DEACON SERVES AS PASTORAL PRESENCE

From The Advocate in Baton Rouge:

At 60, Camille Carpenter Wood answered a calling to become a deacon in the Episcopal church.

“I come from generations of Episcopalians,” Wood said. “The church has always been important to me. I wanted to be sure that my children were always involved with the church.”
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The journey to her ordination on Dec. 4, 2010, was both intense and lengthy.“It was a very gradual process,” Wood said. It began about 2007 at Baton Rouge’s Trinity Episcopal Church.
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She joined the altar guild, became a Eucharistic minister, did readings as a lector and even served as senior warden for a while.

“The more I got involved, the more I just sort of had a passion to do more,” she said. “It led to other things. I truly felt a call. It’s hard to explain, but it’s something that kind of grabs you and takes over. You can’t deny it, really.”
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After her ordination, Wood stayed at Trinity for almost a year as director of lay ministry, a position she had held even before she was ordained.

She was in Seattle at her niece’s wedding when Bishop Morris Thompson called her to serve as a pastoral presence at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Clinton.
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Wood immediately accepted the bishop’s call. “I didn’t have to think about it,” she said. “It was not only something I needed to do but something I wanted to do.”

She has served the church since the first Sunday in September. She appreciates St. Andrew’s history of support for the local community, its history of serving the needs of the community.

The article about Deacon Camille Wood was featured on the front page of the Religion section of the Advocate, along with an article on the history of St Andrew's Church in Clinton, Louisiana.

Two retired priests, the Rev. Maggie Dennis, who is originally from Liberia, and the Rev. Don Brown, conduct services at St. Andrew’s three Sundays a month.

One Sunday a month, Wood leads morning prayer the way services were done at Trinity Episcopal Church, in Natchez, Miss., where Wood grew up.

“I grew up having morning prayer three time a month and Eucharist once a month,” she said. “We have morning prayer with hymns and sing canticles (songs taken from Biblical passages), and I give a homily. There is just no Eucharist because a deacon cannot consecrate the bread and wine.”

I expect we may see deacons acting as the permanent pastoral presence in Episcopal parishes more and more often. St Andrew's is blessed to have the service of Deacon Camille Wood and fortunate to have the same two priests presiding at the Eucharist, rather than an ever-changing roster of priests.

I've heard folks who are long-time members of the Episcopal Church and remember the period before the Eucharist became the norm for Sunday worship say they miss Morning Prayer. I love the Eucharist, and one reason I chose to attend the Episcopal Church after I left the Roman Catholic Church was because of the frequent eucharistic services. Recently, I've heard and read a good many discussions about the pros and cons of communion before baptism. I know that the Canons of the church say all baptized Christians are welcome to receive communion, but I also know that some Episcopal churches welcome everyone to communion, baptized or not.

Whether communion should or should not be available to all is not my point, but I wonder whether it might be a good thing to have a service of Morning Prayer at least once a month. All are welcome to participate in the entire service without question. No one is excluded. Especially when we've been between rectors and without a priest, I've wondered why we don't have Morning Prayer in my church, led by one of the two members of our congregation who are qualified to lead the prayers, rather than having a supply priest for every service.