Promise Partner

Promise Partner has found a home with Quakers since the early 2000s. Her experience has spanned a diverse range of theologies and worship styles of contemporary Friends. She is a member of North Seattle Friends Church and she is grateful to belong to Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends as a Quaker, Christ-centered, queer-affirming community. 

Promise’s ministry is to create and facilitate sacred spaces of connection, reflection, and growth. Her career has included working as high school teacher in Ohio, New Hampshire, and Oregon, as well as the West Bank and East Jerusalem, supporting young people to know their inner lives and the world around them through language, literature, history, and religion. During her years teaching at Olney Friends School (Ohio), she led the Spiritual Life Committee and took delight in working with colleagues and students to offer meaningful worship experiences for the community. As director of Quaker Experiential Service and Training (QuEST) in Seattle, she accompanied young adults in their personal and professional growth while they served at nonprofits and lived in intentional community. This included leading creative workshops to support participants in community, spirituality, and social justice.

With her prophetic voice, Promise speaks truth from a place of love, challenging oppressive systems like white supremacy. She rests in and strives for God’s Kin-dom of care and liberation shown to us in Jesus. A community organizer in Kitsap County, Washington, she facilitates groups, campaigns, and events for racial justice, immigrant rights, and Palestinian solidarity, working collectively with her neighbors. 

Promise and her partner Avery Welkin are the founders and facilitators of Bremerton Friends Worship Group under the care of North Seattle Friends Church. Promise’s ministry has developed to include writing and preaching as she offers prepared messages during their semi-programmed meetings. She shares words, songs, and presence to create a space that both nurtures and emboldens her community.

Promise is also a spiritual director and companion, accompanying others in their spiritual questions and reflections one-on-one and in groups. She is a member of the 2016-2018 cohort of the Way of the Spirit program through Good News Associates and the 2026-2028 cohort of the Art of Spiritual Direction program through the Stillpoint Center, and a member of Spiritual Directors International and Public Friends.

As a recorded Sierra-Cascades public minister, Promise is in a relationship of mutual support with the Yearly Meeting in service to Love and Her leadings. She seeks to use her pastoral and prophetic gifts to support others’ spiritual grounding and faithful action, particularly in the face of the destabilizing domination systems of our day.

September 2026