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[ENS] Deployment: new director seeks best matches of clergy,


From "Matthew Davies" <mdavies@mail.epicom.org>
Date Tue, 15 Mar 2005 14:21:26 -0500

Daybook, from Episcopal News Service

March 10, 2005 - Thursday Thesis: Meeting People of Purpose

Deployment: new director seeks best matches of clergy, congregations

By Pat McCaughan

[ENS, New York] -- The Rev. Rebecca McClain says starting her new post
as
executive director of the national Church Deployment Office (CDO) feels
a
bit like "crossing from the South rim to the North rim of the Grand
Canyon."

"It's a huge leap of faith, to leave behind so much that was known, and
to
know that sense of starting again," she says.

It isn't the first such leap for McClain, 57, who as dean of Trinity
Cathedral, Phoenix, oversaw restoration efforts after a $5 million fire
gutted the organ and forced the congregation to meet in the parish hall
on
Sundays.

Of that experience, she says: "We've been back in the church permanently
since September. It's our hope to do the rededication on October 9,
which
will be the third anniversary of the fire. I'll be there."

Before the fire, the congregation was experiencing a resurgence --
average
Sunday attendance had tripled, from about 90 to 275, members had engaged
a
downtown reclamation effort, and Trinity had been re-established as one
of
Phoenix's spiritual centers and a gathering spot for the larger
community.

"The last 10 years I've watched that congregation undergo radical
transformation and change so that it's truly a force for change in the
larger Phoenix area," McClain says. "It's an amazing place. I'd like to
see
if it's possible to bring some of that energy and some of that kind of
thinking into this role."

'Called to prosper'

McClain is no stranger to transformation, or to the process of seeking
the
best matches of clergy and congregations.

Eight of the 10 years she served as Trinity's dean, she doubled as Canon
to
the Ordinary and, consequently, as diocesan deployment officer. The
double
duty was "a great gift," she recalls. "The community knew I couldn't do
everything. It simply empowered them."

Empowerment is very much on McClain's mind. She plans to create a think
thank by calling up diocesan deployment officers throughout the country
for
input. Another goal is to establish a West Coast office because, "even
with
all the tools of communication at our disposal, there is nothing like
being
there. We are an incarnational people and there's something about being
present in the flesh."

She hopes to maintain the existing system while transforming it.

"The whole issue of call and deployment is critical to the life of our
church," McClain says. "As we make good calls, we will flourish. The
church
will prosper. The clergy will prosper. Congregations will prosper. We
will
be agents of transformation and change. I am beginning with a vision
that
says we are called to prosper and that call is an individual call on
each of
our lives as Christian people."

Creating radical hospitality, an 'expansive' future

A cradle Episcopalian and a Houston native, McClain is a former high
school
teacher with a bachelor's degree in biology and history from Trinity
University in San Antonio. After experiencing a call to ordination in
1974,
she earned a master's degree in religion from the Seminary of the
Southwest
and eventually was ordained in 1985.

She served at Resurrection, Austin, and at Epiphany, Houston, before
moving
to Arizona in 1989. There, she was involved in developing rural ministry
and
stewardship. In 1992, she was named Canon to the Ordinary and, three
years
later, became dean of Trinity Cathedral.

"I called that community into a life of radical hospitality," she says.
"I've spent the last 10 years watching a congregation go through a
radical
transformation so that it's truly a force for change in the larger
Phoenix
area. I'd like to see if it's possible to bring some of that energy into
this role."

Still "in the discovery process" now, she will supervise a staff of
five,
with a mandate to create a network to allow more expansive opportunities
for
search, for clergy and for congregations.

"I am being asked to go back to square one and to re-examine the office
as
it provides service to the church and to say how can we be doing this
better, how might this be more useful to clergy as a tool for their own
professional growth and their own deepening understanding of their gifts
and
talents as offered to the church."

Ultimately, it involves recreating deployment through radical
hospitality,
while honoring the work that's already been done.

"We always have to listen to the stories and to ask the questions, 'How
did
things come to be the way they are? Where is it that we're being led
today?
What is it that we see on the horizon?' It's my job to bring those
things
together."

'We have to play a bit'

McClain has definite opinions about familiar issues: the aging of the
clergy
and fewer young people seeking ordination.

"First, of all, I'm 57," she says. "I always had a vision around a
destination, where I wanted to be. So, even to say, 'I'm in my 50s and
no
one's looking at me because I'm too old' -- I'm not going to go there."

And, communities of faith need to be more honest about their needs,
their
histories and potential for call, she added. "Often, they're not and
deployment officers in each diocese have to become a bridge ... and to
be
able to offer examples of how things can be done differently."

As for young people she says: "I'm actively recruiting all the time.
What
I'm looking for is someone with a great capacity to gather and create an
environment that is energized, that sees changes in the winds and is a
blessing to those around them. That's priestly.

"We also have to put people into positions where they're stretching a
little
bit. I tend to not take volunteers as much as I recruit people, to give
them
an opportunity to serve and see how it plays out. For me, we have to
play a
bit."

[A photograph accompanying this article can be found online at:
http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_59825_ENG_HTM.htm]

--The Rev. Patricia McCaughan is senior correspondent for the Episcopal
News
Service.

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