Late one afternoon Stephanie-Ann Wedderburn is busy in the office of Christ Church Parish Church doing routine paper work associated with her part-time job as the church’s assistant curate.
She is currently on holiday from the full-time job she has held for over 15 years, as warehouse supervisor at the upscale Sandpiper Hotel on the West Coast.
The Bayfield, St Philip resident wears a simple beige skirt suit, nails attractively-manicured (only because she is on holiday from her hotel job, she says), no make-up, though she is no plain Jane.
At age 46, Stephanie-Anne was ordained as a minister in the Anglican Church just last August.
She told Easy Magazine:“I think I finally made the decision about three years ago. All along I would have been very active in St Catherine’s Church. You know you came up in that era when only men were priests so it never really dawned on you that this is a role you could undertake. Even with the ordination of females about 19 years ago, even then it was not obvious it was something I wanted to do.”
She pursued the diploma in theology at Codrington College and went back to do the Bachelor of Arts.
Canon William Dixon became the priest in charge of her home church, St Catherine’s, and since she was studying at Codrington College he allowed her to do things at church. But it was participation in a vocations for ministry session during a patronal festival at St Mary’s Church in Bridgetown, that prompted her to answer the call to the priesthood.
Stephanie-Ann was ordained a deacon last year August. On November 14 she assisted with conducting her first services at Christ Church Parish Church.
“I always remember that date. That was when I got here for six o’clock. I had never been to church so early. I did three services that day, 6 a.m.; 7:45 a.m.; and 9:30 a.m. and by then I was exhausted.”
Now early services are the norm and she has adjusted.
It is a far different experience from childhood days when she went with her sister to the small missionary pentecostal church in the village of Bayfield, attended vacation Bible school and got involved in all the other activities of that church.
“I found there were the older people in the district, the Sister Wiltshires, the Sister Butchers, so you went to church. Even there the atmosphere was such that you wanted to learn more about Jesus, you learnt the creation story, about Noah and the Ark.”
She grew up with a heavy dose of church, attending Sunday school at St Catherine’s in the evening after having gone to the morning service at the mission church.
“Growing up I never really had any activity except church or school and the occasional fair.”
Now her life is crowded with church responsibilities, the responsibility for the storerooom at Sandpiper Hotel, with ballroom dance classes.
Like her boss Canon Austin Carrington, she is a ballroom dance enthusiast.
“I don’t have free time. I go to ballroom on Tuesday nights, some nights I will come here, there is a ballroom class here on Wednesday.
“We just organised a line dancing class at the hotel so that is Thursday nights and then some Sundays after Bible study after Evensong, there is line-dancing here (at the church’s parish centre next door) so I would simply just go across and sit down . . . so I relax that way.”
As if her cup were not full enough, Stephanie confesses she has been walking around with “the little tag on my purse for guitar lessons and there is a number I have to call. I will be taking up guitar lessons as well,” she vows.
How does she balance the jobs of hotel storeroom supervisor and Anglican cleric?
“I think I have a good relationship with management and even when I was doing the BA in theology, they were very supportive in the sense that whenever I had to attend class I would be allowed to go off. The same thing happened during my year at Codrington College and since graduating there is that flexibility in the sense that when I need to be here, [church] it is possible.
“I can always ask for the time to be here. What I have been doing though is with the canon’s understanding, to arrange my off day around what is happening at the church. I am entitled to two off-days a week. Sunday is definitely my day off from work, so the other day, what is major here I would take it to suit.”
Thursday is the day Holy Communion is administered to “sick and shut-in” members of the church, and she often takes the second day off to make those visits.
Stephanie-Ann loves to laugh, and throughout the interview she goes from hearty laughter to the seriousness of a woman fervent in her commitment to the mission of the priesthood. She wants to be an example to others who might consider the vocation.
“It is probably that the priesthood is not presented in a light as a viable ‘career’, people probably see it as something you do in your spare time. It is not projected as a way of life.”
But she believes there are some young people who are “interested in doing good things for people and you have to start from there . . . . It has always been my goal to allow young people to see that they have a role to play and that it is not a shameful job to work for Christ”.
Yet she is mindful today’s young people have a lot more options and distractions than she did.
“I look at my nephews age four and two and on Sunday mornings they are at home sleeping. At that age we would have been at Sunday School. It is kind of puzzling at times.”
Still single at 46, Stephanie-Ann has not ruled out marriage, perhaps to the “tall, dark and handsome” man. She breaks into fits of laughter as she repeats those words and admits” “I don’t have plans to get married right now. I am hoping it is still on the cards.
“I think after so many years you have a picture of the qualities you want in a partner. I am not a wimpy person. I feel you have to be strong somehow and able to defend your opinion.”
Meanwhile, her sights are set on eventually going into fulltime ministry, a direction in which her bosses at Sandpiper are aware she intends to pursue.
