Bexley Seabury Summer 2014

Exploring Anglicanism: art and soul Organize the community, energize the church Lessons in vitality from the Diocese of London

Bexley+ Seabury Summer 2014 }

Detroit: A Church in the Streets

Vol. 2: Issue Nยบ 1

Table of Contents 1

A letter from the president

2

A curriculum infused with the arts

6

La Iglesia Detroit: a church beyond walls

10

Professor Fout explores the lessons of London

12

Community organizing: politics with soul

16

Student column: My first year in seminary

17

A Seabury descendant’s expansive stewardship

18

Six new members join Board of Trustees

20

Our donors

22

Alumni and faculty notes

PRESIDENT'S LETTER

Dear Friends of Bexley Seabury, As you will see as you page through this Bexley Seabury magazine, it has been a full and exciting year for us as we live into our vision of a seminary beyond walls.

• In Columbus a few weeks ago, the first six graduates of Bexley Seabury received their MDiv diplomas, joining their Trinity Lutheran colleagues in a spirited and grace-filled ceremony.

• The next day, I traveled to Erie to confer a Doctor of Ministry degree on Dean John Downey at a moving cathedral evensong attended by Bishop Sean Rowe and hundreds of parishioners, clergy and friends.

Cover COURTESY MARCIA LEDFORD, TRINITY SERVICE © HTB LONDON

• That same week, in partnership with ChurchNext (churchnext.tv), we launched our ground-breaking online series exploring the spirituality of the Prayer Book—a series featuring every member of our distinguished faculty and available to parish audiences and lay individuals anywhere in the world.

• As I write, we are in the midst of our fourth annual Leadership Institute, in partnership with the Kellogg School of Management’s Center for Nonprofit Management at Northwestern University, with almost forty church leaders—lay and ordained—from around the country in attendance, including six of our Doctor of Ministry candidates.

• We have just opened registration for Professor Jason Fout’s January study tour—Learning from London—which will explore at first hand the remarkable growth and vibrancy of the Anglican Church in that ancient diocese.

• And week by week, in both Columbus and Chicago, we have continued to pray for each of our alumni by name, in solidarity with the mission of Christ in the world that all of us share.

I am convinced that the future of theological education in the Episcopal Church lies in the offering of flexible and accessible programs like these, both face-to-face and online, responsive to the needs of lay and clergy leaders throughout the country and the world.

Our future lies equally in the formation of dynamic new ecumenical partnerships.

Along with our continuing strong relationship with Trinity Lutheran Seminary and our partnership with Wartburg Seminary, we have this year forged new agreements to train Episcopal students from Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, Louisville Presbyterian Seminary, the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago, and Central Baptist Seminary in Kansas. And we continue our full participation in the work of the Association of Chicago Theological Schools, including the ACTS DMin program in preaching. We are all in this ministry together, seeking to strengthen the mission of God in difficult times and a troubled world.

We could not do any of this without the generous support of our Board, our Bexley Hall and Seabury Western alumnae and alumni, and parishes and individuals around the country who share our vision of a 21st century seminary, open to all who seek to deepen their Christian formation in a generous spiritual and intellectual tradition. Our supporters’ names are listed in these pages, with our deepest thanks.

Enjoy the magazine, and keep us in your prayers. Come see us in Columbus or Chicago, or online at www.bexleyseabury. edu. Join one of our classes. Spread the word.

{ President Roger Ferlo

God’s continued blessings, Roger

{ Opposite: A contemporary service at Holy Trinity Brompton in London. Professor Jason Fout’s class will visit the parish, which draws 5,000 people to eleven services at four locations each Sunday.

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Not by text alone

bexley + seabury

The art of leadership as taught by artists { Faculty trio forms pastors and theologians by focusing on the senses

By Jim Naughton

“The intelligences that have to do with the arts are as important to church leadership as the Harvard Business School’s way of understanding leadership.”

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As a cellist, the Rev. Roger Ferlo, president of the Bexley Seabury Theological Seminary Federation, knows how quickly the sense of touch, as he puts bow to strings, is followed by sound. He knows how closely the sound of those first notes is followed by his sense of how those notes are being experienced by the audience and he knows, almost immediately, whether his performance requires adjustment.

This cycle of intention, creation, response and adjustment is not unique to performing arts, Ferlo says. Indeed, it should be familiar to anyone in a position of pastoral leadership.

At the annual Bexley Seabury Leadership Institute, Michelle Buck, a professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, teaches people how to tango. “It’s all about leading and following and how quickly those roles can change,” Ferlo says. “It dissolves the distinction, the bipolarity between leader and follower and you do it with your body, and that translates into how you act as a leader.”

The Episcopal Church is increasingly aware that it can benefit from skills and wisdom cultivated in other disciplines.

The insights of the late Rabbi Ed Friedman, who brought family systems therapy to the parish, are quoted so frequently by Episcopal clergy that he is sometimes jok-

ing referred to as the fourth person of the Trinity. The distinction between “technical” and “adaptive” change articulated

by Ron Heifetz of the Harvard Business School has become a staple in the conversation about restructuring the Episcopal Church. And Bexley Seabury has been in the forefront of a growing number of seminaries offering courses in community organizing based on the principles of Saul Alinsky. (see pages 12-15) Yet the insights gained by creating and experiencing the visual and performing arts do not figure prominently in seminary curricula, and church leaders receive little training in how to guide those for whom the arts are a pathway to the divine.

“What we are up against in theological education is the Protestant focus on the text,” says Ferlo, who has a PhD in English from Yale and has lectured and led workshops on religious elements in the works of Shakespeare. “That long-time focus on the written word only has led to a narrowing of experience and a narrowing of intelligence. The intelligences that have to do with the arts, creative imagination, sense of embeddedness in culture— both popular and high—are as important to church leadership as the Harvard Business School’s quantitative way of understanding leadership.”

The church is at a moment, he adds, when focusing on the creative arts, both as a metaphor for collaborative pastoral leadership and a means to inspiring contemporary Americans, is more important

Not by text alone

DALLY INSTALLATION © Richard spahr

Summer 2014

than ever. He and other Bexley Seabury faculty want to help the church to claim this moment. They plan both to help students develop the ability to have and create artistic experiences and to infuse core Anglican studies courses with insights drawn from creating art.

“I am interested in deepening our sense of what leadership means in a pastoral and post-Christian context where no one knows anything about the church, but people know a lot about the senses,” Ferlo says. “I am interested in the connection between sensory experience and the experience of God. It seems to me to be a way that the church can renew its place in a culture that is on sensory overload but has no immediate way of really organizing the senses that leads to deeper knowledge and deeper wisdom.”

Ferlo’s initiative has the enthusiastic support of the Rev. John Dally, professor of theology and culture at Bexley Seabury and artist-in-residence at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Chicago, who has made a specialty of presenting the material of traditional Anglican Studies courses in

innovative, experiential ways.

“I’m interested in creating access to the Christian tradition in the seminary classroom and in the Christian community,” says Dally, who trained as a classical pianist in his youth and later became a playwright and fiction writer. “And I have learned that images and sounds create that access in a way a lecture never could.”

In 2011, Dally taught a course in the Anglican ethos for 28 students. Rather than lecturing his way through the history of Christian worship, he created six practica to allow students to experience the development of the liturgical tradition.

“We did a third-century house church Eucharist; a 13th century Latin mass; the Lord’s Supper according to the second Prayer Book of Edward VI; a Victorian choral Matins and a Eucharist with bread and water in a Nazi concentration camp,” Dally says. “Each practicum was placed in a sociological context: people chose roles from a hat that covered the spectrum of who might have been present at this liturgy in that time.

“The practica were open to the public

{ J ohn Dally, left, creates art installations, like the one behind him, to spur critical thinking.

and as many as fifty people joined us for each of them. The house church Eucharist was placed in Asia Minor during the Decian persecution of 251, and a guest to the gathering reports that his own community was broken into during worship and that their leaders had died in the arena and everyone was now in hiding.

No one knows that is going to happen, so they react spontaneously. The Eucharistic prayer, in which everyone raises their arms to pray, not just the presider, is all about invoking Christ as victor in combat, so those words become real for people in a way they might not in a modern context.”

When that Eucharist was over, Dally invited participants to discuss their experience. “The discussion lasted over an hour. People had a lot to say, and one of the recurring themes was ‘How come church isn’t real like this now?’”

“Here is what this project means to 3

Not by text alone

“If seminary is just about listening to an expert, then that is what you will be when you leave. But if seminary breaks open the tradition for you and makes it yours, you will be able to do that for others.”

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me,” Dally says. “Decentering the Christian community from the ‘professional theologian’ and giving everyone access to the tradition. Experiential, visual and aural presentations of the Bible and its theology displace the clergy person as authority and allow the community’s collective discernment to emerge. That doesn’t mean that we eliminate the role of the ordained, but it morphs into one that facilitates these kinds of experiences and encourages this kind of conversation.

“And to do that, the seminary classroom approach has to change as well.

If seminary is just about listening to an expert, then that is what you will be when you leave. But if seminary breaks open the tradition for you and makes it yours, you will be able to do that for others.”

In day-to-day parish ministry, clergy confront challenges requiring such a wide array of skills that learning to tango or to throw a pot might not seem immediately relevant. But the Rev. Suzann Holding, director of Bexley Seabury’s lifelong learning and doctor of ministry programs, says that settling on a guiding metaphor for one’s work as a pastor is important, and the church needs a broader palette from which to choose. If a parish can be “like” a nonprofit, or “like” a family, why can’t developing a congregation be “like” creating a work of art?

