Disciple: An Interview with Bishop Jennifer Brooke-Davidson

The Rt. Rev. Jennifer Brooke-Davidson was announced as the assistant bishop of the Diocese of North Carolina on August 16. She spoke with the Disciple about her calling, ministry experiences and passions. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

[Image: The Rt. Rev. Jennifer Brooke-Davidson, new assistant bishop of North Carolina, ordains priests in the Diocese of Virginia. Photos throughout courtesy of Brooke-Davidson]

You are our new assistant bishop, and you just finished serving for three years as the assistant bishop in the Diocese of Virginia. What does an assistant bishop do? How is the role different from a bishop suffragan?
An assistant bishop does exactly what a bishop suffragan does, which is to share with the bishop diocesan in the leadership of the Church. That includes the Diocese, The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. As an assistant bishop, I have canonical status with voice and vote in the House of Bishops. The difference between a bishop suffragan and an assistant bishop is that a suffragan is elected under the canons of the diocese, and an assistant is called by the bishop diocesan and voted on by Convention. It’s actually different from diocese to diocese, but, in this diocese, that’s how it works.

An assistant bishop shares in proclaiming the Gospel, which in real terms means preaching and teaching as primary roles, as well as prayer. From day to day, the role includes visitations with the congregations and other ministries of the Diocese and support of the congregations and their leaders, particularly serving as a pastor to the clergy. In addition to all of that internal work, it includes a focus on working for justice and peace, which is clearly an important priority in the Diocese of North Carolina. And so that’s an area where I’m especially looking forward to continuing my work.

Often, the bishop diocesan will delegate oversight of certain areas of ministry to the assistant bishop. For Bishop Sam and me in North Carolina, that will include, among other things, Christian formation, mission strategy implementation and diaconal formation. I’m very excited about all of them. I have spent a lot of my ministry life in Christian formation at all levels, but I haven’t been as involved in that work as a bishop, so I’m really looking forward to supporting those ministries more directly again. And implementation of the North Carolina mission strategy just makes my heart sing.

Going back in time a little bit, where did you grow up?
That goes back a long way! I was born and raised in Corpus Christi, which is on the coast, kind of where the ranch land of South Texas meets the Gulf of Mexico. There are fabulous beaches, horses and cows, all the things people think about when they think about Texas, but also a rich multicultural environment with a deep and complex history.

I grew up in the Church of the Good Shepherd in Corpus Christi, a big, old Episcopal church that my grandparents were very involved in building, so that is very much a part of my background. I was in the Junior Daughters of the King, and I was in the choir, but women and girls did not serve otherwise, except behind the scenes, in the worship space. Women were not ushers. Women couldn’t serve on vestries. There were no girl acolytes.

Shortly after General Convention changed some of those rules in the ’70s—or possibly before the change officially happened—my grandfather, who had been a lay reader forever, had me read the lesson with him one Sunday. It was one of the most formative experiences I’ve ever had, to have that role of leading in worship. I was probably 10 or 11. It was a really big deal for me.

[Image: Brooke-Davidson preaches for the first time as a bishop from the pulpit of the church where she grew up, and where she once served as a lay reader with her grandfather.]

I graduated from high school in Corpus Christi, and then I went to Yale. After college, I went back to Austin for law school, which is where I met my husband, Carrick. He got a job in the honors program for the Justice Department, so that’s how we got to Washington, D.C.

Professionally, you started out in commercial financial law. What did that entail?
Mainly contracts, lending, corporate and real estate. I had a subspecialty of lending for radio station acquisitions, which is a weird subspecialty for technical reasons.

When did you first start to hear a call to ordained ministry? It must have been a really big transition.
Initially I couldn’t identify it as a call to ordained ministry because that really wasn’t part of my universe. There were women priests by the time I was practicing law, but they were pretty rare, and they hadn’t been part of my personal experience. I started hearing a call toward some kind of spiritual leadership or role in the Church, but I didn’t have any place to park it. It was just kind of there, sometimes literally in dreams.

I had become much less active in church during the years when I was living in D.C., and it wasn’t until we moved back to Texas that my call started to take shape. My law firm, where I worked for a decade, wouldn’t consider allowing part-time work, so after my daughters were born, I found another law job. It was a part-time position, but they were still upset when I stuck to that part-time schedule. So I just quit. We decided to move back to Texas, where my parents were, and sometimes I attended my mother’s small country Episcopal church, St. Stephen’s in Wimberley, where they had a day school our older daughter attended.

That was where the holy hook caught me. I started volunteering for the school, and then for church, and I got involved in family ministry. One thing led to another. As you do in a small church, I gradually did all the different jobs. One year I was down at Diocesan Council [West Texas’ version of Annual Convention] in the Rio Grande Valley, and, while sitting in a shuttle bus, I was praying for God to give me some kind of guidance. I said, “What do you want me to do? I don’t really understand what my role is in this thing.” And I got this very clear answer, and the response was “Build my church.”

