Crossings | Spring 2021

SPRING 2021

Crossings All Things Things New New

u New faculty members nurture academic programs u Theology professor appointed to new House of Deputies post post u Two new staff staff members, members, one one new new retirement retirement

Letter from the Dean

Mission Means Meeting Our Neighbors and Meeting Human Needs By

the

V e r y R e v . W. M a r k R i c h a r d s o n , P h D

President and Dean

Greetings from Berkeley.We are approaching the completion of a full year of adaptation to the circumstances of pandemic, now with signs of promise for a new day as the vaccination process unfolds. I am proud of the students, faculty, and staff who have responded so constructively to the challenges of theological education under these conditions.We have learned ways to counter isolation creatively and reach out to care for one another.These lessons will shape our future ministries.

We began and have continued spring semester at a wrenching time for our nation. Opportunities for healing will be tested by systematic disinformation and the politicizing of cultural forms of conversation.This reality touches all of us existentially. For many, relationships between alums and friends of the school and their parishioners may feel in flux.

As I think about these circumstances in relationship to CDSP, I am further convinced of the need for commitments we made several years ago: to develop a curriculum that is outward-facing and mission-oriented, to strengthen the capacity and desire of congregations and their leaders to engage the wider community in pursuit of common objectives, and to endeavor to meet local human needs in the context of such partnerships.

with the outlook and expertise of their new faculty colleagues.

This letter and this context is a good opportunity to express my joy at having the Rev. David Beckmann with us this semester. He is a Lutheran pastor, president emeritus of Bread for the World after more than two decades of service, and a well-known leader among decision makers in the nation’s capitol.

The course Beckmann is teaching, Poverty, Faith Communities, and the Politics of 2021, is jointly listed with the Goldman School of Public Policy at University of California, Berkeley (UCB).This course is another step in the development of professional ministry at CDSP, of stepping out of our cherished but often siloed circles and into common spaces that so desperately need leaders ready to serve the public good.

This Goldman School partnership is a reminder of CDSP’s tremendous positioning for extending our reach.

Other opportunities will follow where Beckmann has helped lead us. For example, UCB’s School of Social Welfare helps form expertise in navigating organizations and systems of child and family welfare, skills directly relevant to ministry.We can also complement our own leadership instruction through partnerships built around nonprofit management offerings at the Haas School of Business.After years on “the hill,” many opportunities are still untapped for expanding and developing offerings for our students and colleagues.

The Rev. David Beckmann, visiting The bonds of culture and the quest to fellow at CDSP, is teaching a course identify shared values are so often formed on faith, politics, and poverty in locally, even though we see the divisions partnership with the Goldman School of Public Policy. dramatized nationally. Our graduates, | Photo by the Rev. Kyle Oliver preparing to lead, can enter faith-driven actions with their congregations by I know you will enjoy the features our together nurturing the spirit of discipleship editor, the Rev. Kyle Oliver, has assembled in this edition and imagining mission at intersections with civic life. of Crossings. I commend to you his work expanding our With the future in mind, we entered January Intersession offerings in various media and connecting our activities to with renewed purpose.The community organizing course the wider Church we serve. offered students tools and insights which will help to shape Thank you, friends, for your gifts, your prayers, and all your their orientation toward congregational mission. Our new support for the ministry of CDSP. faculty in ministerial leadership and contextual education have just such an orientation in their teaching, blending well

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CDSP’s longest-serving staff member, Steve Sibbitt, retired at the end of February. | Photo by the Rev. Kyle Oliver

4 Professors’ Practice

18 Community News

New faculty describe their approach in the classroom.

CDSP-connected people with new books, new calls, new jobs, and more.

8 MacDougall Deputized

20 Staff Transitions

HOD president and new theologian join Crossings for a chat.

The seminary says one bittersweet goodbye and two delightful hellos.

12 Low-Res Love

23 Change Is Good

Participants in distance programs share their stories.

16 Institutional History

Crossings SPRING 2021

CDSP VP on how interruption has shaped the institution’s vision.

Archivist Rawlinson examines CDSP’s past, one box at a time.

The Very Rev.W. Mark Richardson, PhD, President and Dean Editorial: The Rev. Kyle Oliver, Paul Impey ‘23, and Dorothy Linthicum Design: Trinity Church Wall Street Crossings is published by Church Divinity School of the Pacific 2450 Le Conte Ave Berkeley, CA 94709-1249 © Church Divinity School of the Pacific, all rights reserved.

For additional print copies, e-mail communications@cdsp.edu.

Crossings also is published as a pdf online, at www.cdsp.edu/news/crossings, with archive copies available.

We want to know what you think of our magazine.

Please send your comments, story ideas and suggestions to communications@cdsp.edu.

Go Green with CDSP: Email communications@cdsp.edu to subscribe to our monthly email newsletter, and stay connected on Facebook at /cdspfans, on Twitter @cdsptweets, and on Instagram @cdspstudent.

On the cover: The Rev. Mark Chung Hearn, PhD, Associate Professor and Director of Contextual Education (top right, photo courtesy Hearn);

Professor Peace Pyunghwa Lee, Instructor in Homiletics and Pastoral Theology (center, photo by the Rev. Kyle Oliver);

The Rev. Alison Lutz, Instructor in Ministerial Leadership (bottom right, photo by the Rev. Kyle Oliver)

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Recently Hired Faculty Step into (Virtual) Classrooms Relational Formation for a Healthy Ministry Foundation by the

R e v . M a rR k C h u n g h H e a Rr n , P h D

In my short time at CDSP, I have especially enjoyed the teaching aspect of my role. I’ve learned that our students are concerned about how the Church will remain responsive to the times and prophetic in its witness in the world.

Students are more aware today of our plurality, interdependence, and need for healthy religious leadership in public arenas than when I was a seminary student twenty-five years ago.They understand that the questions we hold must keep evolving and, in turn, keep our curiosities open and alive.

A sedentary Church is one destined to become obsolete.

Students face up to this challenge by finding ways to

bridge the sacred and secular in their contextual education internships and experiences.

For example, a residential student in our internship program is focusing one of her learning goals on community organizing, even though her site is a congregation.This focus has led her to participate in a community organization that is not faith-based. She gathers regularly with them and learns what it means to represent both the parish she serves and the Church as a whole. She is, for some in this nonprofit, the closest, and sometimes only, link to organized religion.

We have a low-residence student who, for her internship, works on a racial justice initiative in her home diocese.

She meets people seeking out opportunities to contribute to anti-racism initiatives. And then she brings to our class difficult questions about showing up as a white woman religious leader in collaboration with Black, Indigenous, and other Persons of Color (BIPOC).

Both students are continually reflecting on what these experiences and questions mean for their developing ministerial identity and vocation. It’s a gift to accompany them as an instructor, partly because they keep my own vocation sharp and attentive. I seek to help creation flourish through teaching and forming the next

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generation of religious and ministerial leaders.

One of my strengths as a professor is relational formation. I am effective because I know how to tell the truth.

This truth-telling is built on a foundation of trust.The students believe in their gut that I am here for their growth and bring goodwill to my role.

Currently, I teach the first year of contextual education courses. I build these classes on four questions: (1) Who am I becoming as a minister? (2) Who is the person of the minister? (3) How do I theologically reflect upon this pastoral experience? (4) What professional skills and capacities am I learning, or do I need to learn?

Seminary is a wonderful place to consider these and other kinds of deep-seated questions. I would rather students begin asking them now rather than when the complexities of life have taken further hold, and when they are left to engage these questions in relative isolation. Sadly, we have all heard about ministerial scandals and abuses of power. I believe many of these leaders start out with good intentions but eventually are overcome by a lack of self-knowledge and self-awareness. Asking these questions earlier helps seminarians begin to build a healthy foundation.

