Once people meet seminarians and find out that the church doesn’t pay for us to go to seminary and that it is a problem, people are so generous.

I started seminary directly after my undergraduate education, for which I am pretty indebted. I’m also accruing a considerable amount of debt in seminary. Seven years of school, that’s a lot of money.

It’s easy to feel self-righteous and ask why isn’t the church doing more for me or why isn’t the seminary doing more for me, but they don’t have that kind of money either.

If the church is serious about having young, quality priests, what is appropriate for the church to do? Other denominations are much better about financing their seminarians.

I feel the Episcopal Church is consistently fighting this image that we’re the church of the establishment. If we’re going to be serious about not being a church for only rich, white people, then we need to make sure that there are other types of people in our seminaries. Frankly, those are the only people who can pay for it. If we’re going to be serious about having young people, women and people of color as priests, we’ve got to figure out how the church can make that happen financially.

Once people meet seminarians and find out that the church doesn’t pay for us to go to seminary and that it is a problem, people are so generous. I’ve been shocked by how generous the people in my parish have been. Their understanding is, “He has a lot of debt from college; he has no way of making money; he’s poor. None of us are rich, but let’s try to help him out.”

After people become aware of the problem, I think they will be willing to help because they realize that they will reap the benefits after we graduate and become ordained. If you think of it as an investment in your future leaders, how can you not support that?  It’s a question of educating the church at large.