Instagram story viewer> @revnessa> Tagged

Vanessa M Brown

@revnessa

1.3K

followers

1544

following

Keep Pressing!

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

Today, we joyfully celebrate the life, leadership, and beautiful spirit of our Bishop Vanessa M. Brown! 🎉💙

Your wisdom, faith, courage, and love continue to strengthen our church and inspire everyone blessed to encounter you. We thank God for your life and the countless ways you pour into our community.

May this new year bring you abundant joy, renewed strength, divine favor, and many more reasons to smile. Please join the entire Rivers of Living Water family in wishing our Bishop a very happy birthday! 🎂✨

#HappyBirthday #BishopVanessaMBrown #RiversOfLivingWater #churchfamily

25

9

GOD IS NOT FINISHED YET! 🙌🏽❤️

What God has in store for your future is greater than what you can see right now.

Bishop Vanessa M. Brown delivers a powerful reminder to keep believing, keep moving forward, and trust that God is still at work!

A powerful moment of preaching at St. Paul Baptist Church during the 18th Pastoral Anniversary celebration of Rev. Dr. V. DuWayne Battle.

#RiversOfLivingWater #BishopVanessaBrown #Faith #KeepTheFaith #PowerfulPreaching StPaulBaptistChurch

14

1

IT’s Celebration Time!
Everyone help us wish our very own
Presiding Prelate, Bishop Yvette Flunder a very Happy Birthday! 🎉🎉
We love you!! @bishop_flunder and hope you’re having an amazing day! 🫶🏾

#happybirthday Repost from @revnessa

8

1

Sometimes the holiest thing you can do is rest.  
🎥 Watch the latest episode of Back Talk — Live from the Movement — on the McCormick FB page. 
In this episode, Dr. Maisha Handy sits down with Bishop Vanessa Brown for a powerful conversation about the theology of rest, the courage to set boundaries, and why community isn’t just helpful—it’s essential for surviving and thriving in these times. 
Together, they explore what it means to care for ourselves while caring for others, the realities facing Black women and LGBTQIA+ communities, and why becoming well is part of our witness. Because faithful leadership isn’t about running ourselves into the ground. It’s about trusting God enough to rest, heal, and keep showing up with purpose. 

#BackTalk #FaithAndJustice #RestIsResistance #CommunityCare #TheologyInAction

2

0

On October 13th, 2022, Rt. Rev. Dr. Edward Donalson III, a Pentecostal Bishop, led a virtual lunch on the #BlackLivesMatter movement, alongside Black Liberation and Womanist and Queer Liberation theologies.
Dr. Donalson was joined by Rev. Terrance Taylor, Senior Pastor of the Breath of Life Seventh-day Adventist church in Inglewood, California, who moderated the webinar. Guest panelists included Rev. Dr. Vanessa M. Brown, Bishop Elect, and Bishop Joseph William Tolton.

Watch the full recording here >>> Link is available in our bio.

#juneteenth

1

0

The community has been asking for more spaces where Black LGBTQ+ people can come together in joy, worship, connection, and celebration. We heard you.

Join us for The Sankofa Gathering: Returning to Love, Liberation and Belonging, an evening of powerful worship, music, community, and affirmation.

Featuring Guest Preacher Bishop Dr. Vanessa M. Brown and Guest Psalmist Rev. Tia LyDawn.

21

0

Atlanta changed me.

I graduated and I was witnessed.

And somehow, all of this unfolded during Mother’s Day weekend; which made the experience feel even more sacred, layered, and emotional for me.

This weekend became a convergence of scholarship, initiation, matriarchal care, theology, ritual, grief, laughter, road trips, and deep communal love. I was surrounded by my aunt, cousin-sistah, sistahs, spiritual mothers, organizers, and loved ones across generations and traditions; all holding reverence for God, spirit, ancestry, and collective care in their own understanding.

Caribbean memory sat beside Indigenous-centered practice. African-centered ritual sat beside Christian prayer. Different genders, spiritual paths, and cultural traditions gathered without demanding sameness from one another.

And maybe that is what touched me most.

To experience a Mother’s Day weekend surrounded by a living matriarchal circle of care; women and community members who held me in softness, prayer, laughter, accountability, celebration, and witnessing ; felt deeply healing.