What’s the difference? Most ministry leaders can learn plenty of week-toweek techniques and skills relatively early in their careers. However, to know how to ministerially respond with accumulated skills and techniques takes practical wisdom born out of a lifetime of intentional reflection, habits,

p

THEOLOGY

TECHNOLOGY

and self-knowledge that protect us NETWORKING from self-deception.

Ministers who know their own selves truthfully, and are not threatened by what they know, can possess the kind of internal freedom and coherence leaders need today.This sensibility leads to less posturing, more curiosity, and lifelong learning.

One of my favorite assignments during the spring semester is an entry point to understanding personal myths, families of origin, and systems theory. Building on Edward Wimberly’s Recalling Our Own Stories: Spiritual Renewal for Religious Caregivers and Murray Bowen’s family systems theory, I ask students to write a short reflection on their earliest memory of justice or injustice. We then probe the experience to see if it has influenced their commitment to ministry or perhaps contributed to an unhealthy ministry habit.

Again, the aim is for students to know themselves and how they show up to others. It is a powerful exercise for many students. It may be the first time they speak about a significant narrative from their lives and the impact it may have on past and future selves. I am not a therapist, and I encourage students to seek out their own therapy.

Still, there are therapeutic elements to this exercise, which integrate well with the rest of their seminary training and theological formation.

My vocational commitment is to be a part of a process that forms, as much as possible, a healthy and whole minister prepared to serve others well in the roles to which God leads them.

TEAM BUILDING

Preaching with Confidence B y P r o f e s s o r P e a c e P y u n g h wa L e e

There are days when it feels like a miracle, a prayer answered, that I get to teach preaching. I have been given an immense privilege and honor to accompany students in their holy vocation of proclamation.

Nearly a decade ago, I stopped running from my call and entered seminary. I was twenty-six years old and a first-year student at Princeton Theological Seminary when I finally saw someone who looked like me preach from a pulpit.

It wasn’t until I saw a woman preacher that I could finally articulate what I had been feeling for a very long time: a deep, abiding grief for the silencing of certain voices in our church. I was deeply shaken by this experience, because my own call to preach had been suppressed when a pastor corrected me that God may have called me to a life of prayer and devotion, but certainly not to preaching.

I wish I could tell you that seeing someone who looked like me preach from the pulpit immediately set me free from all my fears and conditionings. It didn’t. I tried to get out of the mandatory preaching course in my program and even considered switching from the MDiv to the MA. The fresh memory of seeing a woman in the pulpit kept me going. I was beginning to understand and feel the truth of the words of womanist

homiletician Teresa L. Fry Brown:“our presence in the pulpit alone is a visual for justice.”

The terror of preaching my first sermon in the introductory course was ameliorated by the kind and loving faces of friends and professors who encouraged and affirmed me. I am so grateful for my friend Genciano “Vitto” Clotter for being the first person to call me a “preacher.” He kept calling me a preacher every time he saw me, baptizing and blessing me with the word until the old story I had internalized melted away and I could start believing that I too was called to preach.

I give thanks as well for those first preaching professors— Yvette Joy Harris, Sally M. Brown, and

Spring 2021 C R O S S I N G S | 5

Jerusha M. Neal—all fearless and brave women who understood deeply the risk and courage it takes for someone, especially those minoritized and made invisible, to stand and preach. Our classrooms were transformed into a holy space where we encountered each other’s testimonies and sightings of God’s activity in the world.The music stands we would set before ourselves as makeshift pulpits became altars as we each rose up to offer a trembling prayer of our vision of God and the world.

This spring semester, I am blessed to accompany seven beautiful Episcopal seminarians on their formal introduction to the field of Homiletics.

Each has their own unique call and story and path that God has ordained for them. As we gather on Zoom under the shadow of an unrelenting pandemic and a world bent on destruction

and despair, I pray and hope that these students will find true confidence, faith and trust in God and in the communities that have called on them to be preachers, to be bearers of the gospel.

In our opening class, I invited the students to name their fears, their hopes, as well as the persons and communities that have shaped and influenced their call as preachers. As we open our hearts and share these stories, I want us to remember that we are never alone, and to taste the joy of adding our own unique voices to the everexpanding choir of witness.

I remind our students that it’s okay to be afraid. For some of us, preaching is something we do, joyously, despite and even through our fear. I remind them that the birth of Christian preaching took place in deep

darkness, death, and despair. In the darkness, there was a whisper, a confession, a testimony.The first proclamation of resurrection came from none less than Mary Magdalene.

In her beautiful book Preaching as Testimony, the Rev. Dr. Anna Carter Florence uncovers the lineage of women preachers in the likes of Jarena Lee,Anne Hutchinson, and Sarah Osborn, and reminds us that preaching “is the slow work of standing in one’s own life and in the word of God and saying what one sees and believes, no matter the consequences.”

With this reminder, I invite students to the holy task of standing in their own life and preaching with confidence.

They are rooted in God and in community, fears notwithstanding.

I am grateful I get to listen in.

‘Attending’ to Crisis Management, Racial Justice By

The morning I was ordained to the priesthood in the Diocese of New York,

the

R e v . A l i s o n “A l i ” L u t z

Bishop Mark Sisk gave my fellow ordinands and me a simple guide to being a priest: love the people, be kind to them, and pray for them.

As I prepared to join the CDSP community last fall as instructor in ministerial leadership, I asked myself, “What does love look like when I am entering a new community as one of its teachers?”That question brought me back to Simone Weil’s observation in “Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God,” which I read on my first day of seminary nineteen years ago. Weil writes that the substance of love is attention.

When I learned I would be teaching CDSP’s yearlong capstone course, Leadership for Ministry (LFM), I started by attending carefully to the existing syllabus. I was moved by how thoughtfully it integrated with the rest of the CDSP curriculum. I decided not to make major changes in my first year.

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I then gave my full attention to the details of our context, particularly the movement for racial justice that has pierced the nation’s consciousness in ways we must not ignore. In response, I added to the LFM course adrienne maree brown’s book Emergent Strategy, which has had a significant impact on community organizing work for racial justice in which I have participated.

As the semester got underway, I gave my full attention to students’ questions and concerns.At their suggestion, I added a unit on disaster preparedness and crisis management to LFM for the spring semester. I was excited to welcome for this topic guest speaker Gerlene “GJ” Gordy, communications director for the Episcopal Church in Navajoland (ECN). Gordy organized ECN’s distribution of food boxes to families hit hardest by Covid-19.

This spring, I have also been teaching a new course. It’s called Episcopal Church Leaders and Racial Justice.

The course aims to equip students to

THEOLOGY

I remind [students] that the birth of Christian preaching took place in deep darkness, death, and despair.

In the darkness, there was a whisper, a confession, a testimony.

TECHNOLOGY

TEAM BUILDING

WORKING

engage the Church in critical reflection and action in this area. Our challenge is to do so in a way that is brave, honest, loving, contextual, open, evolving, embodied, and spiritually grounded.

Our students will be prepared to meet the present moment.We want leaders who graduate from CDSP to draw on all their skills and wisdom to respond to the various questions, longings, ideas, approaches, pain, resistance, and momentum that arise in diverse contexts for the ongoing work of racial healing, justice, and reconciliation through the Church.

One of the assignments that meaningfully supported these learning goals was the Concepts and Terms Notebook.This activity helps students become aware of the assumptions they carry.The goal is to bring critical reflection to the patterns of thought students take for granted, which have been structured along racialized hierarchies of value with a disordered

preference for people and institutions that are perceived and treated as white.

Students first wrote an entry on their current thinking about ten concepts related to racial justice.Throughout the semester, they added to their entries as they encountered these terms in class materials, guest presentations, and discussions. By articulating at the outset what they assumed or took for granted initially, students could better engage new ideas without unconsciously filtering those ideas through their existing mindsets.

One of the themes of the course is that work for racial justice is not new. I was thrilled, honored, and frankly in awe that womanist theologian and ethicist Dr. Emilie Townes joined the class as a guest presenter.We studied her scholarship on counter-narrative and counter-memory to frame our attention to the untold history of racial justice initiatives in the Episcopal Church.

