During the 2025-26 Program Year, Sunday morning Forums will focus on our parish wide theme of Belonging. For our first Forum, we had a great opportunity to get to know our new rector, the Rev’d T.J. Freeman and hear some of his thoughts about Belonging.

Unfortunately there were some technical issues with the recording which made the audio hard to hear. In case there are parts of the video that are indiscernible, below is a transcription of the recording.

Transcript:

You know, silence isn’t a terrible way to introduce one’s self.

When I had been a priest for about a year, I was elected to the Standing Committee of the Diocese of Pittsburgh. And I jokingly said that I was just young enough not to realize I should keep my mouth shut.

Hello, I’m T.J. Freeman, I’m your new Rector. Most of you. know that or figured it out. Where do we start? I’m a Libra. Annie and I this past summer celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary. So that’s exciting.

We were doing some math, and we figured out that we’ve lived in seven different homes in four different states, one state twice. Most of that happened in the first seven years because we spent just over eight years in Fort Wayne. So, you know, well done to her for sticking with me through all of that.

Nancy: Where is Annie?

T.J.: I don’t know…. Yes! She’s all the way in the back. Hello!

Nancy: She should be up there with you.

T.J.: Well, I will say, Nancy, that I’ve been married for 15 years and I’ve learned not to tell her where to be. So if she has self-selected into the back, I’ll let her own that.

I thought I’d start with telling you how I met Jesus. That seems important. That is, in fact, why we’re here. All the other stuff is secondary to that, honestly. The center of our lives as disciples is to follow Christ, to imitate him in our liturgy, to give glory to God. Right? And if we do those three things, the rest of it will come naturally, I promise.

I was raised in a family without any church. And that’s saying something, growing up in Indiana in the 80s and 90’s…to be completely without faith in that location, in that time. When I say “without faith,” I mean there was no Christmas or Easter. There was nothing. Not a Bible in that house. My mom and dad weren’t married in a church. There was nothing. I had step-grandparents who were Catholic. They never invited me to come.

In the fourth or fifth grade, I’m walking to school. It’s a small town, about 1100 people, western Indiana. The local, non-denominational church has a sign up that says, “J.A.M.: Jesus and Me. Wednesday 6 PM.” So I came home, and I told my dad and my stepmom that I was going to start going to church on Wednesday.

And being very involved parents, they asked, “Is that before or after dinner?” And the second question is, “Can you take your sister?” Because maybe they can get both of us out of the house.

I went that first year, as a fourth or fifth grader. It was the first time that I ever heard any of the stories. I’m not being funny–none of them. Noah and the Ark, Jesus walking on water, Christmas, all of it. I had no concept. I fell in love because we’ve got a great story. That first year, I read the Bible cover to cover. And it was a red-letter, KJV.

I underlined, I didn’t have highlighters, we didn’t have much money. But I had crayons, so I could sort of put a crayon over the parts that seemed important.

In Jesus, I met someone who constantly seemed to be reaching out beyond what others were comfortable with. In having grown up without a lot, that really spoke to me. The next summer (it would have been June 11, 1991) I went to church camp for the first time.

It wasn’t like the church camp my kids go to, which is a little rustic, but like, they at least have a roof. I got sent to church camp in my dad’s old boy scout pup tent, which, 20 years later, was no longer waterproof.

I spent a week sleeping in a wet, down sleeping bag. And I loved it.

I was baptized there, at that summer camp. I went to Jesus And Me until I aged out of it. Then in high school, I started going to the Methodist Church because that’s where my girlfriend and her family went to church. The pastor just happened to be my youth soccer coach. After that first Sunday, her parents said, “We’ve never seen the pastor talk to someone for so long…” [this happened to be a Eucharistic Sunday] “…so long at the Eucharist before.” I said, “Oh, he was my soccer coach.” And they’re like, “oh, that makes sense.”

I went there for two or three years, and right as I was leaving for college (about six months before), the Methodist Church (they do this less now, but back then it was still pretty predominant), they sent the pastor out for three years, and then they picked them up and sent them somewhere else. We’re entering into my first ever experience of racism.

They sent a black man to pastor this small-town church in Otterbein, Indiana. They turned on him, a pastor who was incredible to me. He spent tons time answering my questions and reading scripture with me. It was life-giving.

