We have wonderful news: following a Spirit-filled discernment process, the Rev. Toby Darrah, who served as our seminarian last summer, has been placed at St. Clare’s as our curate for the next three years, through the Trinity Wall Street curacy program, with additional support from the diocese! Through this process, we affirmed that St. Clare’s would be a good environment for Rev. Toby’s formation as a priest, and that their pastoral and spiritual gifts would be a wonderful addition to our emerging work and growth at St. Clare’s. Rev. Toby will be ordained to the priesthood at St. Clare’s on Saturday, June 29, at 4 p.m., and we anticipate that they will begin their ministry with us on July 1.
You might have some questions about all this! Read on, and/or join Rev. Anne for an informal Q&A time following both services on June 2 and June 9 in the sanctuary.
Who is a curate?
A curate is a priest who has just been ordained, and their curacy is their first call at a church. Through a curacy, a new priest has the chance to learn from ministry with a healthy congregation and a rector who can provide guidance and feedback. It will be our job to provide a healthy, encouraging place for Rev. Toby to learn and grow as a priest, and we’ll get to learn and grow from their many gifts and work among us too.
How is a curate paid?
As a graduate of CDSP, Rev. Toby is eligible for a two-year curacy grant through Trinity Wall Street. Their salary and benefits will be paid for by Trinity Wall Street for the first two years. For the third year of Rev. Toby’s curacy, we have been awarded curacy funding from the Diocese of Michigan’s McElroy Trust, which will pay 50% of their salary and benefits for that year. St. Clare’s will pay the other 50% of their salary and benefits during that third year only. As a curate, Rev. Toby is only eligible to stay at St. Clare’s for three years; we will not have the option to hire them for a longer time with us. (We’ll send them off to serve another community!)
What will Rev. Toby do here for the next three years?
We’ve developed a job description centered around expanding our congregation’s ability to provide pastoral care, develop small group opportunities, and expand our outreach and advocacy work. Because we don’t know whether we’ll be able to afford a 2nd priest after this curacy, Rev. Toby will focus especially on working in partnership with lay leaders at St. Clare’s, leaving behind projects and programs and groups that can be self-sustaining. They’ll also do all the things I do- preach, preside, provide pastoral care, building relationships, communicating, administration, etc.
I’m incredibly excited and grateful—to Trinity Wall Street and the Diocese of Michigan for the financial support, to the Vestry for their wisdom in this process of discernment, to Rev. Toby for saying yes, to the Spirit’s working among all of us to make it happen! I’m grateful for all of you, because I know that this community will be a gracious and loving place for someone in these important first years of priestly ministry.
This gift couldn’t come at a better time for us. We are growing in many ways here at St. Clare’s, and my fear has been that we would hit the limits of my capacity, time, and energy in ways that would stifle that growth, or make it more difficult. It certainly wasn’t something we expected, though, so the surprise and joy as it’s unfolded has just been really exciting. I think Rev. Toby’s qualities (which we already know from our time together last summer!) of steadiness, kindness, and honesty, along with their gifts as a pastor, as a person who invites people to contemplation and reflection, and as a person who is curious and appreciates the gifts of others will fit in well here and will invite us to further growth and a deepening relationship with God as well.
In the coming weeks, we’ll have a few opportunities for questions and more information about this new beginning. But for now, we get to celebrate!
Rev. Anne