By Mark Dawes, Staff Reporter
The Rev. Jean Fairweather-Wilson animatedly makes a point. - Ricardo Makyn / Staff Photographer
Today Mind&Spirit concludes for this year its series on the Theological Late Bloomers persons who at 50 years or older have decided to pursue pastoral or other related ministries.
A CAREER in banking is one of the best foundations one can have for a future in pastoral ministry, says Deacon Jean Fairweather-Wilson, curate at both St Michael's and St. Patrick's churches, in Kingston.
A banker for most of her adult life, Mrs. Fairweather-Wilson was a senior manager at the Bank of Nova Scotia. "Banking is one of the best preparation grounds for pastoring - especially the Bank of Nova Scotia, with its very fiscally sound practices which taught good practices and good judgement. In ScotiaBank you work like a cow and you have to turn you hand mek fashion, you always had to improvise. I was fairly versatile in a lot of banking functions," she said.
In her last few years at BNS, she grew disillusioned with certain management practices and raised her voice against such. But things got to a point where the two parties agreed to a parting of ways. She left Scotia and banking in 1997 and on her terms.
With a handsome parting package, she immediately thrust herself deeply into the work of the Kingston Parish Church where she was a member; and also the work of the Anglican Church's Diocesan Financial Board, which she served as deputy chairman.
As she immersed herself in lay-ministry, the thought of preparing herself for the Anglican priesthood began to grow on her. In February 2000 Deacon Fairweather-Wilson walked down the aisle, a second time, to become the wife of Samuel Wilson, retired psychotherapist and social worker. She was previously married to Geoffrey Fairweather, renowned musician and one-time director of the National Chorale.
Then in September that same year, at 55, she enrolled as a theological student at the United Theological College of the West Indies (UTCWI) in preparation for full-time Christian ministry. Her matriculation in the UTC WI was met with affirmation from her husband, her four children and many who knew her.
It was not much of a surprise to many when they learnt that Mrs. Fairweather-Wilson was studying for the ministry as her caring disposition and her penchant for looking out for the underdog made the enrolment seem like a fulfilment of her
destiny.
By entering UTCWI she was returning to the University of the West Indies to study 33 years after she first graduated. She did her studies then in English and was for a while a teacher of English at Wolmer's Boys' School before she entered banking. She carried a heavy workload while a theology student - so much so that she was able to complete the four-year degree programme in three years. She was graduated with honours and topped her class in the subjects, Contemporary Theology and Preaching.
THEOLOGICAL CONSERVATIVE
Though the product of UTCWI, a liberal seminary, Deacon Fairweather-Wilson is a theological conservative. "I said to them on the campus there, 'Let me tell you all something, I have come here with my Sunday School theology and I am leaving with my Sunday School theology'." As if to test her, this reporter asked her views on Heaven. She replied, emphatically: "Heaven is a place not a state I am a very conservative Christian. I see red when people suggest for example that Jesus lusted after the 'Woman of Samaria', and when they say Jesus must have had some woman in His life. I am not going to sit down and accept blasphemy and think that it is funny."
The second of three girls born to Fredrick and Pearl Hibbert. Her father was a detective inspector and her mother a housewife. The Curate has worshipped as an Anglican all her life, except for the period when she was first married. During those years she worshipped in the Baptists Hanover Street Baptist and Barbican
Baptist churches.
During her final year at UTCWI she was assigned to St. Michael's Cure for her pastoral internship. She did so well that the Cure asked that she be given back to them after he graduation.
A former headgirl of St. Hugh's High School for Girls, Mrs. Fairweather-Wilson was ordained to the Diaconate on June 29. She then became a Curate and now works under the pastoral leadership of the Rev. Dr. Alton Tulloch, rector of St. Michael's Cure. Since she entered ministry there, it has come home to her strongly, like a culture shock, the great extent to which people from the elderly to the children need pastoral care. She explained a greater level of pastoral care is needed largely because of "the times in which we live. People need care also because of the economic fall-out that has happened in the country."
She has the highest regard for the members of the congregations she now serves, most of whom are 45 years old or older. She recognises a strong need for her to minister by her presence an incarnational ministry with her parishioners, a lot of whom live in nearby depressed communities. In these formative days of her pastoral career, she is striving to be relevant in ministry accordingly, high on her priorities is getting to know the people. "You can't say you are ministering to people and you don't get to know them.
So I am just trying to get to know them, making their friendship, listening to them and then I know I can take it to another level," she said.
With the ups and downs that pastoral ministry presents, Deacon Fairweather-Wilson has had time to contemplate the career she left behind. Does she miss banking? "No. Not at all." Is her quick response. "What I how realise, is that I was being prepared for the work I am now doing."