“I came across Jackson Carroll’s book, “God’s Potters,” in working on my own DMin,” Holding says. “One of the things he talks about is clergy as producers of culture. … That caught my imagination and since he used this image of “God’s potters,” I wondered what might it be like for leaders to think about their work in shaping congregational culture as working with clay. When you do that, you come to learn that the clay knows what it wants to be.”

Pursuing her curiosity, Holding took pottery classes. “When you are on the wheel and it is spinning, you can get into one of those moments that can be very meditative and grounded because you are very engaged and you’re concentrating but you are not obsessing.”

The longer she practiced, the more she became intrigued with the idea of “getting a group of leaders together in a pottery studio, having a potter teach

us, and then finding points of time to do intentional reflection from a leadership standpoint.”

For example: “The whole process of centering the clay on the wheel, what does that mean and what does it mean for the congregation in terms of what centers them, what might be the core values that center them and ground them?” she asks.

“Because if the clay isn’t centered, no pot.”

Holding will be leading a class at Salt Creek Pottery in Elmhurst, Illinois, from 2-5 pm September 27 and October 4, 11 and 18, and promises participants “one clay bowl to take home and maybe more if they are particularly productive.”

“God creates.” Holding says. “Being made in God’s image, we are creative just by nature. My question is how can we do this hands-on, if you will, process of working with clay and use this as a way of engaging our congregations around culture change?”

Ferlo believes there is a hunger among clergy and other church leaders for an approach to theological reflection that takes them beyond simply examining and defending propositions. “When we say the word theology, it is usually a shorthand for systematic theology,” he says. “But just as we have multiple intelligences we have multiple modalities of theology.”

When he was associate dean and director of the Institute of Christian Formation and Leadership at Virginia Theological Seminary, Ferlo co-taught a course on Biblical hermeneutics called Acts of Attention, with the Rev. Judy Fentress Williams, an associate professor of Old Testament. On one occasion, they took the class to the National Gallery of Art, assigned them each a painting and gave them an afternoon to study and reflect on it in theological terms. He can imagine teaching a similar course based on the works of Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and other abstract expressionists whose works are in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.

At a recent retreat for clergy in the Diocese of Ohio, Ferlo led an exercise in reading scripture through visual images, showing participants an image of “The Transfiguration,” the final painting by the Renaissance master Raphael, which was

FERLO FAMILY © RICHARD SPAHR

{R oger Ferlo’s book, Sensing God

bexley + seabury

Not by text alone

Summer 2014

{ Clockwise from top: the Rev. Suzi Holding at the potter’s wheel; the Rev. Roger Ferlo, cellist and Shakespeare scholar, flanked by his daughter, Liz Harlan-Ferlo, a poet, and his wife Anne Harlan, a book artist; “The Transfiguration,” by Raphael, which Ferlo uses in workshops on “the discipline of seeing.”

positioned beside the artist’s coffin at his funeral. The painting’s brilliant, ethereal upper half depicts Jesus, flanked by Moses and Elijah, floating above the cowering figures of Peter, James and John. In the bottom half of the painting, which is more crowded, vivid and intense, the disciples are failing to cure the epileptic boy described in Matthew 17: 14-16.

In the lower left-hand corner of the painting, a disciple sits, his head turned

said she found it fascinating to hear Ferlo explicate the painting. “That will stick with me for every single year that I hear the Transfiguration story,” she said.

Carson, a Bexley alumna and member of the Bexley Seabury board of directors, said her clergy colleagues “seemed totally engaged” in the ensuing conversation.

That impression was reinforced, she added, because “many of my Facebook friends ended up making allusions to it

toward the action, but with an open book at his side and his hand held out as though to the observer.

“I told them that clergy tend to occupy the threshold between the two kinds of scenes, seeking to ground the holy in the everyday, and seeking to transform the everyday by pointing toward the holy,” Ferlo says. “It is an uneasy position to be in, especially as we are prone—like the apostles in the story—to inadequacy and failure.”

He then asked them for their own thoughts. “What was remarkable was how energized the clergy were by the exercise, even those who thought they knew very little about art,” he says.

The Rev. Mary Carson, rector of Church of the Redeemer in Lorain, Ohio,

either right then or in the next day or so.”

Ferlo, Dally and Holding say that immersion in the arts has a way of generating enthusiasm.

“Once you have the permission to think visually, suddenly it becomes a very different world,” Ferlo says. “I consider painters and poets better theologians than most systematicians, but we have lost the discipline of seeing. We don’t cultivate it anymore. But when you look at “The Transfiguration,” you see a great artist theologizing.

“How do you link the transcendent with the earthly? You do it by means of the arts.”

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By Lu Stanton León

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La Iglesia Detroit Bexley grad begins new ministry by making friends in Mexicantown

Juan Perez knows what it is like to feel marginalized, to worry about acceptance, to be locked out when others are let in.

He also knows what it is like to be welcomed, supported and celebrated by the Episcopal Church. That’s the experience the recent Bexley Seabury graduate wants to share with the Latino community by way of La Iglesia Detroit, a new ministry he is helping create in the Diocese of

Michigan.

“Growing up in the South Bronx, in the midst of death, violence and despair, the one thing that allowed me to overcome all this was my faith,” said Perez, who was born to Puerto Rican parents and spoke only Spanish until he started kindergarten. “I am reminded of the words of encouragement from one of the Dominican Sisters who taught me ‘to

{ Right: La Iglesia Detroit celebrates an

Easter Eucharist in the street. The church is supported by the Diocese of Michigan and a grant from the Episcopal Church.

From left, the Rev. Juan Perez (then a deacon, now a priest), the Rev. Marcia Ledford and Sylvia Booth.

believe in myself as much as God believes in me.’ That has helped feed my vocation as a social worker and has helped feed my vocation as an ordained member of the Episcopal Church. So when I stand on the street corner or when I preach, I seek to remind those who are listening of the potential of hope and life in the midst of darkness and death.”

La Iglesia Detroit is the result of outreach efforts by the Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Michigan to better serve under-represented groups—in this case, Latinos. It is being led by Perez and the Rev. Marcia Ledford, author of the grant proposal that, in December 2013, was awarded $100,000 from the Episcopal Church. The funds are part of the church’s initiative to create and support Mission Enterprise Zones and New Church Starts,

a directive from the last General Convention. That grant is being matched by $100,000 from the diocese.

Although the new ministry to Latinos is not focused specifically on gay and lesbian people, being a gay man has contributed to Perez’s acute awareness of—and desire to serve—those who feel marginalized.

“Many of my friends who struggled with their sexual identity were often told that God did not love them,” Perez said.

“Unfortunately, many of them chose drugs, suicide and risky sexual behaviors as a substitute for this perceived loss of love, and many died believing that God did not love them. Those of us who have been forced to live on the margins of society often have difficulty seeing beyond the imposed limits.

“So if I were to simply state what my ministry is, it is creating a ministry of presence. Aside from the words of encouragement I received as a child, it was the presence of a loving and all-embracing community of faithful Christian witnesses that helped me see light in the midst of darkness.”

La Iglesia Detroit is centered in Mexicantown, a vibrant, growing community in the southwest part of the city. One of the new ministry’s first offerings was Ashes to Go on Ash Wednesday, which was a huge hit.

“I didn’t know what to expect,” Perez said. “As we moved through different sections of Mexicantown, over 150 people came up to us. One of the leaders of a gang came up to me and asked what we were doing. He said, ‘Can you pray for me?’ So I did, and later a whole bunch of other gang members came for prayers.

We handed out pamphlets with information about the Episcopal Church and about us. In addition to offering ashes, we made it a point to talk to them about it and about what we are doing.”

Ledford described it as “one of the most amazing days of my life. Grandmas would come up and say, ‘Can I go home and get my kids and bring them back?’

And they did. Ash Wednesday is hugely important in the Latino culture. That’s part of what was driving that.”

Perez and Ledford also held an outdoor Easter service, attended by about a dozen people.

“I think we’re gaining trust because we are out on the street,” Perez said.

“We’re not looking at getting a building right now. We’re hoping that once we get a contingency of people who come more often, the people who come will help us decide where to build a church, so the 7

LA IGLESIA detroit

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Jr., a 1987 graduate of Seabury-Western Seminary. When the grant was awarded late last year for La Iglesia Detroit, Gibbs announced that the new outreach ministry would work hand-in-hand with Lutherans who already were working with Latinos in southwest Detroit through a four-year-old project called Grace in Action.

Perez, who loved the ecumenical ethos of Bexley, is glad to be partnering with the Lutherans, who already have ministries in place.

“Grace in Action is a Lutheran church plant,” Perez said. “A lot of what they are doing is providing social services, not church liturgy. We’re looking at how to support each other.”

“They have built a good relationship in the community, and we want to build off that,” he said. “It is challenging. No one has ever done this before.

I often get the question of ‘How many people are coming to your church?’ But our ministry is one of presence. We are not yet looking at building a structure.

We are looking at how to better serve the population and how to support churches that have Latino members.”

In the grant application for La Iglesia Detroit, Ledford wrote, “Establishing trust with the community is job one.

Past ministries cropped up and disappeared, and this added doubt about the staying power of church initiatives. Immigration enforcement is another issue that causes the Hispanic community to be wary of outsiders. … These elements and others mean that this ministry needs to be mindful of the social and spiritual needs of the community through continuity and steadfastness.”

Ledford, who met Perez in 2008 when both were discerning a call to the priesthood, is also a civil rights attorney. She said immigration is one of the biggest issues facing Latinos in Mexicantown.

“About 65 percent of Latinos in the United States are documented. In Mexicantown, about 65 percent of our folks are not documented, so that’s a

PHOTOS COURTESY MARCIA LEDFORD

people will be empowered by being part of the decision.”

