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Rural pastor created a community ministry

Jeannette Solimine’s daughters’ disabilities—autism and a genetic disease—mean they will never experience living, studying and traveling abroad, which fed her life journey, but they are the light of her life. Their needs led her to stay in Colfax where she did specialized rural ministry with the UCC.

Jeannette Solimine developed a specialized rural ministry.

At the PNC-UCC Annual Meeting in April, she shared how her doubts led her to faith and a ministry that has given her the flexibility to “walk with my profoundly disabled daughters.”

“Over the years, I learned that many clergy struggle with doubt, as I have,” she said.

Baptized at St. John’s UCC in San Francisco, she spent three years in Augsburg, Germany, where her father was stationed in the military. Returning to Davis, Calif., her ideas about doubt began when she and her sister attended a Church of Nazarene.

Those ideas were challenged by experiences abroad.

At 16, she spent a year studying in the Himalayas at Woodstock Christian International School in Mussoorie, India, with children of missionaries, businessmen, politicians and diplomats of various faith affiliations. A roomate was a Sri Lankan Buddhist. A friend’s family fled Afghanistan, where they had been freedom fighters.

In contrast to that interfaith community, the Nazarene church, had taught her that faith and doubt were opposite.

After high school, Jeannette studied international relations in Scripps Women’s College at Claremont and spent her junior year studying at the University of Heidelberg and traveling to Eastern Europe, East Berlin and the Soviet Union.

It was eye opening to visit concentration camps and learn of the horrors of the Holocaust.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in 1986, she earned a master’s degree in international policy at Monterey College, focusing on communism in East Germany. That became irrelevant after the Berlin Wall fell and Iron Curtain collapsed from 1989 to 1991, so she went to Jiaxing, China with 20 others who taught English in other cities. The Tiananmen Square massacre of protesters led her to end her contract two months early.

Back in San Francisco, she found jobs for several years in three lawyers’ offices with different emphases environment, banks and schools.

Having left the Nazarene Church when she was 20, “because I had too many doubts,” Jeannette began attending St. John’s UCC, where she had been baptized.

“There, I learned faith and doubt were complimentary, not opposite,” Jeannette said. “For the first time I saw a woman pastor preaching. Then a member said with my interest in the Bible, music, worship and church history, I should go to seminary.”

Realizing women could be ministers in the UCC, she went to Pacific School of Religion in January 1997. While in seminary, she married John and her daughter Sophie was born. Chrissie was born after she graduated. Their disabilities became evident later.

“As I traveled the road to ordained ministry, I still had doubts, but paths opened,” Jeannette said.

Interest in small rural churches led her to an internship in San Rafael. After graduating in 1999, she looked for a small rural church. PNW-UCC conference minister Randy Hyvonen recruited her for three year Renewal ministry at Plymouth Congregational UCC in Colfax, which called her in 2001.

“When I told my parents, they said my great-grandfather was born there in 1888. His  father, a Civil War vet, had started a Presbyterian home ministry in Colfax and built the Presbyterian church there,” she said.

She felt the Renewal program did not make sense there. By then, Sophie’s autism and Chrissie’s mitochondrial disease was evident, so Jeannette, offered to work half time for six months to complete her contract.

She and John, who started a business, stayed in Colfax after she left the church, because they owned a house, but they faced financial struggles with health care costs.

As she began searching for a new church, she realized she was not going to find a full-time job in ministry. As Jeannette became engaged in the community—volunteering, serving on City Council and being a substitute aide at the school—she believed she still belonged  in and was in ministry, so she pursued being a specialized minister.

With her involvements in Colfax and relationshiops with area churches, she officially established a three-way covenant  in 2018 with the PNC and Plymouth UCC to do regular pulpit supply and community ministry.

She has preached in nearby Lutheran, Disciples of Christ, United Methodist, UCC and other churches in Colfax, Cheney, Dayton, Endicott, Pullman, Lewiston, St. John, Malden, Rosalia and Spokane.

Her community ministry from 2005 until retiring this year has included teaching Bible studies, visiting people in senior care facilities, conducting worship services for their residents, serving as volunteer chaplain at the hospital, leading services at a rehab center, doing funerals and weddings, and informally counseling and referring teens she had met as an aide at school.

Although retired, she continues preaching and doing community outreach, and recently joined the Community Congregational UCC in Pullman.

“Faith and doubt kept me going,” said Jeannette. “Even though my daughters will require 24/7 care the rest of their lives, it’s a joy to be with them.”

Some might blame God, but she affirmed, “Life can give us more than we can handle, but by God’s grace I can handle it with help from my parents, husband, sisters, dog, friends and people around world of many faiths who hold us in prayer.

For information, call 509-288-0799 or email revjeannette@msn.com.

 

Pacific Northwest Conference UCC News © copyright Fall 2025

 

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