CDSP is in the process of rolling out an exciting new curacy program. We spoke with three participants in the pilot stages of the program about the difference it's making for their new congregations, the value of serving with experienced mentors, and more.
The Rev. Mees Tielens (MDiv ‘23), PhD, is curate at St. Anna’s Episcopal Church in Antioch, CA; the Rev. Angela Furlong ‘23 is assisting priest and associate for youth and families at All Saints' Episcopal Church in Frederick, MD; and the Rev. Katherine Frederick ‘23 is curate at Grace Episcopal Church in Fairfield, CA.
Photos by Larry Canner (left) and Tom Minczeski (center, right).
CDSP is in the process of rolling out an exciting new curacy program. We spoke with three participants in the pilot stages of the program about the difference it's making for their new congregations, the value of serving with experienced mentors, and more.
The Rev. Mees Tielens (MDiv ‘23), PhD, is curate at St. Anna’s Episcopal Church in Antioch, CA; the Rev. Angela Furlong ‘23 is assisting priest and associate for youth and families at All Saints' Episcopal Church in Frederick, MD; and the Rev. Katherine Frederick ‘23 is curate at Grace Episcopal Church in Fairfield, CA.
Photos by Larry Canner (left) and Tom Minczeski (center, right).
Kyle Oliver: This is Kyle Oliver at Church Divinity School of the Pacific, and I'm here with three recent graduates who are all part of the early stages of an exciting new initiative here at CDSP. I'll say a bit more about that in a second. Before we go any further, I want to let each of them introduce themselves so that our listeners can hear who's who. Angela, do you want to go first and say who you are, where you are, that sort of thing?
Angela Furlong: Hello. I'm Angela Furlong, and I am the Assisting Priest and Associate for Youth and Families at All Saints' Episcopal Church in Frederick, Maryland.
Kyle: Great. Thanks, Angela. Let me throw it to Katherine.
Katherine Frederick: I'm Katherine Frederick. I am now the Curate at Grace Episcopal Church in Fairfield, California.
Kyle: Okay. To Mees.
Mees Tielens: I am Mees Tielens, and I am serving as the Curate at St. Anna's in Antioch, California.
Kyle: Great. Thank you all for being with us. I'm really excited. Before we launch into some conversation, I just want to set the stage a little bit. At CDSP, as part of our shift to a fully hybrid model of theological education, the seminary is going to be providing, this is the long-term thing here that we're transitioning to, a curacy position for each alum. It's effectively turning our four-year hybrid degree program into a six-year program. I'm starting to hear four plus two from the administration. That will include continuing community and mentoring in the context of paid employment after graduation.
For listeners who may not be familiar with the term, this word "Curacy" that we may throw around a little bit in terms of where we're heading, this is a word in the Episcopal Church that has traditionally referred to a person's first job after seminary, but that first job tended to have a particular kind of character. It was usually an assistant clergy position in their home diocese, often with an experienced mentor. The cost of this position tended to be shared between the congregation and the diocese, I think in the most common sort of iteration of all that.
The long and short of it is that there just aren't a lot of curacy positions around anymore as budgets at the congregational level and the diocesan level have gotten tighter and tighter. Most leaders, most bishops, most people in seminary, probably most alums, recognize that it is not ideal for newly-ordained priests to be faced with this very stark choice of either I'm going to go on the job search market denomination-wide and go somewhere where they happen to have the money to be able to pay a full-time assistant. Maybe in my diocese, but probably not. Obviously, the chances of finding one of those jobs gets a lot better if you widen your net, especially depending on what diocese you're from.
That's been sort of Choice 1. Choice 2 is often this, "Go be in charge somewhere." From day one, deacon in charge, priest in charge sort of model, hopefully with some mentoring, sometimes for multiple congregations. The structures of ministry are really changing. No one, I think, would say, "Wow, that's the best-case scenario for transitioning out of seminary into full-time ministry."
There's been some real excitement about the fact that CDSP, obviously with the partnership of Trinity Wall Street, is going to be providing opportunities for folks to have that more, at least semi-traditional looking curacy experience Now, I want to get to the interesting part, which is our conversation. Let me go to Angela first and just ask you to tell us a little bit about the context where you're serving.
