About Me
"For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:38-39)
Whether teaching at the University of Michigan or serving in as Rector at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Wyandotte, my passion is helping people make and share meaning. In a church setting, this means helping them experience God's love and opening themselves up to God's transforming power. I was ordained a priest on December 12, 2015, and a transitional deacon on June 13, 2015, in the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan. I am also Director of Writing Programs at the University of Michigan Stephen M. Ross School of Business, where I teach business communication, lead the assessment of all incoming MBAs' communication, and lead the integration of communication into the curriculum. I'm currently co chair of the Business Communication department.
My call is to help small churches be the best expression of God's kingdom that they can be. As a bivocational priest (someone with more than one job), I'm following in the footsteps of people like St. Paul, who was a tentmaker as well as an itinerant church planter. Being bivocational allows me to serve a congregation that is not able to call a full-time priest.
Why have I chosen this path?
I didn't grow up in the church. In fact, I am a third-generation unchurched person who lived a mainly secular life until I was in my mid 30s, when I had an unexpected and wholly inexplicable encounter with the Divine. You can read more about my sense of call here. As an academic and big fan of postmodernism, I'm not your typical church person - but I've come to realize there is no such thing. Christians are all called to ministry through baptism, and that means there are as many different kinds of "church people" as there are people. In fact, more than that - I believe we are each a tiny piece of the image of God, and only when we come together can we start to understand deeply who God is.
I believe is that in which we live and move and have our being, and God's love for us is greater than we could ask or imagine. But I also know that the church is an institution composed of imperfect people (like me!) which has (sometimes inadvertently and sometimes purposefully) caused great harm to other people. Practices, policies, and scriptural interpretations that oppress and marginalize people of color, women, and LGBTQ+ people have hurt people and forced them out of the church. Christendom (the fusion of imperial nationalistic and later corporate interests with Christianity) has wreaked havoc on the world and left many people skeptical of the value of following Jesus. We live in a time when Christianity has for seventeen centuries been the religion of empire - when it has become hard to hear the subversive, revolutionary nature of Jesus’s message, because it has been so thoroughly co-opted by those in power to legitimate their control.
Part of my call is to help people "open the ears of their hearts" to hear the revolutionary nature of Jesus's vision of the kingdom of God and to understand what it means to us today. Another part of my call is to make sure people understand that God's love and grace is for everyone - no exceptions. This is often harder to put into practice than it is to say! Since we are all made in the image of God, and since all Christians are part of the body of Christ, our unity is just as real as our diversity. Holding those things in tension is part of who I am and what I have to offer the church.
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