The Rev. Stephen Zimmerman currently serves at the Chapel of St. Andrew in Boca Raton, Florida, where he has been rector since 1986. He has also served churches in Grenada, Mississippi and Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.

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Essay Responses

1. What are you passionate about in your ministry, in your personal life, and in the world around you?

I am passionate about my faith in Jesus Christ, and about the Church that God is building in the world, particularly as I experience it within the Episcopal Church, and the Anglican tradition. I love being a priest, preaching the Gospel, celebrating the Eucharist, overseeing and coordinating the mission of the church, leading people to faith and commitment to Christ, and encouraging them to live their faith in their daily lives, as members of the Church.

I have developed a catechumenal process that helps seekers explore how God has guided them in their lives, and acquire the tools and resources of the Church, including liturgy, prayer and sacraments to discern God’s call to serve Christ in their lives, as Christians in the world today. As a result, I have witnessed the Christian communities I have served reach out to the community and the world by feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, and witnessing to their faith in their community, and in mission to the world. For example, nearly a dozen members of my present congregation have discerned a call to the priesthood or diaconate. Others have entered full-time professional lay ministry, and we have had numerous mission trips to Latin America, Africa, and Madagascar. I believe that the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit is the most decisive, exciting, and present reality in the history of the cosmos, and that living into the meaning, purpose and life of Christ gives meaning, direction and purpose to our life today. I value the traditions and freedom of the Christian faith, as it is expressed in our Book of Common Prayer and in our life together. I can not imagine being a Christian in any other denomination, and I am passionately committed to helping other Christians, as well as Episcopalians, understand our unique expression of the Christian faith that grounds us in the historic faith of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, and allows each of us to “work out our own salvation” in the Holy Communion of the Church today.

In my personal life, I am passionate about my wife, Kathy, and our life together. We met in high school, and have been married for thirty eight years. We have a grown son, Jonathan, who is engaged to be married. When not at work, Kathy and I enjoy spending time together. We enjoy reading and watching films, and we have two dogs that keep us entertained and amused. I also enjoy listening to music, and playing my guitar. I belong to several clubs that trade live music, which keeps my interest in “the classics” up. I also reading history and literature, and have an interest in modern science, particularly in cosmology, Big Bang and string theory, but my interest is severely limited by my understanding.

2. Please elaborate on an occasion or experience, during your ministry, of significant personal growth or change.

Shortly after I had become rector of my first parish in a racially divided town of about fourteen thousand people in Mississippi, a parishioner proposed renovating an old building into a retirement home. I had been rector for less than a year, but I told the Vestry, “We all know this is a long shot, and will probably never happen, we have to let people know that nothing is too big for the Church of Jesus Christ.” At first we explored placing the building on the historic register, but there were no state funds, and federal guidelines put limits on the modifications we could make. Then, at a church conference in Atlanta, I asked someone from “815″ if the national Church office knew about retirement homes. Indeed, they did. A representative visited us, and recommended a federal HUD program. We could not save the building, but the vestry made a commitment to ministry.

So, we embarked on a multi million dollar retirement home project. We discovered that we were not just a little church in a poor state, but part of the diocese and Episcopal Church. Both U.S. Senators were Episcopalians. The national Church guided us through the application process and the diocese put up escrow funds. We were awarded 2.8 million dollars to build the retirement home.

Then, we were sued. Some citizens objected to an integrated retirement home on Main Street. Bible study groups in town circulated petitions. The church split. We were taken to Federal Court. The weekend the law suit hit the news, a senior matriarch of the congregation called my wife. “I want you to sit with me on Sunday,” she said. This quiet act of leadership saved the Church. The retirement home was built, and soon became the pride of the community. The Bishop dedicated the building in the largest public religious service the town had seen, and afterwards, proud residents took newspaper reporters on a tour of their new home.

I learned to rely on the whole Church, and to trust in God. I learned that lay ministry is more than serving as a lay reader on Sunday, but that architects, businessmen, governors and senators are also lay ministers. I learned that the most courageous leadership sometimes comes from the frailest among us.
At one point I told the bishop, that it was painful to see people who loved the church, but opposed the project in the congregation. I hurt for them. The Bishop told me, “I don’t want you not to care about them. And I don’t want you to stop doing what you’re doing. So, just stand there and hurt.”

So, I learned to stand firm, and to love my enemies. I learned that the Church is bigger than the congregation and the diocese, and even the institution. I learned that we contend with powers and principalities, and that as we live into the death and resurrection of Jesus, we experience the power of the Holy Spirit to change the world.

3. What are the touchstones in your faith that will guide your responses to the issues now facing—some would say threatening—the Episcopal Church and the world-wide Anglican Communion.

The touchstone in my faith is that Jesus Christ is the firstborn of all creation, the Head of the Church, and the author of my salvation. I believe that the genius of the Anglicanism is that it has had the courage to insist on this truth, as the sole source of authority in the Church and hope for the world. This faith that is the source of Anglican liberty, and the constant in every controversy.

When the Reformation asked, “who has the authority to tell you what to do?” Catholics answered that the Church has authority, because Jesus gave the keys to the kingdom to Peter. Protestants said only the Bible -for Luther, because it contained the Gospel, and for Calvin, because it is the Word of God. Anglicans said only Jesus Christ, the Risen Lord.

Luther’s freedom of the Gospel from the Law offered little moral guidance, but to “sin boldly,” (and trust in the mercy of Christ.) Calvin’s insistence that the moral laws of the Bible are still binding on Christians led to were experiments to create societies based on Biblical laws in Geneva and Salem, and London. So, when the Calvinist Puritans came to power in 1649, they closed the theaters, dissolved parliament, and established a dictatorship.

Anglicans resisted the claims of the Church and the Bible, as a law book for society. Only Jesus Christ, who was not only Jesus of Nazareth, but also the Word of God, Who was in the Beginning with God, through Whom All things were made, and Who had not only become flesh and dwelt among us, but also risen from the dead, and ascended into heaven, where He sits now at the Right Hand of the Father, and intercedes for the Church - only He through Whom the Holy Spirit is poured out on all believers, and not just the clergy, or apostles, could tell Christians what to do. So, the final seat of moral authority was not the cathedra of the bishop, or the pulpit of the preacher, but the conscience of the individual.

Anglicans agreed with Calvin that the Bible, was “the Word of God,” and they agreed with Luther that it “contained all things necessary to salvation.” However it was the Word of God because it bore “witness” to Christ, who fulfilled the Law, and it was the Bible’s witness to the Person of Christ, “whose service is perfect freedom,” that gave the Bible its authority. As a Holy Communion, the Church was larger than a Confession of faith, and included Protestants and Catholics, High Church and Low, Liberal and Conservative.

Disputes were always evidence that the Church had not discerned the mind of Christ. The Anglican Via Media held that Truth was comprehensive, and would encompass the truths of both sides. In the meantime, to settle such disputes, without resorting to schism or Civil War, Anglicans came up with a unique and courageous instrument to protect the conscience and the peace: debate and the secret ballot.