Walking Without Knowing Where I am Going: A Journey of Discernment
Soon after Monica Burkert-Brist and her husband Steve married in 1979, they arrived in Madison, Wisconsin, for Steve to attend law school, and Monica landed a job as a legislative aide at the state capitol. She loved her work and was good at it—within about a year, at the ripe old age of 21, she was promoted to legislative assistant to the Speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly. The Speaker, Ed Jackamonis, was a brilliant, and extremely demanding, taskmaster. He used to tease Monica about getting lost in the capitol building because, she said, “I would set off walking ‘without knowing where I was going.’ Often if he wished to criticize my writing, he would return it to me and tell me I was ‘walking without knowing where I was going.’”
In the late 1990s, Monica embarked on a journey which led her to discern a call to ordination as a priest in the Episcopal Church. She was granted postulancy status by The Rt. Rev. Roger White (1941-2012) and joyfully entered Nashotah House in the fall of 2004 as a part-time student, working toward a Master of Divinity degree. By this time, she had attended law school herself and left the Capitol to work as an Assistant Attorney General at the Wisconsin Department of Justice. She and Steve also had two beautiful children.
“When my discernment committee at St. Andrew’s in Madison heartily endorsed my calling, they told Bishop White and the Commission on Ministry that they did not know exactly how I was going to ‘get there,’ but that I should definitely get going.”
At the time, the plan was for Monica to continue working with the Department of Justice until her children finished school and she reached early retirement age so that she could devote herself to future work in the church without necessarily requiring full-time monetary support.
“When I entered Nashotah House, I didn’t really know how long it would take me to get my degree or what the future had in store. In other words, once again I set off walking without being completely sure of where I was going. But true to the advice I was given by my home parish and Bishop White, I ‘got going.’”
Since that time, the road has taken a number of unexpected twists and turns. Monica ended up under the supervision of three different bishops, and she worked for three different attorneys general at the Department of Justice in her secular job while attending seminary. In the meantime, Monica’s daughter Catie graduated from high school and left for college, her son Ben entered high school, and Monica and Steve took on the management of care for numerous elderly family members, which added to their already-full plates.
“Our family life grew and changed while I was busy studying and continuing to discern my call to ordained ministry in the church,” she said. “I became a regular fixture at the hockey rink with my Greek workbook in my lap while Ben was practicing.”
The decade-long journey was not without a few considerable setbacks. With a transition in diocesan bishops in 2000 came a change in policy for seminarians, including a strong preference for seminary training away from home. Yet Monica’s family circumstances did not permit her to transfer to an out-of-state seminary for a year of study. Approximately a year before she was poised to complete seminary, Monica’s postulancy status was terminated, which meant that she would not be able to be ordained in her home diocese.
“After prayerful discernment and consultation with many in the Episcopal Church who had known me for a long time, I decided to continue and complete my seminary degree at Nashotah House,” she said. “I knew I had an obligation to leave no stone unturned in my search to discern what God was calling me to do in God’s church. Through it all, I learned and grew in my faith. I felt continuously lifted up by the Nashotah House community and the people of my home congregations.”
God still had plans for Monica, though it would be some time before they were fully revealed. Soon after being removed from postulancy, Monica was assigned to complete her field education at Holy Trinity Church in Waupun, Wisconsin, in the Diocese of Fond du Lac. She was grateful for the chance to learn among this loving group of people. Her work at Holy Trinity led to her transferring her membership to that church, and she and Steve became active in the Diocese of Fond du Lac. At about the same time, she and Steve continued to discern their calling to social outreach work in the church, and Monica viewed her election in 2009 to the national board of directors of the non-profit Appalachia Service Project (ASP) as a further part of her discernment process.
Monica graduated from Nashotah House with her Masters of Divinity degree in 2010 and made history as the first daughter of a son of the House—her dad was a 1956 Nashotah alumnus—to graduate from Nashotah House. While a time of great joy for her and her family, Monica graduated without being in an ordination process and no immediate prospects for ordination.
