Greetings! I hope this email finds you rested and relaxed, and still enjoying summer. This past weekend, I left for a 10-day mission trip with Tom Gebhard to Malawi. I wish I could make this announcement in person, but I am so excited to share this good news that I didn't want it to wait for my return!
I am thrilled to announce that Genevieve "Jenny" Campbell has accepted my invitation to join the
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Jenny Campbell
New Director of Youth Ministries
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staff of St. David's as Director of Youth Ministries. Jenny has been deeply immersed in the cadence of the Episcopal Church in several different congregations throughout her life. During her junior and early senior high school years, St. George's Camp in the Diocese of Virginia helped shape her deep faith. A few years later, while studying at the University of Virginia, she returned to serve the camp as a counselor and began her journey in youth-related work. While at UVA, Jenny was an active member of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Charlottesville, where she participated in several aspects of church ministry, including Women's Prayer Group and the Skinner Scholars program. Jenny also made an offering of her artistic skills with the creation of several original art pieces for St. Paul's Stations of the Cross.
One of her references wrote this about Jenny:
I have to say, Jenny's enthusiasm and joy, together with such empathy and commitment, is a winning combination. I have found Ms. Campbell to be an exceptional student, ever so intelligent, personable, hard-working, gifted. She carries her many gifts so lightly. I recommend her to you without reservation.... Observing undergraduates over 30-some years, I think presently we are in a very idealistic moment, a kind of return, where questions of faith, social commitment, art, and aesthetics co-mingle. This romanticism I see all across our university; I see liberal arts students at the edge of this phenomenon. How we should live is a question hard to divide, and quite pressing. Genevieve Campbell is one of these idealistic graduates; I think she is near the very ideal of the kind of person to direct youth ministry.
I believe this combination of talent and spiritual gifts are just the right mix for what we need in youth ministry at St. David's right now. While a very recent college graduate, Jenny brings an abundance of joy, love, enthusiasm, and depth of spirit. She is open to learning and will bring us new expressions of ministry, well-suited for the modern realities of urban life in Austin.
I am grateful to the Youth Vestry for all their help with prayerful discernment, as we examined resumes and written responses, held Skype interviews, and then face-to-face interviews, and finally to the selection of Jenny as our final candidate. Even more so, I thank them all for the work they have done over the past year-plus in leading the youth ministry during the interim. Special thanks go out to the Rev. Chad McCall and our Youth Intern, Elizabeth Mauro, for their leadership during this time as well.
I'll have the privilege of introducing Jenny to you in person on her first day, Welcome Home Sunday, August 21. Please come meet her that day and work to support her ministry in the years to come.
Peace,
Fr. Chuck
