Background: We were looking for material to include in the Newletter "Tidings" of St. Luke's Episcopal Chuch, when I thought of the idea of interviewing the various clergy who happened to be members of the church (but not working in an official capacity). The initial question was to be: Why are you here at St. Luke's, rather than somewhere else? Mary Peñaloza (Chair of the Communications Committee) thought up the name "Clergy in Our Midst". I did the interviews and wrote the text, which was corrected by the "clergy" in each case and then expertly proofread and corrected by Warren Taylor (Publishing and Communications Staff). Here are the articles in the series so far.
[Link to this page: http://www.cs.utsa.edu/~wagner/church/clergy/clergy_in_our_midst.html ]

On a recent Sunday morning in the News and Reviews Adult Education class, Bill Killam is asked to give the final devotion. As usual he gives a thoughtful, centering prayer. Some Sundays Bill misses the class because he is doing Home Communion as a Lay Eucharistic Visitor.

Bill and his wife Corinne landed at St. Luke's when he retired to San Antonio in 1995. They had tried several local churches with "dismal services," when a parishioner who dearly loves St. Luke's asked them to come with her one Wednesday evening. When they said it was quite a ways from where they lived, she picked them up and drove them herself

Bill attended MacMaster Seminary in Canada, becoming an ordained Baptist minister in 1960. As a "rebellious bookworm" and an "angry young man," he was not entirely happy with the Baptists, who were constantly fighting among themselves, liberal against conservative. (Bill likes the irony of escaping to the Episcopalians in time for more struggling. He says, "There is nothing new under the sun.")

So he switched to the Unitarian church, where he met Corinne at a singles group. During the next year he finished a master's degree in psychology and counseling at the Andover Newton Theological School in Boston, getting a heavy dose of Carl Jung. He then led two Unitarian churchs in the Boston area for nine years, followed by twenty-five years working as a programmer at a bank in Boston until he retired.

Around 1976, the Killam's younger son, ten years old at the time, suffered from an obsessive-compulsive disorder. In this time of need, a charismatic prayer group, part of an Episcopal church, reached out to them. In a single prayer session, which became for them a profound religious experience, their son was completely healed, doing well to this day.

So there you have them: Bill Killam and his wife Corinne -- a delightful couple who might not be at St. Luke's but for one parishioner's enthusiastic invitation and insistence on driving them to a service.

(See Tidings November 2006.)

Wayne Knutson has such a trim figure and boyish face that it is hard to believe he has spent 27 years in the Air Force. He is also remarkably cheerful and upbeat for a chaplain who is always on call to attend to airmen and their families.

Knutson, his wife Molly, and children Christopher and Chloe, enjoy everything about St. Luke's. They love the Eucharistic liturgy, especially as enhanced by the musical efforts of David Eaton and the Parish Choir. The Knutson's find "spirit" here -- a "sense of community around word and sacrament." From his background of ministering to everyone, Wayne cherishes the diversity at St. Luke's and likes the interplay of ideas in the News and Reviews Class.

Knutson was graduated from St. Olaf College in 1973 and spent six years as an officer in the Air Force, serving at an ICBM site. He resigned his commission in 1980 to attend Luther Seminary in St. Paul. In 1985, he got a call from the Air Force. He married Molly shortly after his ordination.

For many years he provided a "liturgical service" to Episcopaleans, Lutherans, and many others. Assignments have taken this family throughout the U.S., Germany, and South Korea, and -- for Wayne without his family -- to the Middle East.

In 2002 Knutson became Wing Chaplain at Lackland AFB, supervising 38 services each week given by 24 chaplains, who provide or provide for the religious needs of the Air Force community, including every Christian denomination, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, even Wiccans.

About this same time, Wayne and Molly were looking for a church centered on a weekly Eucharist which they could attend as a family. Because they had already been to one service at St. Luke's, they thought of our church first.

The services the Knutson's found in 2003 were led by Omar Pittman and Jane Patterson. They were smitten with St. Luke's immediately.

Since 2005 Wayne has served at the Air Force Air Intelligence Agency, which has involved travel but has often left him free on weekends. He recently received a striking honor: the Legion of Merit Award.

The Knutson's future in San Antonio is uncertain. Wayne is set to stay for another year, but this depends on the Air Force's needs. St. Luke's has been blessed to have this family with us.

(See Tidings January 2007.)

Lloyd became involved with the Episcopal Church at the University of Vermont in 1957 as a freshman. He remembers a specific evening by himself where he felt a calling to the priesthood. He finished a degree in accounting at the University of Miami, following his mom's advice to have a backup profession, but in fact accounting was useful to him in his ministry. In 1966 he finished Nashotah Seminary (just west of Milwaukee), where Chip Prehn would finish his own studies two decades later. There he received his "strong spiritual formation as a person of prayer and as a Catholic Episcopalian."