The new ministry’s first stage focuses on building relationships from which a core team will be established and a mission statement created.

Additionally, the ministry’s outreach campaign this first year will focus on social media, crafted in consultation with community leaders and experts in marketing to Latinos. Bilingual billboards, radio spots, banners, and events will be featured. Perez and Ledford also hope to reach out to community leaders and immigration attorneys who work to eradicate human rights violations, including human trafficking.

Perez said he hopes La Iglesia Detroit will foster a dialogue within the diocese about the spiritual needs of the Latino community and serve as a resource for existing congregations to develop or enhance Latino ministries.

Renewing ministry to the Latino community has been a focus of Diocese of Michigan Bishop Wendell N. Gibbs,

bexley + seabury

Summer 2014

“One of the leaders of a gang came up to me and asked what we were doing. He said, ‘Can you pray for me?’ So I did, and later a whole bunch of other gang members came for prayers.”

big issue,” she said. “People are deported and their American-born children stay here, and they are not getting the social services they need; they are falling through the cracks. And there seems to be a prominence of domestic violence, so when they try to go to the shelter, the people at the shelter don’t speak Spanish.

I anticipate that whatever our ministry is going to be, those are a couple of things we’re going to address. It is so important to talk to the leadership around town and find out what is happening.”

LA IGLESIA detroit

Many of the Latinos in the Diocese of Michigan are, like Perez, former Roman Catholics. He is hoping that many will find a home in the Episcopal Church.

“I became an Episcopalian when I was attending grad school at Penn for social work,” Perez said. “I had left the church because I identified as gay and couldn’t be gay and Roman Catholic.

“The Episcopal Church appealed to me because, one, the similarity to the Roman Catholics in terms of sacramental theology, but I also liked the fact that I was allowed to engage in it, and challenge it,” he said. “I went through Roman Catholic elementary and undergraduate schools, so I was well aware of what the challenges would have been had I stayed.”

After receiving his master’s degree, Perez worked as a social worker in hospitals and schools in Michigan and New York. He was working at Mount Sinai Hospital Adolescent Health Center in New York City, providing family therapy to Hispanic families when, on September, 11, 2001, two planes flew into the towers of the World Trade Center.

“After 9/11 I helped with body identification and worked with the families in the following days,” he said. “It was the weirdest time ever. It was so quiet…it was an intense time.

“One of my coworkers at the time was married to the rector at St. Mark’s-inthe-Bowery. The day after the attacks, she asked if I could come and help her out with a service for the community. We were worried about people being emotionally unstable. It was a little prayer service, and there were people there who were very irate. I forgot what I said, but I got up and said something, and it calmed everybody down, and the service continued.”

The next day his co-worker asked if he were in the process of becoming a priest. He wasn’t, but the question planted a seed of possibility.

It wasn’t until 2011 that Perez entered seminary. He spent one year at the Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas, before transferring to Bexley. Perez received his MDiv degree from Bexley Seabury in May and was ordained a priest in June. He lives in Berkley, Michigan, with his husband, Joe Cloutier.

“They’re awesome at Bexley,” Perez

said. “There was a great attitude. I called the seminary and had a conversation with Tom Ferguson [vice president for academic affairs for the Bexley Seabury Federation and dean of Bexley Hall] to try to get a sense of what the community was like there. There were two other seminarians from my diocese at the time, so I had a feeling of what the community was like.

It was very receptive.”

Ferguson said Perez greatly enriched life at the seminary.

“Juan has been such an integral part of the community during his time in seminary,” Ferguson said. “His faith in a God who loves and redeems all of us is evident and palpable in all that he does.

“His work with La Iglesia Detroit is simply crucial in breaking down some of the ways in which the Episcopal Church has not been faithful to our call to spread the message of a Gospel where God does not see the divisions we create.”

Perez and Ledford see a huge opportunity to grow the Episcopal Church among Latinos in Detroit. Nationwide, the Latino population in the United States has increased from 12.5% of the total population in 2000 to 16.9% in 2012.

Michigan is not among the states with a high percentage of Latino residents, but it has the fifth highest number of Hispanic migrant workers.

“There are a lot of migrant workers in Michigan and a lot of third- and fourthgeneration Hispanics,” Perez said. “The urgency I see is that second and third and a little of the fourth generation are individuals who are more willing to move to another denomination. If we don’t move on that now, we are missing an opportunity.”

Perez hopes to help Latinos in the Diocese of Michigan recognize how much the Episcopal Church has to offer.

“With La Iglesia Detroit we want to create a space that allows for individuality and inclusiveness,” he said. “The Episcopal Church can be a place to grow toward faith in many different ways, while at the same time allowing participation in a community where your voice and participation matter.”

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LEARNING FROM LONDON

bexley + seabury

Learning from London { Why does one diocese thrive while others decline?

Jason Fout’s class will look for answers in London

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by Rebecca Wilson

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Ask most people in the know and you’ll hear that the church in North America and Europe is in steady decline. Attendance and giving are in freefall, cosmopolitan young people are fleeing, and hidebound old people refuse to change.

But this depressing conventional wisdom isn’t the whole story, says Bexley Seabury Professor Jason Fout, especially in London.

Since 1990, the Diocese of London in the Church of England has grown by 70% in terms of average weekly attendance.

Since 2000, giving has increased by 50%.

And last year, the diocese issued “Capital Vision 2020,” an ambitious plan to plant 100 worshipping communities, double the number of young people involved in Christian communities, and “equip and commission 100,000 ambassadors representing Jesus Christ in daily life.”

Fout thinks that the Episcopal Church can learn from London, and the church agrees. In May, the Episcopal Church’s Standing Commission on Ministry Development awarded him a Conant Fund Grant to study the Diocese of London’s growth. This award and another from the

TRINITY SERVICES © HTB LONDON, FOUT AND MILLER COURTESY JASON FOUT

Summer 2014

Evangelical Education Society made it possible for Fout to spend three weeks in London this summer developing a new study course, working on a manuscript for a book to be published by Forward Movement, and developing a workshop for the 2015 meeting of the Consortium of Endowed Episcopal Parishes.

The study course will take place from January 16-24, 2015, and is open to MDiv and DMin students, as well as “anyone charged with leadership in the church,” Fout says.

“Inevitable decline is not the only story to be told for Anglicanism in the developed world,” Fout says. “The church is growing in London, in the midst of one of the most diverse, vibrant, cosmopolitan, multi-faith and secularized urban centers in the world. In January, we will investigate the many facets of the mission and evangelism taking place in the Diocese of London through learning best practices from seasoned practitioners.”

While he was in London this summer, Fout prepared for the course by meeting with diocesan and parish leaders including the Venerable Luke Miller, archdeacon of Hampstead, whose official job description includes holding the diocesan portfolio for resilience.

“One factor in our growth has been that each church has a distinct identity and a definite churchmanship: we can name our differences and be clear about what we have to offer the community,” Miller says.

Fout agrees. “Churches in London are not trying in their self-expression to be everything to everyone, and yet, there is a

LEARNING FROM LONDON

strong sense of mission and service to the area where the church is located.”

Holy Trinity Brompton Church, a renowned center for the Church of England’s evangelical movement, exemplifies Miller and Fout’s point. Called simply HTB, the church is best known as the home of the Alpha Course, an introduction to the Christian faith developed in 1977 that has attracted more than 24 million participants across 169 countries since its inception.

HTB’s visibility has recently been raised even higher by one of its famous alumni. In 1983, a young businessman named Justin Welby—now the Archbishop of Canterbury—joined the parish and was an active member for six years until he left London to attend seminary.

“You were a very disruptive influence to my non-Christian life,” Welby told Nicky Gumbel, HTB’s vicar, in a 2013 interview.

Around five thousand people worship at HTB each Sunday across eleven services in four locations; it is the most visible parish driving growth in the Diocese of London. But Fout doesn’t think that its success dictates an inflexible formula for the Episcopal Church.

“HTB provides one good example,” says Fout, “but not all parishes growing in London are along these lines. There’s a strong sense of collaboration. AngloCatholics are grateful for the presence of evangelicals and what they offer, and evangelicals seem the same way. Even if they disagree at points, there’s a convergence of appreciation.”

Miller concurs: “The various church parties don’t need to see each other as

competitors — there are so many who are not involved in church, it’s not as if we are competing for the same 100 people.”

During the weeklong course, Fout will take his students to HTB as well as St. Ann’s Tottenham, a North London parish with five congregations in neighborhoods with some of the highest unemployment and gang violence rates in the city, and St. John at Hackney, which is redeveloping its facilities. Students will examine church plants and restarts, new church models including Fresh Expressions and Pioneer Ministry, and social outreach and evangelism. Throughout the week, students will have opportunities to interview leaders about what they have learned in their ministries.

Following their trip, students will formulate what Fout calls “mission action plans” to relate what they have learned in the Diocese of London to their own ministries.

“We will spend our time learning best practices from seasoned practitioners,” Fout says. “Plan to come away energized to tell a different story about the possibilities present to the church in America!”

Learn more about the January 2015 Learning from London study course at bexleyseabury.edu/learningfromlondon. { Opposite: A child-friendly service at Holy Trinity Brompton; Below: Professor Jason Fout, who will lead “Learning from London” with the Venerable Luke Miller, archdeacon of Hampstead, who says churches need “a distinct identity.” Right, a contemporary service at HTB.

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Getting Organized

{ Community organizing students met with leaders of United Power. Clockwise from top: Organizer Duane Ehresman; Bexley Seabury students Dillon Shipman, the Rev. Abigail Murphy and the Rev. Mary Erickson; Jawanda Ware, organizer; the Rev. Kristin White (MDiv 2009).

