Loading...For the past ten or more years The Widows Corporation of Pennsylvania, one of the three colonial societies that fulfilled the call of Dr. William Smith and Bishop William White to care for the widows and orphans of clergy in the new American states, had been seeking ways to expand its ministry to the living clergy in Pennsylvania.
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In 2000, retired Bishop of Pennsylvania Allen Bartlett, a member of the Corporation’s board, had engineered the Fund for Clergy and Clergy Family Wellness that has distributed over $2 million in grants to clergy to help with all sorts of health and wellbeing needs. But the needs haven’t always kept up with the available funds for this remarkable organization that pre-dates the Episcopal Church by some twenty years and its board had been seeking new ways to minister to the clergy in the state of Pennsylvania.
In Central Pennsylvania, Bishop Nathan Baxter was also in search mode. As he said recently, “Our clergy are wonderful at caring for their people, but, as a Diocese, we have not always been as good at caring for our clergy.” He challenged his senior staff to find new ways of ministering to the needs of clergy in the diocese, and Canon Ed Messersmith and Dr. John Emmert responded by developing a proposal for new ministries to diocesan clergy and their families. Bishop Baxter received this proposal with enthusiasm, but of course funds for new initiatives can be difficult to find in times of financial pressure.
The two searches found each other in mid-2011 at the Annual Meeting of The Widows Corporation, when Canon Ted Babcock of Central Pennsylvania represented his bishop at a consultation of diocesan representatives with the Discretionary Benefits Committee of “The Widows,” all seeking new ways to carry forth The Widows’ mission of caring. The idea that The Widows had available funds but was looking for new needs was an amazing coincidence to Canon Ted. And finding a new initiative that fit so perfectly into the parameters of the Wellness Fund was a delight to the members of the Benefits Committee.
Today, funds from The Widows Corporation’s earnings on its investment portfolio are being used to underwrite two caring initiatives in Central Pennsylvania. One program has established two chaplaincies to retired clergy and clergy widows. The other is focused on bringing clergy together on retreats to work through structured components addressing Spiritual Formation, Family Systems, Leadership, Praxis and Personal Networking. This program will lead to pairings of clergy based on the Anam Cara model as developed by Mahan Siler.
It is the hope and intention that these programs can be shared with other dioceses throughout the Church, so that clergy in every stage of ministry know that the care they give to their parishioners is also available to them from their bishop and their clergy colleagues.
