Lent Madness 2025 boasts an all-star lineup of Celebrity Bloggers serving as contributors. Enjoy reading the contributor bios below, log onto their respective website and blogs, and by all means buy their books! (where applicable). Oh, and PLEASE don't mob them when you see them out in public places. The aura of "celebrity" can be a heavy burden.
This is David Creech's twelfth year as a Celebrity Blogger. He has managed so far to remain undistinguished. Undeterred by more than a decade of losing, he is still fascinated by hagiography, both ancient and modern. He is a product of an Evangelical seminary and a Catholic PhD program and taught for years at a Lutheran college and worships with Episcopalians. Some would say he is an ecumenical voice but mostly he’s just confused. His book title is long and boring (The Use of Scripture in the Apocryphon of John: A Diachronic Analysis of the Variant Versions) but nearly sold out of its initial print run of 200 copies. He also edited the New Testament portion of The Path, a fantastic abridged Bible (in Spanish too!). He has long dabbled in a project that explores early Christian criminality. A native of Southern California now exiled in the Upper Midwest, David lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota with his family. You can follow him on Bluesky or Threads (but not that other site filled with much weeping and gnashing of teeth).
Ellen Singer is a Postulant for Holy Orders from the Episcopal Diocese of Texas. She is a second-year Masters in Divinity student at Virginia Theological Seminary, where she lives with her husband Dan and their two cats, Janet and Dana. Before seminary, Ellen worked in communications at diocesan and churchwide levels. She received a B.A. in Theology and Economics from Georgetown University and served as a case manager for asylum seekers and refugees through the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. She has also served as an editor at Earth & Altar Magazine and as a member of the Presiding Bishop’s Delegation to the UN Climate Conference, COP26. Ellen belongs to the Order of the Daughters of the King and is a fan of Eurovision, crossword puzzles, and fashion history.
Emily McFarlan Miller is an freelance reporter writing about the spiritual and supernatural. In 2017, she wrote an article about Lent Madness for Religion News Service, and the rest is history. When she’s not writing for or about Lent Madness, she does communications work for Indigenous Pathways, volunteers with Hope for the First Nations and enjoys hosting Halloween for her family in Chicago, where she lives with her husband, Joel; their toddler, Asher; and their cat Poe. Her sister has dibs on Easter. Follow Emily on Instagram as @emmillerwrites.
Kathryn Nishibayashi is super excited to be joining the esteemed list of Celebrity Bloggers for this year’s Lent Madness. She has actively participated in Lent Madness for many years and jumped at the chance to join the blogging team. She is a lifelong Episcopalian, the fourth generation of her family to be a member at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Los Angeles, a church founded for Japanese immigrants but now home to a multicultural congregation. She has held various leadership positions at the parish, diocesan, and churchwide levels. She received her MDiv degree from Church Divinity School of the Pacific in 2023 and is in discernment for Holy Orders. Prior to seminary, she spent twelve years as an elementary school teacher and this year has returned to teaching full-time. In her free time, she enjoys reading, singing, and watching baseball. She was the author of the Forward Day By Day meditations in October 2023 and is one of the authors of the Advent devotional Show Me Your Ways, O Lord, also published by Forward Movement.
Neva Rae Fox is ready for all the traditional hallmarks of Lent—devotions, reflections, spiritual reading, wearing purple nail polish, and, of course, Lent Madness! Her goal for Lent 2025 is to devote quiet time—if there is such a thing—to read the all the books on her Lent To-Read pile, including a few by one-half of the Lent Madness Supreme Executive Committee Tim Schenk as well as the new book from The Living Church, In Search Of Growth, which contains some of Neva Rae’s writings (yes, that is a shameless plug!).
The Rev. Becca Kello serves as Associate Rector at Christ Episcopal Church and Chaplain at to the Episcopal Campus Ministry (ECM) at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky. She has two black and tan coonhounds, Coakley and Oliver, who are goofy and vital to the rhythm of her day. This past summer she took four of her ECM students on pilgrimage to walk the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, her second walk on the Way. She shares her sermons at beccakello.com, as well as the occasional reflection on the things stirred up by the Camino.
The Rev. David Sibley serves as Rector of St. Paul’s Church in Walla Walla, Washington, within the Diocese of Spokane. Raised in South Carolina, David proudly studied and did research in chemistry at Furman University before a call to ordination. He is a graduate of General Theological Seminary and has previously served parishes in New York City and Long Island. He was a four-time Jeopardy! Champion in 2022, until his brief run was ended by an eventual 21-game champion. When not in church, David enjoys travel, trivia, all things food and music related, and enjoying any number of sporting events, especially the Chicago Cubs, Walla Walla Sweets, South Carolina Gamecocks, and Liverpool Football Club.
The Rev. Laurie Brock, returns as a Distinguished Celebrity Blogger because this, like God’s love, is eternal and inescapable. She serves as the rector of St. Michael the Archangel Episcopal Church in Lexington, Kentucky, and Archdeacon in the Diocese of Lexington. She has written two books about horses and spirituality, Horses Speak of God and God, Grace, and Horses. Her next book, Souvenirs of the Holy, is scheduled to be published in fall 2025. She frequently shares photos of horses and random stuff on Instagram at @revlaurieinlex and at various church gatherings as a retreat leader and speaker. When she’s not doing priest things, she is a competitive equestrian, riding her American Saddlebred Murphy in the show ring or riding her horse Nina, the Official Horse of Lent Madness, on easy trail rides.
The Rev. Megan Castellan, Distinguished Celebrity Blogger, is the Canon to the Ordinary for Formation and Mission in the Diocese of Central New York. Previously, she lived and worked in Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Arizona, Missouri, and a period of time in the West Bank that the government can’t know about. Her ongoing adventures and strong opinions are chronicled in her blog Red Shoes, Funny Shirt and on Bluesky at @revlucymeg. (From time to time, she also writes actual books, such as Welcome to a Life of Faith in the Episcopal Church.) She and her husband, Ben, live a Noah-like existence in Ithaca, NY with their two dogs, two cats, and two small children.
