Jasmine Bellamy is all about loving, courageous leadership.
“Love is my plumb line and that is not about sentiment, that is about the power of God at work among us and with us,” says Bellamy, who in March 2026 was named director of Stillpoint: The Center for Christian Spirituality, an institution of the Diocese of Los Angeles.
“The journey to wholeness is what we’re all about and making it a lived practice in a faithful effort,” Bellamy told The Episcopal News in a recent interview. “That’s what my passion is in my personal life, and it is in alignment with the mission of Stillpoint. I am really envisioning Stillpoint as a place where love is not just our ethos, but the characteristic, the presence people feel when they’re with us and what they take with them as they go back into their own lives.”
The center, which began 40 years ago as an ecumenical and interfaith spiritual formation organization, changed her life, Bellamy said. The former marketing executive at athletic footwear giant Reebok, Gap, Inc., and the Kmart/Sears Holdings Corp., recalled discovering “I am a contemplative, and I found myself called to the art of spiritual direction.”
Bellamy was a stand-out candidate to lead the center, bringing clarity to Stillpoint’s mission, “to nurture pathways to wholeness by encouraging contemplative living, faith practice and spiritual activism,” says the Rev. Deacon Daniel Tamm, the center’s board chair.
While Stillpoint is known for “creating an environment for people to develop a closer relationship with divine mystery and forming excellent spiritual directors, it is also important what you’re doing with that in the world, that you’re not just sitting home and having a good relationship with God,” Tamm said. “Stillpoint has found a new direction and a strong director to carry us into the future.”
A Stillpoint-trained spiritual director, the Bronx, N.Y.-born mother of two founded the Love 101 Ministries (https://love101ministries.com/) and The Loving Leader (https://thelovingleader.org/) and is currently a Fuller Seminary doctoral candidate with a concentration on love-centered leadership.
In 2021, Sports Illustrated named (https://www.si.com/more-sports/2021/10/20/reebok-jasmine-bellamy-diversity-efforts-100-influential-black-women-sports) her one of the Top 100 Influential Black Women in Sports, as a “culture transformer” and noting her creation of and willingness to engage diversity-focused, sometimes tough but courageous conversations.
“We intended to have six courageous conversations,” Bellamy recalled. “We had 23, and it became the lifeblood of this corporate entity. You can still be love in a corporate space if you choose to be and when you do, you can become a transformative agent.”
Participants “felt the difference and because of that they don’t ever want to be anything but loving leaders themselves. That is transformative.”
In May, she led another kind of conversation, an online open-hearted Lectio Amoris “invitation into the practice of love, a practice of becoming more awake, more present, more courageous, and more available to love within ourselves, within one another and in the world.” She was joined by Felicia Murrell, a newly appointed Stillpoint faculty member and author of, “And: The Restorative Power of Love in an Either/Or World.”
As Bellamy considers, “what it looks like for us to be deeply rooted in our name—what is that still point, that place where we are in communion with God, and what does it look like for Stillpoint in its fullness to be a center for Christian spirituality,” she envisions global and local partnerships.
The center has evolved from a conversation among friends, to what Bellamy aims to become a community with global reach. Already a partner with the Ghost Ranch retreat center in New Mexico, “we are in the process of building relationships with the Trinity Retreat Center, with the Rev. Dr. Mark Bozutti-Jones.
“We will be doing residential programs—bringing some of our signature programs there as well as continuing to look for opportunities in the Los Angeles area. Our roots are in Pasadena, where Stillpoint was founded, but that doesn’t limit us. We’ve never focused on just a location, our goal is to support people in wholeness and their spiritual journey all over the world.”
“I welcome everyone to come check us out, to join us in community,” she added. “Share us with your congregations and look to us as a support and a partner as you need it.”
Stillpoint is “magical,” says the Rev. John Draper, who recently retired from the board. Bellamy is “the energizer bunny. It’s not just her work ethic, but her vast range of leadership roles that she has already held both in a religious context and in a commercial context that will help us grow in the right direction.”
Even on Zoom meetings, “there is something magical, mystical, Holy Spirit-infused that allows everyone to open up and be very transparent with each other,” Draper said. “You just have to experience it. It’s that feeling of I don’t have to hide or pretend I’m something I’m not. I can just bring it to them.