For example, the class learned together about the life and ministry of the Rev. Earl Neil, Episcopal priest and spiritual advisor to the Black Panther Party in Oakland, CA. Neil opened his church, St. Augustine’s, to host the first Black Panther Free Breakfast for School Children Program in January 1969.

I first learned about Neil during the application process for my position, while doing research on courses I would propose to teach at CDSP. When I arrived as a new faculty member, I learned from Dean Richardson that CDSP students and their spouses were among the volunteers cooking and serving breakfast with the Black Panthers at St. Augustine’s fifty years ago.

I could not be more pleased to be a part of the CDSP community. I am grateful for the opportunity to teach and to learn as we meet this moment together with love, kindness, and prayer.

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Servants of Mission

House of Deputies President, Theologian Talk Theology of Governance I n t e r v Ii e w

by the

R e v . K y l e O l Ii v e r r

On August 5, 2020, the Rev. Gay Clark Jennings announced the appointment of Dr. Scott MacDougall, CDSP associate professor of theology, as theologian to the House of Deputies. Jennings is president of that branch of General Convention, the Episcopal Church’s governing body. She joined MacDougall and the Rev. Kyle Oliver to speak about the significance of the new appointment and the connection between theology and church governance.This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

KyleOliver: Kyle Oliver:ToTo kick kick usus off, off, I want I want toto ask President Jennings to give us an overview of the roles and duties of the House of Deputies.

Gay Clark Gay ClarkJennings: Jennings: At the At the very very beginning of theoffounding beginning the founding of of the Episcopal Church, our founders decided to do something that was actually quite radical around the world.

Everyone was going to have a place at the table.We committed to shared governance, and what that means is that we distribute authority so that bishops, clergy, and lay people have an equal role in the governance of the Church.

KO: Is there a story behind your appointment of a theologian to serve the house you lead?

GCJ: Some months ago, I was told that as the president of the House of Deputies, I should stay in my governance lane and leave the mission to others.That’s a false dichotomy, because governance is always the servant of mission. My role as president is to help deputies and alternate deputies to take their appropriate role in the governance of the Church.

It’s really important for deputies to understand that their role is far more How that plays out is that at General than attending a meeting once every Convention, which is the highest three years. In order to order to be temporal authority of the Episcopal clear that governance is a servant of Church, we have two houses. It’s no mission, we have to understand that surprise, given that the Episcopal governance is fundamentally at its core, Church was founded around the same a spiritual and a theological act. In a time as the founding of the United conversation I was having with a colStates of America. league, a light bulb went off. I thought, “You know what? The House of We have the House of Bishops, where Deputies has a chaplain, the Rev. Lester every bishop is seated and the McKenzie from the Diocese of Los Presiding Bishop is the presiding officer.

Angeles.The House of Deputies needs And we have the House of Deputies. a theologian too.” I had spent a January In the House of Deputies every diocese term at Church Divinity School of the has the right to elect up to eight Pacific in 2019, and I knew right away deputies: four lay people and four clergy. who I wanted to serve in that role.

Any act of General Convention—the budget, a resolution, a policy, changing I didn’t really know how deputies or amending our Constitution and would respond. I made the announceCanons—has to be by concurrent ment, and I didn’t really hear. I had a action of the two houses. couple of people say,“Oh, that’s a great 8 | Church Divinity School of the Pacific

idea.” I set up a webinar on the topic of the theology of governance, with Scott as the presenter. More than 300 deputies registered.That has begun a journey of deputies and alternates and the president and my whole team understanding that what we are about is fundamentally spiritual and theological work.

KO: Dr. McDougall, MacDougall,what whatwas wasititlike liketoto get this invitation?

ScottI can’t SM: MacDougall: overstateIwhat can’tan overstate honor it was toanbehonor what askeditto was doto that. beTheology asked to do for me that.

Theology is a second for me career is a second in somecareer ways, in some andways, when and I decided when I decided to stop the to trajectory stop the trajectory that I wasthat on Iand wasgo onback and to graduate go back to school graduate to study school this todiscistudy pline, this discipline, the very the reason veryI did reason thatI was did because that was Ibecause had a goal I had of agiving goal of back giving to the Church. back to the Church.

I wantedI wanted to steepto myself steepin the theology myself in the of theology my tradition of my and tradition serve the Church and serve the byChurch formingbynew forming leaders new for that for leaders tradition. that tradition.

I hopedIto hoped be able to be to teachtointeach able a seminary, in a seminary, which I’ve which been I’ve blessed been blessed to be to able beto able do.to do.

I’ve received so much in my own formation from deeply theologically sophisticated clergy who understood that lay people should be equipped with the skills of theological discernment and to contribute to building up the Church for the betterment of the entire body.Theology isn’t something that’s done only by a kind of well-educated class that has custody of that particular capacity. It’s something that should be done by all.

That is the genius of the dispersed authority with which the Anglican tradition has understood church governance since its founding. I think that’s a really important component of who we are and our distinct identity.

The Rev. Gay Clark Jennings elected to her third and final term as president of the House of Deputies at the 79th General Convention in 2018. | Image courtesy Jennings

So when I was asked if, as a lay theologian in the Episcopal Church, I would like to serve as an inaugural theologian to the House of Deputies, the answer was a foregone conclusion.

Of course I would.

KO: What else attracted you to this opportunity?

SM: I think it’s very important to be a lay theologian empowering the imagination of other lay people about our role in theology. I also think it’s important to model for clergy the importance of building up the theological capacity of the people they serve, rather than acting as a theological delivery system to people in the pews.

I think that’s very limiting.

I’m encouraged and excited by the opportunity to work with the deputies, to explore the ways in which governance, in the ecclesial context, isn’t done for its own sake.We do it for the sake of furthering the gospel, even when it seems to be about a budget or a resolution or a piece of parliamentary minutia. It’s about the larger work of

God in Christ and the salvation of creation.That seems lofty at first, but actually it’s true.

“I get to go to Baltimore and be part of working to bring hope to the Church and to the world.” It’s no small thing.

GCJ: I want to echo what Scott just said. He’s written about hope, and this passage was one of the deciding factors for me. He wrote,“Maintaining hope in the eschatological future of God, the promised coming of the kingdom that Jesus preached, empowers us to work now with God to create conditions that look more rather than less like the promised kingdom of liberation, joy, and life.”

SM: Gay, I’m glad that was a component in your decision. I am really committed to shaping an imagination of what we do as Christians that is not afraid.

Death is not the thing to be fearful of.

It’s inauthenticity and the abandoning of our beliefs that we should be afraid of.When we are governing the Church and doing the work of setting policy, I think sometimes we’ve bought our own narrative of decline such that we’re so afraid we’re going to die that we lose sight of what’s really important.

We operate out of a sense of anxiety and fear.

Isn’t that the choice we’re called to make time and time again, as the baptized members of Christ’s body?

To choose hope and not death? That seems particularly poignant right now in our history. Choose hope and be free to live centered in Christ. Choose hope and be part of the coming of the kingdom.

That’s what General Convention is. It’s not “Oh, boy, I get to go to Baltimore or wherever for 10 days.” Rather, it’s

Now, it may be a well-founded fear, given numbers and statistics and financial figures and projections.

I’m certainly not advocating for us to ignore facts.What I would argue is the work of the Holy Spirit is bigger than those facts.We are a people who believe that life is snatched out of the jaws of death and that we should live

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Dr. Scott MacDougall preaches at the baccalaureate service as part of CDSP commencement exercises in 2019. | Photo by Richard Wheeler

that way every day. So we shouldn’t govern the Church out of a sense of fear or scarcity or lack of nerve or pulling back from telling the truth.We should embrace our strength as people who are empowered to share the message of life to the world.

