Special Ministries

Part of the mission of Ladera Community Church is to provide a place where seminary students may be nurtured and where ordained ministers specializing in areas other than a church may have a home, such as a hospital chaplaincy.

“In Care” Candidates

Pictured are four dedicated Christian women who are part of an extraordinary chapter in the history of Ladera Community Church. This chapter covered the period from 1999 to 2004, during Rev. Wayne Dalton’s tenure as the church’s minister. Valerie Duecker, Erin King, Erin Gilmore and Marilyn Halstead Corvin were invited to serve “in care” of Ladera Community Church while they were seminary students preparing for ordination. At Ladera Church they participated in worship services, served in various ministries and attended retreats, each bringing with her special gifts. They were all ordained in the United Church of Christ at our church.

Erin Gilmore, the first of the church’s “in care” students, was ordained in 2003; Erin King, the second, was ordained in 2002; Valerie Duecker, the third, was ordained in 2003; and Marilyn Halstead Corvin, the fourth “in care” candidate, was ordained in 2004.

Two of these ministers serve as pastors: one serves as a hospital chaplain, and one recently retired from a hospital chaplaincy.

Four-Way Covenants

As well as supporting these four candidates for ministerial preparation and ordination into the United Church of Christ (UCC), Ladera Community Church has been one of the four parts of “four-way covenants” with local ministers. Four-way covenants are covenants between 1) a local UCC church, 2) an ordained minister serving in a setting other than the local church, who is also a member of that particular church, 3) the organization that the minister serves, and 4) the local UCC association. Each of the four participants in these covenants makes differing promises of support for specialized ministries.

Ladera Community Church currently has one four-way covenant relationship. In 1993, Rev. Wilma J. Reichard began serving as a chaplain at Stanford Hospital. She entered into a four-way covenant with the church, the local UCC association (Santa Clara Association of the Northern California Nevada Conference), and the hospital. Wilma has remained in such a covenant throughout several different positions at Stanford Medical Center. She maintains her covenant currently serving as a chaplain in the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford. 

Four-way covenants are designed to bring the ministries of an ordained minister working in a hospital or some other area of philanthropic endeavor together with the wider United Church of Christ’s ministry in a local context. It provides another way for our church to reach others and for our specialized ministers to participate in our congregation.