What I experienced in the church was a group of people hating him–from where I stood, in senior high school–hating him for nothing more than the color of his skin. I went to college really disenchanted with the church. Well, I loved Jesus. Jesus was still cool. But the church didn’t make much sense to me, at least as I’d experienced it.

I’m the first person in my family to go to college. I didn’t know how it worked. I thought it was like high school and I didn’t have to study to get straight A’s. Turns out that’s not true.

I found my way into the Tuesday evening, non-denominational, student-led ministry. It was okay. The music was good. Aside from guitars and congregational singing, it was a little hand-holdy for me. At the end of the night, he would stand around, join in a big circle, and you start on one side and then the prayers would move around to the left.

And to prove how holy you were, you had to pray longer than the person to your right. Now, eventually I learned that if I just didn’t (I was like a three-year-old) if I didn’t open my eyes and I just squeezed the other person’s hand, maybe they wouldn’t realize that I hadn’t joined in.

Well, here comes disappointment number two in the church. The group decided that the biggest issue facing students was homosexuality. At that point, my mom and her wife had been together for about 10 years, so that didn’t really work for me.

Here I go, out of the church again, wondering, “am I ever going to find a place where I can encounter Jesus, like honestly?”

My sophomore year, that fall, I had a lot going on at this time. I’m on academic probation. (This is a big group to tell that you spent that part of college on academic probation. I’ve got a 3.6 in my doctoral program, though, if you’re curious. It became good eventually.)

I had my great-grandmother, who lived with my mom and her wife; my grandma had just died; my dad and stepmom were getting a divorce. There’s just a lot happening. And honestly, I’m on the verge of considering just leaving college and figuring it all out from there. Just go home to the farm and get some job somewhere.

I was walking through the living room of the fraternity house one day, and there’s this little, old man, sitting, reading his newspaper. As I walked through, he folds his newspaper down and said, “How’s it going, brother?”

In a moment of what I can only attribute to the Holy Spirit, I answer honestly. I said, “not very well.” We talked for about five hours. Now, this doesn’t help with my GPA. I ended up skipping all my classes that day.

But, “Doc” as we knew him, turned out to be the Reverend Solomon George Dirghalli, a retired Episcopal priest. Doc had been at the University of Florida, a member of Lambda Chi Alpha. He had spent some time in the Navy and then had come back to work for the national fraternity before going to seminary. Throughout his ministry as a priest, he’d maintained a close relationship with the fraternity. And in the 70s, when my chapter was kicked off campus for doing “70’s things,” motorcycles and pot. Some of you were around for that. You remember!

Doc was the one who came from the national fraternity to help reconstitute it after four years of lying fallow. He came back once or twice a year to lead a brotherhood retreat or give a talk or a lecture there. I pour out my heart to him–every hurt, every pain, every frustration with the church. My deep sense of loving Christ. At the end of that conversation he said, “I think I know a place where you can take your questions. It may not have a lot of answers, but it will sit with you and your questions.”

We got the phone book out, because this is the fall of 2000, and looked up the number for the nearest Episcopal churches. Christ Episcopal Church in Madison, Indiana. We called and the Rector answered, Rick Draper. Doc set up a time to take me downtown the next day because I didn’t have class on Thursday afternoons, so that he could introduce me to Father Rick, and Father Rick would give me a tour of the parish.

We went downtown and, it was this beautiful old building. Mary Todd Lincoln’s sister was the organist at one point; right on the Ohio River; there was boom and bust, as trade moved; as Louisville came up, the trade moves further, you know, further to the west. Madison didn’t have a whole lot going for us. The next Sunday I went, and I encountered God like I’d never encountered God before. It was liturgy that I had no idea what was going on, mind you. But I just sat there, and it still had those little box pews, still do. I sat there in the little box by myself with a prayer book in one hand, the hymnal and the other, and the bulletin open on the seat next to me.

I met God in the sacraments in a way that I’d never encountered God. I went back every Sunday. Sometimes I was a little “tired.” But I never missed Mass on a Sunday. And they just loved me into being the person that was inside of me.

There was a little Eucharist and healing liturgy on Wednesday night. It was really simple sort of evensong, into the Eucharist, into anointing, and then there was a potluck dinner. You’d have six Episcopalians and five bottles of wine. We’d just sit and talk for a few hours afterwards until I helped Father Rick start their Canterbury Club on campus. I’d come downtown to Madison for that service, eat the dinner. Then I was the Altar Guild for the Canterbury Club on campus, at the chapel. I had a Tupperware box that had all my Altar Guild stuff in it. So I’d hop on my bike with my little Tupperware box and go a half-mile across campus from the chapel to my fraternity house and I loved it.