Organizing for creation & disruption TEXT: Lu Stanton Le贸n photos: vincent johnson

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D Summer 2014

Debra Bullock doesn’t expect the Bexley Seabury community organizing class she took recently to turn her into an outstanding broad-based community organizer, but she knows it has made her a better priest and leader.

“This week has been really amazing,” she said near the end of the weeklong course that incorporates training provided by the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF). “I’m getting good tools to go out and be a courageous leader. I’m getting tools to motivate my congregation and myself to put some meat on our words, to put feet to the Gospel.

“I don’t have any intentions of going out to become a great community organizer; I want to be a great Episcopal priest, and what that means to me is to have a community of folks who are living out their baptismal covenant every day of the week, not just Sundays.”

Bullock, rector of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Evanston, Illinois, and a 2006 Seabury MDiv graduate, was one of 11 Bexley Seabury students who took Community Organizing for Missional Living this summer, a course taught by IAF members and Suzann Holding, a 1999 Seabury MDiv graduate and now the seminary’s director of lifelong learning and doctor of ministry programs. The course, designed to help students develop skills in relationship building and community change, is part of the seminary’s Doctor of Ministry in Congregational Development program.

“It’s a training put on by the IAF for their affiliates” Holding explained. “Including our seminary students, there were about 60 people in the training. With our students, we work on how to make the connection between the IAF work and issues of congregational development.

We translate from the IAF culture to the congregational culture.”

Why is the course called Community Organizing for Missional Living?

“I know the word missional gets thrown around a lot,” Holding said, “but

Getting Organized

we know that God is in the midst of what is happening inside and outside our churches. How do we engage that mission of God? How do we not just be in our silo, which is our church, and instead engage in living missionally with those around us? So community organizing is a way of thinking and a way of life that is attuned to sussing out the needs and the issues in a community—and the passion and gifts of the people in the community—and doing God’s work.”

Founded in 1940, the Industrial Areas Foundation is the nation’s largest network of local faith and community-based organizations. It partners with religious congregations and civic organizations in local communities to build broad-based organizing projects that promote leadership development and citizen-led action.

IAF currently works with thousands of religious congregations, nonprofits, civic organizations and unions in more than 65 cities across the United States and in Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and Germany.

At this summer’s one-week class, Mike Gecan, Gerald Taylor and other senior IAF organizers presented community organizing concepts and methods and trained attendees to use them. Gecan, a veteran organizer who trained with IAF founder Saul Alinsky, is the author of several books, including “Going Public: An Organizer’s Guide to Citizen Action” (2004).

Although many seminaries now offer courses in congregational development and community organizing, SeaburyWestern was a pioneer in that movement.

The seminary may have been the first to recognize the practical application of community organizing in congregational development and parish ministry.

Through its Seabury Institute, it first offered community organizing classes in 1995.

The Rev. Kristin White, who spoke to this year’s class, is a 2009 Seabury MDiv graduate and a passionate proponent of using the community organizing methods she learned in seminary to spread the Gospel. She began using those skills during her three years as associate rector at the Church of the Holy Spirit in Lake Forest, Illinois, and kept at it since becoming

the rector of St. Augustine’s in Wilmette, Illinois, in the summer of 2012.

“My primary focus is the health of my church,” White said, “and I try to apply principles and ideals that advance that health.”

White has both taken and helped lead community organizing classes. She said that when she was first introduced to the idea that political organizing tools could be used to advance the Gospel, it came as a revelation to her. But it became the impetus for her to go to seminary after she had taught high school English for ten years.

“I was always a political nerd growing up,” she said. “My dad is an Episcopal priest, so I very much grew up in the church, and I’ve always loved the church and always loved politics. But I didn’t know what to do with that.

“The reason I mention the religion and politics piece is that I thought I’d have to choose, but I didn’t. The community organizing class in seminary was like politics with a soul. Suddenly it wasn’t illegal to talk about power; power is the ability to get things done, and that’s the Gospel. I wanted to do things that weren’t divorced from my soul.”

White has used community organizing tools both inside and outside the church. She’s used the one-on-one relational meetings, critical to all IAF work, as an integral part of congregational development and as a way to participate in God’s work outside the church walls.

“ The community organizing class in seminary was like politics with a soul. Suddenly it wasn’t illegal to talk about power; power is the ability to get things done, and that’s the Gospel.”

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Getting Organized

bexley + seabury

While an associate rector, she and several members of Holy Spirit worked with the IAF’s local organizing affiliate, Lake County United.

“I was involved in establishing an initiative called Waukegan to College, now an independent 501c3 working with children and their families from grade five through college,” White said. “That program works to prepare young people and help them navigate school, applications, college visits, etc., offering support until they graduate from college. It’s a pretty amazing thing.”

White said that within her congregation, she constantly uses the IAF training tools focusing on one-on-one conversations, power recognition, and sticking to that which is essential.

“It’s hard,” she said. “It’s knowing people and connecting people and helping them discern their gifts. It’s running meetings that are well prepared and inviting people to take risks and provide leadership.

“It just works. I would say the community organizing tools that are really helpful to me are being able to read power in a situation and to figure out people’s self-interest and bring that into the conversation. That is not something that is easy to do, so I am so grateful that Bexley Seabury is offering this in the DMin program.”

Anger—how to recognize it and how to use it—is a major emphasis of the community organizing class, as is acknowledging that power isn’t a bad word. Those aren’t the easiest of lessons for church people.

“Some of their wording around motivation was new to me,” said the Rev. Jeff Thornberg, vicar at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Indianapolis. “They are clear that the best trait in a leader is anger.

That’s a helpful agitation. There are injustices in the world that I’m angry about. If I owned that frustration, that anger, would my leadership look different?”

The class brings to mind William Sloan Coffin’s observation that “anger is what keeps us from tolerating the intolerable.” IAF training provides a way to recognize and use power to channel that anger.

“The discussion around power has been helpful and challenging,” Thornberg

“Every class I’ve taken has been so clearly applicable to congregational life,” said Thornberg, who earned an MDiv from General Theological Seminary in 2008 and served as the associate rector of St. John’s in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, for four years before being called to St. Paul’s. “Every class I take, I think, ‘This is so relevant to my job.’ I’ve been so

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“There are injustices in the world that I’m angry about. If I owned that frustration, would my leadership look different?” said. “As church leaders we have consolidated power, and this class makes me think about the way I use my power in the world.

“Whether we name it or not, you have to recognize where the pockets of power are. The way the IAF discusses it helps us name it clearly.”

Talking about power, anger and taking action creates a palpable tension in the class.

“It’s a challenge to people,” White said. “It is unsettling and it is hard work.

It is intentionally disruptive of the status quo. Dangerous may be too strong of a word to apply, but maybe not. To require action is to threaten by saying that action needs to be taken.”

Holding said the class includes conversation about “what healthy anger looks like and how it feels. Too often we want to avoid conflict. We don’t want to talk about it and we run away from it. We don’t want to make people angry because they might walk away.”

As part of the class requirements, Bexley Seabury students must go back to their congregations and communities and apply what they’ve learned. For Thornberg and Bullock, that won’t be a problem.

“I think the biggest takeaway for me is how important it is to cultivate relationships with other leaders, particularly outside the church,” Thornberg said.

“The more I can get myself into other contexts and meet with other leaders in the community, the more I can learn and understand the way that God is working in the world.”

The course, he said, is just one example of the tremendous impact Bexley Seabury’s DMin program is having on his ministry.

impressed with the curriculum. I’ve been encouraging my colleagues from seminary, who are now in ordained ministry, to pursue this degree at Seabury.”

Bullock said she doesn’t plan to waste any time before using what she has learned in the class, both inside and outside her congregation.

“I like to think that I’ll go back and—even though it is a class assignment—have more one-on-one meetings,” she said. “I’ve been at St. Mark’s over three years, so I know the résumé stuff about parishioners, but I want to get to know them more deeply. I want to know their stories and really ask, ‘What are you looking for? What brings you here? What really makes your heart sing?’”

Bullock, who is in her second year of the DMin program, added, “We really need to get to know our neighbors and find out what God is already doing in our neighborhood; asking ourselves where can we go alongside our neighbors with God.” Holding echoed that thought. “We are people who are on the go, who are

Summer 2014

Getting Organized

{ Other participants in the off-site session

sent out into the world,” she said. “We are church for and with others, not being church to others. We are not bringing God to anybody; we are engaging in what God is already doing, in what is happening right now. It’s incarnational; it is embodying the Gospel.”

The need is immediate.

“One of the things I love about community organizing is that it acknowledges that institutions, like the church, are a necessity to community life,” White said, “and building healthy institutions is crucial. I have a clear sense of urgency.

“I love the church and want to see it flourish. We have to get to work.”

included, clockwise from top: Organizer Sam Knight; Dillon Shipman (left) with fellow IAF training participants; the Rev. Jeff Thornberg (foreground) and the Rev. Gene Sheppard (background); organizer Loree Woodley; the Rev. Debra Bullock (Seabury ’06); Jim Schwarber of United Power.

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STUDENT COLUMN

bexley + seabury

My first year in seminary { Moments of doubt and discovery

By Kevin D. Beesley

“The community at Bexley Hall is especially enhanced because of the unique common mission found between Bexley Hall and Trinity Lutheran Seminary.”

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Do you remember what it feels like to get home, sit on the couch, and enjoy your favorite beverage following an exhausting business trip?

The fatigue and collapse following red-eye flights, connections, and of course, finding your car in the sea of long-term parking can be overwhelming. Yet at some point, during the first few minutes of relaxation, you realize that you have completed a great task. Maybe it was the business deal, the relationships that were established, whatever the purpose, it was successfully completed.

