Our alumni make a difference.

Dr. Garwood Anderson, Dean

If you’ve studied at Nashotah House, or even visited a worship service, you know that every day we pray for our alumni — every day, several by name, until we get through the thousand or so names and start over. It’s sometimes fun to hear a junior navigate the pronunciation of an especially challenging non-Anglo-Saxon name — but the Lord knows!

My first year at the House, the names washed over me, unknown, no matter how they were pronounced, and I could only say, “The Lord knows.”

Fifteen years later, I not only recognize most names, I can say of a majority that we have met, and of many — more all the time — that they are friends. And I recall a class they were in (even a paper they wrote!), refectory conversations, or a prank they pulled in this same chapel.

And for many I offer up also the name of their spouse, or their children, or their parish or other ministry. It has gradually become a favorite part of the service, full with memories, thanksgivings, and intercessions.

Time and relationships are like that: they gather and connect and knit in unexpected ways — we might say serendipitously if we didn’t know better — and in wistful hindsight you see that your life is a tapestry more intricate and wonderful than you could have ever set out to make for yourself. It is one of the great joys of a long career in ministry.

In recent years, I have had the privilege of seeing the fruit of Nashotah House labors with a longer view, not just in the form of an outstanding student paper, or an exceptional chapel sermon, or admission into a PhD program, but watching our alumni exercise their ministries in situ. And that is what this is all about. It’s the reason Nashotah House exists.

It is a marvel to behold the transformation wrought in a seminarian from their junior (first) year through ordination through to a few years of seasoning. The new student, often younger, comes to us with that perfect mix of passion and idealism, intellectually curious, maybe a little overconfident in their theological acumen, and often with some cluelessness and a certain amount of baggage (we all have it). Chalk it up to a rigorous theological curriculum or the role of a faculty mentor or the way life in community invariably changes people, but all of that combined with the grace of ordination, finished off in the school of hard knocks, and God has done something through it that we might not have expected or even recognized from the inauspicious seeds that were planted. God does a work in those who avail themselves of his means of grace so that he can do a work through them, making them ministers of his grace, fit for service, “workers having no need to be ashamed” (2 Timothy 2:15).

We’re naive if we think that seminaries do this alone or even that it couldn’t be done without us. But we’re deeply mistaken if we think that the same quality of formation happens without the intensive, institutional yet deeply interpersonal, investment of a community of scholars and learners and pastors singularly dedicated to the flourishing of the Church to the everlasting glory of God. There is nothing like the finely tuned dynamics of intentional formation, and our churches are largely rising or falling with the character and quality of the formation seminaries provide. That’s how much it matters.

There is nothing like the finely tuned dynamics of intentional formation, and our churches are largely rising or falling with the character and quality of the formation seminaries provide. That’s how much it matters.

Dr. Garwood Anderson and the Rev. Burke Whitman, '22

Photo: Parker Asplin

It matters that much not because seminaries matter, but because the Church matters and our alumni matter that much. They step into despair bringing hope; into chaos, bringing order; into decline, provoking change; into unbelief, preaching the gospel. They endure misunderstanding, opposition, discouragement, and resist temptations, and persevere through pandemics, and love unruly sheep.

Anderson and the Rev. Amy Feins, '22

Photo: Davauer Photgraphy

Some time past, they left their nets at the feet of Jesus to follow him into apostolic mission, packing their essentials into a U-Haul, wintering in Wisconsin, not knowing what would befall them, only that they were called, nevertheless. Now they are priests, deacons, bishops, professors, chaplains, and lay leaders. The Church is different for it.

As I write from the living room of the Deanery in late-August, there seems a never-ending streaming of U-Haul trucks going past our window down to the Flats and the Peaks (our student housing). Nets left behind; the future unknown; responding to God’s call. The Church will be different for them.

Anderson and the Rev. Christian Wood, '16

Image courtesy St. John's Episcopal, Tampa, Florida

Not too long ago, I had the privilege of preaching for the installation on an alumnus as rector to his new parish. It is, by North American Anglican standards, a large parish, though nothing like it had once been. On this evening, the pews were full almost to standing room only, and I heard from many parishioners that it had been quite some time since they remembered it being hard to find a seat in church! It was a joy — the whole evening, every part of it. New beginnings are like that. But I sensed something more. It was that I knew that the new rector had once left his nets at the feet of Jesus, drove a U-Haul to campus, and endured three Wisconsin winters — all for the love of Jesus Christ and his Church. And that evening a parish was joining him and his family in an adventure that will change that church.

Our alumni make a difference. †