As I was getting ready to graduate, I didn’t know what to do. I was getting a degree history which is not terribly useful. There’s probably a couple other failed historians around here. And people would ask me, “oh, what are you going to do after graduation?” I said, “well, go to lunch.” Because I didn’t know. Father Rick asked me if I was interested in being a counselor with a thing called the Ulster Project. The Ulster project is still going, it’s incredible. It’s a grassroots peace ministry, and they bring Catholic and Protestant youth over from Northern Ireland, to live with Catholic and Protestant kids here in the States for the summer.

And it was there that I heard my call to ministry, in that place. I know if you’ve not been or spent a lot of time reading about The Troubles and the ongoing repercussions of that, you may not realize that these kids, many if not most of them had had no contact with anyone from the other side of the wall. They didn’t even believe the other group was necessarily Christian. You’re taking two groups, some of whose grandparents bombed the other group’s grandparents, and teaching them that they’re one in Christ. It’s pretty good work.

I go through that summer with this bubbling sense of vocation, the priesthood program. I’ve moved back home with my dad. I sold CutCo knives for a while. I sold the vacuum cleaner…Kirby! Yeah, I sold Kirby vacuums for a while. Eventually, I emailed Father Rick, and I said, “Hey, can we have breakfast sometime?” We set up a time.

I get there, we’re sort of sitting in this little diner in Madison, Indiana. He goes, after about 30 minutes, he goes, “What did you want to talk about?” “I just wanted to see you,” because I’m chickening out. He goes, “no one drives three hours for breakfast just to see somebody.”

I say to him, “Father, I think God wants me to be a priest.” He said, “I knew that maybe a couple years ago. I don’t know what took you so long.” In the Diocese of Indianapolis at that point, everyone started the ordination process at one time of the year. He said, “Alright, there’s a day coming up in the cathedral in September. Meet me there.”

We start the ordination process with parish work and diocesan work. This is the point where the imposter syndrome is sneaking in. Because nobody in my family goes to church. My mom is a lesbian, which most of Benton County still tells me is terribly sinful, I think. Almost everyone in my family is divorced. There are several functioning and not so functioning alcoholics. How can I, this kid who grew up and is a product of all of this, be a priest in God’s church?

In January, I joined the Army. And I spent five and a half years as a reconnaissance soldier. First, going to Fort Knox. Then I went to Fort Hood, Texas. There I was in a reconnaissance unit attached to the Fourth Infantry Division. Spent 12 months on the west side of Baghdad. They had about 40 of us, Operational control ground Irish. If you remember the news from that, how it was the most dangerous road in the world, and there were 40 of us, and we had to secure everything two kilometers north and two kilometers south for a year.

In a year, we ran over 500 missions. At points, there were so few of us, we were going out four at a time. It was a pretty hard year. When I got back from that… I didn’t join; I didn’t do the paperwork bit. But Father Paul Moore was the rector of St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church in Killeen, Texas, and I get back from Iraq.

I’ve told this story lots, but just never to so many people at once. I was in a pretty dark place. My life was bleak. I wasn’t sleeping, lots of alcohol, all of that. But there was still something in God calling to me. And so I drive to St. Christopher’s on a Sunday, and I’d park in the parking lot, but I couldn’t go in because I just felt so dirty. I’d go drive around for a few hours until the bars opened up and I’d get a drink.

That went on for a while, and then eventually I got out of my truck and walked up to the door of the church. And I turned around and walked back to the truck Same thing. Eventually I made it into the narthex. I couldn’t make it in. Back to the truck. Same thing.

Made it into the pew, and left before the peace because I couldn’t… The thought of having to shake someone’s hand was really hard.

I went and drove around, and drove around. I must have driven about six hours that day. Just all across central Texas. I finally stopped in a Borders bookshop parking lot. I couldn’t call Father Paul because he’d want to meet in person. So I called Father Rick Draper back in Madison, Indiana. What happened then, I just poured it all out. Everything I was going through.

Rick, over the phone, invited me into the Sacrament of Confession.

I went home that night and slept for ten hours. It was probably more than I’d slept in the last week combined. I went to church the next Sunday. The week after that, I was a Lay Eucharistic Minister.

