Stuart Kenworthy ’84: Forming and Transforming lives for Jesus Christ, the Church, and this beautiful and broken world

It was Michaelmas, 1982, and I stood in the first row of the long choir section in the Chapel of The Good Shepherd as Dean Jim Fenhagen and the faculty processed in for the early evening liturgy in which all entering students would write their names in a large leather-bound book. Incense was billowing upwards, and the chapel choir was chanting a numinous piece of early music which ascended with the sweet fragrance that filled the air. I would be in that same choir pew for every liturgy during the first year—moving up one higher in the next.

At that time there were 175 students registered in various degree programs and, therefore, who would sometimes be on the Close in Chelsea Square. This was our official entry into General Seminary. The final time our names would echo off those sacred walls would be during the annual liturgy remembering those of the GTS community who had departed this life during the previous 12 months.

The Chapel was both geographically and spiritually at the center of General Seminary. Anyone who has spent time there knows this. At that time, one was expected to be present in the chapel for many of the daily offices and Holy Eucharists throughout each week. If for some reason you were absent for long, a faculty member, another student, or even the Dean might see the need for a pastoral inquiry.

It had been a long journey in arriving in the Episcopal Church and that chapel and seminary in 1982 at 31 years of age. I had already had seven years of ordained ministry in the Methodist Church, serving parishes in Boston and Philadelphia. In Philadelphia the churches were in the southwest part of the city, a hardscrabble, racially tense, and rapidly declining neighborhood in numerous ways. It was there that many strands of experiences and influences over many years would finally coalesce into initially seeking Holy Orders in the Episcopal Church, a process that lasted about a year.

The first conversation in this long transition was with the near neighbor and Rector of historic St. James, Kingsessing, Church, (Old Swedes, 1762) which was built on an entire city block, just like General Seminary. Next it was on to St. Stephen’s Church at 10th and Chestnut in Center City, and now, sadly, closed. A vibrant and very large healing ministry took place there several days each week. And finally, on to St. Martin’s in the Fields where I met for over an hour with its Rector, Father Frank T. Griswold, who would go on to the episcopacy in Chicago and later as Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. We remained friends from that day on. From him, and many others, I discovered that ministry is what we all do, but priestly ministry is an identity, a call, that lives within: A gift from God to be discovered, and affirmed.

Soon I was moving through the official processes of the Diocese of Pennsylvania (including Confirmation). Bishop Lyman Ogilby urged me to enter General Seminary for two years of Anglican Studies. Arriving at General with Fran (married two years), I was grateful and excited to be in this historical and vital seminary where everything, in a sense, began and ended in the Chapel – prayer, liturgy, and community. And where our first daughter, born in New York, was baptized in the embrace of the seminary community. 

It was exhilarating to be engaged in the best and most necessary academic learning of my life. My professors and mentors included great scholars like J. Robert Wright (in later years saying, “you can now call me Bob.” -- “OK, Father”), Thomas Talley, Philip Turner, Alan Jones, Richard Corney, and eminent church musicians like David Hurd and Bruce Neswick. 

That was academic life. Then there was the Refectory where we dined twice a day and lingered over Saturday brunches before returning to our studies or on to field work settings in the tristate area. The very large and historic Refectory was astonishingly beautiful with its soaring ceilings, leaded glass windows, and dark wood walls. It was a place where friendships formed, ideas were exchanged, and the connectivity of community was strengthened. And all under the gaze of a bust of Dean Augustus Hoffman (late 19th c.) on the mantle over the great fireplace with the inscription, “Manners Makyth Man” (!)

And, of course, New York City was the environment all around us, which needs no commentary. There is no place quite like it in the world, and it afforded so much more learning and wonderful experiences in manifold ways. For me, this included field work in St Luke’s/Roosevelt Hospital and two years as seminarian at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue. Later I went on to serve as curate there for over five years under the legendary priest, great preacher, church builder, and long-term rector, the Reverend Canon John G. B. Andrew.

Many times along the way I had to pinch myself when contemplating the riches that came from the seminary, the city, and all the people I met and worked with in those two years at General, and then seven more in Manhattan. It was a long way from Southwest Philadelphia. It was a long way from the Methodist Church, which I always remembered with thanks as bringing me to faith in childhood, youth, and beyond. And I also remembered Billy Graham who as a young boy I had watched on television in some awe as he preached in stadiums and arenas across our nation. 

Increasingly I have come to know how deeply General Seminary formed so many men and women over the long years of its existence. In the decades since leaving, whenever and wherever I met another General graduate there was almost an instant rapport. We knew, even without articulating it, how GTS had formed our lives and ministries and created a bond between us.

General prepared so many over centuries for a priesthood that would be gifted and entrusted to us, and for all the ways we then went on to serve Jesus Christ in this nation and around the world.

The reach and power of General’s influence followed into the place where I served as rector for over 23 years, Christ Church Georgetown in Washington, D.C., founded in the same year as GTS. In the first years there we began to gather three evenings a week in St. Jude’s Chapel for Evening Prayer (15-20 minutes). Soon it was five evenings a week. A couple of years later it was also Noonday Prayer each day. Daily Morning Prayer soon followed, mostly lay led. Three times a day, morning, noon, and evening, five days a week, people gathered to meet, pray, and accompany one another in our life and journey in Christ. In that lovely Chapel of St. Jude, the experience and influence of the Chapel of the Good Shepherd at General Seminary, all those years before, was still present and alive, beckoning all faithful and seekers to love God and join ourselves, in every circumstance of life, to the saving and reconciling love of Jesus Christ.

Now, in these later years of life, I have come to use the word “love” judiciously. I “like” pizza, baseball, reading, an evening with friends, walking for miles along the Potomac River or the beach in south Jersey. But I love God, my wife Fran, our three grown children, and the gift of life and faith. And I loved, and still do love, the General Theological Seminary. I love what it has been for over 200 years, and what it will be in the future, by God’s grace and leading.

All I have written here is not so much about the past and my good memories of a very important place in the heart of the Episcopal Church and New York City. Rather, it is a humble attempt to convey gratitude for all that GTS has provided for so many over long years – centuries – forming and transforming lives for Jesus Christ, for the Church, and for this beautiful and broken world.

And I pray, and hope in faith, this will be true for years to come.

The Rev. Canon Stuart A. Kenworthy, Diocese of Washington, General Theological Seminary 1984