Angela: The church where I'm serving right now was the same church that I served as an intern before I came out to seminary. The parish here, the parishioners all know me. They're very familiar with me. Given all of the changes that have happened over the last three or four years, it's a good placement for me to be with them during this very transitional time for both of us.
Kyle: I always wonder what it's like for people returning with a new role to somewhere they've been before. As you say, so much has changed across the board. Do you think that lessens the impact of that?
Angela: It's a pastoral position, I think, for both of us, for myself and for the congregation, because in such a transitional time, we offer one another stability. They couldn't have afforded to hire me. With the salary assistance grant, that enabled me to be here with them.
Kyle: I want to follow up on that a little bit. What's this congregation's history of clergy staffing? Is this something they're used to and they just can't afford anymore? Tell us a little bit about that.
Angela: There are several factors that happened that COVID just exacerbated. We've lost a lot of parishioners in the last few years. They've been through, I'd say, about five different priests over the last three years. Both the priest in charge and myself are new to this congregation. We offer some stability going forward, which is welcomed by the parishioners.
Kyle: Cool. Cool. Thanks.
Kyle: Mees, how about you?
Mees: Yes. I am serving in the same place where I did my field ed during seminary. It's a small church. It's a mission church, ASA of 40, 50 generally speaking. One of the things that's really interesting about this context is that they're a merged church. In 2019, two churches officially became St. Anna's. At least one of those two churches had already been a merged church way back, which has its challenges, but it also means that nobody says we've always done it that way because there are at least, if not more, of ways that people have always done things. There's a little more freedom in that sense.
They were all small churches. They were all scrappy churches that are now just a merged scrappy church. I think that was a big adjustment for me coming from churches where you had staff, you at least had an office manager, and that's just not true here. There's a vicar, and now there's me, and then there's the lay leaders, and we do all the things. Kyle: Great. Katherine, how about you?
Katherine: Yes. Grace Fairfield has-- I pretty sure have never had a second clergy person. One of the things that's really nice is it gave them the opportunity to have more resources and more staffing. Grace Fairfield is participating in the FaithX Program, which our diocese, the Diocese of Northern California, is one of several dioceses around the country who were invited to take part in FaithX. It's basically a parish vitality improvement program. One of the focus points is doing outreach into the neighborhood.
It's a three-year process of doing outreach and then also of preparing the space and looking at the space and seeing how we can use the space in other ways maybe to bring in money and also just to have more community using the building. It's really nice for them to have me come in and have a second pair of hands, a second brain, just to do the work of that vitality improvement project.
Kyle: I'm curious, what you've been hearing-- you've each been in your roles in different lengths of time, I think, but to the extent that you know this, what are you hearing from your community about what your presence means to them?
Katherine: I've two things. One, somebody told me yesterday that they really could tell the difference in energy in the parish since I came. This actually goes into the second thing. One of the very first things that I did when I sat down on my very first day, which was January 2nd, was starting to pick out hymns for the Sundays coming up. Just because I'm more familiar with a broader focus of hymns and what they've been doing, we got a little out of the box and went beyond the 1982 Hymnal. For various reasons, the church has been sticking to mostly the 1982 Hymnal for a while.
We sing a song in Spanish that actually-- there's a relatively new parishioner who's been coming who's Mexican. She actually wasn't even at that service. She went to the eight o'clock that doesn't have music, but it really meant something to her that we sang a song that was meaningful to her and was a Spanish hymn. There's been a lot of that just kind of changes in the music. Then just a general-- I am really energetic, I'm enthusiastic, and that seems to be catching on to the parish.
Mees: There's the practical aspect, the congregation can see that there's more time for the vicar to do the pastoral care that everybody wants her to do, because there's things I can take off of her plate, or more long-term strategic planning, or things that were just not her skill set or interest or priority. Like we have a youth group now, which we didn't have before. What it really means, I think, for the congregation is that this is a congregation that is very aware that churches close and I think it very much feels like it's a sign of hope and vitality that they have two priests and can develop new initiatives and programming.
