New Holy Trinity rector,also a nurse, knows the power of healing By Annette Esterheld Staff Writer
When she was in seminary, the Rev. Leslie St. Louis told everyone she would prefer not to focus her ministry on children, but "God had different ideas," she said.
St. Louis' first job was associate pastor in youth and family services at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Rochester, N.Y. Her second job? She's the new rector at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church and that includes a responsibility for a school with 620 students.
"My friends kept saying to me that God keeps sending you to kids," she told the Blade-News. "It must be where God wants me to be."
St. Louis said she has many nieces and nephews, but no children of her own. What she did have was a whole lifetime, well, over 20 years, job experience as a surgical scrub nurse and clinic administrator in a cancer unit for a major medical center in Albuquerque, N.M.
Like so many people find, St. Louis said, "God had other ideas."
Just answering the call to study for the priesthood in the Episcopal Church was a journey for her. She first acknowledged the desire when she was 22 years old. Her grandfather had died and her family asked her to do a eulogy at his funeral.
"The priest asked me to speak from the pulpit. I spoke on life and resurrection and I felt right being there," said St. Louis. But this was the 1980s, she said, and the Episcopal Church had only started ordaining women in the mid-1970s.
She said, "I was not sure how to become a priest. The pathway was not clear."
St. Louis also believed she was involved in ministry in her day job in the hospital system.
"The call kept coming from God. Sometimes it would feel like a nudge. Other times it was like God was hitting me over the head with a two-by-four," she said. "Being a nurse is caretaking, but it's not the same. I wanted to be involved in the nonphysical. For me the spiritual component was missing and God just kept talking to me."
"One day it was clear that my journey was changing, that the hospital part of my journey was done," she said. "I felt peaceful and joyful with the realization that that part of my life was over."
There were a couple of tugs for her - one, family; the second, music. "All my family had settled in the Albuquerque area where I had moved with my parents when I was 16 years old. Before that I was a military brat and we lived all over, mostly overseas," she said. "Deciding to go to seminary after I did the discernment process meant moving away from my entire family."
St. Louis has been involved in music ministry since she started singing in choirs as a young child. Along the way she added flute playing and "a little" piano playing.
"I sang in choirs all the time and loved that role in worship. For me to become a priest, I knew I'd never be able to sing in the choir in the same way," she said. "Giving up singing in choir was a consideration as I thought of entering the ministry. I knew that role would change."
St. Louis hasn't given up music and singing. For her, the "deepest worship experiences happen through music."
"Songs like 'Amazing Grace' and 'How Great Thou Art' are part of creating liturgy. Music is a tool in the worship tool chest," she said. "In the Episcopal Church the responsibility for liturgy of the church is entirely on the priest. You can hire a music director, but ultimately, music, like other pieces of liturgy, falls on the rector."
St. Louis began the interview process with Holy Trinity in February. Her job at St. Paul's was to rebuild the youth program for infants through college age and it was "well on the way."
She said she was looking nationally and was a bit surprised that Holy Trinity would consider her since she had no experience with a church that had a school. "From my first phone conversation and through my first interview, it was clear that the Holy Spirit was at work," she said.
Things fell into place, including selling her house in Rochester on April 13, her first day at Holy Trinity.
Holy Trinity has had an interim pastor since the Rev. Tom Andrews retired after over 30 years. In the past 18 months, a search process included looking at dozens of candidates from around the country before St. Louis was hired.
"It's difficult to follow a long-term pastor and an interim leader who also did good work," she said. "My initial work will be to figure out all the relationships and work on how to grow the parish."
On St. Louis' first Sunday the readings talked about Jesus as the Good Shepherd and she told parishioners in her first sermon that rather than being called a shepherd to her flock at Holy Trinity, she prefers being a "sheepdog."
"There's only one shepherd and that's Jesus. I don't want to be compared to him, rather what I can do is function as a sheepdog in the role of nipping and guiding to Jesus, the one true Shepherd," she said.
St. Louis will be installed officially as rector of Holy Trinity during a Holy Eucharist celebration Sunday, June 1, at 5 p.m. All are invited.
