Both the Rev. Canon Dr. Dan Smith, canon to the ordinary, and the Rev. Canon Ellis Brust, canon for clergy in transition and rector of St. Andrew’s, Fort Pierce, bring years of experience to their roles as officers of transition ministry for the Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida. The recent National Transition Officers Meeting for The Episcopal Church, held March 25-28 in Baltimore, Maryland, highlighted the importance of that experience and what it will mean for transition ministry in the days ahead.
“It has been years since I attended a Transition Officers Meeting, and being with Canon Smith and the 67 other transition officers from around the U.S. was time well spent,” Brust said. “We stayed at the Maritime Center outside Baltimore, and attendees came from as far away as Alaska and Hawaii, and from Maine to San Diego. The Diocese of Central Florida was one of the few with more than one canon in attendance, but this allowed us to connect with more of our colleagues from around The Episcopal Church. This is ‘connection’ intensive work, and having good working relationships with our sisters and brothers from across the country makes the work easier and joyful.”
Challenges in Transition Ministry
“Basically, the Office of Transition Ministry is in transition,” Smith said, explaining that fiscal cuts made at General Convention 2024 dropped $1.2 million a year from the personnel budget of The Episcopal Church’s newest presiding bishop, the Most Rev. Sean W. Rowe. As a result of this trimmed-down budget and Rowe’s commitment to streamline national church operations, “The staff who used to be at the Office of Transition Ministry aren’t there anymore,” Smith said. “So to a degree, the Office of Transition Ministry, at least as we know it, has ceased to exist.”
Smith explained that the database previously run by the OTM, which allowed transition officers to access candidate and church profiles, still exists but is also in flux and not consistently accessible by either clergy candidates or transition officers. “This means that the dioceses and transition officers like Canon Brust and me are going to have to do a sort of workaround for the time being,” he said. “And we’ve decided how we’re doing that, at least in Province IV.
“The heart of that OTM portfolio is a series of questions and answers, things like stewardship and how you deal with conflict, ministries that you’re particularly proud of, how you engage others, your outlook on liturgy – there are 11 questions to cover those areas,” he continued. “For the time being, we will continue to ask clergy to answer those questions and then do a full resume in connection with it. The reason that becomes important in the workaround is that we’ve trained the vestries to use those portfolios – the answers to those questions – because it’s the easiest way to compare apples to apples in a clergy search.”
Since the national database isn’t consistently accessible, Smith explained that he, Brust and other Province IV transition officers will share data with each other through personal connections, similar to the way he and Brust did in earlier days when they worked with clergy transitions in other dioceses. “Right now, when we have an opening, we are spending time contacting other transition officers and advertising those positions or contacting transition officers and telling them about clergy we have who are looking,” he said.
Hope for the Future
Despite the shifts and uncertainty, both Smith and Brust remain hopeful for the transition process overall. “There is a consultant who’s been hired to come up with a plan for the future,” Smith said. “Some of the provinces do have a sort of an online joining between transition officers of two or three provinces; I guess that’s their interim workaround. But Province IV transition officers get together every year, once in the fall and once in the spring. We’ve already been meeting with each other on a regular basis, which means I know my colleagues in Province IV. One of the reasons I took Canon Ellis to this national meeting is because he got to meet all of our colleagues from Province IV and do that networking because we’re back to conducting the process in a more old-school way.
“But we’re also going to do some things we believe will be proactive,” he said. “We don’t know this for certain yet, but we’re hoping that the transition officers from Province IV will meet with the Province IV bishops at their fall meeting to get their ideas on how we can better relate and do this work. This will take our meeting to a higher level. We’re all getting contacted from time to time and being asked questions by staff at the national church level, so I’ll keep answering any questions they send my way. But other than that, Canon Brust and I will keep doing what we’re doing, using our best practices and seeing what comes next.”
Smith also anticipates that the National Transition Officers Meeting, held triennially, will continue. This year’s gathering was put together by the Diocese of Rio Grande, whose bishop, the Rt. Rev. Michael Hunn, is a former transition officer with a heart for transition ministry. “He was a driving force in making sure this meeting kept happening,” Smith said.
The transition work of Brust, appointed in January by the Rt. Rev. Dr. Justin S. Holcomb as quarter-time canon for clergy in transition, is already making a difference in Central Florida, he added. “The addition of Canon Brust to the team has certainly allowed us to have far more personal contact with our search committees, and we believe that personal contact will lead to highly successful searches and calls.”
Both canons came away from the conference with the realization that, in terms of the transition process, the Diocese of Central Florida is in a good place. “We have five full-time openings right now, and we have 14 clergy looking for positions,” Smith said. “Canon Ellis or I are taking between four and six names – some from within our diocese and some from elsewhere – to every congregation looking for a clergy member. Most of our counterparts in other dioceses are lucky if they’re taking two or three names.”
“The future of transition ministries may be very different in the Diocese of Central Florida from many other dioceses,” Brust said. “We have a robust ministry development process for those called to the diaconate and priesthood, and we currently have more people in the ordination track than the majority of other dioceses. The Episcopal Church is in a challenging moment in our history, as we are ordaining only half the number of clergy retiring each year. There is a growing clergy shortage of priests nationwide. Central Florida can help mitigate some of that challenge through our strong ordination path. When we help another diocese find a strong new rector, vicar or associate priest, that’s a win for the kingdom of God.”