Welcome to the first year of seminary.

No one said that following God’s call to ordained ministry was easy, and it isn’t.

What has proven true, however, is that in my first year at Bexley Hall, God has provided. As a father and husband, there has been sacrifice, yet grace. As a student, there have been challenges and yes, the academics can cause anxiety. There have been moments of doubt, question, and shocking discovery. Yet also times of assurance of God’s mercy, love, and the joy that comes through Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. This assurance becomes life giving as an individual as well as in the community of fellow seminarians. The community at Bexley Hall is especially enhanced because of the unique common mission found between Bexley Hall and Trinity Lutheran Seminary.

The sense of community that develops in seminary grows partly organically and partly by design. It is never stagnant. To meet people on the first day of seminary who are beginning their senior years, and then accompany them, as they become candidates, and in some cases transitional deacons, is a remarkable experience. As these students make the transition inwardly and outwardly with the donning of vestments and clerical

collars, it serves as a reminder of God’s call, a motivation, and a reminder that in seminary, relationships are established but constantly changing.

As I bid farewell to new friends who are graduating, I recognize that those friendships will continue as they become mentors and confidants in the future.

Being a part of a small seminary provides the opportunity to know our leadership and faculty beyond the classroom.

The opportunities to laugh, to share times of sorrow, and to establish a level of trust and confidence that is transparent adds a layer to the experience that not only benefits academic life, but personal and spiritual life as well.

In a few days I will be 40 years old.

I have enjoyed a career and have been blessed with a wonderful family. To leave a career and to ask my family to go on this journey with me would appear to many as, well, foolish. This year has proved that God places people and events in our lives who will help us tremendously through their support, love, and encouragement.

The learning process over the last year reminds me of that African Proverb that suggests, “It takes a village to raise a child”. For someone desiring ordination in the Episcopal Church, it takes a community to raise a priest. Thanks be to God for his grace and the church.

Managing Change

Summer 2014

A spirit of openness and hopefulness

K

{ Kate Koeze at the Norwegian Sea above the Arctic Circle

By REBECCA WILSON

Kate Koeze is a direct descendent of Samuel Seabury, the first bishop in the Episcopal Church, but he doesn’t get credit for her long involvement with the seminary that bears his name. That goes, at least in part, to the 20th century theologian Paul Tillich.

“At St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire, I had to take a year of religion. One of my most formative experiences was reading “Dynamics of Faith,” she says, referring to one of Tillich’s seminal books for a general audience. “It was revelatory for me. It remains one of my touchstone books.”

Years later, when Koeze was the mother of two adolescents and interested in deeper church involvement, the Rev. Chuck Howell (Seabury ’95), her rector at Grace Episcopal Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, gave her name to the SeaburyWestern Theological Seminary’s Board of Trustees nominating committee.

Koeze joined the board in 2003 at the Very Rev. James Lemler’s final meeting as dean and president. During her eleven years of service, which concluded at the

May board meeting, she helped oversee the transitions that culminated in the 2013 inauguration of the Bexley Seabury Federation.

“Mainly I stayed with it so long because it was so enjoyable,” Koeze said.

“I was there in a real transition period, and the people who served with me were creative and committed. It sustained me and taught me how to manage change.”

Koeze particularly enjoyed the different liturgies she experienced at Seabury during board meetings. “I loved going and doing something different and weird,” she said. “It certainly nourished me spiritually. I felt filled up when I would come home from one of those meetings.”

Among the lessons Koeze learned is to “keep a spirit of openness and hopefulness about the church as it is, not as we wish it would be.”

“The temptation to keep doing the thing you know is really strong until you finally face into the need to do something different. Until you’ve had to give up some things that were important to you and go on to the next thing, you don’t

really know how to change.”

Serving on the seminary’s board wasn’t the first time Koeze committed herself to making change. In the mid1980s, freshly graduated from the University of North Carolina where she was a Morehead Scholar, she took a job as a field manager for the Clean Water Fund.

“I went door-to-door in the suburbs of Washington, DC, talking to people about clean water issues in the Chesapeake. It was the whole human comedy— you see everything when you are going door-to-door raising money.”

Today the Clean Water Fund is a $10 million organization that operates grassroots environmental and health programs in 20 states. Koeze has served on its board of directors since 2004 and also serves on its committee that manages endorsements of political candidates in Michigan.

“The endorsements process is a teaching tool,” she says. “A lot of people know they want our support, but they don’t know our issues very well. It gives us an opportunity to explain the importance of clean and safe water.”

Koeze works part-time from home as the CFO and administrator at Nuthatch Software, a company that owes its name to its beginnings in an empty office at the Koeze Company, the nuts and peanut butter business that her husband, Jeff, is the fourth generation of his family to lead.

Their children are grown and have followed their parents’ lead in attending the University of North Carolina. After a year teaching in Norway, their son, Hugh, will begin teaching English in Virginia Beach this fall, and their daughter, Ella, will return to UNC for her senior year after a summer internship in Silicon Valley.

In addition to serving on the vestry at her parish in Grand Rapids, Koeze helps manage a different kind of change at Trinity Episcopal Church in York Harbor, Maine, a summer chapel near her family’s home where she and Jeff were married in 1986.

“My mother and I do the altar twice a summer,” she says, “and a couple of times a summer at weddings, I am the church lady who whips the bridesmaids into shape and gives the signal to the organist.”

“I am informed by my faith in all that I do,” she says, laughing.

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BOARD NEWS

bexley + seabury

Six new members join Bexley Seabury board

A leader of non-profits, a community organizer, an interior designer, a lawyer, an educator and a priest have joined Bexley Seabury’s 37-member Board of Directors.

At its meeting on May 15-16, the Bexley Seabury Federation board of directors elected six new members to terms of three years.

The board also thanked ten outgoing members: Eleanor Chabraja, the Rev. Canon Carlson Gerdau, James H. Hawk, Katharine R. Koeze, the Rev. Wendy Lane, the Rev. Eugene Y. Lowe, Jr., Roger Lumpp, the Rt. Rev. Kenneth Price, the Rev. Jeffrey Queen and the Rev. Dr. Gwynne Wright.

terian because she was determined to be part of Lake County United, a non-profit, non-partisan organization of civic institutions doing justice. She fell in love with the Episcopal Church and was confirmed several years ago.

Cole has served on the vestry at Holy Spirit, where she helped lead the mission and outreach ministry and inaugurated a pilot program with the Waukegan Public Library to teach English as a second language to mothers and children.

Judy Bross

Ashley Maentz

Judy C. Bross is the former director of agency services for Episcopal Charities and Community Services. Prior to joining Episcopal Charities, she was head of the USA Education Charitable Trust.

She served as chairman of the Latin School Board of Trustees from 19982002, and she has served as president of the Women’s Board of Northwestern Memorial Hospital, the Junior League of Chicago, and the Antiquarian Society of the Art Institute. She is a parishioner of St. Chrysostom’s in Chicago.

Judy has co-chaired capital campaigns for the Latin School, the Chicago History Museum and St. Chrysostom’s Church. She is married to former Seabury trustee John Bross.

Ashley Maentz, an interior designer, is an active member of the Lake Forest and Lake Bluff, Illinois, communities and, in recent years, served as an alderman.

She is also a past president of the Junior League of Chicago and a life director of Northwestern Lake Forest Hospital. She is a member of Church of the Holy Spirit in Lake Forest, Illinois, and St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church in Palm Desert, California.

Maentz is a director and past president of Elawa Farm, a public-private partnership in Lake Forest dedicated to the preservation and stewardship of a former gentleman’s farm that now includes a wildlife center and gardens for the community.

Sandra McPhee

Kitty Cole

Kitty Cole is a community organizer whose work life was devoted to housing issues. She joined the Church of the Holy Spirit in Lake Forest, Illinois, as a Presby18

Sandra F. McPhee has practiced law for 38 years in the Chicago area, specializing in estate planning and residential real estate transactions. A graduate of Smith College, Sandra also holds a JD from Boston

Summer 2014

BOARD NEWS

{ Judy Bross

{ Kitty Cole

{ Ashley Maentz

{ Sandra McPhee

{ Melinda Rhondes-DiSalvo

{ Bruce Smith

the areas of eLearning resources, course design, digital portfolios, and online and hybrid course instruction.

Rhodes-DiSalvo has taught journalism, English and leadership at Ohio Wesleyan University, at Cottey College in Missouri, and at community colleges in Missouri and Kansas. She received her PhD in higher education curriculum and instruction from the University of Nebraska, her EdS in community colleges and MA in English from Pittsburg State University in Kansas and her BA in English from Missouri Southern State University.

more than 12 years as associate rector of Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church in Columbus. He is currently priest-in-charge of Trinity Episcopal Church in McArthur, Ohio.

Smith earned an MDiv in 1996 from Drew Theological School in New Jersey.

He also received a master of theological studies degree from the Methodist Theological School in Delaware, Ohio, in 1999.

He studied for the General Ordination Exams with Bexley Hall faculty. Smith currently chairs the Affirmative Aging Commission of the Diocese of Southern Ohio and serves on the corporate board of directors of Episcopal Retirement Homes, Inc., in Cincinnati.

University School of Law. She is a lifelong Episcopalian and attends St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Evanston, her childhood parish. She is the daughter of the late Barbara Ferguson, a former trustee of Seabury.

McPhee is a member of the standing committee of the Diocese of Chicago, secretary of the board of St. Leonard’s Ministries, and has served on the Diocese of Chicago’s Bishop and Trustees and the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church.

