My calling is as a parish priest in the Episcopal Church.
I currently serve the parish of Trinity Episcopal Church in Milford MA as their Rector.
My vocation.
I am a teacher and pastor, writer and artist. I am drawn to progressive theology, social justice, and the future of religion. Spiritual formation is key to my calling into parish ministry.
My parish.
I have the joy of serving a pastoral-sized parish in Massachusetts.
I love the challenge of balancing pastoral care, teaching/preaching, and administration.
Vocation
My calling as a priest is rooted in transformation and discipleship.
Jesus called people to follow him,
to do the work he was doing.
Those who did so were his disciples, and he trained and equipped them to be trainers and equippers in turn of the people who became the first “little Christs” (Christians) and later the church.
As this call continues through the centuries,
the role of the priest and pastor is to model, teach, and walk with their community in collective encountering the divine, being transformed in heart and mind, and sending out to work in mission.
My theological perspective has been formed by my upbringing in and then leaving the fundamentalist tradition, current biblical and religious scholarship, feminist and liberationist movements, and my studies in process, theopoetics and radical theology traditions interacting with continental philosophy and psychoanalysis.
Our calling is to partner in God’s salvation (Gk: sozo); of Christ’s work to heal and make whole. As we are healed, we are to heal others, and continue the work of uniting and making-one (at-one-ment) all creation. Hallelujah!
Spiritual Formation
Formation is more than head knowledge; it’s about transformation of the heart and soul.
Classes & Curriculums.
I’m passionate about education.
From theology and doctrines, to Biblical scholarship and religious studies, I love developing curriculums and walking with parishioners through discussion-based deepening of faith and tradition. I encourage questions, diversity of perspective, and careful attendance to what matters.
You can browse many different topics that I’ve taught on my Formation project page.
Pilgrimages & Nature.
Connecting with God.
Geography, architecture, ecology—all have profound ramifications for embodied spiritual beings. Exploring these avenues of connection and transcendence is becoming more vital every day as our world is increasingly imperiled and disconnected from reality.
My own spirituality has grown through pilgrimages and encounters with nature, and I’m eager to lead others in this way.
Contemplation & Rites.
Liturgy + Mysticism.
The Anglican tradition is grounded in both formal liturgy and boundless mysticism. As we embrace the spectrum from traditional BCP rites to ecstatic expression, we find enriching experiences for a range of personalities, needs, and connections.
My calling continues in leading individuals and communities through these transformative moments and movements.
Preaching
“Every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like
the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”
— Matthew 13:52 —
The parable above is the heart of my preaching.
Each week, I go into the household of faith and I dig, sort, and present treasures both ancient and new from our scriptures, theology, and tradition. Here are some favorites from the past few years:
In July 2020 I preached a four-part series from our Hebrew Bible readings on Jacob, beginning with “Tis a Gift to be Simple.
This past Juneteenth broke in the middle of another wave of racist violence, and so I gave the mic to a priest of color and 35 silenced voices in Listening for Justice (see video).
April’s Hosting the Stranger was my most ambitious use of the video medium, taking advantage of the pandemic situation to look deeply into a painting by Caravaggio (see video).
Two years ago I preached a sermon in a progressive parish on the Miracle of Opening.
The first sermon I preached in my sending parish was more personal and vulnerable than most, and I hope The Wilderness After Epiphany resonates with others.
Art, Media, and Writing
With a first career in design and media
and a long interest in the arts,
I’m excited about new ways to spread good news and form community. These pandemic restrictions have given us ample opportunity, as well as other projects I’ve been working on over the years already. Here are a few examples:
In 2015, I wrote a book on fully affirming gay and lesbian Christians with a conservative reading of Scripture.
My wife and I have started collaborating on liturgical art.
I’ve been using design to teach and communicate religious knowledge.
During the pandemic, I’ve experimented with different forms of preaching and liturgy via video (see below and above).
In collaboration with the Rev. Dr. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, I produced the 2022 Season of Creation Liturgical Guide which was endorsed by the dioceses of Massachusetts, Western Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, and Central Gulf Coast as well as used in parishes around the country.
Social Justice
From the Hebrew prophets to Jesus, and for so many of the great saints of our tradition, the gospel is God’s yearning for a healing and restoration to the image of equality implanted in our creation.
My conservative upbringing taught me about an individual, spiritual salvation, but as I began to seriously read the Bible for myself in my early 30’s I realized there is a deep concern for collective and this-worldly renewal and liberation in our scriptures. This connected with a shift I was already making in my political perspective, and has led me to a fierce passion for the role of the church and religion in social justice.
Parish Experience
Parishes in which I have served.
