Marti kelley moments to remember1/23/2024 ![]() I am sure that on October 1, 2011, I had an idea of what my ministry would be like, but my path has gone in directions I would have never guessed. My ministry has included work with college students and young adults, work to address food insecurity, and disaster response. In six years, I have served four churches. Serving as a deacon has allowed me diversity. The deacons I encountered had their place in the liturgy and diverse ministries in the world, but there was still work of definition and education of “what a deacon was.” It was the diversity of ministry, and the deacon’s role of linking our worship to service in the world, that spoke to me in my discernment. When I landed at Canterbury Chapel in 2006, I encountered a diaconate in the sixth wave but still remembered the work of the fifth wave. Third Class of Deacons ordained November 3, 2012: Kaki O’Flinn and Catherine Schiesz Henry Nutt Parsley, Jr., announced the formation of the first class of “permanent deacons.” In 1999, after years of study and work by clergy and lay ministry, together with the Commission on Ministry, the Rt. The ministry of deaconesses in Alabama would continue into the twentieth century. Richard Hooker Wilmer, the second Bishop of Alabama, some 25 years before the national church authorized the order of deaconess, set apart Rebecca Hewitt, Harriet Irwin, and Jane Williams to serve as deaconesses. The Diocese of Alabama’s experience with diaconal ministry began in the “second wave.” On December 20, 1864, the Rt. Since about 2005, a seventh wave began to develop defined by integration of the elements of the previous waves. The sixth wave, beginning in the late 1980’s, emphasized the leadership role of the deacon and focused on the deacons’ involvement in the world outside the church community. The fifth wave, beginning with the implementation of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, was a time of definition-focusing on total ministry of the church and servant ministry. The third wave was male “perpetual deacons” from 1952 to 1970, ordained at a time of church growth “primarily to serve as pastoral and sacramental assistants.” The fourth wave, starting in the 1970s, was a transitional time: deaconesses were made deacons some women became deacons in anticipation of eventual ordination to the priesthood many others, male and female, and indeed the church as a whole, were seeking what a renewed vocational diaconate should be. The second wave was that of the deaconesses, from 1885 to 1970. The first wave was that of missionary or indigenous deacons serving in the United States from the 1840s for about a century. In the modern period, the diaconate has gone through overlapping waves of development. Third Class of Deacons ordained October 1, 2011: Marla Asson, David Barfield, Kim Beckett, Marti Holmes, Kelley Hudlow, Jerry Jacob, Judy Lee, Judy Quick, Jeannie Robison, Cindy Roff, CJ Van Slyke, David Whetstone, Norbert Wilson. Deacons are found in the epistles of the New Testament and throughout the history of the Church. Traditionally, the Seven from the Book of Acts are considered the first deacons. The ministry of the diaconate is rooted in Christ’s own ministry to the poor, the outcast, and the forgotten. It was not until I moved to Tuscaloosa that I experienced diaconal ministry through Deacon Roland Ficken at Canterbury Chapel.Īs I began my discernment and formation program, I learned about an order of ministry that was both ancient and contemporary. Growing up, my only experience of diaconal ministry was the transitional diaconate, clergy on the way to the priesthood. I was born in Mobile, and according to the usual schedule, was baptized and confirmed in the Episcopal Church. ![]() My story began in the Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast. ![]() Second Class of Deacons ordained October 30, 2004: Gerri Aston, Bill Cunningham, Mary Groff, Don Owen, Steve Shanks, Lynn Bullard, Dave Drachlis, Joanie Hammonds, Cindi Park, Mary Vandagriff, Preston Colangelo, Bruce Drube, Kenneth Lewis, Clyde Pearce. ![]()
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