The Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida will celebrate the ordination of eight deacons raised up from congregations inside and outside of the diocese on Saturday, Sept. 8, at The Cathedral Church of Saint Luke in Orlando. To commemorate this achievement, the ordinands joined us for a Q&A about their religious background, leadership roles, how the call to become a deacon transpired, and what their goals are for their respective ministries.
Part 4: Meet Robert Osborne, Mallene Stowe
Robert Osborne
Osborne
Current church/capacity: Sponsoring parish: Iglesia Episcopal Jesús de Nazaret, Orlando. Recent graduate of Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania.
Deacon title: Transitional Diaconate.
Please briefly summarize your religious background as far as your upbringing and any leadership roles you may have held.
In terms of leadership roles in the Church, I have taught Sunday school, youth group, and hosted Bible studies, in addition to leading young adult outings, mission trips, and various fundraising ventures. I have also served as an acolyte, thurifer, and lector, and I have worked with prison ministries, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, and helped convene services within nursing homes.
I have been involved with and worked on a number of projects with the Episcopal Church in Connecticut; the Catholic Archdiocese of Jos, Nigeria; the Anglican Diocese of Kaduna, Nigeria; the Anglican Diocese of Mukono, Uganda; the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem; and the Anglican/Episcopal Diocese of Egypt with North Africa and the Horn of Africa.
How did the call to become a deacon transpire for you?
I am a cradle Episcopalian. I felt God calling me toward a life of service ever since I was a child. I felt God directing me to move toward a vocation where I would have to make morally difficult decisions. I have spent much of my life so far consumed with an interest in making simple ones: feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, visit those in prison, seek the welfare of my city of occupancy. In the past few years I have heard God calling me to places where I have had to make difficult decisions that are morally perplexing. Shepherding members of God’s fold and resources toward actualizing the Kingdom of God in this contemporary world is the most perplexing thing I can fathom.
How do you hope to help the Episcopal Church as a deacon?
I am still discerning in what capacity I might serve the Church.
Mallene Stowe
Stowe
Current church/capacity: St. James, Ormond Beach, assigned to serve at Church of the Holy Child, Ormond Beach after ordination.
Deacon title: Vocational Diaconate.
Please briefly summarize your religious background as far as your upbringing and any leadership roles you may have held.
My home church for more than a dozen years, the church in which I was raised up for diaconal ministry, is St. James, Ormond Beach. I served there as a lector and lay eucharistic minister, a member of Daughters of the King, assisted with confirmation classes, sang in the choir, and assisted with Vacation Bible School. For my field work, I was assigned to the Church of the Holy Child, Ormond Beach, and God has called me to serve there as their deacon after ordination. Bishop (Greg) Brewer has made that placement official, and I have begun the transition.
How did the call to become a deacon transpire for you?
As a child, I was brought up in the Baptist Church, and I really don’t remember a time that I didn’t know Jesus as my Lord and Savior. Despite some time in my teenage years when I spent more Sundays at the beach than in church, I always felt like there was something more God was calling me to. I returned to church before my senior year of high school, and by the time I was a junior in college, I had been director of the Training Union, had served on a pastoral search committee, was active in Bible studies, and had been involved in the music program, including singing in a women’s trio. I later found my way to Grace Episcopal Church, Ocala, in my mid-20s and was confirmed by Bishop (William) Folwell in 1982, and now I have been an Episcopalian most of my life. After my children were born, they were baptized at Grace and later attended the day school there.
When my family moved to Ormond Beach in 1998, we attended a Methodist church where other family members were already actively involved, but I missed our liturgy and finally visited St. James in 2005 and soon realized that the Episcopal Church was my church home. After a few years, and while I was earning my M.Ed. in Instructional Technology, a friend at St. James suggested I consider diaconal ministry at some point. She knew I had chosen the instructional technology degree path over seminary as I just could not figure out how to make that happen and continue to teach school, which I needed to do.
About a year after I graduated with my master’s degree, I attended the Conference on Ministry and began classes at the diocesan Institute for Christian Studies. The diaconal program was, at that time, a three-year program, but my journey was not without some twists, turns, and delays. My mother became unexpectedly very ill and died within a few months after I began my studies. There were other major life events that occurred within my family which required me to take time out. When I resumed the process last year, things fell into place for me to complete my training.
How do you hope to help the Episcopal Church as a deacon?
I have learned many things through this journey, and perhaps one of the greatest is that following God and His call will be nothing short of an adventure. Things do not always happen as we expect or when we expect, but we can be assured that if we seek God’s will, he will bless our efforts and work out his purpose for our lives. He has changed my life in ways I never dreamed possible and is using my life experiences to be the servant He has called me to be.
My ministry as a deacon will involve supporting others in their ministries, and it will involve teaching because that is what I do, but I believe God also wants me to use my training with technology for online outreach in addition to online learning. We must be willing to go where people are, and people are online, and they are at work and involved in many other activities when we typically worship. Our worship need not be limited to Sunday mornings, nor to specific locations. God is not constrained by human boundaries.
When my children graduated from high school and reached their college years, I was taken aback at how little the church had to offer for them. Although my kids have moved through those years and have found their way back to church, that need is still there, and I want to explore new ways of reaching out to young adults—and many others—who may be better served by a form of church that looks a little different than what we know and love. I believe I am in a position to be a bridge between the traditional church and these new ways of sharing God’s love with our hurting and broken world. With the United States now being the third largest mission field in the world, we cannot afford, for the cause of Christ, to just hope that those who do not know Him will simply show up on Sunday. The Great Commandment and Great Commission demand more and better of us.
These are exciting times in which we live, and I feel incredibly blessed that God has called me “for such a time as this.”