Community Corner
Ordination Ceremony Set for Associate Chaplain
Middletown, R.I.—The Rev. Jackie Kirby, associate chaplain at St. George's School, will be ordained to the Episcopal priesthood.
Middletown, R.I.—The Rev. Jackie Kirby, associate chaplain at St. George’s School, will be ordained to the Episcopal priesthood during a special service presided over by the Rt. Rev. W. Nicholas Knisely, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island, on Thursday, Jan. 22, 2015, at 5:45 p.m. in the St. George’s Chapel.
A 2008 graduate of Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University, the Rev. Kirby also holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from New York University and a bachelor’s degree in literature from Yale. In addition to her chaplaincy duties at St. George’s, she teaches classes in religious studies. Prior to joining the St. George’s faculty in September 2014, Kirby taught writing at Boston University, and was the lead founder and board chair of the Frederick Douglass Charter School in Dorchester, Mass.
She said she felt called to the priesthood, and specifically to school chaplaincy, during a period of years in her adulthood.
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“My spiritual life just flourished,” said Kirby, who grew up attending an Episcopal church outside Baltimore, in the town of Owings Mills, Md. “And through the years it began to feel like I had two vocations: one in the church, and one as a teacher.”
Kirby said she attended divinity school hoping to find a way to bring together the two professions. “And now here I am, 10 years later, in my dream job!”
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Bishop Knisely said Kirby’s ordination—a church sacrament by which she will be blessed and set apart for the special tasks of preaching and teaching, pastoring the people and leading worship—will be “an exciting moment for all involved. For Dr. Kirby as she commits herself and her life to the discipline of ordained ministry, for our diocese and for St. George’s School as we will benefit from the amazing gifts she brings to her work, and most importantly the students who will, God willing, be inspired by the example she is setting in committing her whole self to serving God and others in the world.”
The Rev. Kirby lives in Jamestown, R.I., with her husband Ed and 6‐year-old daughter Annie.
