Hello St. John’s! I am so excited to join you as your curate for the next year through the Reimagining Curacies Program. As you all know, the three of us curates (Mawethu, Philip, and I) spend a year at each parish, and then rotate to our next placement. I’m eager to get to know all of you—though please forgive me if I ask for your name 5-6 times, as I try to remember all y’all!
My name is Amanda Bourne, and I come to you from the Diocese of Virginia, from the DC area. I grew up in Southern Maryland on a farm, and spent my early years learning how to acolyte in a tiny Episcopal church in my home county. In college at Marymount University in Arlington VA, I majored in English (Media and Performance Studies), with a minor in Theology and Religious Studies. You sometimes hear the phrase “once an English major, always an English major”, and that is definitely true for me! I love going back to my roots in literary and adaptation theory, and remain an avid reader. My for-fun genre of choice is murder mysteries, particularly really bad Sherlock Holmes adaptations.
When I discovered my own call to ministry during college, I began my discernment conversations at my sending parish and through the Young Priest Initiative in the Diocese of Virginia. In that context, I spent a year—first doing an internship in a Virginia parish, and then spending about a year in the Episcopal Service Corps at the Society of St. John the Evangelist in Cambridge, MA. In case you’re wondering—yes, I did voluntarily go live with a bunch of monks for a year… and it was a wonderful, difficult, and rewarding year in community that I will always treasure! Upon returning to Virginia, I began seminary at Virginia Theological Seminary, where I spent an awful lot of time in the Bishop Payne Library and in the campus coffee shop. I particularly loved my systematic theology and history classes, and I enjoy continuing some of that academic work, even though I’m now out in the real world, whatever that means.
I’m really passionate about Jesus, history, preaching, the Bible, and asking big questions about how we live together in community. I feel so welcomed by the way that St. John’s has already welcomed me into your community, and I can’t wait to walk with you this year, as we seek to become friends with Jesus and each other in this exciting year of regathering.
You can reach me by email at curate@stjohnswf.com, or find me in the office most Tuesdays through Thursdays.
