JR
(SIM/Carpenter)
Convocation-Ep. Churches in Europe
Berkeley
Stephanie was born in Picardy, France, and moved to Paris at age 21 to study literature, art theory and art criticism. Raised as an atheist, she was very much attracted to the church and what she would now identify as "the Divine,” especially through art, music, literature and gothic architecture. While studying for her PhD in 2009, she spent a semester in Oxford and began to attend Evensong services at New College. At first the music was her "excuse" to participate in services. However, she quickly realized that spiritual environment of the chapel was moving her profoundly, in a way she had never experienced before. The example of Dean Jane Shaw, a priest and scholar she witnessed serving in the chapel, led her to consider the priesthood. When Stephanie returned to Paris, she became a parishioner at the American Cathedral, serving in multiple ministry areas. In 2014 she defended her PhD, and in 2015, after a discernment process that confirmed her call to the priesthood, she became a Postulant to Holy Orders. She is currently a seminarian at Berkeley/Yale Divinity School and the Institute of Sacred Music, where she combines theological study with her love for the arts. Committed to dedicating her life to God as a priest and as a scholar, Stephanie wants to express her profound gratitude to SIM as none of this would have been possible without the SIM/Carpenter scholarship.
Carpenter Scholarship Recipient
Phil Hooper, recipient of a SIM/Carpenter scholarship, is a post-Christian ministry innovator who embodies a model of faith leadership SIM actively seeks to foster through scholarships for the education of Millennial faith leaders. With a faith journey that mirrors so many of Phil's generation, Jesus is known by this remarkable young man as, " not the rock upon which I rest so much as the road which I tread. When I consider my future as a leader in the church, it is often through this metaphor of the pilgrim way.” For Phil, the encounter with Jesus came after many years of searching and struggling, “So I am keenly aware of what it feels like to be a wanderer.” His goal now is to find other such wanderers, not to dictate to them where to go, but to illumine the path under their feet with the Good News of God's enduring love. Phil's gifts as a master builder of radically welcoming Beloved Community exemplify what it means to be a leader of the Episcopal branch of the Jesus Movement. He is not reticent about being countercultural. "And what is countercultural today?" Phil writes. "Deep listening. Presence. Silence. Patience. Thoughtful discourse." He is facilitating the co-creation of such sacred spaces and gathering communities marked by these practices both in his sponsoring diocese of Nevada where Phil founded the faith community, "Holy Doubt," and in the context of the California Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, California, where Phil is studying for the priesthood. In funding Phil Hooper's theological education SIM is intentionally aligning the investment of our assets with the goals of our Presiding Bishop and General Convention in raising up future leaders who can foster communities of reconcilers, justice-makers, and healers who are practitioners in the way of love. Leaders like those described by Charles Skinner as “consecrated men and women seeking a new world who forget themselves in their passion to find the common life where the good of all is the quest of each.” We invite you to join SIM in supporting the education of a new generation of loving, liberating, life-giving faith leaders like Phil Hooper that are our future and our hope.
MIDD
(SIM/Mercer)
Western North Carolina
VTS
Anna Shine is a senior Master of Divinity student at Virginia Theological Seminary, hailing from the Diocese of Western North Carolina. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, she nevertheless considers her home the mountains of North Carolina and East Tennessee, having moved there when she was eight. Her call narrative began with the study of Judaism to understand more deeply the religion which formed Jesus. Next she pursued the study of Islam to understand how other Abrahamic faiths understand God, and to heighten her consciousness of Christianity’s history of abuse, violence, and oppression. Anticipating that her life journey would take her into academia, she pursued a Masters of Theological Studies at Harvard Divinity School, branching into the study of women, gender, and religion. Anna felt drawn toward ordained ministry for most of her life, but did not believe she had “enough” faith to be worthy of it. That belief, and numerous other excuses cut Anna off from pursuing the ordination path for many years. God laughed, however, and overcame her resistance. In Damascus, Virginia (yes, Damascus), Anna finally experienced and accepted her call and began the formal path of discernment to the priesthood. Her passions range from social justice and racial reconciliation to creation care and earth justice, as well as examining how the church addresses (or doesn’t) money, wealth, and healthy sexual relationships. Since human beings are narrative creatures, she considers part of her ministry to be the collecting, preserving, and purveying of story. Ultimately, her goal is to find the ways in which we can become better disciples of Christ in the Jesus Movement, connecting our greatest passions with the needs of this world.
SR
(SIM/Mercer)
Diocese of Mississippi
The School of Theology, The University of the South
Les Hegwood was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. Les earned an undergraduate degree in English from the University of Mississippi. He is a graduate of the Mississippi Teacher Corps, a fellowship master in curriculum and instruction through the University of Mississippi that places teachers in low-income and critical shortage areas in and near the Mississippi Delta. He taught English and coached baseball for five years at Raymond High School in Raymond, Mississippi, and four years at Signal Mountain Middle/High School near Chattanooga, Tennessee. His last four years in education were as Head of Trinity Episcopal School in Natchez, Mississippi. Les is interested in fostering equity in education through the ways in which Episcopal schools live their Episcopal identity as this relates to the Church's role in educational equity. In addition to parish ministry and/or school chaplaincy, Les hopes to help the Diocese of Mississippi be a leader in establishing educational equity through its Episcopal schools. Les is a Middler at Sewanee, where he lives with his wife and three young children.
SR
Massachusetts
Berkeley Divinity School - New Haven, CT
My name is Debbi Rhodes. I was born and raised in New York, and although I now live in Seattle, a New Yorker I will always be. I grew up in a pork-loving secular Jewish family, the daughter of a doctor and a lawyer, imbued with intellectual confidence and religious scorn. Unlike my family however, I was hungry for God. Having survived several world-shattering traumas and a nearly 20-year-run with addiction, I found myself seeking a God who would feed, forgive, and redeem me. I found that God, after a foray through the religions of the east, when I was baptized at the Great Vigil of Easter in 2010.
Like St. Paul, I was struck by Jesus in a flash of awakening. For me, it was while on retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemane in the summer of 2009. I had already left behind careers as both a lawyer and a college professor to focus on ministry, but it had been an interfaith one; among other things, I taught meditation, preached, and provided counseling and spiritual direction for seekers like myself. A few years after my baptism I got a job as a hospice chaplain so that I could work for free at my true calling – prison ministry. I had felt that call ever since I volunteered in a prison while in college. Prisoners are considered the very least of “the least of these,” and I felt a unique sense of call to be the face of God for them, to remind them of their status as beloved children of God, to listen carefully to their stories, and to offer God’s forgiveness and redemption. I have done this work in both county jails and maximum-security prisons. It is where I feel most alive, most secure in God. But I began to feel that something was missing; I wanted to be able to offer the Sacraments to these men and women, to feed them as I had been fed with Christ’s Body and Blood, to offer them not just forgiveness but Absolution. It is in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament that I feel closest to God and where I feel the most peace and joy. Because of that, and several other reasons, I knew God was calling me to priesthood.
I am currently a first-year low-residential student at CDSP in Berkeley. My last semester will be in June of 2020. My goal is to continue to grow not only in knowledge but in holiness. I have been blessed with the tremendous and undeserved gift of grace, and I believe it is my joyful responsibility to share that with the world.