Called to discover needs
New deacon sees her role as helping church to serve
Clinton — At 60, Camille Carpenter Wood answered a calling to become a deacon in the Episcopal church.
“I come from generations of Episcopalians,” Wood said. “The church has always been important to me. I wanted to be sure that my children were always involved with the church.”
The Natchez, Miss., native grew up at Dunleith, one of the city’s most well-known antebellum homes. Her family attended historic Trinity Episcopal Church, which was formed in Natchez in 1822.
The journey to her ordination on Dec. 4, 2010, was both intense and lengthy.“It was a very gradual process,” Wood said. It began about 2007 at Baton Rouge’s Trinity Episcopal Church.
“After we moved to the LSU area, I changed my membership from St. Luke’s to Trinity,” Wood said. “The children were older. I became more involved with the church.”
She joined the altar guild, became a Eucharistic minister, did readings as a lector and even served as senior warden for a while.
“The more I got involved, the more I just sort of had a passion to do more,” she said. “It led to other things. I truly felt a call. It’s hard to explain, but it’s something that kind of grabs you and takes over. You can’t deny it, really.”
Wood spoke with the Rev. Ken Ritter about “her call, not to the priesthood, but to be a deacon,” she said.
A deacon is different from a priest, Wood said. “A deacon is meant to go out into the world and discover what the needs are of the people of the community to bring them back to the church and to encourage others to go out and serve,” she said.
In 2006, Ritter formed a discernment committee, a group Wood met with for six months to help her define what she felt her call to be.
“After we talked and met, they agreed together that I could move forward in the process,” Wood said.
The next step was to approach the vestry at Trinity to ask the members to submit her name as a potential deacon. Wood met with then-Bishop Charles Jenkins, who agreed to let her move forward in the process.
One weekend a month for two years, Wood attended the School for Ministry at Christ Church Cathedral in New Orleans. At the same time, she participated in Education for Ministry classes, a course required for anyone who wants to go forward in the deaconate, Wood said.
As part of the process, Wood had to complete a six-month field project. She did projects with the Capital Area Alliance for the Homeless helping people find housing and with the Baton Rouge Crisis Intervention Center giving comfort to children who had gone through traumatic loss.
She was also required to do clinical pastoral training, which she did at East Jefferson General Hospital, and to attend monthly formation classes at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, both in Metairie.
“My final hurdle was my parish assignment for eight months at St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church in Zachary under Father Chad Jones,” Wood said. “He gave me my training in liturgy, and I had a chance to preach also,” she said.
After her ordination, Wood stayed at Trinity for almost a year as director of lay ministry, a position she had held even before she was ordained.
She was in Seattle at her niece’s wedding when Bishop Morris Thompson called her to serve as a pastoral presence at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Clinton.
“Out of the blue, he told me he would like to send me to St. Andrew’s,” she said.
Wood immediately accepted the bishop’s call. “I didn’t have to think about it,” she said. “It was not only something I needed to do but something I wanted to do.”
She has served the church since the first Sunday in September. She appreciates St. Andrew’s history of support for the local community, its history of serving the needs of the community.
“The church is meant to serve in the world and bring the world back into the church,” Wood said. “If a congregation just exists for itself, they don’t live out their baptism covenant, to go out and help the sick and the friendless and the needy. That’s what Jesus meant for us to do.”