I don't know if they were ever just surviving. There's always more than that. Both of us we’re 30 hours a week. Having two priests at 30 hours a week still means a significant addition of things you can do and ways you can start thinking about things. I think Katherine is very right about that sense of energy that you bring in, not just because you have different skills or different experiences, but also just having the second priest where you never would have had one before, it brings itself energy to a congregation that lay people pick up on and run with.
Kyle: I remember a friend of mine who was a church planner, once said to me, "There's a reason Jesus sent people out two by two," and that in our often clergy-centric model, being a solo priest is like, in some sense, at odds with at least one particular way of thinking about like, "What is like healthy and manageable and sustainable."
Angela: I think the general sense here is relief because we need two priests here because of the size of our church and because we're the only Episcopal church in the city. For me, the rapid transitions has made it harder here because we're such a focal point in this city and all the changes have disrupted all of the old relationships we had throughout the city. Now that the two of us are here, we're both new, we both started right around the same time here. She has 20-plus years as a rector. Working alongside her, I'm learning what she's learned over the years, but we're learning together what this parish needs, what this community needs.
Kyle: as we continue to picture these congregations where you've landed, does anybody have like a representative story from your church, something that it happened and you thought, "Oh, boy, I feel like I get this church more now or what a great encapsulation of this community."
Mees: One of the reasons I wanted to do first my field ed at St. Anna's and then stay on as a curate was because they're really good about getting out into the community. We know that Episcopalians are really good at charity and they're generous and they will give money and they will fund really worthwhile things, but they're not necessarily always good at actually leaving the building and partnering with people.
St. Anna’s does some of the "normal things," that churches do like collecting food for food drives and diaper drives and things like that, but what I really love about them and what I feel like tells me something about the church they are is that they have really invested in a relationship with the elementary school down the street. Antioch is not affluent and this is not an affluent neighborhood. The kids at the elementary school, 83% is low income, I think, something like that, a really high amount. Once a year we provide uniforms to any student who wants one and we fulfill teacher wish lists, some of that kind of stuff.
One of our lay leaders is on the school site council and makes a difference that way. We have parishioners on campus every month volunteering, so that sense of the congregation really taking their responsibility towards their neighbors seriously has been really life-giving to me, especially when you consider that most of us don't actually live around the church because merge congregation so they come from all over. Still, they have a very strong idea of like, "We are on this corner for a reason and we want the neighborhood to actually feel like we have a presence here, not just on Sunday morning."
Kyle: Cool.
Katherine: Likewise, we're actually right across the street from a school too, from Fairview Elementary. The neighborhood that our church is in is one that was built up in the late '40s early '50s to support GI housing, so it's very mid-century, the church is very mid-century. Now a lot of the people who go to the church have moved to other parts of Fairfield, so the neighborhood has really changed a lot. Part of what we are working towards with our parish vitality improvement project is that kind of reaching out to the neighborhood.
conBefore Christmas, they went out-- during school pickup, they went out and handed out Christmas ornaments and invitations to come to our Christmas service, we're planning ushers to go around school pickup and then also we're planning palm crosses. Then our rector actually volunteers once a week at the school. We've also taken collections up for teacher snacks and just supporting the school too. It's interesting that we're also focusing on the school, it's literally across the street.
Kyle: Very cool.
Angela: The only time we've actually devoted our ministry toward one particular school is when a school had to refurbish a building and they were without a location for a while, so we rented our buildings for them to do their school until their building was ready.
For the staff here, we really missed them when they left. I miss going down the hall and saying "Good morning" to all of the students and the staff. That's one good thing. Outside of that, our church is very invested in blessings in a backpack. I don't know if you're familiar with that, but we contribute to that significantly. That's where here in this city, one school is a drop point for the backpacks and we fill the backpacks with food for kids who might otherwise go hungry over the weekend so they get sent home with a backpack full of food that benefits them and their families. Like Mees was saying, they're really good at reaching out and helping others in need.
Kyle: Thank you for these portraits of your congregations. I think it's helpful as a baseline as we chat a little bit about your experiences. you've all made the transition within the last year, less than the last year, from having sort of your center of gravity in the seminary experience to having your center of gravity in these congregations. I'm curious if you have some reflections on, in general, what the transition has been like for you.