KO: Dr. MacDougall, you’ve given us this picture of work intended to develop deputies’ and alternates’ imagination about the work that they’re doing as connected to the theological imagination of the Church and the mission of the Church. President Jennings, what’s on that agenda in the days ahead?

GCJ: Let me take a contemporary example:The intersection of our faith and political life in the country right now. It’s on everyone’s minds. In the next month or so, I’ve asked Scott to consider putting something together that will help deputies and alternates think about what is happening.

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KO: Let me note that we’re speaking on January 11, 2021, less than a week after the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

GCJ: Yes.This will not be over. How do we as deputies think about this, especially in light of the fact that there are some who say the Episcopal Church should not be involved in social issues? There are others for whom it’s a deep and abiding commitment and passion.Whatever we do, whether we say something or nothing, we are making a public witness.

How will our theology influence what we do between now and General Convention and what we do at General Convention? When we enact a bill, when we adopt a resolution, when we say this is the Episcopal Church’s policy, it’s not just left on the floor of either house when we leave that city. It gets into our system in terms of who we say we are as a Church and what our public witness is to the country and to each other within the

confines of the Church. I expect a lot of activity between now and July 2022, when we are finally able, we hope, to gather in person in Baltimore.

SM: One of the things I’ve tried to do in my own work and in my own teaching is to embrace very strongly the present and well-developed thread of Anglican theology that has been socially engaged for a very, very long time.

The vision of Anglican political theology is deep and vigorous and concrete and carries a legacy of positive change that has shaped and formed in positive, and sometimes negative, ways the countries in which the Anglican Communion has been present for literally centuries.

There’s no reason for us to shy away from that legacy, rather, we should be embracing it.That said, one of the things that’s really important to me is for us to remember why we do that work.

One of the things that my students have heard me say over and over again,

particularly on the first day of class in the introductory theology course, is that social justice language is not Christian language.That usually brings people up short.They get a little huffy, and that’s what I want them to do. But aside from being cheeky and provocative, the reason I say that is because it’s not Christian language. Social justice is a commitment that we have because we’re first committed to the gospel.

I don’t want us to downplay that gift or to hide that light under a bushel. I want it to be out for the world to see. It’s a way to attract people to the beauty that is the Christian way.

I would rather we move a little bit away from the shorthand and talk about the real fundamental commitment, as President Jennings has already invoked, to this vision of God’s future, of God’s promise for a creation redeemed and brought to its fulfillment in relational communion over the full flourishing of life. If that’s our gospel vision, human rights language is the wrong language to be using to frame our arguments.

GCJ: Yes, it makes sense. Cuba comes to mind immediately.At the last General Convention, the two houses voted, unanimously I believe, to reunify with the Diocese of Cuba, which had been part of the Episcopal Church.

Because of the revolution in Cuba, that relationship was almost entirely severed, although there were belowground relationships.

It’s not the wrong language to be using in the public sphere to talk to each other.

We may have common cause.After all, I also do teach community organizing in its theological dimensions. I understand about strategic allyship with organizations of common concern.

But we are also different.The Church offers a way in which we align our entire lives moving through the world in a way that furthers God’s vision for flourishing, and that’s unique.That’s a unique gift that we have to offer.

KO: President Jennings, I’m wondering if you could comment on that with respect to some issue that the House has spoken to at some time. Have you seen that dynamic work in how the House of Deputies approaches its work?

One piece of our theological understanding of what it means to be Church is what it means to be one.What does our theology and our faith say about unity, about becoming unified? We’re reading John right now: “that they all may be one just as the Father and I are one.”There was a clear theological reason for the Episcopal Church to be reunified with the Diocese of Cuba.

of all of it, what mattered was our relationship with our Cuban siblings.

That’s what drove the reunification, the desire to be one even in spite of some political reasons perhaps not to proceed.

SM: I think that is a good example of the kind of action we need to be considering.Where do we recognize possibilities for other reconciliation?

Where do we find other relationships that need repair? Where do we find that grace has been dammed and there’s a place that we can break it open and start the free flow of gifts and exchange again?

KO: Thank you both so much.This conversation has been really rich and interesting.

SM: We’ll be praying for the work of the convention as it moves towards its meeting.

GCJ: Thank you both.

In terms of public opinion, it was divided.There was debate.At the end

Isn’t that the choice we’re called to make time and time again, as the baptized members of Christ’s body? To choose hope and not death? That seems particularly poignant right now in our history.

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Surprised by Community Students, Alums Name the Blessings of CDSP’s Low-Residence, Online Programs All photos on pages 12-15 courtesy of the authors

to my family. I knew our circumstances were such that I could not easily uproot everyone for us to move someplace where I could attend a full-time, residential seminary.We had no local options either, and I convinced myself briefly that I must be misunderstanding my call.

Ashley Gurling ‘23 I was born in Ogden, Utah, and grew up in an idyllic small town where I could climb trees, capture frogs, and swim in the Weber River. My family raised me in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and I cannot ever remember a time where God was not with me.

As a child, I would line up my stuffed animals and dolls and “play church.” I would pass out pieces of bread and pass a small cup of water.Then I would give a sermon! In my childhood tradition, women are not ordained, so my family thought this was amusing. But it felt natural and right to me.

that day, my first experience with formal liturgy.The hair on my arms stood up. I cried and cried. Worship in the Episcopal Church felt, to me, like I had stepped into living poetry, like I was learning truths that I could know in no other way.

Later in my life, after transitioning away from my childhood faith, I walked into Episcopal Church of the Resurrection in Centerville, UT. I stayed for worship

When I first experienced my call, I did my best to set it aside because I believed there was no way to pursue the call and fulfill my responsibilities

12 | Church Divinity School of the Pacific

The low-residence program at CDSP was the answer to every obstacle. It allows me to do the work according to a schedule I set for myself and continue being a present parent. Formation at CDSP is changing who I am over time, subtly shifting how I view the world, my faith, and my connection to other people.Wherever my future ministry is lived out, I hope I will have the opportunity to lead worship, facilitate adult formation, and provide pastoral care. It is in these three areas that I feel I am most responding to God’s call.

a part of me growing up. However, at times I would participate in Hindu rituals with my dad and his relatives.

The Rev. Bertram Nagarajah ‘23 I was born and educated in Sri Lanka.

I came from a family where my mom was a cradle Anglican and my father a cradle Hindu. My mom had more influence on me growing up. I went to church regularly with her, and also to Sunday school. So church became

When I was about 17 years old, I felt a calling to the priesthood. I went for an interview in the Diocese of Colombo. I was told to come back three years after further education. Around that time, my dad died, and I was the oldest male child and had to shoulder family responsibility.After a few more years of studies, I got a job to support my family. However, the calling to the sacred ministry never went away.

Many years later, I came to the United States for more engineering and technology studies. I got a job, and my

well, particularly its openness to people of a wide variety of backgrounds.

The Rev. Andrew Armond ‘20 I was raised as a Southern Baptist in rural North Louisiana.The story of my conversion to the Episcopal Church is fairly standard for evangelicals of my generation (late X / early Millennial).

I was intrigued by and drawn toward formality, ritual, and liturgy in worship.

Since that time, I have continued to grow in my appreciation for other aspects of the Episcopal Church as

I am currently the chaplain of the Diocese of Western Louisiana’s diocesan school, Episcopal School of Acadiana in Lafayette, LA. For the past five and a half years, my role has been to offer spiritual counsel with students and faculty, to be the presence of the Church in the life of people from a variety of religious backgrounds, to teach a world religions course to eighth graders, and to operate the chapel program.

I am in the midst of vocational transition.

I will be moving to the Diocese of Texas and working at Trinity Episcopal Church in Longview as curate and chaplain of Trinity School of Texas.

company sponsored me for a Green Card and U.S. citizenship. Eventually I settled here and got married. My wife is also from Sri Lanka.We have two sons.

