Our guest on this episode of Crossings Conversations is The Rev. Amy Newell-Large. A 2022 graduate of the Hybrid Program at CDSP, Rev. Newell-Large serves as Curate for Parish Life, St. John’s Cathedral Denver, CO.
Side note: You will likely have learned by now that beginning in 2025, the Hybrid Program (formerly low-residence program) will be the sole model for all students in the Master of Divinity and Anglican Studies Programs. You can read about the announcement shared this past January and all things Hybrid Education at CDSP here.
For now, we hope you enjoy into this interview with the Rev. Newell-Large.
Download full episode transcript here
Guest Bio: The Rev. Amy Newell-Large is a 2022 graduate of the Hybrid Program at CDSP and serves as Curate for Parish Life, St. John’s Cathedral Denver, CO.
About the Show: Crossings Conversations is a co-production of Church Divinity School of the Pacific and Trinity Church Wall Street. If you enjoyed the show, please rate and review it on Apple Podcasts or share it with a colleague. You can learn more about the only Episcopal seminary on the West Coast and subscribe to Crossings magazine at cdsp.edu.
Our guest on this episode of Crossings Conversations is The Rev. Amy Newell-Large. A 2022 graduate of the Hybrid Program at CDSP, Rev. Newell-Large serves as Curate for Parish Life, St. John’s Cathedral Denver, CO.
Side note: You will likely have learned by now that beginning in 2025, the Hybrid Program (formerly low-residence program) will be the sole model for all students in the Master of Divinity and Anglican Studies Programs. You can read about the announcement shared this past January and all things Hybrid Education at CDSP here.
For now, we hope you enjoy into this interview with the Rev. Newell-Large.
Download full episode transcript here
Guest Bio: The Rev. Amy Newell-Large is a 2022 graduate of the Hybrid Program at CDSP and serves as Curate for Parish Life, St. John’s Cathedral Denver, CO.
About the Show: Crossings Conversations is a co-production of Church Divinity School of the Pacific and Trinity Church Wall Street. If you enjoyed the show, please rate and review it on Apple Podcasts or share it with a colleague. You can learn more about the only Episcopal seminary on the West Coast and subscribe to Crossings magazine at cdsp.edu.
Welcome to Crossings Conversations, I am Greg Klimovitz, Communications Specialist at CDSP and on contract with Learning Forte. This week we hear from a CDSP alum of the low-residence program, which is now known as the Hybrid Program. The Rev. Amy Newell-Large, serves as Curate for Parish Life, St. John’s Cathedral Denver, CO and graduated from CDSP in 2022.
Side note: You will likely have learned by now that beginning in 2025, the Hybrid Program will be the sole model for all students in the Master of Divinity and Anglican Studies Programs. You can read about the announcement shared this past January and all things Hybrid Education at CDSP through a link on this episode page.
For now, we hope you enjoy into this interview with the Rev. Newell-Large.
Greg Klimovitz: In a sentence or two, how would you describe the way the Hybrid Program’s formation at CSP has impacted your life and ministry?
Amy Newell-Large: Yeah. The low res program at CDSP made it possible for me to begin a vocational path of ministry. At the time when I was going through discernment and when I started seminary, my husband's job was based in Boulder, Colorado. Additionally, because of when I started the program at CDSP, my income was necessary for covering tuition and books and all the costs associated with going back to a graduate program. And so being able to maintain my job and keep our location kept our family together and kept a very strong support system in place for me when I started Seminary.
Greg: What life and ministry circumstances led you to enroll in your low res program at CDSP? You, you kind of already said that, so maybe dig in a little bit to what did the CDSP low res program make possible for you?
Amy: Yeah. The CDSP low res program make possible for me to access a wide variety of classes. It also made possible for me to connect with other students who were in similar life situations, who had families, who had jobs, who were not in a position to move full time to go to seminary, and that was an incredible opportunity for me to relate to others in ministry, and I began some of my strongest clergy friendships with folks who've started that program with me because we have similar life circumstances and that all needed the low res program and the network that was created there.
Greg: How are you called to innovative or non-traditional forms of ministry? And kind of related to that, how did your understanding of your calling for that work deepen or change during the program?
Amy: I would say that for myself, I have always understood my vocational calling in collaboration with my contemplative spirituality. And a big part of that has been through my mindfulness work that I've done. In addition to being at seminary, my second year of seminary I also completed a year of mindfulness meditation instructor training because I do think that knowing how to talk with people about how to pray, things like that is very important.
