The Adams Family Is a Perfect Fit at Trinity

The Reverend Jonathan Adams

The Reverend Jonathan Adams

By Leonard Shapiro

The Reverend Jonathan V. Adams was perfectly happy with his role as associate rector at St. Martins in Houston, with 8,000 congregants, the largest Episcopal church in the country. He’d been there four years, with a myriad of responsibilities, including helping conduct the funeral services for President George H.W. Bush and, before that, his wife Barbara.

And yet, he also missed being a rector at a smaller church. Before moving to Houston, at the Church of the Apostles in Atlanta he had developed programs for youngsters through college age, and he founded the Village Church, also in Atlanta, that led to the growth of three additional churches.

One day last fall, he received a phone call from a friend, The Rev. Paul Walker, rector at Christ Episcopal Church in Charlottesville, telling him about an opening at Trinity Episcopal in Upperville. Rev. Adams was intrigued, and decided to fill out the necessary forms to get into the mix of potential candidates.

What followed was a meticulous screening process conducted by Trinity’s search committee. It began with a long Zoom call, one of a dozen such preliminary interviews the committee did with other candidates. The field was narrowed to four, and committee members soon flew to Houston to attend one of Rev. Adams’ services, meet his family, and conduct more interviews, this time up close and personal.

“Then they narrowed it down to two or three people they wanted to come to Virginia,” Rev. Adams said, recounting a recruiting process perhaps even more rigorous than an NFL team deciding on its No. 1 draft choice. “We came up here in early December for three days. More interviews with the committee, and then they said, ‘we’ll be in touch.’”

In late January came another call.

“They said we really like you and we want to present you to the vestry,” Rev. Adams said. It would be the final step, with a slight Covid-induced hiccup.

That meeting originally was scheduled for early March, just as the pandemic was worsening by the day. It was no time to be traveling, so he met the vestry by Zoom in April. Finally, in early June, Rev. Adams accepted an offer to become the 24th rector in the history of a church originally built by the late banker and philanthropist Paul Mellon and his wife, Bunny.

On July 1, Rev. Adams began at Trinity, and these days, both he and his wife, Jana, and their three children, Noah, Lily and Caleb, couldn’t be more delighted to be in Upperville.

A Jacksonville native, Rev. Adams majored in religious studies at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, and earned his Masters of Divinity at Southeastern Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina.

In addition to his last four years in Houston, his intriguing resume includes serving as founding rector for Village Church Vinings in Atlanta from 2010-2016 and Director of Student Ministries and the Priest in Charge at the Church of the Apostles in Atlanta from 2003-2010.

After being ordained, he also lived for a time in Eastern Europe, based in Budapest, as Director of Missions and Development while working with youth leaders in Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Russia, Serbia, Moldova, Italy and Ukraine from 1998-2004.

And now, after four months at Trinity, “it’s everything I expected and more,” he said. “This community has been so warm and welcoming. People have gone overboard to be so very kind to us. If I had any anxiety in the beginning, it was only the concern about starting here in the middle of Covid.”

He adjusted nicely. Rather than conduct Sunday services inside the church, “we saw how beautiful the back garden was and we asked the bishop if I could do it outdoors,” he said. “The community has really responded to it, and it’s also allowed me to meet people in smaller groups, rather than jut greeting them at the door.”

With winter approaching, there are plans to move inside, with strict social distancing measures to assure everyone’s safety.

It hasn’t taken long for Trinity’s faithful parishioners to learn that their new rector clearly has been a perfect fit. A No. 1 draft choice, you might even say.