All this time, I continued to hear God’s call.When I could no longer put off, I participated in a discernment process for holy orders and was ordained as a vocational deacon in the Episcopal Church.With my regular job, diaconal duties, and outreach program work, it would have been impossible to do any full-time coursework in person.The CDSP low-residency program makes this possible.

I am planning as part of my mission to spend time in Sri Lanka and teach at the Colombo Theological Seminary There are many great curricula I have learned and continue to learn through my CDSP studies. I hope to one day share this treasure trove of knowledge with others.

I was drawn to CDSP’s low-res program because it was literally the only one that met my life circumstances. I needed to get a Certificate in Anglican Studies, but I wasn’t able to uproot my family and leave my job for the one or two years that such a program would require at most residential seminaries.

In addition, CDSP’s program was affordable and flexible.

What I found certainly exceeded my expectations.The setting, the people, the academic rigor, the spiritual development, the corporate worship, and the online aspects of the program were deeply meaningful and gratifying.

The cohesion of our cohort was a blessed surprise for me. I did not anticipate being able to form relationships of such depth in so short a time. I loved learning alongside students from all over the country, especially when discussing regional differences in the Episcopal Church.

It was illuminating to understand how differently the Church operates in dioceses across the country.

Spring 2021 C R O S S I N G S | 13

LOW RESIDENTS 12-15

children.Yes, I was a church kid, a preacher’s kid—all of the applicable titles. I swore I wouldn’t be a minister. I wanted to be a nurse, but God had other plans.

Dr. Robin Woodberry ‘21 I grew up in a family with five children and two hard-working parents. My mother was a pastor in the African Methodist Episcopal church, retiring in 2014. My father worked in the local steel mill. I have lived in Youngstown, OH, all of my life. I met my husband of 36 years at church when we were

In 1995, I was licensed to preach in the Baptist Church, and in 2005 I was ordained, going on to serve as the assistant pastor at the largest Black Baptist Church in the city. But in 2017, I felt God’s pull in a different direction, and I embarked upon a huge life transition.After having served as a minister for more than 20 years, I left the Baptist Church and was confirmed in the Episcopal Church, discerning my call into the priesthood.

It was one of the most significant decisions I have ever made, but one I do not regret.

After 34 years, I retired from Shell Oil Company as a global purchasing manager, a role that took me far and across continents.

Don Dozier I was born in St. Louis and attended Southeast Missouri State University (SEMO), majoring in marketing.While attending SEMO, I was blessed to enroll in a sociology class and meet my future wife, Lynne Drew. She was seated next to me in alphabetical order.We had four children and eight grandchildren.

14 | Church Divinity School of the Pacific

Lynne and I were married for 56 years.

In April of 2019, she was diagnosed with leukemia, and she died December 22 that same year.We had been members of St. Dunstan’s Episcopal Church in Houston, TX, for more than 40 years, and I have served in many roles there.

As I was trying to adjust to the loss of my wife, I listened to a podcast, and the speaker discussed that a grieving person needed to fill in the empty white spaces they had on a piece of paper. One of the items on my list was

Being called into the life of ministry is not something I take lightly. Since I am the fourth-generation woman minister in my family, I know all too well the sacrifice and dedication that comes with this call.That’s why attending CDSP in the Certificate of Anglican Studies program was so important to me.

It’s no secret that the Baptist Church and the Episcopal Church (TEC) have some differences. I needed to come to know who TEC is, as well as how and why she functions.While my bishop would have preferred that I attend seminary as a residential student, financially I could not leave my job and move to another city.The most significant benefit was studying from home and not having to uproot and relocate, even if temporarily, which gave me the chance to continue working my job and overseeing my family’s needs while pursuing my education.

to enrich my understanding of the Bible and my relationship with God. I explored several educational opportunities, and a friend shared with me the online Certificate of Theological Studies and Center for Anglican Learning and Leadership programs at CDSP. I pray that my journey will allow me to understand God’s word and apply these truths of love, kindness, justice, and righteousness in my daily life. CDSP is offering me the chance to be located in Houston, enhance my knowledge, meet new friends, and understand other people’s perspectives within the Episcopal faith community.

Family and work commitments made it impossible for me to move overseas for a block of time, so a low-residence program I could complete part-time was the obvious solution.

A couple of my colleagues and advisors suggested that CDSP might be a good fit.

Frances Oka ‘23 I have lived in Japan for many years now and am fairly fluent in everyday spoken Japanese, but unfortunately my reading and writing skills are not sufficient to undertake an academic course in that language. Since none of the seminaries here offer courses in English, I needed training for ordained ministry elsewhere.

The low-residence model has allowed me to honor both family and work responsibilities as I take the first steps on an uncertain path.

Much as I would value the experience of a residential program, moving to Berkley or elsewhere in the U.S. would require me to give up on teaching and abandon my family.

The low-residence program at CDSP was vital in allowing me to answer the call to ordained ministry.

It allowed me to continue working to support myself during seminary. I wanted not just an education but an academically rigorous theological formation that would stretch and challenge me.

The Rev. Anthony Jones ‘20 I sensed and explored the call to ordained ministry after working as an attorney for several years with the Department of Veterans Affairs. Still repaying law school loans, I was hesitant to think about seminary. I needed to continue to work full-time and did not see a way forward.

I now serve in parish ministry as assistant priest at an urban congregation in Brooklyn with more than 600 members.

As part of this clergy team, I share in pastoral care ministry, liturgical leadership, and regular preaching. I also support our small group community outreach ministries.

The church I presently serve, St.Albans,’ is the only “English” church in the Nippon Sei Ko Kai, the Anglican Communion’s province in Japan.As my working skill in Japanese improves, I hope to act as a kind of bridge between our church and others in the diocese. I’m mainly interested in parish ministry, but my nursing background and recent experience on the receiving end of some excellent medical and nursing care have started me thinking about the possibility of chaplaincy in a hospital or hospice setting.

The diaconate here in Japan is essentially transitional, but my bishop has expressed an interest in developing the vocational diaconate as a ministry in its own right.As yet, we also have relatively few female clergy. I have never been much of a trailblazer, but I hope to make a contribution in both these areas.

Perhaps an unintended benefit of the low-residence program is the technological skills and tools I learned as a result of the nature of the program.

My classmates are spread out across the United States and are as far away as Hawaii.We know how to create and hold relationships and community online.We know how to create audio and video presentations that can be presented through meeting spaces such as Zoom.When the pandemic prevented the congregation I serve from gathering in person, we were able to immediately transition worship, Bible study, choir rehearsal, and small group meetings to online offerings.

No doubt we are in a time of change and transformation in community and congregational life. I cannot predict what life will look like going forward, but I hope and intend to continue to grow the ministries of the congregation in the context and circumstances in which we find ourselves.

Spring 2021 C R O S S I N G S | 15

Around CDSP:

Alum Restores Order After Archival Relocation By

the

Rev. Kyle Oliver

When the Rev. John Rawlinson (MDiv ‘70, PhD ‘82) contacted CDSP in hopes of accessing the archives, he didn’t expect he would eventually be managing them.

Rawlinson was seeking access to papers and other materials from one of his former professors, the Rev. Massey Shepherd, PhD (DD ‘85).The world-renowned liturgical scholar taught full-time at the seminary from 1954 until 1981.

“Eventually I was told,‘The reason you can’t see them is that you won’t be able to find anything,’” Rawlinson said.

“So I offered to organize them.”

Rawlinson is a trained historian with a doctorate from the Graduate Theological Union (GTU) and had served as archivist for the Diocese of California for twenty years. He received permission from CDSP to tackle the forty-seven--box collection, slowly cataloguing Shepherd’s papers and other materials over the course of more than two years.

At the end of the project, CDSP agreed with Rawlinson’s assessment that the Shepherd materials were important enough to the Episcopal Church as a whole to be sent to the denomination’s archives in Austin,TX. “That project gave [Dean Richardson] a close intimate knowledge of what I had done and how I had worked.

