The Ministry Fellowship

Last spring, I had the honor of being awarded a Ministry Fellowship from the Fund for Theological Education (FTE). The Ministry Fellowship supports "young adult" (i.e., under age 35) students in their second year of seminary with generous financial support for both educational expenses and to conduct a "self-directed ministry project" in the summer between their second and third (and final) years of seminary. There were 20 of us from around the country and from all different branches of Christianity who received the fellowship for 2010-11.

The first event in our life as Ministry Fellows was a conference held last May at St. Francis Springs Prayer Center in Stoneville, NC. There, the 20 of us got to meet each other and share our stories, interact in creative workshop sessions, and share meals together. Episcopalians rubbed elbows with Presbyterians, AME seminarians hung out with Quakers, and Roman Catholics broke bread with Baptists. We shared worship and prayer together as well, as we explored our common calling to serve God despite the differences that can divide us.

At the conference, we were assigned to a "Discernment Circle," composed of four 2010 Ministry Fellows and one mentor pastor -- a former Ministry Fellow who is now actively serving a congregation. This discernment circle was to accompany us on our journey throughout the 2010-11 academic year, as we sought to hear what God was calling us to do with our fellowship money in the summer of 2011.

The three other fellows in my discernment circle were Kristy Calaway, a white Roman Catholic woman from Ohio studying at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, California, Willie Francois, an African-American Baptist man from Texas studying at Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass., and John Lucy, a white Methodist man studying at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. I journeyed with these three fellows through the four-stage process given to us by the FTE to discern how to use our funds and how to shape our projects. Our mentor pastor who helped to facilitate our conversations was the Rev. Hannah Brown, pastor of West Concord Union Church in Concord, Mass., a United Church of Christ congregation.

At the end of the process, the four of us wound up with quite different projects. This summer, Kristy will make a pilgrimage to Spain to walk the Camino de Santiago and reflect on her experience as a Catholic woman who feels called to leadership in a tradition that does not ordain women. She will be accompanied by the writings of many Catholic women saints on her journey. Willie will travel to his home state of Texas to interview prisoners on Death Row as part of his anti-death penalty advocacy. He hopes to create video of the prisoners telling their stories to share in some public forum, and to create video of the prisoners reading children's books that will be shared with their children outside of the prison. John will be riding his bicycle across the country to raise money and awareness about modern-day slavery and sex trafficking. He is chronicling his journey on his blog, 27 Million Revolutions for 27 Million Slaves.

And me? I'll be making an interfaith pilgrimage to Israel.

The genesis for this project came out of reflections early on in the discernment process for the fellowship about the practice of "open communion," or allowing non-baptized people (i.e., non-Christians) to receive Eucharist, or Communion. I have been a member of Episcopal churches where this practice was the official policy, and I was very much in favor of it. After coming to seminary, however, I learned that practicing open communion is against the rules of the Episcopal Church, which prohibits anyone who is not a Christian from receiving Communion. All baptized Christians of any denomination are welcome at the Eucharistic table in the Episcopal Church, but not non-Christians. I struggled with this new knowledge a great deal, especially given the fact that my good friend Valarie Kaur, who is a Sikh, had attended church with me at the parish where I interned in Nebraska in 2006-07 and received communion there, which she found to be a profound spiritual experience. I had also been to interfaith conferences where Eucharist was served to all participants of many different faiths, and I saw it as a beautiful embodiment of what the kingdom of God would look like -- EVERYONE at the table together, regardless of whatever differences and boundaries we might have. And yet, as a priest, I will have to take vows to "conform to the doctrine, discipline, and worship of The Episcopal Church," which means NOT serving communion to non-baptized people.*

It was one such story that I used to begin my reflection process with my discernment circle. Through a series of many steps that took my project down many different trails in different directions, I eventually settled on using the funds to make an interfaith pilgrimage to Israel. I have always been drawn to the idea of pilgrimage, and was more so after hearing Kristy talk about her proposed trip to Spain. I'd thought about taking a trip to India with Valarie and having her come to Israel with me -- accompanying one another to our respective "holy lands" as the next step in our interfaith friendship. However, there weren't enough funds to travel to both places, and Valarie wound up not being able to accompany me, so I decided to make a solo pilgrimage to Israel -- both because I've heard it's safer to travel alone there as a woman than it is in India and because it is my own "holy land" where I've always wanted to visit. At the same time, though, it is a religiously diverse place, and would offer me opportunities to visit not only those sites considered sacred to Christians, but also sacred Jewish, Muslim, and Baha'i sites as well. My "guiding question" for this trip will be twofold: How do I experience God in religions other than Christianity and in the sacred spaces of other traditions? What is the value of clear boundaries between traditions?

I will spent three weeks traveling in Israel, integrating prayer and Scripture reading with silent meditation days. I plan to do a good deal of photography while I am there, and reflective/creative writing as well. It is my intention to share my journey here on this blog.

Many thanks to the FTE for making this journey possible, and to Kristy, Willie, John, and Hannah for helping me to discern and form this trip through their holy listening.

*Over the course of this academic year, I have made my peace with the issue of open communion, largely through a research paper I did for my liturgics class. The long and short of it is the the Episcopal prayer book's theology sees Eucharist as the completion of Christian initiation, and thus anyone receiving communion is essentially participating in a Christian initiation ritual. Just as it would be inappropriate for a non-Christian who did not seek to become a Christian to be baptized, so it is inappropriate for a non-Christian who is not seeking to become a Christian to receive communion. I do still struggle with this issue on some level, however.