And so being at CDSP really helped me understand. A more full framework of how I wanted my ministry to look, both potentially in parish ministry, but more significantly also that I wasn't afraid to look outside of parish ministry to continue my work with folks who are in mindfulness circles that maybe are not based in Christian practices. And to continue building relationship, inter-religiously as well. In particular with the Buddhist community that I'm involved with and to be able to broaden a lot of my options. I did that mindfulness meditation instructor training also as a distance learning. I participated in a couple panels and series about inter-religious dialogue that have all been on online, in hybrid kind of formats. And so the flexibility and the engagement that I've been able to continue doing has, has been really wonderful, has been really supported by my ministry work at CDSP.
Greg: Can you share more about how the low res program especially impacted your experience with mindfulness and your own spirituality?
Amy: Yeah, that's a really good question. I'm a cradle Episcopalian, but I grew up with a very contemplative spirituality. My mom teaching us how to pray was a centering prayer kind of practice. And so that's been essential for me. And I knew that going into seminary, I was going to need to maintain that for my own wellbeing.
I had the flexibility to tune into that more with my formation groups in particular to offer that with them, to talk about that with them and to kind of carve out my own space for that. Being in person a few times, being able to offer that in person. It was a great learning experience because I was able to see how can I fit in contemplative practices with others who are not as familiar with that, and how can I help bring people into that? And so I learned a lot from that process as well and appreciated that there was an openness for us to, to do that kind of work.
Greg: I know you mentioned your spouse's work and it's impacting your decision to be low res, but I'm wondering about your own personal professional experience before seminary and if that has continued to be a part of your working life now and its relationship to similar experience.
Amy: Yes. So I spent the last 10 years working in the craft beer industry in Colorado. It was wonderful and it was absolutely essential to getting to where I am. I did start out home brewing, like my, my dad was a home brewer. And so I've grown up around that and I home brewed for a long time and when I finished my first master's work- in religious studies with Sanskrit- my husband was still finishing his master's. He has a master's in geology and so I just needed a job to stay in Boulder while we figured out what we were gonna do. The brewery that had the Home Brewers group I was a part of just asked if I would just come and work for them. I said, yes. It turned into a 10 year career. Yeah.
What it helped to reveal was how substantial hospitality always has been in my faith, and it gave me a profound foundation for how to engage my spirituality. Through hospitality and then in working with other people. So I did all sorts of things. I worked as a brewer and worked, you know, production and warehouse. But the last six years I worked as the hospitality manager And I was in addition to being one of our tap room managers, I handled all of our beer dinners. Our private event program, our tour program. So it was a lot of forward facing and interacting.
And then I also handled our employee beer training program. Having worked as a brewer, I know a lot about beer and how to talk about it. And so I led a variety in collaboration with another manager. We put together this whole training system and that process of first working with other people with and helping them to find their way through not only just our beer list, but to help people find their way through craft beer. It was really phenomenal. I remember my first day I had never worked as a server. I just have a background as a nerdy home brewer. And background in religious studies.
It was an interesting combination heading into it, but I was so nervous because I had to step up to a table and interrupt a group having a conversation to ask them if they knew, you know, what beer they would like. As soon as I was, you know, within a couple of feet, they hadn't really seen me yet. I just had. a realization as I looked at the table and people gathered around it, and I thought, I, I know what it means to bring people together at a table. I see this every Sunday, and I took a deep breath and surrounded myself in God's light, and I said, Bless me, Lord, that I may be a blessing. May I be the service that they need and I stepped up to the table and had a fantastic conversation, totally nerding out about craft beer. From then on it just really set me on this track of like, what does it mean to help people in that investigation? What does it mean to help people uncover what they need? And Craft beer was an interesting in for that. It really helped me understand and pay more attention to a vocational call that had been with me throughout my life. And I thought pursuing religious studies, academically, would pacify that. But it really, going through the beer industry, it only grew stronger. And being in a hospitality situation, which is so similar to how my ministry is now, it just really opened that door, or it forced me to open that door and I continue to be engaged in hospitality and spirituality. I actually just a few weeks ago, maybe a month ago, I gave a presentation, a talk to our congregation about the practice of hospitality theologically and practically. And so talked about what does Jesus mean by hospitality and then what are some practical. Tools that we can use, such as why is it so uncomfortable to make small talk with somebody?
You know, how are you thinking about approaching someone that you don't know yet? Just little pieces of hospitality, I don't know, tidbits that help us as a church think about how we're building community. And the openness that hospitality requires you to have to anybody that sits down at your table. And how can a church cultivate that same openness?
