Welcome to my website! My name is Connor Filkins, and I am an ordained minister in the Heartland Conference of the United Church of Christ. I currently serve as the Associate Pastor of Youth Ministries at First Congregational Church of Hudson, OH. It's an incredibly vibrant community with a service minded mission. Check out their website and stop by for a visit!

I am a graduate from Eden Theological Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri and graduated from Albertus Magnus College in 2016 with a B.A. in Religion and Philosophy in 2016. My particular passion is in youth ministry, which was cultivated by involvement in my home church's youth ministry, both as a participant and subsequently as an intern with the youth ministry. I've continued this passion by working with Group Mission Trips, the leading youth mission trips provider in the United States, and also helping other churches develop their own sustainable youth ministry programs to fit their church needs.

Mission is something that I have a great passion for as well. Group Mission Trips has given me the opportunity to travel the country and facilitate large scale home repair mission trips. This job helped me cultivate project management skills that lead to the organization and co-leadership of The Wallingford Workcamp Team which served 54 homes in and around my home town of Wallingford, CT during the summer of 2018.

Since attending and graduating from seminary, my faith focus and personal theology have evolved towards being explicitly inclusive and affirming, as well as being a vocal and active advocate of marginalized communities. Living in a diverse environment of St. Louis, Missouri has opened my eyes to the injustice and intolerance present in the world, which has greatly influenced my theology and ministry. I am committed to an idea that theology, religion, and Christianity are deeply contextual, meaning that the cultural community in which our faith grows influences the growth in ways we don't often realize. This results in the vast diversity of belief within the Christian faith that we see today. The world was created by God to be diverse, and universal dogma and doctrine can sometimes limit our ability to appreciate the diversity that God's creation and God's people have to offer.