Angela: The transition was a significant one for me because I thought I was busy in seminary and then I came to a church. I liken it to parenthood, no matter what people teach you and tell you, you don't really know until you actually live it what it's going to be like. It also depends on the context that you're ministering in, the community, the church, the parishioners and your own growing edges. I've found it overwhelmingly busy, but fruitful and I'm learning so much that I couldn't have learned in seminary.
Kyle: can you give us an example of something like, "I learned this recently and there's just no way I could have gotten this at CDSP."
Angela: Well, I watched the priest in charge here develop a budget to bring this church to lessen the percentage they were drawing out of the endowment, which is significant, and the goal was to maintain pledges or increase pledges, because with all the transitions that we've gone through over the last several years, we've lost people and pledges and we have a large property here that we still have to pay for. The bills don't change when the congregation changes. We have a huge focus now on looking for people to rent our space so that we don't lose it as we discern how we want to best use our space.
You can read about stuff like that in books, but until you're dealing with real people and their real concerns regarding that particular space and all of the things that used to happen in those spaces, you don't really know until you live it.
Katherine: like Angela was saying, I was also helped-- got to help on our budget. We talked about budgets in seminary, but that wasn't something that I've ever really done before. I didn't really get to help do that during my field ed time. Our sexton left in December. We've not had a sexton since then, and we are in the hiring process, so kind of working up. I've been helping on the job description, we made a flyer, we're going to be interviewing.
Just going through the whole hiring process and dealing with staff. That's also been something I didn't do in seminary. I have vacuumed for Jesus a few times.
[laughter]
Kyle: Love it. This is good. This is good. Mees, any reflections on the transition?
Mees: I find parish work so much less stressful than seminary. Maybe it's just because I don't have the ordination thing hanging over my head anymore. There's a lot less anxiety in my life between not feeling scrutinized about all my choices and thoughts and everything. Just taking out all of that, even though we have our existential crisis here, is still really different. I did some of the budget stuff and things like that during field ed. My supervisor has always been really generous about letting me watch all the things and do all the things. I don't know that I was prepared for the amount of building repair that I do now, because someone has to.
Like fixing toilets on Sunday morning, or last on the afternoon, we just did a nice little budget discussion during Bishop's Committee meeting, and then came out to find that the office had sprung a leak and we had to pull up carpet and call insurance. I could have probably used a little bit more education around church insurance and how to do all that kind of stuff. That's the joke that everyone always makes, like the things they don't teach you in seminary. I find that now I have a tool bag in my car because I need that more often than not.
Kyle: We've got vacuuming for Jesus, plunging for Jesus, insurance claims for Jesus.
[laughter]
Mees: Exactly.
Kyle: Let's go the other direction. I'm curious if you're finding places where it's like, it's like, "Oh, I've got this," where you're thinking of a particular class or a particular moment in seminary. Have you had those times where you've gotten to pull out your notes or lean on your academic training? How are you putting that stuff to work?
Mees: I'd be curious to Angela's take on this, but I felt like we got really well grounded in liturgics, like book of common prayer structures. I felt super prepared liturgically to both handle the things that happen on Sunday morning and also just the thinking around why we worship the way we do. Why I said I'd be curious to Angela's take is that both of us worked as sacristans and not everyone gets that obviously at seminary, but that has been so beneficial. Nothing phases me on Sunday morning because we've handled all the things. If I can herd bishops to do the thing they ask them to do on Thursday night, I can handle the acolytes, that way.
[laughter]
Angela: Yes, I agree with Mees. Although I've always been-- even in seminary, I was still unsure or hesitant about things. I guess I felt pressure or scrutiny to get things right. Once I came to a church and I was doing this every day regularly, I just fell into it comfortably. I don't know, maybe it is because I was a sacristan. I remember the other day pausing and wondering at the fact that I felt good about that. I was no longer nervous about it. I can now fall into liturgy and be comfortable even when things happen at the last minute. That can be frustrating, but it seems to be the way of the church that things change last minute.
I also think as far as our seminary experience with each year being very different because of different things changing, huge things like COVID and then learning how to be with people again, and then the program changing the way it has, I think has helped at least me significantly be prepared for change. I went into seminary feeling like I was okay with change and I could roll with the punches, and then discovered precisely where I couldn't and then had to. Now that I'm in a church, I'm pretty much like, "Okay, bring it on. We'll just deal with it in the moment. That's the best we can do. It's all in service to God and we're all here. Worship will happen."