Greg: How did your relationship with your local communities impact your studies during the program? You've already alluded that a little bit, whether it be your experience in the local Buddhist temple community as well as the beer industry. How did it impact your relationship with those communities?
Amy: My relationship with the community is that I was a part of during seminary were absolutely essential to the support that I had. I had so many people here from my sending parish, from the Episcopal diocese in Colorado at large. From the Buddhist community that I worked with and my friends in the beer industry, everyone knew that I was engaging in this work and they were willing to support us, making meals when it was finals week and helping us out with our family stuff.
Then, making sure that I needed to take certain weeks off around right midterms and finals or days off to complete. There was so much support for me logistically like that, and then there was also just so much support for the journey that I was going on in my vocation and other people seeing my joy at doing this work that helped me maintain a sense of joy, even when schoolwork became very stressful.
And I think that was an essential piece of how smoothly I could transition into school. While working, while maintaining, volunteering at church and my Buddhist community and doing all of those things, the joy that others saw in me and that they could reflect that back was amazing. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Greg: So that's a little bit about your experience. What about studying with other students in the cohort? I mean, big piece of the low res program is being able to do your studies while you're in your contextual experience, your contextual reality, but it's not just yours that you're having a part of your studies, but it's also those of the students that bettering your cohorts. Can you share about that?
Amy: I will say that the way the CDSP low res program is set up is that you begin, ideally you begin together with an intensive, and those two weeks together are absolutely foundational for our relationships and the people that I met and were in my cohort, regardless of if we were in the same degree program, the people that were in that initial group with.
I still consider, again, some of my closest clergy colleagues. They're profound friends that I love deeply, and they're people that I trust immensely. So the depth and strength of those relationships have been incredibly important. And then it's so interesting to me, the way that most of our classes worked was with online forums where you post responses and because you are posting responses.
People really took a lot of time to think through their theological response, and so I would say that I got such deep dives that people were willing to think through their theology, to process their own lived faith experience and bring all of that into a simple forum. But because we had the time to do that, and that to me was very different than the in class conversations where there's a lot of, you know, popcorning around and sometimes certain people can dominate conversations.
But because of the online forum format, people could really think deeply and we trusted one another and could share that very openly. And I think that also contributed to the depth of our relationships was our willingness to engage theologically, wrestle with one another a little bit, and always do so with so much thoughtfulness.
Greg: Absolutely. Now, how have your studies impacted your relationship to your local community since you finished the program? So I mean, you had, you shared about when you were in the program. Students to work with. But what about now?
Amy: Now I definitely keep in touch with a lot of those folks. I talk with other friends and often at this point it. It's very lighthearted and supportive. It's things like, you know, are you wearing a clergy collar every day at work? And have you figured out exactly the best place to order your clergy clothes from? I would say that now because we're outside of a school program, we're not writing papers anymore, we're engaged, you know, obviously in our ministry lives, but we're still supporting one another even with these very small details of our lives.
And I'm, I'm very grateful. Also, I've called some of my friends, like the first sermon that I gave, I wanted to run by someone who had been in my homiletics class and who knew my style of preaching. So that kind of support that we continue to have is really important.
Greg: You spoke to it already, when it comes to your understanding of your own vocation, how did the low res program and your studies there, how did that impact your vocation?
Amy: Yeah, so you're right. I did kind of touch on this in a few different ways. So one of the ways that it was really important for me was in the openness that I had to cultivate a contemplative practice with others who maybe did not know that, and I could really see myself in a role of, of teaching and inviting people into contemplative prayer life.
Also with my hospitality work, and because I continued to work in hospitality while I was in the low residence program. Being able to be more intentional about how my spirituality was showing up. I mean, my spirituality has always informed my work and was an essential part from day one, as I mentioned.
But there became kind of a new depth to that that was supported much more theologically now because of the classes that I was taking and I was able to. Write about my experience in the brewing industry for my pastoral theology class, and I could write about that in my New Testament class. And so there was wonderful spaces for overlap and for further discernment of how can my skills and talents and awareness in hospitality really inform and support my ministry work? And how will my ministry further support and discern my hospitality work too. And so I could always see an interplay and my professors really helped me to disseminate that into something, um, that was really foundational as I graduated.
Greg: I'm curious, what was your experience like related to the quality of education you received through the low rise program?
Amy: Yeah, I think, I think that by nature of doing a low residence program, Most people are primarily doing it because they have other things going on in their lives that they need to continue while they are in seminary. And for me, that was definitely true. I needed to continue my job, my husband needed to continue his job.