At that time I was serving on the St. Stephen’s Building Committee, so I thought that’s what the message meant—and we got that church built! So then I thought, well, maybe the call is more about congregational development. So I started doing lots and lots of work in congregational development, which I love. My father was serving as the bishop’s deputy for congregational development, so I learned a lot from him and did a lot of work around the diocese.

As time went on, it became more and more clear this call was about something else. It was about ordained ministry and building the Church in a larger sense.

At the time, it was still difficult for women to get on the ordination track, but the time came when the door opened for me to enter the ordination process.

I stayed in full-time work at St. Stephen’s, where I was by then the director of evangelism and formation. I was also doing full-time seminary at Fuller Seminary in a low residency program. I absolutely loved it, with its focus on joining the mission of God and serving a church that is, in the words of Lesslie Newbigin, “a sign, an instrument and a foretaste of the Kingdom of God.”

So that’s how my call happened: a little bit at a time, and then, one day, it’s just all in.

Can you tell me a little bit about the churches you served as a priest?
I served in two. The first was St. Stephen’s in Wimberley, where I had been for a number of years, and stayed on as the assistant rector for a couple of years.

When I got there in 1997, St. Stephen’s was essentially a country chapel composed mostly of retired people. It had an incredibly well-formed laity, but they didn’t have young families. In fact, when I first went, I was reluctant to go regularly because, as I kept telling my mother, she was the youngest person there!

That changed when three of us, all young mothers, connected with one another and started developing a family ministry. We worked really hard on it, and the church, for that and other reasons, grew tremendously. Over the 12 years I was there, it went from 120 on Sunday morning to almost 300. To be with the church through that kind of transformation was amazing.

The other thing that happened during the last few years I was there was a new rector put a lot of emphasis on welcoming newcomers and intentional formation for adults. From there, we were able to develop an incredible missional outreach focus.

[Image: Throughout her ministry, Brooke-Davidson has focused on formation and family ministry.]

Every seven weeks, we went out into the community to do something for people who could do nothing in return. That was our mission. We rebuilt houses. We held the biggest food drive in the history of that county. We held “free sales” where we’d fill a school cafeteria or gym with donated goods that we just gave away. The place was radioactive with Holy Spirit energy.

I served at St. Stephen’s for two years after I was ordained, and then I accepted a call to serve as vicar of St. Elizabeth’s in Buda, Texas. It was a struggling mission on the first exit south of Austin, so the community was growing like wildfire, but the little church was pretty stuck and had been for a while.

We began with a very strong focus on Bible study for the leadership and helping them learn to discern what God was up to in the community. In the beginning, there was pretty significant turnover. Some folks who were not excited about that approach transferred to nearby churches, and many new people came in. We developed a whole new leadership team, and the church grew in spiritual health and then in size, from about 40 people to about 100 people in five years.

I think that had to do with the leadership being very, very focused on listening to God in Scripture and in the world around them. The real turning point came with a strong prayer team focused significantly and powerfully on the health of that church. When that happened, things just started taking off. It became a really outwardly focused, healthy place.

And then there was an announcement that they were going to elect a bishop suffragan for the Diocese of West Texas….

I believe that Church leadership discernment really is a community thing. I think it’s not about deciding you want to be a bishop; I think it’s about being called forth by the community. When you look at the great bishops in the history of the Church, that’s what happened.

I hadn’t really actively considered standing for election. One of the things we were doing at St. Elizabeth’s was a program called The Story, with the whole congregation reading through the Bible in one year. I was preaching all the way through the Bible, which is a rare treat for a preacher, and one Sunday I preached a passionate sermon about the call of Abraham—how, when God calls, you don’t know what’s going to happen; you just have to say yes and go.

I went home, and my phone rang. And I thought: This is trouble. And it was. It was a good, trusted friend of mine who said, I really want you to reconsider and allow us to nominate you. I prayed about it, and I finally said, if that’s what you all are calling me to do, I’m willing to participate. And so I did. And what happened is what sometimes happens, which is God said, “Here we go,” and I was elected, which filled me with surprise and joy. I was called as bishop suffragan to serve with bishop diocesan David Reed. West Texas is a great diocese, a great place, 87 churches across 66,000 square miles. One of the former bishops used to say that’s bigger than any state east of the Mississippi. So it’s a very large diocese, geographically, and very diverse.

What were some of the areas of mission in your portfolio as bishop suffragan?
I oversaw all the mission congregations, and I oversaw congregational development. All of that dovetailed with formation for clergy in those congregations.

West Texas has created its own Iona School for bivocational ministry, which is aimed at mission congregations, and I was deeply involved in that work and with the formation of bivocational clergy.

Alongside of that, I worked to bring the College for Congregational Development into the Diocese of West Texas. I took a team of 14 people up to the Diocese of Olympia for training, and we were working to incorporate all those things together when I was called to Virginia. It was lots and lots of on-the-ground work with small and rural congregations, and it was a whole lot of fun.

