What is the Deacons' School?The Deacons’ School is a collaboration between the three Dioceses of Virginia - Southern Virginia, Southwestern Virginia, and Virginia - to form future deacons of the Episcopal Church.
The school offers each student an opportunity to master the academics essential to the five canonical areas required of deacons and to gain practical skills and experience while in a supportive community. During the second year of the school, each student is assigned to a parish or other ministry for an internship. During the internship, students will develop a Capstone project, integrating the school’s academics with their internship experience. The Rev. Lynn Orville is the dean of the school. The faculty consists of well-respected academics and church leaders, both lay and ordained, as well as a chaplain, and deacons from the three constituent dioceses. |
What is a Deacon?Deacons are called by their vows to make Christ's redemptive love known to the poor, the weak, the sick and the lonely (BCP 543).
Modelling servant ministry in their daily life and work, deacons are icons of servant ministry through their liturgical roles in worship. At all times, by their life and teaching, deacons are to show Christ’s people that in serving others they serve Christ himself. It is the special responsibility of deacons to interpret to the Church the needs, concerns and hopes of the world. Deacons entrust their gifts to the guidance of the Holy Spirit in order to empower others to name, claim and engage fully the work God gives us all to do. Those who sense they might be called to ordination as a deacon demonstrate servant ministry in the world, either in an institutional setting or in other forms of service, and their calling is firmly rooted in their faith and recognized in their actions. |
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