After his ordination, he got a call to St. Gregory's in Boca Raton, where he met Janie in the first year of an eight-year stay. Their three children were born there; they now have seven grandchildren. In 1974 he became rector of Saint Peter's, Canton, Illinois, a small parish which for ten years proved to be a good place to raise children. In 1984 he became rector of St. Paul's in Pekin, Illinois, a larger parish. In 2001 he wanted a new challenge and moved on to St. Alban's in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and retired in 2006, partly exhausted from all the work that a rector of a pastoral size parish is called to do.

Lloyd is proud that in 1979 he and his wife began leading Marriage Encounter Weekends that would strengthen and enrich couples' lives. For twenty years they led a group every three months or so, all over the country and even abroad. They also were active in Cursillo, the Alpha Course, and marriage preparations. Lloyd and Janie bring to St. Luke's very special talents and experience, particularly regarding ministry to couples. Please introduce yourselves and make them welcome.

(See Tidings May 2007.)

The other half of the MacNaughton team is John's wife Shirley, who is also very active at St. Luke's. John and Shirley wed in 1954, and now have five children, eleven grandchildren, and two greatgrandchildren; John baptized the youngest of these on May 13 in the parents' Lutheran church in Minneapolis. John said it was nice of them to allow him to do this as a non-Lutheran guest.

John has always felt a real presense of God in his life. As an example, he refers to a time in 1975 before he came to Texas. He had been the Rector of St. Stephen's Church in Edina, Minnesota for three years when Christ Church in San Antonio contacted him. He had resolved to address problems at St. Stephen's and didn't want to come to Texas anyway, but Shirley talked him into going through with the interview. It turned out that Christ Church was a wonderful fit; he stayed there as Rector for ten years.

John left Christ Church in 1986 when he became the Bishop of West Texas, retiring in 1996. Just as he retired, St. Luke's Church needed an Interim Rector, and John took on this task for nine months. John is grateful that he could remain at St. Luke's as Bishop-in-Residence. He says he now understands that he has always been a pastoral priest at heart. He was privileged to serve as a Bishop, but in that role he missed the continuing contact with ordinary parishioners.

His call to the priesthood started in high school -- he was attracted but didn't know why. At a college conference he talked alone with the speaker for two hours, wanting to know if his was a real call. This person told him to pick ten people, tell his story, and ask what they thought. Nine of those he picked were friends with no special relation to a church, and they were all enthusiastic about this profession for him. The tenth was the local campus student minister, who recommended against it.

John values bible study, informed by scholarship and critical tools, and he has always managed to teach a class one way or another. John says, "These were real people in the Bible, not unlike us. What does this say about who God is and about how we ought to behave?"

Of John's many accomplishments, one that particularly stands out is his long work with stewardship, for which he received the Apostles in Stewardship Award at the recent General Convention. In 1980 he became chairman of the national founding committee on stewardship, and his excellent 2002 book More Blessed to Give: Straight Talk on Stewardship is called a "classic resource" and a "valuable development tool highly praised by clergy and lay leaders throughout the church."

Another Sunday comes and there is John MacNaughton, standing before the congregation like a rock of stability, celebrating the Eucharist one more time with his clear, deep voice.

Susanne is grateful to a long sequence of people who helped her along during her life, starting with her father, an Anglican Priest, and her Lutheran mother, who was the grand-daughter of a pastor. Susanne went to elementary school in England and grew up in northern Virginia. In 1978 she graduated from Hollins University in Roanoke. Then she earned a Master's in Business Administration from Harvard, followed by work in Toronto, Pennsylvania, California, Oregon, and finally Las Vegas, where she did a master's in Marriage and Family Counseling. Susanne helped write a well-received book, "If Only I Had Known: Avoiding Common Mistakes in Couples Therapy," appearing in 2005 with two co-authors. She was especially busy getting the book finished during her first year in seminary.

When our Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, was the Bishop of Las Vegas, she was the first person Susanne talked with about ordination, so she supported Susanne from the earliest part of her discernment. Jefferts Schori sponsored her for her seminary work, ordained her a deacon in 2006, and even gave the sermon at her graduation from the seminary on May 15, 2007 in Austin.

Susanne's father wondered at first if she couldn't serve in another way, but then completely supported her decision to become a priest. Her experience in the seminary was wonderful, with a diverse study group and a focus on cross-cultural ministry. She is most interested in those standing on the margins or on the outside, in finding concrete ways to care for people in the name of God. She said that the chapel of ETSS has its cross outside the building, and she sees this as a metaphor: the cross belongs in the world, not in the church.

During the interview for this article, Susanne was concerned about looking for work and about finding common ground when people are divided. Happily, she has since received a call from St. John's Episcopal Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma that will emphasize her special interests of pastoral care and outreach, as well as adult Christian formation. She wants to thank everyone at St. Luke's and invites us to visit her in Tulsa. Her contact information in Tulsa is in the July 2007 issue of Tidings (on our website), and Susanne.Methven@Alum.ETSS.edu is still her email address.