There was a class that I took by probably one of the best professors at CDSP, and we read a book called Claiming Resurrection in the Dying Church by Anna Olson.
Kyle: I was like, wow, this is bold. Oh, wait. Okay.
Katherine: Yes. Sorry.
Kyle: This is a book from my class.
Katherine: Yes. I got that book out because I recognize that, there's some similarities between St. Mary's in Los Angeles and our church, and one of the really super ironic things about it is our church, the storage closets are bursting with Sunday school books that were printed in 1957, and motivational posters from the '80s, it's old Sunday school supplies, and Claiming Resurrection in the Dying Church has a whole chapter about that, and like really laying out the theological reasons that we want to clear things out. That's going to be our church's Lenten discipline, is making room for something new. I don't know that I would know about that book had I not been made to read it in seminary.
Kyle: Anna Olson, if you are listening, that chapter on clearing out Sunday school closets resonates with folks probably more than any other thing I have ever assigned to students in 10 plus years of pretty active teaching in seminaries. Can you say a little bit about what peer community looks like for you these days? Mees: I have found that a little challenging, like I still talk to some classmates so not as much as I wish or would probably be beneficial. I've made some connections here in the diocese, especially with new associates, but you have to carve that out yourself. That is not the only thing I miss from seminary, but I do miss that a lot, that built-in community and walking together that you had, that it is really easy to be isolated once you start working in a church. Katherine: Yes. I've been in touch with a couple of seminary classmates. One is in California now working at a different diocese, but I'm talking to her pretty regularly and then talking to another friend who's in New York. We talk and text several times a week. That's been helpful. I have also been trying to work with another priest in my diocese who's actually been a priest for a while who, she doesn't have a clergy support group. We're trying to figure out who might be interested in forming a new clergy support group. Angela: Yes. For me, there was already a downtown clergy group established, so I just inserted myself into it. Then our diocese has a fresh start program for priests that are new to this diocese. We get together once a month. I also keep in touch with the Asian American women priests in the country. It's interfaith. I gather with them at different things, nothing too regular, but at conferences and other things like that. Then I just got to participate in a Sacred Ground East with other Asian American priests, and it was a Sacred Ground pilot program for the Asian community. That was lovely, too. I noticed how isolating it was, and I really was afraid of that because I tend to be a workaholic, so I could easily fall into that isolation and keep on going. Thankfully for me, there were already some things in place, and now that I've got footing here, I'm starting to reach out to people and say, "Hey, you want to have lunch?" Then start building relationships with them. It's hard because most of the time I feel like I'm too busy, but I feel like I need to prioritize it, otherwise I will be isolated.
Kyle: Some of you have spoken to it a little bit already, but is there anything you'd like to reflect on about what it's like to be working with a mentor, supervisor, colleague, whatever the right paradigm is in your setting? Mees: When I was job searching, I went on several different interviews, and that's when I realized how generous my vicar is, in the sense that there were more rectors than I might have expected who expected you to stand beside them as they did things. I don't know. I don't necessarily think it was territorial, but it was very clear that they had ideas about what the associate did, and the associate stayed in their lane. I just felt a real sense of trust from my supervisor that if there's something I was interested in, we could try and make it work, and that generosity. I think that means that I am learning so much one of the gifts of accuracy, for me at least, is that you get to see all kinds of things, right, because you're meant to be learning broadly, and my supervisors really lived into that.
Katherine: One of the things that coming from working as a chaplain, where I would talk about having patient face and colleague face, where patient face is where things are buttoned down, and you're like super professional, and then colleague face is like you're making jokes and things. I appreciate having a colleague to have some colleague face time with because I knew that would be a hard thing for me about making the switch into parish ministry. It would be a lot more patient face than what I was used to. Just having somebody that I can be a little bit more myself with,I'm still myself, but I can be that more relaxed version of myself. I think too, I do know people who are out on their own serving as a priest in charge or a rector, and when I hear about some of the things that they are facing, the thing that I think is, wow, I'm really grateful I don't have to do that on my own. I have someone who's actually in charge that can help negotiate, and I can watch what they're doing rather than it being laying on me to work through those things right out of seminary.