Melinda Rhodes-DiSalvo

Melinda Rhodes-DiSalvo is the assistant director of the Center for the Enhancement of Teaching & Learning at the University of Cincinnati. Her work involves professional development for faculty in

Bruce Smith

The Rev. Bruce Smith retired in January 2014 from active parish ministry after

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Donors

bexley + seabury

Our support We thank God for the following individuals, congregations and groups who share in the mission and ministry of Bexley Seabury through the generosity of their gifts: Chase & Whipple Circle ($10,000+) Individuals Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas D. Chabraja The Rev. Canon Carlson Gerdau The Estate of Loretta I. Green The Rev. Dr. and Mrs. W. Richard Hamlin Mr. and Mrs. George Hill Mr. and Mrs. Jeff Koeze Parishes Christ Church Cathedral, Indianapolis, IN St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Indianapolis, IN Dioceses Diocese of Long Island – Scholarships

Gambier & Fairbault Fellows ($5,000+) Individuals Mr. and Mrs. John A. Bross The Rev. M.E. and Mrs. Kathleen Eccles The Rev. Wendy D. and Mr. Charles A. Lane The Revs. Richard and Sallie Schisler Mr. and Mrs. James K. Sommer Anne and John Tuohy Parishes St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, Nebraska City, NE

Enmegahbowh Society ($3,000+) Individuals The Right Rev. and Mrs. W. Michie Klusmeyer The Rev. Dr. Ellen Wondra Parishes Calvary Episcopal Church, Tarboro, NC Christ Church Cathedral, Cincinnati, OH

Help make our Annual Fund a success. Return the envelope in this magazine with your check, use the Give tab on our webpage at bexleyseabury.edu or call us at 773.380.6785.

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Evanston & Rochester Associates ($1,000+) Individuals Anonymous The Rev. and Mrs. J. Stephen Bergmann The Right Rev. and Mrs. Thomas E. Breidenthal The Rev. Jane A. and Mr. Michael A. Clark The Rev. Dr. Kathryn P. Clausen The Rev. Dr. Maribeth Conroy Mrs. Ann R. Delong – Jack Baker Fund The Rev. Dr. and Mrs. John E. Denson, Jr. The Rev. Darby Oliver Everhard and Mr. Thomas Everhard The Rev. Roger Ferlo and Ms. Anne Harlan The Rev. Bruce Freeman The Rev. Alan M. Gates and Ms. Patricia Harvey The Right Rev. and Mrs. Wendell N. Gibbs, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. James W. Gladden, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Thomas R. Green – Scholarships The Very Rev. and Mrs. Gary R. Hall Mr. and Mrs. Edward D. Hatcher Mr. and Mrs. James H. Hawk The Right Rev. and Mrs. Mark Hollingsworth, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Roger Lumpp

Ms. Elisabeth C. Meeker The Estate of the Rev. Joe D. Mills Canon Diane M. Porter The Rev. Jeffrey Queen and Ms. Richelle Thompson The Rev. C. Davies Reed and Ms. Carol C. Rogers Mr. and Mrs. Milner Seifert The Rev. Deborah G. Seles The Rev. Conrad Selnick and Bishop Elizabeth Eaton Mr. and Mrs. Daniel W. Shannon The Rev. Thomas C. Shepherd The Rev. A. Bruce Smith Dr. Salme Harju and Dr. Michael S. Steinberg The Right Rev. Catherine M. Waynick and Mr. Larry Waynick Parishes Calvary Church, Wadesboro, NC Calvary Episcopal Church, Pittsburgh, PA Christ Episcopal Church, Oberlin, OH Christ Episcopal Church, Warren, OH Church of the Good Shepherd, Rangeley, ME Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Keyser, WV Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, Asheboro, NC Church of the Good Shepherd, Columbia, SC Church of the Holy Spirit, Lake Forest, IL St. Anne’s Church, Winston-Salem, NC – John Kevern Fund St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church, Fairborn, OH St. John’s Episcopal Church, Worthington, OH St. John’s Episcopal Church, Minden, LA St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Oxford, MS St. Andrews & St. John Episcopal Church, Southwest Harbor, ME St. James Episcopal Church, Piqua, OH Trinity Episcopal Church, Towson, MD Dioceses & Orgnanizations Diocese of North Carolina Woman’s Board of Seabury Western Seminary – Scholarships

Supporters ($500+) Individuals Dr. Barbara A. Campbell The Rev. Philip College The Rev. Elizabeth and Mr. Charles Coulter Mr. Robert Doak The Right Rev. C. Christopher Epting and the Rev. Suzanne Watson Epting The Rev. Dr. Thomas Ferguson and the Rev. Shannon M. Kelly Mr. Paul Frank The Rev. and Mrs. Michael J. Galvin The Right Rev. and Mrs. Sanford Hampton The Rev. Preston B. Hannibal The Rev. and Mrs. Russell W. Johnson, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Bruce A. Jones Mr. and Mrs. Jon R. Lind The Right Rev. James W. Montgomery The Rev. Marie Mulford The Rev. Dr. Daniel Prechtel and the Rev. Dr. Ruth A. Meyers The Rev. and Mrs. Phillip J. Rapp The Rev. Charlotte Collins Reed and Dr. Don Reed Mr. and Mrs. Fred W. Ruebeck The Rev. Deborah G. Seles The Rev. Michael J. Way Mr. J. Kevin Willis and the Rev. Anisa C. Willis Mr. and Mrs. Mike Zafirovski Parishes Christ Church Christiana Hundred, Wilmington, DE Church of the Epiphany, Grove City, PA

DONORS

Summer 2014

Church of the Holy Spirit, Greensboro, NC Holy Trinity Church, Oxford, OH St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church, Dublin, OH St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, Bexley, OH St. John’s Church, Cold Spring Harbor, NY St. Saviour’s Parish, Bar Harbor, ME Trinity Episcopal Church, Pottsville, PA Trinity Memorial Church, Binghamton, NY Dioceses ECW-Diocese of Chicago

Friends ($150+) Individuals Mr. and Mrs. William T. Bagot The Rev. and Mrs. Stephen I. Bartlett The Right Rev. William G. Burrill The Rev. Mary C. Carson The Rev. Schuyler L. Clapp, Jr. The Rev. Brian L. Cole The Rev. Dr. and Mrs. Harvey G. Cook Lt. Col. Carl E. Creswell, USA (Ret.) The Very Rev. and Mrs. John P. Downey The Rev. and Mrs. O. C Edwards, Jr. The Rev. Michael K. Fincher The Rev. and Mrs. Charles A. Forbes The Rev. Canon Dr. Mark Gatza The Rev PV George The Rev. Canon Charles H. Gill, Jr. The Rev. and Mrs. Enrico M. Gnasso Mrs. Janet H. Graff The Charles M. Harrington Fund of the Minneapolis Foundation The Rev. Canon Suzann Van Sickle Holding The Rev. John A. Holmen and the Rev. Canon Mary J. Holmen The Rev. Elizabeth B. and Mr. James Jameson The Rev. Lois B. and Mr. Newlin Keen Mr. and Mrs. Donald A. Koss Mr. and Mrs. Michael C. Krug Mr. and Mrs. William M. Lane The Rev. Dr. and Mrs. Trawin Malone The Rev. Gary B. Manning The Rev. Charles P. Martin The Rev. Dr. and Mrs. George H. Martin The Rev. Canon Ralph G. McGimpsey The Rev. and Mrs. Peter Michaelson The Rev. Diane E. Morgan Mr. and Mrs. Conway Newton The Rev. Dr. Carol P. Oak and Mr. Jeffrey C. Oak The Rev. Dr. and Mrs. Louis Oats The Very Rev. KyungJa Oh and Ms. Melissa McNeill The Very Rev. and Mrs. William H. Petersen The Right Rev. and Mrs. Kenneth L. Price, Jr. The Rev. Anne L. Reed Mr. and Mrs. Steve Rohrbach The Rev. Nancy H. and Mr. Thomas Shepherd The Rev. and Mrs. Dale E. Sheppard The Rev. and Mrs. James R. Sorenson Ms. Deborah Stokes The Rev. Dr. Ruth H. Strang Mr. Ira G. Stroud The Rev. and Mrs. Charles E. Sturm The Rev. Arie J. van den Blink – Dean’s Discretionary Fund The Rev. and Mrs. Peter E. Van Horne The Rev. Jon M. White The Rev. Kathryn S. White Parishes All Saints Episcopal Church, Valley City, ND Calvary Episcopal Church, Lombard, IL Church of the Redeemer, Cincinnati, OH Church of the Redeemer, Lorain, OH

St. Paul’s Church, Cleveland Heights, OH Society of the Transfiguration, Cincinnati, OH St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Caledonia, NY St. George’s Episcopal Church, Newport News, VA St. James Episcopal Church, Dexter, MI St. John’s Episcopal Church, Henderson, NC St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Shelby, OH St. Paul Episcopal Church, Bellevue, OH St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Cincinnati, OH St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Bath, NY Trinity Episcopal Church, Buchanan, VA Trinity Episcopal Church, Iowa City, IA Trinity Episcopal Church, Lawrenceburg, IN

