When the Rev. Bill Smith was offered the position of chaplain to the Daughters of the King (DOK), the retired priest appropriately prayed about it. After all, he has always been enamored with the DOK’s primary role as being a powerhouse of prayer.
Smith’s prayers were answered when he officially was appointed chaplain at the DOK Central Florida Fall Assembly on Sept. 21, 2017. Approximately 180 to 200 Daughters and clergy were present for the occasion, including Bishop Greg Brewer, who earlier this year made the chaplain offer to Smith.
“He offered me the position of chaplain to the Daughters of the King, a position that a good friend of mine, Father Ed Weiss, was giving up,” said Smith in his delightful British accent. “I gather Father Ed suggested my name to Bishop Greg. (My wife), Paula, and I prayed about this offer and we agreed, as I put it to the bishop, when your bishop says, ‘Jump,’ you say, ‘How high?’ unless you’re a submariner, when you say, ‘How deep?’”
Smith’s enthusiasm for the DOK can be traced to his days as a parish priest in Western Michigan and Central Florida. “I have been very appreciative of the ministry of the Daughters,” he said. “Their primary role is to be a powerhouse of prayer, and I have been blessed to work with Daughters who are powerful women of prayer.
“In Western Michigan, the diocesan policy is that a priest should never be alone with a parishioner of the other gender, so it was always my practice to visit the sick in the company of at least three Daughters of the King,” Smith said. “An important part of ministry, it seems to me, is the laying on of hands on the sick, and here again I have always made it my practice to carry out this ministry with at least one Daughter. I do this for two reasons: first, when the healing takes place, no one can give me any of the credit; and, secondly, if a woman asks that hands be placed over the site of the disease, a woman can do it when a man should not, something that is very important in an age of so much alleged sexual misconduct.”
Smith said he draws his current responsibilities from a small tome that details what the chaplain to the Daughters should do. He said his chief role will be to serve as “advisory to the president and the board in the diocese, as a teacher to the Daughters diocesewide through retreats and other means, such as an occasional seasonal meditation, and to pray for and with the Daughters.”
The chaplain position is the latest for Smith, who has “unretired” a number of times through the years. But his travels have helped him adjust nicely.
Smith was made a deacon at York Minster (England) on Trinity Sunday 1964 by Archbishop Donald Coggan and subsequently ordained a priest by him on Trinity Sunday 1965. After serving a title at Saint Mary’s Tadcaster (North Yorkshire, U.K.) from 1964 to 1966, he moved to the Diocese of Jamaica at the invitation of Bishop Percival Gibson.
“From then on, I began to serve as what has been variously described as a worker priest or nonstipendiary priest or honorary assistant priest,” Smith said. “In Jamaica, I taught in three high schools: St Hugh’s in Kingston, Kingston College, and St Jago’s in Spanish Town.”
Smith returned to the U.K. in late 1968 and served as the community relations officer to the Borough of Greenwich in 1969. But his stay there was short-lived, as the U.S. beckoned.
The English priest moved to New York City and joined the congregation of St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery in 1970, an experience he won’t soon forget. “There, I was one of five priests, none of us receiving a salary. I earned my income working for a couple of years in a printery in midtown Manhattan before being employed by the United Nations as an editor-translator,” Smith said.
He married Paula at St. Mark’s in 1972. She shared (and shares) his work ethic. “She has had an active role in our ministry, even while being the mother of three children and overseeing a series of households wherever the United Nations and the Episcopal Church have moved me,” Smith said.
In 1976, the U.N. transferred Smith to its regional office in Bangkok, where he was licensed by the Bishop of Singapore to serve at Christ Church, Bangkok, as an honorary assistant. “My ecclesiastical duties took me to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand and to Vientiane in Laos and to Hanoi in Vietnam. My United Nations duties took me to several other countries in East Asia and the Pacific, and sometimes I would be called upon by a local parish priest to preach.”
The U.N. transferred Smith in 1985 to Nairobi, where he was licensed by the Archbishop of Kenya to serve as an honorary assistant priest, initially in the parish of Saint Mary’s, Kabete. Smith was later moved to the Cathedral, All Saints’. “I celebrated the Eucharist in English, Swahili and Kikuyu, but I only preached in English, an interpreter providing a translation into the language of the service,” Smith said.
A decade later, he retired from the U.N. and accepted the position of interim priest to St. Mary’s, Cadillac, in the Diocese of Western Michigan. “I did receive a small stipend from the parish. In addition to parochial ministry, I served on the Executive Council of the Diocese, its Finance Committee, and the Cursillo Commission,” he said.
Smith retired again in mid-2000 and moved to Port St. Lucie and joined the congregation of Holy Faith, “primarily because it was in the same zip code area as our home,” he said. “Father Dan Moore invited me to assist him, and when he moved on in 2002 I was invited to be the interim priest. A new rector came on board in 2004, but he soon moved away.
“‘Father John’ Hagood then served the parish until his retirement in 2008, when again I became the interim priest until the arrival of Father Orlando Addison,” Smith said. “I still assist at Holy Faith from time to time as Father Orlando requests, and I serve other parishes as the need arises.”
Now Smith will serve the DOK as its chaplain – a role he prayed about not so long ago.