Yvette A. Flunder was born on July 29th 1955 in San Francisco, California. She was raised there where her father was the preacher at the Church of God in Christ. Where she met Walter Hawkins and the Love Center Choir. She began performing with them and started recording music as the lead singer of “Walter Hawkins and the Family” and the Center Choir in 1984. She has made several gospel recordings including, “There’s Power“ with the City of Refuge Praise Ensemble, “We Won’t Be Silent Anymore” with The Fellowship Mass Choir. She even collaborated with the Grammy Award winning Chanticleer to record “How Sweet the Sound”. During this time she met and fell in love with her future spouse Shirley Miller who is the cousin of Walter Hawkins. She would go on to become licensed in the COGIC and even ordained by Bishop Walter Hawkins of Love Center Ministries. She then served as Associate Pastor along with being the Administrator for Love Center Church located in Oakland California.
FIRST CALLING
After witnessing the 1980’s epidemic of HIV/AIDS spreading through her community. She was moved to help and preach to the victims and their families. This is when she founded a number of non-profit enterprises in and around the San Francisco Bay Area including Oakland. Responding to the needs of the AIDS epidemic she started with Hazard-Ashley House then Walker House which serves people in recovery as well as people living with HIV. It was followed by Restoration House which is a dual-diagnosis residential facility for African-American women. It was the first of it's kind. These were all through the Ark of Refuge Inc., a non-profit agency that provides housing as well as direct services, education and training for people afflicted with HIV/AIDS in the San Francisco Bay Area and through out the US along with three countries in Africa as well. It later became the Y. A. Foundation.
In 1991 she wanted to merge Gospel Ministry with Social Ministry so she founded the City of Refuge under the United Church of Christ fellowship. She has described the City of Refuge UCC simply as an effort to "create a spiritual community that will embrace our collective cultures, faith paths, gender expressions, and sexual/affectional orientations while simultaneously freeing us from oppressive theologies that subjugate women, denigrate the LGBT community, and disconnect us from justice issues locally and globally".
In 1997 she earned a Certificate of Ministry Studies and a Master of Arts degree from the Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley, California. In 2000 she started the Fellowship of Affirming Ministries. It was a trans-denominational of Christian churches who she claims "desire to celebrate and proclaim the radically inclusive love of Jesus Christ". She was appointed Bishop and started presiding in 2003.
Flunder was consecrated as a bishop of the Fellowship of Affirming Ministries, which began in 1999 and now has some 60 member churches and about 40 affiliates. Although most of the congregations are predominantly African-American and led by LGBT or LGBT-affirming clergy, the fellowship also includes whites and Hispanics.
MOST RECENT
In June 2003 Rev. Dr. Flunder was consecrated Presiding Bishop of The Fellowship (founded in 2000 and renamed The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries in 2011), a multi-denominational coalition of over 100 primarily African American Christian leaders and laity representing churches and faith-based organizations from all parts of the United States, and extending to Mexico, three countries in Africa and most recently, Asia. TFAM is in covenantal relationship with The United Church of Christ, The Metropolitan Community Church and The Centers for Spiritual Living.
| Birth Date: | 29 Jul, 1955 |
| Age: | 64 yrs |
| Occupations: | Singer |
| Citizenship: | United States of America |
| Birth Place: | San Francisco |
| Gender: | Female |
| Description: | American singer and minister of the United Church of Christ |
| Net Worth 2021: | 5 million |
