Introducing Diane Morgan
by Susan Bai
Looking at our history, December has brought Nativity many new beginnings. December 1964 saw the first service at our newly built church on Christmas Eve. In December 1991, we completed the addition of our parish hall and kitchen. Recently, December turns out to have ushered in another kind of beginning: Diane Morgan, now our vicar, led us in worship as supply clergy for the first time in December 2008.
I thought it would be nice to conduct a short interview with our new vicar to introduce her to our extended community through The Scene. Diane is incredibly busy! Although she is supposed to be with us part time, it feels more like she is working for Nativity full time. I wanted to discuss her background with her, both for this article and also because John Alexander and I are putting together a new website for Nativity. Diane is a modest person; when I originally approached her about the website, she demurred, stating that our site ought to focus on the community and not on her personally. But there is room for both! We hope to launch the new website by summer.
I thank Diane for finding time to help me put together this article. You will notice a recurring theme of healing in her ministry. It seems her vocation is to aid those in crises physical, personal, and spiritual.
Diane was born and raised in the Detroit area. She was received into the Episcopal church in her late 30’s. She realized she was called to the priesthood because her congregation raised her up. Having grown up Roman Catholic, the idea of women as priests was a foreign concept, but people kept approaching her about it. It took Diane five years of conversation and prayer to accept her call. She took graduate level religious classes at the University of Detroit, then attended Bexley Hall Episcopal Seminary in Rochester, New York.
In 1990, Diane returned to Michigan, where she was ordained as a Deacon and assigned to Grace Church in Southgate. Well, their priest immediately took a sabbatical, so Diane found herself working on her own right away. Simultaneously, she served a one year residency in clinical pastoral education at Children’s Hospital in Detroit. In 1991, she was ordained as a priest at Grace Church.
Her residency complete, Diane was called by St. Martin in Detroit to serve as rector. It was a part time position. She came to bring healing to that congregation following conflict; she worked there for 6.5 years. During that time, she also worked part time as a chaplain at Beaumont Hospital and in 1997 was made department head there. She also did occasional supply work. Then the Bishop asked her again to tend to a parish community: Grace Church, where she had served as a deacon, was a community in grief. They were hurt when their Priest didn’t stay long with them. So, in addition to her full time position at Beaumont, Diane spent 26 months serving as long term supply for Grace.
Diane’s Beaumont ministry was her longest held ordained position. She handled crisis ministry well; Beaumont is a tertiary care hospital, and no day was ever slow. In June 2006, Diane retired from Beaumont and took a one year sabbatical. She travelled to northern Michigan, Mexico, Florida, and the Smokey Mountains. 2007 was dedicated to the care of two beloved people: Diane’s aunt and her partner Karen’s mother. Then she travelled to Arizona for three months, taking time to grieve.
Since then, Diane has done supply work, notably spending 4 months at Trinity in Belleville while their priest was on sabbatical. And here we arrive at the present; Nativity is the next step of Diane’s journey. Diane came here as supply in December, and now the Bishop has appointed her to serve as our vicar. We are blessed that she brings her vast talents and experience to our community. We are in a transformative time in our parish history. I look with excitement and anticipation to see in what direction our community moves under the leadership of both Diane and our fine Bishop’s Committee.
