry
Facebooking at: http://www.facebook.com/kfryer1
Email Kelly at: kfryer@arenewalenterprise.com
