Stay Close to the Altar: A Nashotah House Legacy
When Drew Bradford left Dallas for college at the University of Texas at Austin, he no longer went to Church every Sunday. Drew’s late father was a big influence in his life. And going to church every Sunday was a priority – a priority his dad strove to instill in his family. It was this man’s rector, a son of Nashotah House, who told him, “Chuck, don’t fret that Drew may not be going to church every Sunday. Kids do that sometimes. You’ve brought him here every Sunday of his youth. He’ll come back.”
The year before, Drew had been diagnosed with a debilitating months-long disease that had hospitalized him for weeks. The physicians counselled Drew’s parents that his immune system was not producing the antibodies necessary to fight the disease; until it did so, everyone needed to prepare for the worst. “It was so bad,” Drew said, “that my mother and father knew they had to call a priest for holy unction, or perhaps more.” Again, it had been another priest, also a son of the House, who came to Drew’s bedside and offered words of prayer and encouragement to his distraught family.
After the priest and his family prayed for Drew and anointed him, the antibodies appeared in the blood tests the following morning.
Drew did return to the church after college. “Clergy from Nashotah House continued to pray for and to serve our family in a number of ways over the years, before and after my college ‘wilderness days,’” said Drew. “As a result, the House has had a profound impact on my churchmanship; indeed, on my life. Two sons of the House led our parish EYC in my youth. It was the pre-marital ministry of a son of the House that revealed to me how my college girlfriend was not to be the woman I would eventually marry. After God led me to the amazing woman I did marry, it would be another alumnus who would preside at our nuptials, and he baptized both of our daughters. He trained me to be a thurifer, a lay Eucharistic minister, a chalice bearer, a lay pastoral minister. He would be my confessor and spiritual director. Yet another graduate assisted at our wedding, gave my father his Last Rites and preached at his funeral. I could go on. At least two more Nashotah House graduates were influential upon me in ways I have not described to you already.”
Nashotah House alumni have served the Church of the Incarnation in Dallas for decades. “There has almost constantly been at least one or more alumni on the clergy staff at the Incarnation since 1974, when our 12th rector was a trustee at the House and recognized the excellence of its graduates. Today, there are no fewer than four priests on staff who received their training at the House. Incidentally, it does not go unnoticed how the Incarnation is giving back to Nashotah House forty-six years later. Father Matthew Olver and Dr. Elisabeth Kincaid both come to Nashotah from the Incarnation.”
The Church of the Incarnation is a parish of the Diocese of Dallas of the Episcopal Church. Founded as a mission church in 1879 by Bishop Alexander Charles Garrett with the $350 intended for his sabbatical in Europe, The Church of the Incarnation became a full-fledged parish of the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas in 1897. The modest, wooden chapel of 1897 has moved and expanded into a five-acre main campus in Uptown Dallas and a second campus in north Dallas, with a force of faithful parishioners serving in the church, in the city, around the country and across the world. The notable cadre of parish volunteers provides home-cooked meals to families who are affected by HIV/AIDS, trains lay pastoral leadership for evangelism, provides emergency relief for the poor, and offers at-risk students a safe after-school haven and mentorship. But most of all, the parish is a supercharged house of worship, with seven principle services on Sundays ranging from high church, Rite One, Anglo-Catholic masses and a world class choir that has been broadcast nationally in the U.K. by the BBC, to contemporary liturgies in the parish’s recently-constructed neo-Gothic chapel that is graced with stained glass created by the artisans who maintain the 800-year-old windows at England’s Canterbury Cathedral.
Drew said, “It is no small legacy that these various ministries that are products of Nashotah House have been a golden thread in the tapestry of this parish’s common life in its modern era. The House has very much been an instrument of the Holy Spirit at the Incarnation these past decades. It has all helped position the parish for the leadership of the 15th Rector, the Rt Reverend Anthony Burton, and for its position of strength and witness in the Church today. I think the commonalities I’ve found in Nashotah House priests are their faithful servanthood to Christ; their commitment to Catholic tradition then, now, and in the future; their knowledge and excellence in liturgical practice; and always their constant teaching of all the above. As the 12th rector always said, ‘Stay close to the altar.’ It’s that simple.”
Staying close to the altar also means going out and being active among the people, Drew said. “Yet another son of the House trained me in my youth to be an acolyte. I remember that priest saying, ‘When you serve God by serving as an acolyte, you are doing more than carrying a flame to the altar candles. You are bringing the light of Jesus Christ into worship and Eucharist so that we all then take Him out into the world.’”
The cultural challenges the church faced in the 1970s and 1980s brought about forces that not only greatly challenged the church itself but began to stretch families and communities in Dallas. Some of the strains were economic; others were individualistic and more self-oriented. For Drew and his family, they saw their clergy working to remain stalwart, displaying a fair amount of grit. An attention to detail and a desire to dwell into what these men were doing, and teaching was deeply important. “Even in the small things,” Drew said, “I remember in acolyte training, that particular priest directed all of us to make sure our right thumb was over our left thumb when folding our hands in the sanctuary. What a detail! It seems almost silly, but form and function were an outgrowth of worship and devotion.”
Not too long before Drew’s dad became mortally ill, there was a new Nashotah House graduate who had just arrived at Incarnation. Drew’s dad could not bring himself to address such a young man as “Father.” His dad – as Drew describes, a “salty Texan” – gave the young man that sort of “Lyndon Johnson once-over” and said, “I don’t think I can call you ‘Father.’” The priest charitably replied, “That’s perfectly fine. My own dad calls me ‘Father,’ but I understand.”
Not long after, the young priest celebrated his first mass at Incarnation, and Drew’s dad recounted that he looked up at the high altar during that mass and he could tell that something particularly special was happening up there. There was something in the priest’s countenance that touched Drew’s dad. After the mass, as they exited the narthex and greeted the celebrant, Drew’s dad said, “I believe I can call you Father now!”
“I’m grateful to God for calling me when and where he has,” Drew said. “In addition to my father, of blessed, blessed memory, I credit Nashotah House and those they train for ministry. God, through these ministries, formed me, guided me, healed me, saw me with the right woman at the altar for matrimony, baptized my babies, buried the dead in my family and so much more! I’m reminded of the collect we pray during Compline: ‘…so that we, who are wearied by the changes and chances of this fleeting world, may repose upon thy eternal changelessness.’ These fine priests I have known throughout my life instilled in me through various instances and circumstances I have faced – and staying close to the altar – the confidence that God is always with us, as are the sacraments of His Church and the Faith once delivered. And these priests serve wherever God calls them – from parish priests, chaplains, and bishops, to teachers, missionaries, and church planters, the alumni and the people they serve benefit from the formation of the whole person through worship and Christian service. The Body of Christ is nourished; and God is glorified.”
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Drew Bradford is Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Nashotah House. He is an active member at the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation and has served on its vestry and numerous committees. He was elected and served on the Executive Council of the Diocese of Dallas from 2011-2014, as well as the Bishop's Commission on the Status of Parishes and Missions. He presently serves on the Finance Committee of the diocese. In 2005, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom appointed Drew to the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem (commonly known as “The Order of Saint John”) as a Serving Brother. In 2009, he was promoted Officer. Drew is a private pilot and enjoys his family and the outdoors.