Rev. Laura C. Cannon, Senior Minister / President
Rev. Laura, an Ellicott City native, has been ministering to individuals and couples for over a decade, and created SOUL Community Church as a place where all members can feel supported in their desire to connect with their own divinity and creativity. Raised in the Christian church, Rev. Laura grew up with a love of Jesus Christ and the feeling of community and connectedness that church gave her. After an incident in her teens on a church retreat left her questioning both her church and her faith, she found herself struggling to find a way to reconcile her close personal relationship with Jesus and the seemingly unforgiving dogma of the Church. A period of staunch Atheism followed, until one night in 2001 when Laura had a spiritual “re-awakening” that connected her back to her own self-realized relationship with the Divine. It was at that point that God called her into ministry through a unique and unorthodox path that has included the study and practice of Christianity, Native American Spirituality, the Healing Arts, Yoga, Buddhism, and Eastern Philosophy.
Rev. Laura became an ordained minister in the early 2000’s to facilitate her work with hospice patients, and received her Master’s Degree in Human Sciences with a specialized certificate in Thanatology, the study of death and dying. She is a Certified Mindfulness Meditation Teacher (CMT-P) and a member of the International Mindfulness Teachers Association (IMTA). She is a Certified Buddhist Meditation Teacher, through the Buddhist Studies Institute. Laura has been blessed to study with many fabulous teachers, including Diego, Pema Khandro Rinpoche, Tara Brach, Jack Kornfield, Pema Chodrön, Howie Cohn, Eckhart Tolle, Adyashanti and many others. She has also taken the Bodhisattva vow through intensive retreat with Lama Surya Das in the Dzogchen tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. She is also the author of The Conscious Entrepreneur: A Guide to Maximizing Your Potential for Success, Freedom, and Happiness.
Never one to shy away from life’s deepest questions, the past twenty years of Rev. Laura’s life have been a period of deep self-exploration, teaching, healing, and love that has involved apprenticing and studying with spiritual teachers, ministers, healers and shamans from across the globe. “I was called to build SOUL Community Church as a place that would nurture that sense of community and fellowship often associated with church, but without handing down of a rigid set of rules and dogma. It is my heart’s desire to co-create a thriving, supportive community where we can all realize our own true nature and assist each other in our individual and collective pursuits towards self-realization, oneness, universalism, and love.”