During this same journey, I also underwent initiation within my matriarchal circle and received an additional sacred name carrying meanings rooted in stewardship, dignity, lineage, communal care, and spiritual responsibility.

Because what is graduation if not another form of initiation?

One quote I wrote during this trip keeps echoing back to me:

“To experience love at its highest point is to be fully witnessed without having to abandon yourself in the process…”

Whew.

Atlanta did not just celebrate me.
It held me. ✨

#MothersDayWeekend #BlackFQTheology #SacredBecoming #AfricanCenteredHealing #GraduationRecap

148

55

Bishop Vanessa M. Brown #day4 #blackchaplainsrock #sankofawellnesscon26

11

0

I’ve been sitting with April 12 because I couldn’t just post it like it was light; being licensed as a minister at Rivers of Living Waters UCC came through too much to rush past, and I keep going back to August 2013 when I first encountered Rivers in the middle of grief after Islan Nettles was taken, the first time I felt grief and hope in the same room, and now here I am years later; 2024 was back-to-back loss burying people I love, mixed with heartbreak and stress that followed me into my body with fainting spells this year, and even before that I’ve been carrying what happened to me in 2021 with someone who once shared community space with me, so this moment isn’t just joy, it’s survival, it’s lineage, it’s choosing to stay when I had every reason to step away; and I don’t take lightly the people who stood there and held me in it, Hakim, Fatima, Miss Kim, Kabirah, Ramses, Ruthra, Rev. Yunus, Mya, Morticia, a.p. and so many of my siblings, past and present, lovers and community members, who witnessed, supported, and poured into me along the way, holding not just the celebration but the lessons, the stretching, and the blessings that came with it, and I know I did not get here alone, I’ve been informed by community, cared for through community, challenged by community, learning in real time how to align my life with my calling, including taking care of myself too; so for anyone who’s experienced delays, been pushed out, or made to feel like there’s no place for you, just know that wasn’t God, that wasn’t source, and what’s for you will find you in its own time, the long way if it has to, just like it did for me. I’ll share more in my blog soon. Link in bio.

📸 credit : 1-3 @fatfemme
📸 credit : 4-6, 8 @thehealingrev
📸 credit : 11- 12 @r.a.thegod

111

18

There are moments in life where what has always been true… finally gets named out loud.

With a full heart, I’m sharing that I will be licensed to ministry through my home church, Rivers of Living Water UCC, under the leadership of Bishop Vanessa M. Brown.

This is licensure through my local assembly—not ordination, and not licensure from the United Church of Christ as a denomination; but a sacred step of affirmation, accountability, and continued growth within the house that I serve.

This isn’t the beginning of my call… it’s the honoring of it.

For years, I’ve been walking a path rooted in Spirit; through faith, through community, through ancestral remembrance, and through African cosmology. To now have this affirmed within the church is deeply sacred. It feels like alignment, not arrival. Like language being given to something my spirit has always known.

I also want to name this clearly: while this licensure is new, my ministry is not.

I have been in service, spiritually, culturally, and communally, long before formal recognition. This moment does not define my calling; it affirms it. It creates a container for my ministry to be witnessed, supported, and refined within the community.

And I honor that this is one expression of my service, not the totality of it.

What is shifting is not my devotion, but the reach.
Not my calling, but the containers through which it can move.

If you are in NYC, or can make your way here, I would be so honored to have you in the room as this moment is witnessed and held.

🗓 Sunday, April 12, 2026
⏰ 12:30 PM
📍 The Riverside Church, NYC
💻 Streaming available via @riversnynjucc

Come celebrate with me. Come pray with me. Come witness what it looks like when calling meets confirmation.

6

7

3

0

What a blessing to see and hear our sistah the Bishop Vanessa Brown @revnessa last night as the guest preacher at The Great Awakening UCC @tganation in Portsmouth, VA.

She ushered us into 2026 with a word in season and for the ages, Standing in the Storm, Speaking to the Wind.

My brotha Albert AJ Jackson, Choir Director and Minister of Music, led us beautifully in praise and worship. It was a grand time ✨️

6

2