Contributors (Up to $100) Individuals Mrs. Ruth E. Asboe The Rev. and Mrs. James E. Baltzell The Rev. Melanie R. Barbarito The Rev. Carolyn M. Bavaro Mrs. Verna Beaver The Rev. and Mrs. John E. Bowers The Right Rev. and Mrs. David C. Bowman The Rev. and Mrs. Ernest F. Campbell The Rev. Canon Joye Cantrell Drs. Stephen H. and Virginia Carr The Very Rev. and Mrs. James Carroll The Rev. Dr. Susan Carter The Rev. Robin L. Chance and Mr. Kenneth Chance The Rev. Albert S. Chappelear † The Rev. Daphne C. and Dr. Jason Cody The Rev. Christopher G. Colby Dr. and Mrs. Arthur R. Crampton The Rev. Gene E. Curry The Rev. Marilyn K. Dressel The Rev. Beverly A. Factor and Dr. Joseph J. Elterman The Rev. and Mrs. William Jay Fasel, DMin The Rev. Michael Fill and Ms. Maryann Silver The Rev. Davis L. Fisher Mr. and Mrs. George G. Gorbatenko Mr. Joseph L. Flint and Mr. Steven E. Mosco Mr. and Mrs. Craig Fowler The Rev. David A. Garcia Ms. F. Elizabeth Garrett The Rev. and Mrs. David T. Gleason Ms. Georgianna Gleason Mr. and Mrs. George G. Gorbatenko The Most Rev. and Mrs. Frank T. Griswold III The Revs. Arthur and Jane Hadley Mr. William P. Hall Ms. Sheila R. Hardy Ms. Kathleen E. Hart-Zavoli The Rev. Morris J. Hauge and Mr. Scott Martin The Rev. Ulis Dean Hekel The Rev. Paul S. Hiyama The Rev. Gloria Hopewell Mr. Roger S. Hurd The Rev. Dr. Donna M. Ialongo The Rev. Canon Gregory A. Jacobs The Rev. Ethan A. Jewett The Rev. and Mrs. J. Michael Jupin The Rev. David Kendall-Sperry The Rev. and Mrs. John R. Kenny, Jr. The Rev. and Mrs. Paul D. Kidd The Right Rev. Dr. and Mrs. Edward J. Konieczny The Rev. and Mrs. William Kruse Mr. and Mrs. Russell L. Kumm The Rev. and Mrs. Armand E. Larive The Rev. R. Bradley Laycock The Rev. Sarah A. Lewis and Mr. Richard Lewis The Rev. Elizabeth A. and Mr. George S. Lloyd The Rev. and Mrs. Wallace G. Lonergan, PhD The Rev. Karl E. Marsh The Rev. Dr. Kathryn C. Mathewson and

Mr. David J. Mathewson The Rev. and Mrs. Joseph E. Mazza The Right Rev. Rodney R. Michel Mr. and Mrs. Carl H. Most The Revs. Joseph C. and Judith Neiman Ms. Naomi E. Nord The Rev. and Mrs. John R. Paal The Rev. Linda A. and Mr. Anthony Packard The Rev. Susan S. Payne and Mr. Barry Coplin The Rev. and Mrs. Edward M. Perkinson The Right Rev. and Mrs. William D. Persell The Rev. Dr. and Mrs. Michael A. Petrochuk Ms. Kathryn B. Pruessner The Rev. Dr. Mark Ramseth Mr. Theodore H. Randall The Rev. Jeffrey M. Richards The Rev. Cristine V. and Mr. Bruce Rockwell The Rev. Reginald C. Rodman Ms. Shelley Sandow The Rev. Emily J. Schnable and the Rev. David R. Stock The Rev. and Mrs. Dennis L. Serdahl The Rev. Robert S. Shank, Jr. The Rev. and Mrs. Richard E. Shinn Mr. and Mrs. Paul D. Shull – Jack Baker Fund Mrs. Alice Slater The Rev. and Mrs. George D. Smith III Mr. and Mrs. Newland F. Smith III The Rev. and Mrs. Robert E. Stevens Mrs. Jane Theuner Mr. Robert L. Thomson The Rev. Debra L. Trakel The Rev. Canon Jean P. and Mr. Thomas P. Vail The Rev. Canon Rudolph J. Van der Hiel Mr. Thomas J. Warren The Hon. David Washington Mrs. Dorothy S. Webb The Rev. Margaret Y. Weiner and Mr. Jerry S. Weiner The Rev. Peter W. Wenner and Ms. Barbara S. Williamson The Rev. Warner White The Rev. and Mrs. James B. Wilson The Rev. Canon and Mrs. Charles E. Wood, Jr. The Rev. Daniel O. Worthington, Jr. The Rev. Dr. Robert O. Wyatt II and Ms. Terri Lackey Parishes Chapel of the Good Shepherd, West Lafayette, IN Grace Church, Chicago, IL Holy Innocents’ Episcopal Church, Little Lake, MI Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, Hampstead, NC St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Niles, OH St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Put-In-Bay, OH Church of the Transfiguration, Pointe Aux Pins, MI Woman’s Board of Seabury Western Theological Seminary, Chicago, IL Organizations The Minor Foundation, Inc. – O’Kelly Whitaker Scholarship Fund

† Deceased

This list reflects contributions received from June 7, 2013 through June 30, 2014. If we have made mistakes or omissions, please contact Susan Quigley: squigley@bexleyseabury.edu or 773.380.6785.

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federation NEWS

bexley + seabury

On Campus and Beyond graduates

Anglican Studies

DMins Awarded

In May 2014, Ann Kathleen Reeder Goraczko, Lily Esther Marx and Jana Troutman-Miller were awarded the Diploma in Anglican Studies.

On June 23, 2013 President Ferlo and Academic Dean Ellen Wondra awarded Seabury’s DMin in congregational development to the Rev. Marc Strong, rector of the Church of the Incarnation in Bloomingdale, Illinois. Strong’s thesis was titled “Tentmakers: Changing the Variables in the Equation of Economic Viability for Congregations in the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago.”

On July 14, 2013, President Ferlo awarded Seabury’s DMin in preaching to the Rev. Susan Carter at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Howell, Michigan, where she is rector. Her thesis was titled “The Incarnational Paul in (Two) Acts: From Motorcycle Gang to Martyr.”

On May 18, 2014, President Ferlo awarded the DMin in preaching to the Very Rev. John P. Downey, dean of the Cathedral of St. Paul in Erie, Pennsylvania. Dean Downey’s thesis was titled, “Restore the Ruins? Cathedral Preaching on the Other Side of Christendom.”

MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. In the fall, he plans to return to work as a full-time staff chaplain at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, where he also will assist the prison ministry program of the Diocese of Louisiana.

Shawn Dickerson will complete CPE at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus this summer. He will return to the Diocese of Ohio for congregational work.

MDiv Class 2014 Juan Perez will continue his work in Latino ministry with La Iglesia Detroit (see pages 6-9) and is also currently interviewing for a curate position in metro Detroit.

Benjamin Garren will become chaplain to the Episcopal Campus Ministry at the University of Arizona in July.

Christopher Beasley has been called to become the vicar at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Lebanon, Indiana, beginning August 1.

Nikki Seger will lead fly fishing spirituality retreats this summer in Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia. She anticipates returning to the Diocese of Michigan for her first call.

Peter Kang will do a Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) summer internship at

deaths

In Memoriam The Rev. William Baker, Jr. (Bexley ’62) died on December 27 surrounded by his family. He was 93 and served as an associate priest at Trinity Episcopal Church in St. Louis. During his ministry, he served parishes in the Episcopal Diocese of Missouri and also served in the Diocese of Southern Ohio.

The Rev. Cora Booth (Bexley ’96) died on January 14 in Asheville, North Carolina, following a long illness. Cora served as rector of Episcopal Parishes of Schuyler County in the Diocese of Rochester from 1998 until 2003. She is survived by her spouse, Mark; son, Samuel; mother, Francisca; and sisters, Anne and Alice.

The Rev. Robert Capon (Seabury BD ’49, STD ’66), a food writer and theologian, died on September 5 in Greenport, New York, at age 87. He is survived by his wife, Valerie, eight children, 12 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

The Rev. Warren H. Deane, a Bexley alumnus, died on May 7 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Deane was ordained to the priesthood in 1956 and served as rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Honeoye Falls, New York, from 1962 until 1974. He was a Rossiter Scholar at Bexley Hall in 1986 and 1991. He is survived by { ( l-r): MDiv graduates Juan Perez; Benjamin Garren; Christopher Beasley; Nikki Seger; Peter Kang and Shawn Dickerson

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Summer 2014

his wife, Jeannine, six children, and 14 grandchildren.

The Rev. William McLean (Seabury ’61) died on May 23 in Sarasota, Florida, after a long illness. After being ordained in 1961, he served congregations in Illinois, Wisconsin and Florida. According to his obituary, “Father McLean was best known in the Dioceses of Chicago and Southwest Florida for his work with alcoholics and programs on stewardship education.”

The Rev. Siobhán Patterson (Seabury ’06) died on February 4. She served in the Dioceses of Virginia and West Virginia and is survived by her parents, Robert and Joan Patterson, and siblings Brendan, Brian, Brighid, Eireann, Maire Grace and Sean Patterson. Former Seabury preaching professor David Schlafer preached at her funeral, held at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in College Park, Maryland.

The Rev. Thomas Tracy Pittenger (Seabury ’79) died January 5 in Stuart, Florida.

He had served as rector of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Stuart from 1991 until his retirement in 2009. He served churches in the Dioceses of Central Florida, Florida and Southeast Florida.

The Rev. George Philip Timberlake (Bexley ’50) died on August 27, 2013 in Gaithersburg, Maryland, at the age of 89.

He was an Episcopal priest for 60 years and most notably served as chaplain of the U.S. Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Home in Washington, DC. He is survived by his daughters, Margaret Leah Timberlake and Sarah Wolcott Timberlake, and his son, James Harrison Timberlake.