As a second-career, mid-life priest who came to the Episcopal Church from a different tradition, I’ve served in volunteer and professional in four different parishes but I graduated from seminary only three years ago and I’m in my second cure as a Rector now (I also served as a deacon and missionary in an evangelical tradition through my early-thirties). Here is my parish history:
Trinity Episcopal Church
Milford, MA
As Rector of Trinity, I have been serving a community in transition from 130 ASA (2016) to 45 ASA (2021) with accompanying grief and familiar struggles with loss and conflict in a changing world. A particular joy has been serving with the lay-led music volunteers following the loss of our organist.
St. Thomas à Becket Episcopal Church
Morgantown, WV
I was called as Priest-in-Charge for a two year term in June of 2019 at this 85 ASA parish in a college town on the border of PA and WV. It has been a wonderful community in which to learn and grow into my priesthood. I’ve led liturgy, created budgets, developed technology and A/V, taught classes, and more.
St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church
Alexandria, VA
My Field Education placement during seminary was with the Rev. John Baker and The Center for Spiritual Deepening. During my two years there, I ran the adult formation classes every Sunday morning, preached monthly, and offered a four-session evening class at the Center.
Administration in the Parish
I enjoy the challenge of strategizing, developing, and implementing new programs.
Formation Programs
My first assigned task from my vestry upon beginning in June was to recruit a new Children’s Formation Director, and plan the children’s programs. I also wanted to start a regular Sunday adult formation program. By the end of August, all was in place and has continued.
Website and IT
The parish website and technology platforms were woefully outdated.
By November we launched an all-new website as well as a new cloud-based email, calendar, and file sharing system.
Early into the following year we gave our parish management software a ten-year upgrade and moved it into the cloud as well.
Reports and financial data research presentation for our Annual Meeting 2020.
Financials
Researching, compiling, analyzing.
The parish had been without a priest for three years, and needed to know where they stood. I developed a set of spreadsheets for all the data from our 40 years of parochial reports and budgets, and created graphs and projections to present at our annual meeting.
This helped give context and perspective on some unexpected negative news for the parish, and appreciation was expressed.
Pastoral Care
As a priest, one of my greatest joys and most weighty responsibilities is to walk with my parishioners and community members through all aspects of life. Companionship is my model for pastoral ministry.
I sat with a pillar of the parish while she lay gently dying surrounded by her friends and family, and I read aloud from her favorite book, Homer’s Odyssey.
I stood with doctors and family as they argued over resuscitation going on in the next room, holding space and being available.
I held both parties in a divorce in love, affirming their different perspectives equally while walking with each toward separate paths.
I heard the story of a beloved gone far too soon—years in the past but still vitally present in heart—keeping vigil until the time may yet come for closure.
I kept vigil with a family waiting for their loved one in surgery, listening to their stories about them and providing a prayerful presence.
These and many others are the burdens and privileges of a priest’s ministry.
Pandemic Ministry.
None of us expected how much life would change in March 2020, and it’s been a huge learning experience for priests adapting to a new way of being community in worship.
It has been a blessing to draw on my first career in media in planning and implementing new ways of gathering and celebrating together.
A Virtual Holy Week.
My first Holy Week as a priest was an adventure in creative challenges:
For Palm Sunday, I recorded a service moving from our parish garden to a palm-bedecked nave for broadcast.
I created instructions on how to celebrate home Agape Meals on Maundy Thursday.
We had a live-streamed liturgy for Good Friday along with ecumenical Stations of the Cross resources. I participated in a community clergy recording as well.
I created an Easter Vigil service in 10 parts, covering every reading with a meditation and ending with a sunrise service of Mass on the World.
See this archive of our Holy Week 2020 at St. Thomas à Becket
Moving to video.
For the rest of the spring and summer, I filmed and edited every service during the week before putting it up on YouTube. I began a live-streaming Evening Prayer service on Wednesdays that includes chanting and a meditation on the texts.
Our vestry meetings and formation classes have been well attended on Zoom, and I’ve also offered virtual coffee hours and pastoral conversations in this medium.
Live-Streaming
The workload was too high to continue with filming and editing services every week, plus as the months continued I could see many positives to a permanent live-streaming solution for the parish.
Together with new committees for Pandemic and A/V, and with the blessing of the Vestry, I developed a list of requirements, a plan, budget, fundraising campaign, and eventually installed the gear and began streaming in September 2020. We’re still improving and adjusting, but it has been going very well so far. Since this summer, we have together:
With the advice and assistance of several audio experts in our parish, we installed an all-new audio system into our nave which had nothing before, with a mixer, several different kinds of microphones, and a plan to add ADA hearing assist devices and expansion into our parish hall soon.
We’ve added two PTZ Optics (HD NDI) cameras controlled by OBS software for the video.
I have written detailed scripts based on our different liturgies for our volunteers to follow, and we’ve just begun training rotating teams now.