2024 VESTRY CANDIDATES

The two candidates for our 2024 vestry election are listed below. Once you’re finished reading the biographies, the absentee electronic voting ballot can be found at the bottom of the page. If you are not available on May 19 to vote in person, please use the electronic voting ballot. All ballots must be submitted by 2pm on May 19.

I have known Jesus as far back as I can remember. Baptized in an Episcopal church, I grew up in a faith-filled home, attending our  community church.  I was active in Sunday school, choir, and  youth groups,  Hungry for Jesus, I loved reading my Bible.  I visited Christian denominations.  I chose to attend a Lutheran college. One semester, I was befriended by an Episcopal priest and his wife who showed me Jesus in a new way. I joined their Episcopal church. 

During my married adult life, I had 2 children, lost another in pregancy, earned several grad-level teaching certificates, and taught full-time. Active in NJ  Lutheran churches, I was laison for world outreach programs which added to my wider understanding. 

to trust Him

Healing, loving, carrying me when needed. He also called me to become  Episcopalian again!  He gave me some wonderful new spiritual experiences and opportunities to praise Him through serving others.   

Following my divorce, I moved to a town near the ocean and experienced yet a new kind of God-encounter. One Sunday, 

Ephesians 2:8 was read from the pulpit. God chose that exact moment to immediately, dramatically, enter anew into my life. My spiritual journey and direction forever changed! He also blessed me with a life-saving miracle! He called me by name, sought me, saved me. How can I not fall on my knees!?

Suddenly, God  opened an opportunity to live in upstate NY. I was elected Senior Warden in my new small church, started two Sunday schools, attended Diocesan Healing Prayer classes, connected with an Anglican convent, and was a voting delegate for our new Bishop - a powerful experience for me.  As Sr. Warden in this sweet, small church without a permanent priest or staff, I quickly became super-familiar with the many facets of church functioning within that diocese! God placed beautifully spiritual people in my life just when needed.   I have many wonderful memories, but have also endured some difficult life events and health concerns. 

Jesus entered right into them--- the Good Shepherd searched for His sheep! Through my tears and fears, He found me, taught me. 

Then just as suddenly, 10 years ago, I came to Virginia to help my daughter! And here I am!  -- still growing, listening, learning,  loving, and  leaning into God  more and more! 

Over the years, returning thanks to God has been very important to me.  I’ve enjoyed many avenues of serving including heading an active Altar Guild, supporting missions, helping interview ordination candidates, and teaching English to immigrant families. 

At CCAC, I enjoy turns as reader, chalice bearer, counter, greeter, and after-church prayer. I participate in prayer groups, Formation Groups, the St. Ephrem study group, and family and women’s events. In CCAC’s “olden days”, I participated in Alpha and helped pack snacks for school kids. 

Within DOMA,  I currently serve on Bishop Chris’s Intercessory Prayer Team.  And as part of our Prayer Team for Church Plants and Missions, I was actually praying for Corpus Christi before we had a name! 

I am filled with gratitude and joy to be an official Corpus Christi member, and now to be nominated for a vestry position. Always trusting our amazing God, I’m excited to see how God will lead.

I was born into an observant Roman Catholic family and was baptized about 13 days after my birth. I was raised according to the teachings and traditions of the Church of Rome, although I truly did not understand what was communicated to me. At points of my childhood, I was thoroughly committed to the enchantment of the Christian community as I read about it in books like The Robe or The Silver Chalice and in movies like Ben Hur (and later, as a teen, in Godspell and the Jesus Christ Superstar record). Nevertheless, despite years of CCD (“Confraternity of Christian Doctrine”); being confirmed, and going to Catholic school for 3 years, I would have told you, when I was a senior in high school, that I was an agnostic (not an atheist, because I recognized that being an atheist required a degree of faith, which I did not have).

As a senior in high school, I was surrounded by a number of friends who were involved in Young Life – a parachurch Christian ministry geared toward proclaiming the Gospel to teens. One of my friends was a beautiful young girl named Debbie Blair, who was quite enthusiastic about Christ. Following my graduation, she began to bring me to a Bible study of the book of Romans.

About the same time, we began dating and, toward the end of the summer, we went on a long hike which included a climb up South River Falls in the Shenandoah National Park. At the top of the falls, I brought out a pocket New Testament and she had me read I Corinthians 13. My experience at that place and time reminds me of something I later read by John Wesley:, “...I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation...” I soon started college and got involved with one of the Young Life leaders, who was also at college with me – a young man named Sam Pascoe. He discipled me and introduced me to the Scriptures, including things like the Apocrypha. Sam later went on to become an Episcopal priest. Oh, and much later, young Debbie Blair married me.

Over the next few years, I was involved in some very good Christian fellowship groups, including Saturday Night Alive (with Renny Scott, an Episcopal Priest, and Benny Phillips, a non-denomination minister). I was also involved in several loose fellowship groups which weren’t very edifying - they advocated a more emotional spirituality – which rejected any form of serving Christ with one’s mind. At that time, I was enrolled in college at George Mason University and began taking classes in things like the Old and New Testament and Religion in America. In addition, the Religion in America course was important for me, as the final required a paper discussing the gospel as evangelization or the “social gospel.” I basically concluded that Jesus did not call for an “or” but an “and.”

I transferred to James Madison University, where Debbie was enrolled and became very involved in Intervarsity Christian Fellowship. This was an important ministry because I saw that you could serve God with your mind.

Debbie and I were married at Church of the Apostles in Fairfax (1981) and were received into the Episcopal Church in 1982. At that time, we started teaching Sunday School, something we continued when we returned to Northern Virginia following law school in Oklahoma. We were members of Truro Church in Fairfax from the late 1980’s until we moved to Corpus Christi.