The Rev. Darlene Strickland hasn’t exactly taken the most direct path to her present ministry.

As a child, she was raised in a Pentecostal church in North Carolina.

As a business professional, she started out in the computer field and later worked in sales and marketing for two major toy companies.

Today, Strickland is pastor of Unity Church, 900 Madeline Lane, and a spiritual representative of a faith that stresses personal transformation and multiple paths to God rather than any one prescribed creed.

Yet, underlying this winding journey through life was one guiding impulse urging her toward the pulpit.

“I grew up in the church, and it just would not let me go. I finally reached a point where I said, ‘I’m just going to go for it.’ I’m a person who has always followed my heart,” says Strickland, 42.

And that’s what eventually led her to the Lawrence church, where she is serving as the full-time pastor.

She is one of a handful of ordained women ministers in Lawrence who are leading their own churches.

Strickland graduated June 10 from Unity Institute in Unity Village, Mo., and started work Aug. 1 at Unity Church.

She has been impressed by her flock.

“Within this congregation, we have Jewish members, Buddhist members, people who still practice Catholicism, people from all backgrounds in Christianity. We have a Baha’i’ group that uses the church Sunday night,” Strickland says.

“My hopes are for the people here to realize what an amazing group they are — a mix of a lot of knowledge, diverse gifts and loving hearts.”

The Rev. Darlene Strickland, a former business professional, was ordained in June and became pastor at Unity Church of Lawrence, 900 Madeline Lane, in August. She is one of a handful of ordained women ministers in the city.

Strickland succeeds the Rev. Steve Colladay, who served as interim minister for about a year at Unity Church.

The Rev. Sherry Schultz was the church’s pastor from December of 1996 to July 2003. She left Lawrence to become a hospice chaplain at Good Samaritan Hospital in Puyallup, Wash.

Pursuing a dream

Strickland learned of Unity — a Christian denomination founded in 1889 in Kansas City, Mo., by Charles and Myrtle Fillmore — only a few years before starting ministerial school in 2000.

One of her friends happened to mention that she had been attending a Unity church in Raleigh, N.C., and Strickland decided to check it out for herself.

“The first time I walked into a unity church, the minister said there is only one presence in the universe, God the good. Something inside of me said, ‘Yes, that’s right,'” she says.

The message she heard resonated with her.

“It was not so much about asking me to adopt a particular creed or belief system as it was asking me to figure out what I did believe about myself and God — inviting me to explore other possibilities,” she said.

She was hooked.

“There were two Unity churches in Raleigh. I would go to both of them. I would go to one for the 9 o’clock service and the other one for the 11 o’clock service. It was so different from what I had experienced within Christian churches,” she says.

Unity’s original intention, according to Strickland, was that it would serve as a practical way of approaching life that anybody could adopt, a complement to a person’s existing belief system.

In other words, a far cry from her Pentecostal upbringing. The open-endedness of Unity, which stresses the power of meditative prayer, appealed to her.

“Rather than telling me what to believe, it invited me to look at my own beliefs, to find the answers within myself and continually building on that. I do believe spirituality is a living experience, constantly changing and growing,” Strickland says.

Her early experiences in Raleigh’s Unity churches eventually led to her decision to leave the corporate world — and the sales and marketing of Beanie Babies — behind.

“I just reached a point where I started to question everything. I decided to let everything go and pursue that dream (of ministry),” she says.

Not that the Beanie Baby job, which lasted two years, didn’t have its advantages.

“I was the most popular aunt you could ever imagine,” she says.

Inclusive community

Members of Unity Church seem to have taken to their new pastor.

Harry Shaffer, a professor at Kansas University for the past 48 years, praised Strickland.

“With Darlene, I like it so much that she brings in all religions. When she mentions Christ, she says that he was a teacher … they all (founders of many faiths) were teachers,” says Shaffer, who is Jewish. He also attends the Lawrence Jewish Community Center, 917 Highland Drive.

“She very much exemplifies the spirit that we are all the children of God; it doesn’t matter much the details of the religion.”

Bob Lewis, who has attended Unity Church for seven or eight years, agreed.

“What I like about Darlene is that she gives really inspiring messages, and it comes from right from her heart. I’m sure it’s well prepared, but you get the feeling she’s not working from a script. I think she’ll be a good fit for the church,” he says.

Strickland has an image of her congregation as a loving, inclusive community.

“Anyone is welcome. And if it doesn’t work out, that’s OK, too. We’re also willing to help them find something else that will work,” she says.