“Once again, I found myself “walking without knowing where I was going,” Monica said. But I had learned that, for people of faith, this is not a bad thing. In 2 Corinthians, St. Paul reminds us that ‘we walk by faith and not by sight.’ In my journey to priesthood, I found that I often had to walk without knowing exactly where I would end up. Sure in my calling, I was then, and am now, certain that God will continue to point me in the right direction.
This June will mark the four-year anniversary of Mtr. Monica’s ordination to the priesthood. It took the arrival of a fourth bishop on her journey—Bishop Matthew Gunter, the Eighth Bishop of Fond du Lac—for God’s plans for her to come to fulfillment.
Mtr. Monica was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Gunter in 2016. After her ordination, Bishop Gunter appointed Mtr. Monica to serve as the Vicar of Holy Trinity on a part-time basis, while she transitioned from her career as an Assistant Attorney General at the Wisconsin Department of Justice, from which she retired in 2018. Her career and life experiences have prepared Mtr. Monica well for the work at Holy Trinity, the oldest church in Waupun.
Founded in 1867, and consecrated by Bishop Jackson Kemper, Holy Trinity is a family-sized parish with a long history. Mtr. Monica feels privileged to serve there, and she and her parish have enjoyed meeting the challenges of ministry together.
“I so enjoy the people of Holy Trinity,” she said. “We are small, but we are also mighty and fierce. We are always looking for ways to take the church outside the doors, so to speak. The parish is involved in several comprehensive ministries, including social outreach, fundraising for Episcopal Relief and Development, serving community meals in town, working with our local food pantry, and we are now in the midst of launching a laundry ministry for Waupun residents.”
Mtr. Monica continues in the legacy of the Diocese of Fond du Lac, with leadership, liturgy, and social justice, working with underserved populations in the community. Having participated in the revival in October, 2019, with the Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, Mtr. Monica and her parish were inspired to seek ways to reach out to particularly those in their community who are home-bound or isolated.
Located less than a five-minute walk from Holy Trinity is one of Wisconsin’s largest state correctional institutions for men. Working with other local ministries to meet the needs of the incarcerated is a great challenge for a small community like Waupun. Over the years, prison culture has changed such that many incarcerated and formerly incarcerated men can become agents of change, not only in prison but also when they return to their communities after they leave prison.
“We are currently looking at innovative ways of ministering to family members and to those who work inside the prison as well as to how to evangelize those in need,” she said. “Waupun has many churches yet many unchurched people. Our biggest challenge is making our presence accessible without being intimidating in any way, as the needs of Waupun are great, with struggling elderly and poverty among all ages.”
Having grown up in the church, Mtr. Monica maintains a deep love and respect for the Anglican tradition of worship, teaching, and evangelism. While she discerned her call to ordained ministry later in life—following her career in public service as a government attorney, legislative aide, and administrator in state government—Mtr. Monica recognizes how her previous professional experiences serve her in the role as shepherd to her parish; she possesses keener-than-most insights as to where to direct parishioners for help when they need it.
Straddling both worlds has been familiar to Mtr. Monica for quite a while, going back to her days in seminary. She relates a story of a judge who told her after a closing argument, “You should be a preacher.” “Little did he know,” she laughs. “He didn’t realize I was in seminary at the time!” Studying homiletics, she sometimes worried that she might sound like a preacher in the courtroom and like a lawyer in the pulpit. However, words of encouragement came from the dean at the time who told her, “You have to remember: it’s all about advocacy.”
Asked about challenges she faces as vicar of a small church, Mtr. Monica said, “I would advise seminarians graduating today to consider the circuit-rider model, shared churches, and/or being bi-vocational. There is great need in the church, but the “way we have always done things in the past” may not cut it for the future. Always be open to what God is putting in front of you when you least expect it. One thing I had to learn when transitioning from practicing law to the priesthood is that as a priest I am not in control of anything. I am regularly reminded of that in some moment of grace that I am not expecting. Don’t be afraid of uncertainty, but embrace it; let God put you where God wants you to be. I know that is what God did for me.”