Martinez won reprieve from lupus, ‘signed up’ The Presbyterian Layman Volume 33, Number 3 Posted May 22, 2000 Jill Martinez The Rev. Jill Martinez of Santa Barbara contracted lupus when she was 14 years old. She missed a year of school and took medication to deal with the pain and crippling effects of the disease. As a first-year college student, she was attending a youth meeting where an evangelist was preaching on healing. She was healed, she said. “From that moment on, I didn’t take any more pills. I had no idea I could get my body back. I thought, ‘I get my body, too. Where do I sign?’” Thus, she decided to become a minister. She received her master of divinity degree in 1983 from San Francisco Theological Seminary and currently is working on a doctor of ministry degree. She has served as pastor of congregations, but most of her ministry has been in urban programs to help poor people. She is area manager for Peoples’ Self-Help Housing Corp. in Santa Barbara. “Our communities are absolutely starving to death spiritually,” she said. “I am out in the community, out in the world. There is so much need, so much hurt that there isn’t enough time to do what we need to do.” Declining to state directly her position on gay ordination, she said, “I don’t know how to pick one single thing in a person’s life and say that’s the thing that makes you an unvaluable contributor to our denomination.” “We’re so busy beating up on each other,” she said. “We concern ourselves with things that are important, but not as important as getting out there and reaching the unchurched. Let’s talk while we’re working out in the community.” Martinez chaired the committee to fund and develop the Spanish Language Presbyterian Hymnal and is a former governing body member of the National Council of Churches. For a detailed profile of Jill Martinez, click here.

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