Based on these impressions and the recommendation of the Episcopal 16 | Church Divinity School of the Pacific

Church archivist, he decided it would be OK for me to stay on.”

what are the categories?’”

Rawlinson said.

“Sometime during my training as a historian, I learned The new role of there’s a significant CDSP archivist difference expanded between an archive Rawlinson’s and a library. In a purview to the library you try to seminary-wide pull together all collection, which The Rev. John Rawlinson the items on the had been moved works on a box same topic. In an of archival material. during a archive, you’re | Photo courtesy Rawlinson reconfiguration putting together of campus all the materials spaces. I asked that were created him how he by a person or office.” approached the process of getting to know the material.

“You don’t start with a box,” Rawlinson said.“You start with a mass, in this case of 150 boxes’ worth of material.The first issue is asking ‘What’s here?’”

In the roughly two years since he became CDSP’s official archivist, he has taken more than thirty-nine handwritten notebook pages’ worth of inventory: faculty meeting minutes, board minutes, notes from curriculum planning, descriptions of student activities, faculty writing, administrative records, fundraising records, GTU records, and more.The work before him recently expanded when CDSP staff identified additional archival records filling nine file cabinets and more than forty boxes.

“The next step is asking,‘How do I organize it? Based on this inventory,

Of course, some of those offices find themselves embroiled in conflict from time to time. One particular piece of controversy Rawlinson explored involved a bit of Berkeley history he remembered from his student days but about which he had lingering questions: the protests, and eventual deadly confrontation with law enforcement, connected to the 1969 creation of the People’s Park on UC Berkeley property.

“The incident began not at the university but at the Baptist seminary,” Rawlinson recounted.“They had a class on social ministry, and the professor sent them out to interview people in the neighborhood about what the city needed, and person after person said, ‘We need a park.’ So these students started building, and others, including from my class, started joining in.”

Rawlinson thought he had heard that, after the violence of May 15, Dean Sherman Johnson had used seminary money to bail some CDSP student protestors out of jail. But he had a hard time believing that the trustees would have rubber stamped such a decision.

“When I was working in the archives,” Rawlinson said,“I came upon the memo he sent to the trustees confirming the use of school money to bail those students out of jail. He wrote, ‘I believe the government has the right to manage their own property, but I believe the government use of authority was unwise. Our students were there to monitor and serve as medics.

’The trustees didn’t boil over.They took Dean Johnson’s word, and that was that. His memo was an important piece of the puzzle.”

He notes that in addition to the possibility of supporting independent research, volunteering in the archives has value as professional development:

While not every item in the archive is connected to such significant moments, Rawlinson says there is much to learn from the collection, and he welcomes collaborators.

“One of the requirements of the canons of the Episcopal Church that is almost always ignored is that the priest in charge of any congregation is responsible for organizing and retaining the essential materials to maintain a congregational archive.”

“Early on, it had to be a one-person job,” he said.“Somebody has to design the basic system.Also important at the outset was to have some sense of what, if any, highly confidential material was there, because it may be that certain areas have to be off limits. But that time has passed.”

Students and alums, take note.

From the Archives: Former Dean Introduces First Crossings In the fall of 1977, the seminary retired CDSP Times as the name of its primary publication for institutional news.The new name, with us to this day, would be Crossings.The Rt. Rev. Frederick H. Borsch, PhD (DD ‘81), who was then president and dean and would later be elected bishop of the Diocese of Los Angeles, wrote the following in his “From the Dean” column.

Upon locating the column for a recent project, archivist John Rawlinson wrote,“Frankly, it seems to me that it was a good statement in its time but even more applicable today.” It has been edited here for length and clarity.

Crossings suggests to us that the Church Divinity School of the Pacific is a place where people meet and share many aspects of their lives.This is first of all true of the teachers and students who live and learn here—trying to be a community of searching and faithful Christians.

Individual bishops, clergy and lay leaders pass through at various times in the year to counsel and to share. From the school, faculty and students go out to lead conferences, to act as consultants, to preach, and to work in field education programs.They return bringing new understandings with them.

Situated near the University of California, Berkeley, and in the Bay Area, the seminary is a meeting place for people from different cultures and backgrounds. Located at the heart of the Graduate Theological Union, the

school is ground for exchange between students, faculty, and Church leaders from many denominations.

So Crossings also alludes to the awareness that the seminary is a place where a great number of ideas intersect and interact. Divergent theological attitudes, cultural values, understandings from the past and about the past, present, and future are all encountered here.

I realize that there is a part of most of us which might at times wish this were otherwise. I know there are days when I, at least, think life might be easier in a location where there were not quite so many crossings.

Yet then I remember that our Lord didn’t just come to save that part or aspect of the world with which I am most comfortable. If theological education and spiritual growth cannot

develop in relationship with these many other people and ideas, we must wonder how well we can ever share the Word of God. Thus, Crossings finally suggests that the seminary is a place of meeting for the divine Word and our words, for the Lord’s perspective and our own. Here we are to seek to deepen our insight so that we can see others and perceive the world as God would have us do, and so begin to love with a love like that of Jesus.

I hope through this newsletter you will feel a part of these exchanges.And perhaps in the months ahead there will be some opportunity for you to share your ideas or even visit our campus so that you can participate directly in these crossings.

Spring 2021 C R O S S I N G S | 17

Community News In May 2020, the CDSP community gathered for a special Online Celebration of Graduates rather than the traditional year-end services. Baccalaureate and Commencement return in May 2021, the former taking place as a synchronous service on Zoom and the latter as a pre-recorded liturgy with live watch party.

The Rev. Joanna Benskin ‘21 was ordained to the transitional diaconate on December 5, 2020 at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco on behalf of the Diocese of Indianapolis.

The Rev. Will Bryant ‘21 was ordained to the transitional diaconate Jan. 16, 2021 at the Cathedral of All Souls in Asheville, NC. Angela Furlong ‘23 published “Embracing Oneself as an Icon” and “Context Dictates Our Vision – Privilege Blinds Us” in Maryland Episcopalian.

Brett Johnson ‘21 received a Spot Grant from the Episcopal Evangelism Society to support digital evangelism efforts at All Saints Episcopal Church of the North Shore in Danvers, MA. Kaitlyn Reece ‘24 received a grant from the Episcopal Evangelism Society to lead retreats, seminars, and use social media to help people of faith in the Diocese of Nebraska find and use their prophetic voices to speak in support of criminal justice reform.

The Rev. Dawn Reynolds ‘21 was ordained to the priesthood on December 12, 2020 at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Portland, OR.

18 | Church Divinity School of the Pacific

Patricia Rose ‘21 was named a Becoming Beloved Community scholar for the 2020-2021 academic year by the Society for the Increase of the Ministry.

The Rev. Peter Vazquez-Schmitt ‘21 was ordained to the transitional diaconate on December 5, 2020 at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco on behalf of the Diocese of Maryland.

Dr. Julián Andrés González Holguín published “Christian Ethics and the Hebrew Bible” in The Cambridge Companion to the Hebrew Bible and Ethics and “Painted Eroticism: Sex and Death in Cain and Abel’s Story” in Biblical Interpretation.

The Rev. John Kater, PhD, gave a Zoom lecture for the diocese of Costa Rica and other dioceses in Central America on “Crises and Challenges: Moments of Opportunity?

An Anglican Perspective.”

The Rev. Alison Lutz spoke at a Nov. 8 Community Organizing Webinar sponsored by the Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee’s Beloved Community Commission.

Dr. Scott MacDougall was appointed theologian to the House of Deputies of the Episcopal Church and presented “The Work of Church Governance as Theological Work” to that body. He also presented “Philosophical Theology as a Reflection on Practice” and participated in the panel “Philosophical Theology in a Time of Crisis” at the University of Edinburgh’s TheoCon. The Rev. Ruth Meyers, PhD, contributed to Eucharistic Practice and Sacramental Theology in Pandemic Times, a project of The Anglican Church in Canada, and met with the House of Deputies for a historical overview of liturgical and prayer book revision and a discussion of the role of General Convention and the House of Deputies in the revision process.