YONG BY TRINITY LUTHERAN SEMINARY

faculty

News The Rev. Thomas Ferguson, vice president for academic affairs and dean of Bexley Hall > published an essay titled, “Restructur ing Theological Education: Back to the Future,” in “What We Shall Become: The

federation NEWS

Future and Structure of the Episcopal Church.” Other contributors to the book include the Rev. Dr. Bonnie A. Perry (Seabury DMin ’98), the Rev. Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows (Kellogg ’13) and the Rev. Dwight Zscheile, a Bexley Seabury adjunct faculty member. > published an essay titled, “Caught in the Parent Trap: Anglicans and Methodists in the USA” in “That They May be One? The Episcopal-United Methodist Dialogue.” > will give an address in October at the Society of Catholic Priests annual meeting in Toronto. His topic is “Structuring for Catholic Ministry—From the Parish to the Churchwide Office.”

President Roger Ferlo > gave a workshop, “Rites in Crisis: Rethinking Rites of Passage in a postChristendom Church,” at the National Worship Conference in Edmonton, Alberta, in July. > gave the baccalaureate address, “These Are Not Easy Times for Bridge Builders,” at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky, in May. > led the Diocese of Ohio’s annual clergy conference in May. > gave a workshop, “Wrestling with Logos (or, It’s all Greek to me),” at the Diocese of Ohio’s Winter Convocation in February.

The Rev. Jason Fout, assistant professor of Anglican theology > has been awarded a Conant Fund Grant for his Learning from London project (see pages 10-11), which will include a January 2015 travel course, a book with Forward Movement, and a workshop for the Consortium of Endowed Episcopal Parishes (CEEP). > gave a paper titled, “The Honour of God: on both grasping and repairing Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo,” at the Theologians of Ohio Conference in February 2014. > gave a paper titled “Fearing God in a fearful age: a theological re-examination of a biblical theme,” at a University of Aberdeen seminary in November 2013.

continued

Bexley Seabury Days September 24 & 25

On September 24, join fellow Bexley Seabury alums and friends in Columbus for a reception with President Roger Ferlo and informal conversation.

On September 25, join the Trinity Lutheran Seminary community for the annual T.A. Kantonen Lecture, given this year by Dr. Amos Yong, professor of theology and mission and director of the Center for Missiological Research at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California.

Dr. Yong’s topic is “Pentecostalism, Theology and Missiology in the 21st Century.” He will address the implications of global Pentecostalism for Christian theological method and the implications of Pentecostalism for Christian mission theology. His areas of expertise include global Pentecostalism and interfaith dialogue. He is the author of “Spirit of Love: A Trinitarian Theology of Grace,” “Pentecostalism and Prosperity: The Socioeconomics of the Global Charismatic Movement,” and “The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology.”

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FEDERATION NEWS

The Rev. KyungJa (KJ) Oh, a Seabury MDiv alumna (’00) and current DMin student, became the Bexley Seabury Seminary Federation’s director of field education and formation on July 1. Oh was previously rector of The Episcopal Church of the Advent in Walnut Hills, Ohio, in the Diocese of Southern Ohio.

The Rev. Dr. Ellen Wondra, who has been academic dean at Seabury since 2008, became research professor of theology and ethics on July 1. In her new position, she will return to research and teaching, most immediately with a two-month research leave this summer followed by a full teaching load during the next academic year.

Transitions The Rev. Dr. Thomas Ferguson became the Bexley Seabury Federation’s vice president for academic affairs on July 1.

He remains dean of Bexley Hall. In his new position, Ferguson will be responsible for academic affairs and faculty at the Federation’s programs in both Columbus and Chicago.

The Rev. Dr. Susan Harlow concluded her five-year tenure as director of Seabury’s DMin program with a sabbatical beginning March 1. At its February 2014 meeting, the board of directors expressed its gratitude to her with a resolution reading, in part: “The Rev. Susan Harlow, having commenced her service to this institution in a time of extraordinary change and unsettledness, surrounded by a throng of deeply separate views, did manifest a calm and steady hand in the midst of transition.”

The Rev. Canon Suzann Holding became Bexley Seabury Seminary Federation’s director of lifelong learning and the doctor of ministry program on April 1. She was previously canon to the ordinary in the Diocese of San Diego and has served congregations in the Diocese of Chicago.

Prior to seminary, she spent nearly two decades working in corporate sales, marketing and operations. Holding is completing her DMin at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia, writing a thesis about creativity as a leadership tool.

24

Bexley Hall. She previously served as executive assistant to Trinity Lutheran Seminary President Mark R. Ramseth, who retired in 2013, as well as interim president Thomas E. Ludwig and current president Rick Barger.

The Rev. Conrad Selnick became vice president for advancement and church relations in January after more than twenty years of ministry in the Diocese of Ohio.

As vice president, Selnick leads alumni relations and fundraising efforts. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Johns Hopkins, a master of divinity from Episcopal Divinity School and a master’s degree in organizational development and analysis from the Weatherhead School of Business at Case Western Reserve University.

Staff

Transitions Debbie Frantz concluded her service as office manager at Bexley Hall in May. In June, she and Ken Ranos, a 2014 graduate of Trinity Lutheran Seminary who serves as the pastor of Faith Lutheran Church in Three Lakes, Wisconsin, were married.

Shirla Langknecht joined Bexley Seabury in May as the new office manager at

Alumni

From the Mission Field The Rt. Rev. Joseph Atem, bishop of Renk, South Sudan (Seabury MTS ’00, DD honoris causa ’09), is fostering reconciliation in that country, which has been engulfed in civil strife and humanitarian crisis since December.

GIBBS AND WONDRA © VINCENT JOHNSON, SKIRVING © LifeTouch/Episcopal News Service, LUPFER © Trinity Wall Street

The Rev. Dr. Ellen Wondra, research professor of theology and ethics > completed eight years as editor in chief of the Anglican Theological Review and as been named editor emerita. > taught an eight-week course on Anglican Ethics and Moral Theology for the Dean Stevenson School for Ministry of the Diocese of Central Pennsylvania and will teach a course on applied ethics there in Fall 2015. > published an essay titled, “Response to A Theological Foundation for Full Communion between the Episcopal Church and The United Methodist Church,” in “That They May be One? The EpiscopalUnited Methodist Dialogue.”

bexley + seabury

FEDERATION NEWS

Summer 2014

The Rev. Melanie R. Barbarito (Bexley ’96) is pastoral associate at All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Fort Worth, Texas, where she has been serving since August 2009. She is the first woman priest to be canonically resident in the Diocese of Fort Worth.

The Rev. Russ Bohner, TSSF (Seabury ’03) has been called as rector of St. Anne’s Episcopal Church in Middletown, Delaware. He and his wife, Diane, and children Isabelle and Michael joined the congregation for worship on June 1.

The Rev. Samuel R. Bowman, (Seabury ’50) was the clergy recipient of the Bishop’s cross on October 9 at the 145th Annual Council of the Diocese of Nebraska.

The award is given for “extra ordinary contribution to the Diocese.”

Dr. Brad Carter (Seabury MTS ’88) has joined the faculty of the United States Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island, as an associate professor of strategy and policy. He was most recently an associate professor of military history with the Army’s Command and General Staff College. Brad received his PhD in American Studies from the University of Kansas in 2004.

{ Above: The Rev. Robert Skirving, rector of St. John’s Church in Midland, Michigan, was elected bishop of the Diocese of East Carolina on May 17. Skirving earned a Certificate of Advanced Theological Studies in Congregational Development from Seabury in 1998.

The Very Rev. Dr. William Lupfer (DMin ’03) has been named rector of Trinity Wall Street.

{ Bishop Wendell N. Gibbs (Seabury MDiv ’87), Diocese of Michigan, chats with Professor.

Ellen Wondra at a reception Bexley Seabury hosted for the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church when it met October 15-17 at the offices of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, where Bexley Seabury is located.

The Rev. M.E. Eccles (Seabury ’07), who serves as a Bexley Seabury director, has been named rector of St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Des Plaines. She has served as priest-in-charge there since 2013.

The Rev. Luke Fodor (Bexley ’11) is the new rector of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Jamestown, New York. He had been curate at St. John’s in Cold Spring Harbor, New York.

The Rev. Tyrone Fowlkes (Seabury ’08) has been called as rector of St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church in Oakland, California. He was previously assisting priest at Church of Our Saviour, Chicago, and priest-consultant at Holy Cross, Chicago.

Ohio, and St. James Episcopal Church in Piqua, Ohio.

The Rev. Mark Juchter (Seabury ’03) (Chaplain, Captain USAF) will begin working on a Master of Science in Counseling with a focus on marriage and family at Texas A&M University in July.

He will also be a student of the highly competitive Army Family Life School at Fort Hood and counseling at the Family Life Center on the base.

The Rev. John R. Kirkman (Bexley ’68) has retired after nearly 20 years as rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Greenville, Michigan, in the Diocese of Western Michigan.

Jessica Nelson (Seabury MTS ’09) has been appointed director of the Mississippi Conference on Church Music and Liturgy, a national event sponsored by the Diocese of Mississippi. She also had a choral setting of the 23rd Psalm for women’s voices published by Paraclete Press. She continues her work as organist/ choirmaster at All Saints’ Tupelo and as an adjunct music professor at the University of North Alabama.

The Rev. Bridget K. Tierney (Seabury ’03) is now on staff at Christ Church Cathedral in New Orleans as the director of Advent House, a ministry of spiritual direction and retreat work designed for spiritual support and growth for the Diocese of Louisiana and neighboring areas.

Jana Troutman-Miller (DAS ’14) has been appointed a director of the Association of Professional Chaplains, which has more than 4,300 members. TroutmanMiller has been a staff chaplain for 12 years and has served the last eight at Aurora West Allis Medical Center in West Allis, Wisconsin.

The Rev. Aaron Gerlach (Bexley ’09) Aaron Gerlach has been called as rector of Old Trinity Episcopal Church in Tiffin, Ohio. He was previously priest-in-charge of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Sidney, 25

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