Developing new ministry models sometimes can be a little unnerving for some folks in our traditional denomination, but ultimately it’s life-giving. We keep the best of what we’ve always had and create some new things to go alongside that. Traditions are very meaningful in many ways, and it is worth the work it takes to unpack what we need to keep and decide what we need to be more flexible on. If you can have the patience and take the time to let people sort that out, it’s amazing to see the creativity and commitment that emerges.

Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams used to talk about having a mixed economy in the church. It’s a helpful metaphor. We can also think about it as an ecosystem, where you have some things that are very familiar to us, and some things resonate more with others. And it doesn’t mean that you’re replacing one or the other; they all kind of coexist in the glorious ecosystem of the Beloved Community.

So you’re the bishop suffragan of West Texas, and then you hear a call to come to the mid-Atlantic. Tell me a little bit about that.

That was an undeniable God thing. That call really came out of the wild blue. I knew Bishop Goff and was in a conversation with her about something else during a retreat up at Roslyn Retreat Center in Richmond, Virginia. We were standing in the dining hall talking about something, and all of a sudden she stopped and looked at me, and there was a silence, and she said, “Would you consider coming to serve as the assistant bishop in the Diocese of Virginia?” The whole world came to a standstill, and we stood there and looked at each other for a long time. She says she had no intention or idea of doing that, that she was surprised to hear these works come out of her mouth, and I felt stunned—a the-walls-were-spinning kind of stunned. We both felt a clear call that neither of us had expected or planned.

[Image: While serving as assistant bishop in the Diocese of Virginia, Brooke-Davidson worked with The Underground Kitchen on an enormous COVID-19 feeding program that later moved into food justice work. She is pictured with entrepreneurs Michael Sparks and Kate Hauck at a dinner commemorating enslaved Black artisans and engineers.]

It took me several months of deep discernment to come to grips with that because it was so unexpected, but it was so clear. It was really hard to say goodbye, and the Diocese of West Texas and its people will always be part of my heart.

The Diocese of Virginia was a three-year letter of agreement because it was tied to Bishop Goff’s tenure and planned retirement, and I had no idea what would come after that. I decided to answer the call and trust God with the future.

Because of COVID-19, it was a very strange time. It was an unusual experience, but a good one. Again, in Virginia, I had oversight of the mission congregations and spent a lot of my time focusing on that, along with deep anti-racism work and, as a particular interest, related food justice issues.

What excites you about your role as assistant bishop of North Carolina?
It excites me to be in a place that’s so clearly Gospel-centered and so willing to roll up its sleeves to share the Good News that God loves us and wants us to have abundant life. It’s a place that is bringing the Gospel alive. To be in a place where people can see and say and do that is very exciting.

I’m also excited to carry on the good work of my dear friend Bishop Anne Hodges-Copple, who’s done such great things for the Church and for the communities we serve in so many ways. She’s well-known for her activism for our baptismal promise for justice and peace, and to be able to do some part of carrying on that legacy is very exciting to me.

Well, now that you here in North Carolina and you’ve seen a convention, what are your first impressions?
I’m impressed with how genuinely gracious the people are. I am amazed at the depth and breadth of the stewardship of creation that is happening. It’s really heartwarming to see that work and to see all the places creation care intersects with our other concerns, like racial justice and healing and Christian formation. They’re all tied together, and to see them actually expressed in that way is wonderful.

So tell me a little bit about your family.
Carrick and I met in law school. We’ve been married for 37 years. He’s an environmental attorney working here in Raleigh at Williams Mullen. We have two grown daughters, Emma and Kate. Emma is moving soon from Chicago to Colorado to take a job in computer coding. Kate is living in Washington, D.C., and working for the Central American Resource Center, supporting Central American immigrants and doing significant work with the newcomers who are being bussed from Texas and Arizona to D.C.

Do you have any pets?
We have two cats, Sid Vicious and Skye. We inherited Sid from our daughter and Skye from my mother. One day we’ll get our own cat.

What are you currently reading?
I am eagerly awaiting Louise Penny’s new novel in the Inspector Gamache series, which comes out tomorrow. I’m working on finishing Caste by Isabel Wilkerson, which is about the roots of racism and class. I’m also reading a stack of books about North Carolina!

And are you a TV person?
Not particularly, but I will binge watch things occasionally. I am enjoying Blue Bloods because I served as police chaplain when I was in Buda, Texas, and Blue Bloods has an incredibly interesting take on what it’s like to be in law enforcement and be a deeply religious Roman Catholic.

What are some of your hobbies?
I love gardening—another reason I love North Carolina. I have planted probably a hundred pansies in pots since I got here. I used to do a lot of cooking and still like it, but a bishop’s schedule makes it a little challenging.

Have you picked an ACC team?
So happy to be in a basketball state with such good teams! Personally, I’m a solo sports person. I love sailing. I’m just kind of like, find me a force of nature that I can harness myself to, and I’m happy. I also enjoy watching my husband play ice hockey.

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Disciple: An Interview with Bishop Jennifer Brooke-Davidson

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Disciple: An Interview with Bishop Jennifer Brooke-Davidson

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