Rev. Sara McKinley

When a United Methodist Elder or Deacon (clergyperson) retires from appointed ministry, they are required to affiliate with a local church. While we have several retired clergy who regularly attend Heritage, they are all from Annual Conferences up north, and so their affiliations are there even though they’ve retired to Florida.

At a recent meeting the Heritage Leadership Board had the privilege of accepting an application to affiliate with Heritage from Rev. Sara McKinley. I’ve known Sara for several years, and I can tell you that it is a tremendous gift to have her join us! You already know her if you’re in the choir, as she began singing with them right away. Whether you’ve met her yet or not, you might not know the wide array of experiences she’s had throughout her legal, international business, and ministry career that took her around the world before bringing her to the Florida Conference.

Sara recently retired as the Senior Pastor of First United Methodist Church of Naples where she served an interim appointment for 18 months. Previously she served as the Director of the Office of Clergy Excellence for the Florida Conference of the UMC in Lakeland for 8 years. There she was responsible for overseeing the recruitment, credentialing, formation, continuing education and support of the approximately 600 clergy of the Florida Conference of the UMC. Prior to her work in Lakeland, Sara served as the Senior Pastor of First UMC Gainesville (4 yrs), and First UMC Coral Springs (5 yrs) and as the Associate Pastor for 9 years at Plantation UMC.

Sara was born in England, raised in Africa, worked in the Far East, traveled extensively throughout the world, and then chose to live in the United States. Before her call to ordained ministry she worked in the juvenile court system in Worcester, MA, for 3 years; in international corporate business in the U.S and the Far East for 9 years, including three years managing a multi-million dollar plastics injection molding company in Hong Kong and overseeing the construction of a class 100,000 clean room for medical molding in Singapore; and co-owned a graphic design business in Florida for 12 years.

Sara earned her Bachelors degree in social psychology from the University of Bristol, England; her Masters of Business Administration in organizational development and human resource management from Clark University, Worcester, MA; and her Masters of Divinity from Candler School of Theology at Emory University, where she graduated valedictorian.   She is the proud mother of her son, Andrew, who is married to Genevieve, and is grandmother to four adorable grandchildren, James, Owen, Luke and Olivia.

You will get to know Sara even better this summer, as she will be preaching at Heritage on June 14th, June 21st, and July 26!