Dr. Cynthia Moe-Lobeda published “Christ’s Love in the Midst of Pandemic” in The Ecumenical Review and contributed to Ecotheology: A Christian Conversation and Scripture and Resistance: Theology in the Age of Empire. She was a plenary speaker at the Ecumenical School on Governance, Economics and Management; a keynote speaker at the Bishop’s Theological Conference in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s Minneapolis Synod; and a panelist for “God, Migration, and the Climate Crisis” hosted by Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services.

The Rev. Kevin Gore ‘18 has accepted a call to serve as rector of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Jonesboro, AR, and as a diocesan trustee.

The Rev. Grace Flint ‘20 was ordained to the priesthood on December 18, 2020 at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Sacramento, CA. The Rev. Peter L. Fritsch ‘92 taught for the general public a three-session series on facing evil on Nov. 10, 17, and 24.

The Rev. Portia Hopkins ‘20 was ordained to the priesthood on December 18, 2020 at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Sacramento, CA.

The Rev. Andrea Arsene ‘20 was ordained to the priesthood on January 9 at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Lafayette, IN. The Rev. Ryan Baker-Fones ‘20 was ordained to the priesthood on December 12, 2020 at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Portland, OR. The Rev. Lyn Zill Briggs ‘06 contributed to Planning for Rites and Rituals: A Resource for Episcopal Worship.

The Rev. Everett Charters ‘20 was ordained to the priesthood on December 12, 2020 at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Portland, OR. The Rev. Meg Decker ‘90 was interviewed for “Trinity Episcopal: Rising to the Challenge” in the San Diego Reader.

The Rev. Tim Dyer ‘19 was appointed sergeant-at-arms of the House of Deputies.

The Rev. Laura Eberly ‘20 was ordained to the diaconate on October 24 at Saint Mark’s Cathedral in Seattle, WA. The Rev. Christie Fleming ‘17 was featured in “Western Louisiana Opens Homeless Shelter in Partnership with Rural Community” from Episcopal News Service.

The Rev. Ethan Lowery ‘20 was ordained to the transitional diaconate on December 5, 2020 at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.

The Rev. Randal Gardner offered a three-week Advent class on the Gospel According to Mark for St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Redwood City, CA. The Rev. Spencer Hatcher ‘16 served as chaplain to the 2021 Episcopal Camps & Conference Centers Annual Conference.

The Rev. Kyle Oliver was interviewed for “[Churches] Become Digital Literacy Teachers” in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, spoke at Luther Seminary’s launch event for Grace & Gigabytes: Being Church in a Tech-Shaped Culture, and co-facilitated “Social Media Outreach & Engagement with Young Adults” for Episcopal Church Young Adult and Campus Ministry.

The Rev. Lauren Lukason ‘14 was ordained to the priesthood on December 17, 2020 at St. Paul’s Church in Brookline, MA. The Rev. Elizabeth Milner ‘20 was ordained to the priesthood on December 5, 2020 at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.

The Rev. Colby Roberts ‘16 was ordained to the transitional diaconate on December 5, 2020 at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.

The Rev. Anna Rossi ‘18 was featured on the Episcopal Church’s Prophetic Voices podcast.

The Rev. Richmond H. Grant ‘61 died on January 21, 2021.

Donald Hutchinson, son-in-law of Dr. Robert F. Gaines Sr. ‘80, died on November 18, 2020.

Nigel A. Renton died January 10, 2021 from complications of Covid-19.

The Rev. Margaret Lucie Thomas ‘95 died December 16, 2020.

The Rev. Carren Sheldon ‘12 has accepted a call to serve as rector of Grace Episcopal Church in Astoria, OR.

Grant to them eternal rest. Let light perpetual shine upon them. May their souls, and the souls of all the departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

The Rev. Iain Stanford ‘15 teamed up with the Rev. Dr. Randal Gardner for an Advent conversation as a homily for CDSP worship.

SHARE YOUR NEWS

Edward Stewart ‘19 was featured on the Episcopal Church’s Prophetic Voices podcast.

Please send news items about members of the CDSP community, including death notices, to communications@cdsp.edu or via the CDSP website at cdsp.edu/alumni/information-form/.

Spring 2021 C R O S S I N G S | 19

Staff Spotlight: Longest-Serving Employee Hangs Up Tool Belt, Two New Hires Join Team B R . K O y the

No matter whom you ask about the most recent retirement from the CDSP staff, everyone agrees it means the end of an era.

Steve Sibbitt, the seminary’s superintendent of buildings, grounds, and security, retired at the end of February after nearly twenty-five years on the job.

He stayed long enough to overlap for several months with Mark Ades, who

ev

yle

liver

joined the staff in the role of facilities maintenance project supervisor.Also joining CDSP at the midpoint of the academic year was Angelica Juarez, the finance department’s new controller.

“These are transitions you can’t help but feel good about,” said the Rev. John Dwyer, vice president and chief operating officer.“Steve has been the heart and soul of this community since

before most of us even arrived.We will miss him, but we’re full of gratitude for his good humor and steady hand.

“As for Angelica and Mark, they both bring years of experience in their fields.

They’re just the kind of professionals that help our lean staff operate at a very high level.”

STEVE SIBBITT: ‘Camp Counselor,’ Boiler Whisperer, and More Sibbitt worked a number of jobs before his hiring in the summer of 1996 (“within an hour of my interview,” he said). Before that he had worked various electrical jobs in the construction industry, including a couple years building train cars for the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) fleet. But by then he had already left his mark on CDSP. “After I got hired, I walked into Shires Hall and there was this déjà vu,” Sibbitt told me.“I said,‘What’s going on?’Then I opened up a panel and said,‘Dang, that’s my handwriting. I was here.’”

It turned out Sibbitt had contributed to electrical work during a Shires remodeling project almost a decade before. He told that story when he and two other maintenance staff colleagues were chosen by the Class of 2000 20 | Church Divinity School of the Pacific

to give the baccalaureate address to the graduates.

“I worked for Trinity Electric. I also worked for Lord Electric. I knew somehow that I was going to end up at CDSP,” he told the students.“I was destined for this place.”

Giving speeches in the chapel is seldom in the job description for a building and grounds specialist. For Sibbitt, though, the invitation was a natural extension of his primary passion during his years on the job: getting to know CDSP’s students.

“I could take my trade, my skill set, and go outside of this institution and be successful in it,” he said.“But I would never meet the quality and class and intellect of the folks that I met here.

I’d fix a toilet and do some plumbing repair in between, but my connection was the people. It was just a fantastic place to hang out. I will sorely miss that component specifically in my retirement.”

Sibbitt’s regular presence on campus, his listening ear, and his curiosity about students’ stories shaped his role and extended his impact in the community.

“I was sort of camp counselor for a couple years,” Sibbitt said.“People would ask,‘Where do you get your pastoral care?’They said,‘You would do well to go sit down and talk to the maintenance man.’”

Curiosity and an intuitive, hands-on approach also characterized how Sibbitt has gone about his maintenance

Left: Steve Sibbitt, superintendent of buildings, grounds, and security, was the longest-serving member of the CDSP staff when he retired at the end of February.|Photo by the Rev. Kyle Oliver Right: Steve Sibbitt restarts the Gibbs Hall boiler after an unexpected shutdown.

“I’m not afraid to touch anything or take anything apart,” he said. |Photo by the Rev. Kyle Oliver

responsibilities. He describes his gift as being able to “analyze a mechanical system and make it functional again.”

this on the side over here, you put a screwdriver over here, and we can get this thing going.’”

