How Does One Even Get a Priest’s Collar?

I buy mine on Etsy…

Friends,

I hope you looked at this past Tuesday’s mid-week message, because it contained an announcement about a new transparency ministry. According to the blurb the purpose of the ministry was to take some of the mystery out of the business of doing Church, and this goal would be accomplished by having a live stream of our parish administrator (Sue Bentley) working at her desk. It even included a nine-minute segment of Sue answering e-mails…riveting stuff. At the end there was a link where you could sign up to watch the stream whenever and wherever you like. Of course, the link took you to the April Fools page on Wikipedia. I thought this was hilarious, and I hope you did too.

Despite this being a joke, there is an odd culture around aspects of the Episcopal Church that can seem secretive. In my experience, this is not done intentionally, but a result of it not being terribly relevant to those not involved in the nitty-gritty, being super boring to most, or it is a because we are not great at communicating.

Every once and a while people ask me how I became a priest. Many want to know my motivations, while others are curious about the process. Can you do one of those online ordination things, and start applying for priest positions in the Episcopal Church? If you were planning on this method to pursue a career in ordained ministry, I am sorry to say that it is a bit more involved than that.

I want to tell you a bit about my journey, and let you know about our seminarian for next academic year and about someone who is discerning a call to the priesthood at St. Luke’s. If all of that is too boring for you, but you want some more details, I want to encourage you to come to the adult forum this Sunday at 9:00 in the parish hall. Rev. Sarah Kye Price is the Vocations Minister at the Diocese of Virginia, and she will be teaching our congregation about the discernment process. I invited her to give this talk for two reasons. The first is that St. Luke’s is becoming more and more involved in the education and formation of those seeking holy orders, and it would be good for a critical mass of our congregation to know a bit about how this works. The second reason is that I suspect a couple of you would make adequate clergy, and this would be your chance to learn a bit more.

If you want to know a bit about my touchy-feely spiritual discernment, I am happy to meet with you. I feel like I talk about it a lot, so here is what my journey to becoming a priest looked like: At eighteen I felt a nudge to become a priest to the point where I changed where I was going to go to school. Instead of studying biology and doing the pre-med thing at Furman, I decided to go to Sewanee: The University of the South, because it is like rural Episcopal Disney World. Even though I made a major life decision based on this nudge, I did not do anything about it until my junior year, as I was too distracted by being a basic frat-boy in my first two years. I became deeply involved in the outreach ministry at Sewanee and started volunteering almost every week and became very involved in various religious programs offered by the Chaplain’s office. I majored in Religious Studies, which I enjoyed, but in retrospect, I regret not doing something wildly different to diversify my experience.

After graduation I spent a couple of months on the Appalachian Trail with my siblings and then started the discernment process with the Diocese of Atlanta. I was part of the young priest initiative, so I did not have to be embedded in a church process but went to the Diocesan Office once a month for my discernment and formation. During this time, I worked briefly as a pharmacy tech at Walgreen then quit as soon I as I got a job as a parttime youth minister and parttime EMT. After two years of writing, reading, uncomfortable psychological evaluations, and doing homeless ministry with the Diocese I got approved to apply to Seminary by the Diocese of Atlanta, and I got into Virginia Theological Seminary, which was conveniently close to where my girlfriend was from. She was about to graduate and move back home, so this worked out for me. At this stage my status was “postulant”, which essentially means that the Diocese and I were going steady.

I studied at Virginia Theological Seminary for three years and earned a Masters in Divinity. I served at a homeless Church in Washington DC called The Church of the Epiphany during my last two years in seminary. In my second year I went back to the Diocese of Atlanta for more interviews and was approved to go from being a “postulant” to a “candidate”, which means that the Diocese and I were essentially engaged. Six months after being made a candidate, I was eligible to be ordained a deacon, which I was the day before my twenty-seventh birthday in my senior year of seminary. After seminary I got a job as a curate (baby priest) in Columbus Georgia and worked under a seasoned rector (CEO priest) and was ordained a priest six months after being ordained a deacon. Shortly after that I got married. Shortly after that we got a dog. It was pretty great. I served in Columbus for two year, but then was elected rector as a smaller Church in Southwestern Virginia, and then I was elected to be your priest-in-charge (non-tenured CEO priest). After a year and a half, I was eligible to be elected your rector and I was!

The whole thing was a weird mix of bureaucracy and deep spiritual journeying. You couldn’t force me to do it all over it again, and I have never regretted it for a moment. There is a sermon in there somewhere about having to deal with paperwork and trying to love God and neighbor radically. It was often frustrating, but I think it helped keep me grounded in how the world actually works.

It was about this time last year; I decided to take the plunge and apply to be a seminarian supervisor. It was too late to get an Master in Divinity student, but we were crazy lucky and got a an Anglican Studies student (this is someone has an MDiv at a non-Episcopal seminary doing a yearlong dive into the Church in order to be ordained). All of this year we have had Sally Lombardo with us, and she been leading the charge with our confirmation class after Church on Sundays, for which I am infinitely grateful. Next year, Kyle Munroe will be our seminarian, and I cannot wait to see the ministry he gets into. He went through a process very similar to the one I have been through, and after he graduates, he will likely return to his home diocese of Alabama.

We also have an unusual addition to our Church Family. Micah Brown is going through a process that did not exist when I was in seminary. He is going through the discernment process as a student and is a classmate with Kyle Munroe. Micah joined us from another Christian tradition and has been through much formation and has a clearly articulated called to ordained ministry. He’s well-formed, but sort of playing catch up on the bureaucracy side of things. Next year he will have a discernment committee at St. Luke’s, but he will be serving at another Church on Sundays for his studies. His senior year Micah will come back as a volunteer seminarian. Both students need committees. Let me know if you feel called to support them, and we’ll see if we can get you on the committee.

I feel like all of this is about as interesting as watching Sue respond to e-mails. However, if you have always been curious about all this stuff, then I hope this takes the mystery out of it for you. The official position of the Church is that the ministers of the Church are Bishops, priests, deacons and all baptized Christians. By right of your baptism, you are called to minister in God’s Church. There are a lot more steps to become a priest, a ton more to become a Bishop, but this doesn’t mean more important, just a change in job description. I am specifically called to administer the sacraments to the people in our community and to spread the good news. Bishops are called to oversee the Churches. Deacons are called to serve the marginalized. But you are the heartbeat of this Church, and without you the Church would just be a bunch of people in collars talking too much.

Blessings,

Nick