And we also maintained, again, our volunteering with, um, organizations and maintained relationships that were going to be supportive during. So because there is so much going on, that definitely contributes to feeling like the low residence program is, is more intense because when you're residential and I was residential for a little while, when you're residential, school is, is everything, and you're more likely to have all of your life revolve around school as opposed to school being one aspect of the myriad of other things you have going on in your life.
I also found that the people who were willing to take on a low residence program, tended to be very dedicated to everything they were already doing and they were just as dedicated to being a good student. A perfectionist thread really ran through all of us.
Amy: And so that kind of hardworking person is absolutely the person who is going to be in the low residence program. And so some of that is coming from ourselves and how we put that. But also, you know, as I mentioned with the way that we needed to, or that we chose to take the time to craft our responses to one another in forums and things like that, it meant that our class time was really spread out across an entire week.
And I always had in the back of my mind, have I posted a response? Did somebody respond to me? What will I say when I respond to this person's post? And so there's not much time to turn that off. And so because of that, it really did feel as though school starts to pervade absolutely everything because you, you can't turn it off.
And in fact, the year calendar for the low residence program, August is the only time that you are not in a class. You might be finishing up papers from your summer. But your fall classes haven't started yet, and sometimes you don't have the book list yet. So there's really only a small window where you're not overlapping from finishing papers for one semester while books are arriving for the next semester, and you're constantly thinking about what your, what work you're engaged with as far as posting.
And so the lifestyle that goes into a low residence program. I would say that's what makes it so intense and different students will approach that different ways. But again, by and large, based on who's becoming a low resident student, it it will be a lot of work for all of us. We will take that on ourselves.
Greg: How would you describe your impact as a ministry leader since graduating from CDSP?
Amy: You know, it's, it's interesting. One of the women who was ordained with me went to a different seminar. and we were at a retreat just before our ordination. This was after graduation, and she had considered coming to CDSP and then chose going to a different seminary for her own reasons and asked me how comfortable I felt speaking theologically.
And I, you know, I kind of chuckled and I said, Well, I am pretty good speaking theologically. And I at least feel comfortable saying, I don't know, but I know where to look. And so I asked her, cause it's an odd question, how comfortable did she feel speaking theologically? And she said that she was a little bit worried that she felt like she could speak pastorally, but she didn't really know.
Amy: How strong her theological foundation was, and it was so tender for her to share that with me. So I share it with you because I think that that was something I hadn't really taken into much account while I was at CDSP. I knew that I was getting a rigorous and profoundly strong theological education.
But then to name my confidence in that, going into ministry that was really strong and to see somebody else who didn't have that same confidence was, was really eye opening for me. And that has been true. My theological education at CDSP has made me strong. It has made me a compassionate listener and it has helped me navigate liturgical questions, and it has helped me navigate planning for our parish retreat.
So kind of covering all bases, because I can look at so much and ask, “What is the impact on of my Episcopal theology in this space and how am I helping others to think about their day to day relationship with God and with Christ through whatever small thing that we're doing? Whether it's a small Wednesday evening Eucharist, or whether it's, you know, a Bible study or visiting someone in a hospital. In all of those, it has been important for people to share with me where they are in their faith journey and that I meet them not just with a smile and a nod and an open heart, but that I meet them with knowing God in their lives and being able to speak to. From scripture, being able to speak to that from our tradition and being able to speak to that from my own heart.
So I don't know if that answers the question, but I do think, you know, again, that that theological foundation that at times can seem so. I have been so grateful for how that shows up and again, the confidence that it gives me.
Greg: That's beautiful. Thank you. So what advice or feedback do you have for CDSP about the low res program?
Amy: you know, so as I mentioned, the type of person who's doing the low res program is someone who is very dedicated. They're very hardworking and they have a lot going on and. I would like to remind CDSP that they do not have to worry about the dedication and the commitment that low res folks have. That, you know, giving us whatever grace and compassion is needed is so important and so meaningful for us because we will always get it done and we will always show. , but we'll always have a lot going on. So that would be my kind of feedback is always air on the side of grace and compassion.
Greg: What do you want the church and the world to know about the Low Residence program?
Amy: I really want the church and the world to know how necessary the low residence programs are. Like at CDSP, folks are answering the call to vocational ministry from all walks of life. From all different family situations, from all ages and from all different places where it's not always realistic or necessary to be in person all the time, but for the church and the world to hear their call, to to support them and raise up the strong leaders that the Episcopal church needs.
Greg: Amy, thanks for joining us and sharing your sense of call, commitment to hospitality, and love for your learnings at CDSP.