“I try to figure out why it’s designed and engineered the way it is,” he said. “‘What’s the purpose of that thing right there, why won’t it work?’ I’m not afraid to touch anything or take anything apart.”

Try as I might, I could not get Sibbitt to choose a favorite building on campus.

(He does have a least-favorite, the Virginia Street apartments:“The best retirement present that this institution could give me, Kyle, is to raze that thing, knock it down to the ground. It’s a 1949 building with a 1949 electrical system and 1949 plumbing.”)

Ades agreed with his assessment.

“He has made it easy to take care of these buildings, in the sense that he knows all their idiosyncrasies,” he said.

“He knows what makes them tick, and so when a challenge comes up, Steve has his finger on it. He can say,‘Okay, this is the next step. I know what the big Gibbs Hall boiler is going to do.

You turn this, you twist this, you kick

However, he does have a favorite tree on campus, which he planted himself in the wooded area adjacent to the Easton Hall courtyard.The fir is actually something of a rescue, Sibbitt having collected it after it did its duty as a group of seminarians’ Christmas tree.

So one more contribution to campus, then, for Steve Sibbitt.

The Rev. Susanna Singer, PhD (MDiv ‘89), captured both sides of what makes her fellow recent retiree so special.

“Our beloved, well-worn campus would have fallen apart long ago but for Steve’s skill and devotion,” she said.

“But he was always ready to shoot the breeze about anything from theology to bowling—and sometimes the theology of bowling. I can’t imagine CDSP without him.”

Spring 2021 C R O S S I N G S | 21

MARK ADES: From Hotels to Hulu to the Holy Hill With those shoes to fill, it’s just as well that as of this writing there were already plans to hire a second team member in the facilities department after Sibbitt’s departure.

In part, that’s because of CDSP’s growing needs. Whatever decisions emerge from the seminary’s ongoing strategic planning process, they are likely to require considerable development of an aging campus with unusual topography and building interconnections.

Mark Ades, facilities maintenance project supervisor, has managed such distinctive properties as the Hulu Headquarters and Queen Mary Hotel in Metro Los Angeles and the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas. |Photo by the Rev. Kyle Oliver

managed “every aspect of facilities from construction to design to custodial work to food and beverage to sustainability to transportation.”

Before that, he managed a hotel facility that didn’t even begin its life as a building: the Queen Mary, an ocean liner transformed into a luxury hotel.

When I asked him how he was settling in to his role overseeing CDSP’s eclectic campus, he said lots of the same principles apply.

“Everything I tried to do to the Queen Mary—how to maintain it, how to take care of it—was keeping it true to what it was,” he said.“Each building has its own life and character and style. I look at each one and say,‘Okay, how can I enhance that? How can I keep true to its roots and true to its base while still updating the infrastructure and everything else that needs to be taken As it happens,Ades seems to have a care of? To work for unique entities knack for finding distinctive employers. like a ship, or a giant resort being built His last role was working for streaming in Las Vegas, or a seminary, there’s giant Hulu in Los Angeles, where he something that makes it fun.”

“I was brought in mostly for my experience in project management and construction, beyond my maintenance and facility management side,”Ades said.“I actually opened the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas. It was my job to get all those 2,995 rooms ready for occupancy.”

ANGELICA JUAREZ: A Passion for Education Juarez joined the CDSP staff during probably the most labor-intensive season for a financial professional: time to close the previous year’s books and generate tax documentation for the entire school’s students and employees.

Angelica Juarez, controller in CDSP’s finance department, has served in similar roles at multiple Bay Area youth-serving nonprofits. She is pictured here in Portola Valley with sons Juve Jean (JJ) and Kyle. |Photo courtesy Juarez

22 | Church Divinity School of the Pacific

As she gets to know the organization, she says she’s been asking “lots and lots of questions” of her new colleagues.

But she made time for a few questions from me, including one of those inevitably embarrassing ones that writers often have to ask:What exactly does a controller do?

“We manage and supervise an organization’s daily accounting operations,” she said,“including payroll, bills we owe, bills others owe us, and the general ledger.We also help guide the organization’s financial decisions.

For example, we work closely with all staff to make sure they have the information they need to make budgetary decisions that impact their departments.”

A Bay Area resident for more than twenty years, Juarez has worked as controller at the Peninsula’s chapter of the Boys and Girls Club and as senior director of finance and administration at BUILD, a youth-serving nonprofit focused on entrepreneurship.

She said it was the opportunity to learn “the accounting intricacies of higher education” that drew her to CDSP, as well as the chance to serve with a talented and dedicated staff.

“As you can see, education is very important to me,” she said.

Pandemic and Change Discernment Amid Disruption Is Identifying Hidden Strengths and Opportunities at CDSP By

the

R e v . J o h n F. D w y e Rr

Vice President and Chief Operating Officer

My role at CDSP has forced me to think about change, at both the macro- and the micro-level, much more in the past year than I would have liked. OK, that’s an understatement.

Like every institution, CDSP has been forced to make changes large and small during the pandemic. In particular, we’ve worked hard to adapt our residential program—instruction, worship, housing, and community life—without sacrificing the quality of the formational experience and outcomes.The same goes for the operations of our staff and our campus.

Being part of Trinity Church Wall Street has gifted CDSP the opportunity to be thoughtful and strategic about the ways we have changed in the short term as well as how we might evolve in the long term, post-pandemic.

In this stance, as in all that we do, we are seeking to follow Jesus’s example.

The scriptures suggest he made quite an impression with his regular habit of prayer and contemplation both for regular spiritual sustenance and before taking decisive action.

Dean Richardson and I have been deeply engaged with Trinity personnel in strategic planning. For example, we have been exploring how best to maximize our real estate resources to increase CDSP’s financial capacity for the mission of training lay and ordained leaders for the Church.

These activities have included a detailed analysis of how to “right-size” our footprint on the campus. We want to use only the space we need, in order to maximize the remainder

as an economic engine.We have also begun exploring partnerships with mission-minded organizations, partnerships that will expand our impact and our potential to learn and grow as an institution.

Wherever these decisions take us, we believe a changing campus and changing relationships with our neighbors will be a blessing to our institution and to others.

Of course, our planning reflects much more than budgets, buildings, and bridges here in Berkeley. As we have mentioned periodically in our communications, Dean Richardson and the Rev. Phil Jackson,Trinity’s priestin-charge, have met with more than thirty bishops to reflect on current and future ministry leadership needs in their contexts and communities.

Much of the focus in those conversations has been on the skills our students should be developing in their time with us. In addition to the competencies of the classical theological disciplines, these include early exposure to executive leadership skills like team building, strategic planning, financial acuity, emotional intelligence, and community organizing.

Through these and other grassroots initiatives, we seek a changing relationship with the wider Church, in this case a deepening relationship built on regular mutual listening and consultation.

We have, of course, been thinking a lot about our students beyond the learning outcomes on their syllabi.

We are exploring how to further enhance the experience of being a CDSP seminarian, with particular attention to enhancing transformational community.

A year of synchronous and asynchronous online experiences has shown us we can do this work successfully under our current limitations. Still, we are excited to return to in-person activity, even as we make plans to broaden opportunities for ongoing online and hybrid presence with the community once we return to full in-residence programming.

At this year’s annual gathering of the Gibbs Society, at which we celebrate those who have made an estate planning gift to CDSP, the so-often tiring Zoom format was instead incredibly energizing. I was touched by the joy shared among a community of friends and colleagues—some close, some casual—who had in some cases not seen each other for many years. Indeed, the conversion to an online format made possible record attendance and rekindled affections. Here again, we are committing to preserving some of what has been positive about this time of distanced engagement. Expect more online and hybrid opportunities like this in the coming years.

Done right, we believe these changing experiences of community can lead us to deeper relationship with God and each other.

Through it all, we continue to shape, challenge, and encourage leaders who proclaim and share Jesus’s benevolent love.

Spring 2021 C R O S S I N G S | 23

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