For ten years I had the privilege of leading an historic endowed congregation in Lower Manhattan. Of course, it is difficult to imagine a parish functioning in expensive lower Manhattan without an endowment. There are five Episcopal parishes below 14th Street, all five of which exist in the shadow of the great Megillah of endowed parishes, Trinity Wall Street. In fact, my parish--St. Luke in the Fields--owed its very survival to Trinity. For a hundred years it had functioned as a Trinity chapel in the West Village, in effect a wholly owned subsidiary of the Wall Street parish. In 1976, in the midst of a real estate meltdown (Trinity is a major landowner downtown), Trinity decided to shed its "chapels." They gave the newly constituted vestry of St Luke's title to an entire city block (including three rows of Federal townhouses suitable for market rate rental) and a million dollars. By the time I was called as rector 18 years later, shrewd investments had tripled the dollar amount, the rentals were grossing $700,000 a year, the school was flourishing, and the parish one of the most active and innovative in the city.

But endowments are a mixed blessing, at the mercy of stock market volatility and the hard-to-resist temptation to increase the yearly draw beyond the usual 5% to hide a deficit (a practice that in the past our own seminaries understood only too well).

Holding with her children, Mallory and Michael

A couple of years ago, in the middle of a meeting, the Rev. Canon Suzann Holding had a vision that put her on a journey from the idyllic weather of San Diego back to a city that has been known this winter as Chi-beria, where she will become the Bexley Seabury Seminary Federation's director of lifelong learning and the doctor of ministry program on April 1.

"I saw an old stone ruin with crumbling bricks," says Holding, "and I knew my heart wasn't in repairing that wall. I wanted to go beyond the old, broken walls that too often keep the church in and hold us back."

It's not surprising that Holding, who received her MDiv from Seabury in 1999, was intrigued when she learned about the opportunity to return to her alma mater, which now describes itself as a "seminary beyond walls."

At its meeting in February, the Bexley Seabury board passed a resolution of gratitude for the ministry of the Rev. M. Susan Harlow, who will conclude her time at Bexley Seabury with a sabbatical beginning March 1:

I saw the throng, so deeply separate, fed at one only board -

The devout people, moved, intent, elate, and the devoted Lord.

~ Alice Meynell

"The Bexley Hall - Seabury Western Federation Board of Directors expresses its deepest gratitude to God for the faithful service of the Reverend Dr. Susan Harlow in the development and administration of Seabury's Doctor of Ministry Programs.

"The throng so deeply separate... The Rev. Susan Harlow, having commenced her service to this institution in a time of extraordinary change and unsettledness, surrounded by a throng of deeply separate views, did manifest a calm and steady hand in the midst of transition.  In this half decade she advanced the mission of the school by reviving and redesigning the D.Min. in Congregational Development, teaching key courses, and acting as advisor and supporter for all D.Min. students.

Read the entire resolution.

News to share with your fellow Bexley and Seabury alums? Email Debbie Frantz at Bexley or Ron Fox at Seabury .