By Joseph Reigle, MDiv Candidate ‘24 Duke Divinity School, Charles Simeon Institute Summer Fellow
I grew up in Binghamton, New York, which is a small city on the border of Pennsylvania. My family attended a Baptist church, and I was homeschooled from kindergarten through high school. My family, my education, and my faith were all deeply interwoven. I’m extremely thankful for the care my family took to instill their faith in me. But even from a young age it was difficult to disentangle what was my own faith from what was my family’s.
Do I have faith in God? Is my faith my own? Am I saved? These questions followed me from childhood through high school as I left for Cornell University to study city planning.
The first church I visited at Cornell was Bread of Life Anglican Church. Their service seemed strange to me, with repeated words and responses that I had yet to learn. But their reverence for the eucharist was profound. And I desired to be present for it. Slowly I learned the strange words and repeated refrains of the service. I discovered that going through the motions of faith, even when I harbored doubts, allowed me to imagine the world through the eyes of this community.
Through the Anglican church, I discovered that my life and my mind are not purely my own; I share them with the people and places that shape me. Knowledge is inherently communal; what we learn is contingent on our teachers, our access to resources, and the people with whom we live. My academic studies in city planning also prompted me to ponder questions of community and ministry. I learned that the city planner’s and the priest’s work overlap—they are both mediators between parties with divergent desires, advocates for the unheard, interpreters, and communicators.
A significant part of the Charles Simeon Fellowship is a priestly formation seminar led by Fr. Michael Petty. Together we’ve discussed and studied what it means to be servants of the church, and what it means to be a priest. One thing has become clear to me in this study: a priest is never called individually. Just as my faith is not an isolated individual event, my calling is not isolated. It is true that God calls each of his children by name, but he also calls us through the instrument of his church.
I can say with certainty that the Charles Simeon Institute has played an instrumental role in my calling to ministry. Through the opportunities to preach and teach I’ve been able to see the ways that God has prepared me for the practical work of the priesthood. Additionally, I’ve had the gift of lay mentors within St. Peters who have dedicated their time to observing and discerning my spiritual gifts and pointing them out in me. These aspects of the Charles Simeon Institute have affirmed my calling to ministry, and I believe that the investment CSI puts into developing church leaders is also an instrument that God has used to call me.