Kyle: I remember a sermon that I gave led to someone threatening to pull their pledge. The sort of rock of having somebody who could be like calm and pretty firm about an appropriate way to respond to that was something I was really grateful for. It's a big deal, is my point, like really significant things can happen that, wow, when you have that sort of backstop, it can make a difference. Angela, anything you want to share on that?
Angela: I think what I appreciate most is that the priest in charge here is a woman, and she's had small churches and large churches. I'm from a small church. My entire life I've spent in small churches. I'm used to the priest plunging toilets and making their own bulletins and all of that. It's a learning experience for me to be in a large church where staff do all of that stuff. It's weird because I'm used to being the one doing that stuff, not having someone else do it. I can both learn from her past experience with both small and large churches in a situation and then actively watch how she handles the situation in this context with this parish, given their particularities of experience. That's something I really value.
Kyle: Yes. That sense of apprenticeship and the passing along of the collected wisdom. That's great. Okay. To close here, I want to ask a question, and I encourage you to be really honest. What advice, based on your experiences in your early time transitioning from seminary into the roles that you're in, what's some advice you have about what CDSP should be thinking about as we design this curacy program?
Katherine: Yes. One thing and this is actually for the mentors, is especially for people who've always been a solo priest, like my supervisor has always been by herself, I think having someone to think through about what it's like to share. There's not been a ton of conflict, but there has been some. There have been some uncomfortable moments around us, there being two priests here suddenly. I think making sure that people are really thinking through that. The other thing that I think would be really helpful would be-- Not that I don't have this now, but maybe a more formal way of having this is utilizing the CDSP faculty and staff. Especially somebody like Dent Davidson, who's our chapel music director. If it were maybe part of the program for him to be available to do some consulting and just having a more established connection with the faculty. Yes, we need to fly the coop and we've got these great resources.
Kyle: Yes. If there's an increasingly formal mechanism for the connection in those two-plus years, plus two years, thinking about how to take advantage of that, I think makes a lot of sense.
Angela: I don't really know anything about how it's financially going to be structured, the Curacy program. My hope would be that it wouldn't be a set amount per seminarian, per graduate, but it would be a cost of living commensurate so that people like Mees could be full-time in the context in which he's working. That might mean that he would receive more funding than say I would here, but that's okay because the hope in my mind is to place a graduate full-time somewhere to get the most benefit out of the education and to provide the most benefit to the parish and also giving him and his family a living wage at the same time.
Kyle: Yes. I think it's worth me saying here that I do believe that will be the case. In this transition time, depending on which class folks are in, and Angela and Mees are in a different class from Katherine, who's in a different class from the next round of folks. Obviously, it's hard to just press go on a new reality. We're in these transitional years. I do believe that is going to be the case, that there's guidance about consulting the local diocesan compensation guidelines and having it be a regional cost of living thing rather than like there's X amount of money available. Good news on that front. I do think that that's what it's going to look like.
Mees: I'm saying this not knowing anything about the plus two years, right? Because that's not a part of my situation. One of the things that I really noticed during seminary was doing field ed at a small church and being interested in small churches. A lot of the training we received was not based on that situation, right? I'm also noticing my own diocese, they have a program for newly ordained folks and folks with new calls. Those are not the same things at all. We get a lot of things about, I don't know, stewardship and HR and things that I am not in charge of, and that I will not remember by the time that I'm in charge. I think what I would be really hopeful for is the training and mentoring that comes, that it's just, I don't know, we either do different pathways or just well-rounded, but that Angela and I are in very different churches. If we were both a part of this, that we would both receive something that we can really put to work right away. I think that would be great.
Kyle: From the seat that I have to the early days of this, my sense is that these are the kinds of questions that we're thinking about take your point in the extreme that there will be a wide range of needs for continuing formation .
Well, this has been really rich and I am incredibly grateful for the time that you all have given to us . Thanks for being part of the people who are figuring it out and thanks so very much for reflecting with us today.
Angela: Thank you.
Mees: Thank you.
Katherine: Thank you.