When the Rev. Adam Dawkins, rector of St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Westwood, was in middle school in Greenville, South Carolina, his parents, Ernie and Faye, decided to move the family across town, leaving their Methodist parish behind. They started going to nearby St. Peter’s Episcopal Church instead, where Adam instantly fell in love with our denomination’s practice and teaching, leading to deeper involvement in church, seminary, and ordination.
Just happenstance, or the Spirit’s dance? In telling there stories, one can push the hand of God idea too far — and I always push it as far as possible. Adam very well may have found a vocation in the Methodist church. But we do know if they hadn’t moved house, he wouldn’t have been instituted on Saturday as rector of St. Alban’s, supported by buddies from University of the South, his seminary, and the Very Rev. Chris Pappas, his mentor and the dean at Christ Church Cathedral in Vancouver, where Adam served as curate. Nor would he have met his future spouse, Adam T. Hartsock, since that miracle happened during his seminary years.
So on behalf of the people of St. Alban’s, I thanked the delightful Faye, as well as Adam’s sister Dee, for assisting our God in Christ in bringing Adam and indeed this power couple our way. I’d first met her and the Adamses several years ago at St. Mark’s in Los Olivos, where they were visiting the Rev. Randall Day, who officiated at their marriage. Both are advancement professionals. Adam Dawkins led a $57 million capital campaign at Trinity Episcopal Church in Boston. Adam Hartstock does major gifts at an independent school in Los Angeles.
Their institution-building gifts are already coming in handy. Within days of Fr. Adam’s arrival in February, torrential rains made short work of the 93-year-old choir room roof. He’s overseen $750,000 in repairs and renovations already and welcomed a nesting school whose owners are greatly taken with the Episcopal ethos, portending a close relationship with the parish.
Adam is also deeply committed to ministry to UCLA students, a core parish mission since its founding in 1931. Besides supporting the Wesley Foundation’s famed 580 Cafe, a St. Alban’s-based fellowship and supper ministry to marginalized students, he’s been a regular presence on campus, especially during last spring’s Gaza war encampment. His welcome-back BBQ and open house this fall, “Bluegrass and Stained Glass,” attracted 100 students to campus, some of whom were aboard for Saturday’s service.
Kathy and I were along so I could preside, preach, enjoy having my 70th birthday noted, and luxuriate in the glorious ministry of the director of music, Dr. Ray W. Irwin, and the Choir of St. Alban’s, supported by brass. It was my first and probably last “Happy Birthday” with descant. That peerless pastor the Rev. Christie Mossman was deacon of the mass.
The happy congregation included the beloved former rector, the Rev. Susan Klein, and colleagues who had supported brilliant and long-suffering wardens John Hirning and Dyan Sublett and the vestry and congregation through the unsettled years since Susan’s retirement, including the Very Rev. Gary Hall, the Rev. Canon Jim Newman, and the Rev. Norman Hull. Fr. Adam’s dean, the Very Rev. Canon Ian Elliott Davies, was along to present a copy of the canons and constitution of The Episcopal Church and then take it back again so we can use it at the next celebration of new ministry. In the midst of discerning his own call to leadership in Christ’s church, Geoffrey Clark was my gracious chaplain.