I know I’m at Mister Paul’s, but my friends, the sacrament of Reconciliation can make all the difference in our lives. And I know it seems terribly weird or Catholic for many of us, but it really, really can have a good impact on our souls. It changed my life.

Back then, we talked about it only through the lens of post-traumatic stress disorder. Now we’re starting to talk about some of it as “moral injury.” I think moral injury is more of what I had, because it was that healing of the soul., it’s that absolution, coming to know that I’m God’s beloved, that allowed me to be healed.

The problem here is that I re-enlisted when I was in Iraq.

I got sent to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, with the 101st Airborne, which was great, it was closer to Annie; that was nice. We put a lot of miles on our car those couple of years.

I was deployed to Afghanistan, and we were just over the mountains from Pakistan. I was my unit’s operations sergeant, which meant I went from leading troops on the ground with a small reconnaissance team, to (for those without a military background or a combat background), I was basically the quarterback for all of our missions.

I had about seven different computer screens going at once, where I had integrated ground assets, air assets, our troops, special forces, the Marines, the Polish soldiers we were working with, the Afghan soldiers we were working with.

That was a differently-hard year, because things would happen and I couldn’t pick up a gun and help them. That may not make sense, and that’s not where I’m at personally now. But that was the big struggle for me because war still happened, and the best I could do was make sure the guys had enough units and support to help fight the specific battle.

I started had a men’s fellowship. We didn’t run missions on Fridays, out of respect for Friday is the Islamic holy day. We didn’t run missions on Fridays.

I started a men’s Bible study and fellowship at COP Zormat Combat Outpost. We called it “Club Zormat.” Because it’s so far away from Command, we never had anyone higher than our captain around, which was pretty great. If you’ve been in the military, and you remember your time from early days, it’s pretty nice having no one above your own 0-3 ever around.

That call to ministry just never went away. So I, came home from Afghanistan, and I remember from Sergeant Major Kimbel coming up to me and saying “T.J., what are you going to do when you get out of the Army next year?”

I said, “You know, Sergeant Major, I think God’s calling me to be a priest, and so I’m going to go home to Indiana., talk to my priest and my bishop, and see where we’re at.”

He said, “You know we’re not supposed to deploy for another whole year, so if you request voluntary separation, I’ll talk to Colonel Osteen, and we’ll get it signed.” So that was sweet. About two months go by, Sergeant Major Kimbel walked over. I’m an E6, so I’m a staff sergeant at this point.

I hear someone say, “Hey, Freeman. Sergeant Major’s here looking for you.” Not a good day. He said, “I thought I told you to fill that voluntary separation packet out.” I said, “I didn’t think you were serious.” He said, “Have it on my desk by the end of the week.”

So I did. And the next week I’m in Colonel Osteen’s office, and he signed the paperwork. In the end of August 2009, I left the Army.

The second Saturday in September was when the Diocese of Indianapolis was having its Discernment Day. I call Father Rick, “I’m getting out of the Army, it’s great.” And he goes, “Okay, meet me at the Cathedral on this day in September.” And so I did, and that was the first day I met Jessie Dodson. We discerned our vocation together. We were both at that meeting, and we’ve been friends for 16 years now. Almost exactly 16!

Annie and I got engaged in December. Married the next summer, 2010. Fall of 2011 I went to Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas. I was ordained Deacon in March of 14; Priest in August on the Feast of the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist. Which is sort of an auspicious day to begin one’s priestly ministry.

I was ordained at Calvary Episcopal Church by the Bishop of Indianapolis who came in. I served my curate and associate time there.

I went to Fort Wayne, I started there July 1, 2017. And then here.

The thing that jumps out to me in all of this–it’s a lot– Is that the big moment in my life where I’ve needed reaffirmation, even when I was running away from the church, I found those moments in the church. Because someone in the church cared enough to sit down and talk to me; cared enough to see me for more than the brokenness that I was experiencing; to see in me the wholeness that God created; To see in me the beloved child of God that I was called to be.

When we talk about “Belonging,” I’m only here because people again and again and again told me I belonged.

I’m really, really happy that’s our theme for this year.

Some of you will be familiar with this phrase. I learned it in reading the works of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Michael Battle, who I think is still on the staff at General Theological Seminary. Michael Battle had been Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s chaplain, and both of them have written quite a bit, and they use this phrase, “Ubuntu.” It roughly translates, “I am because we are.” Which beautifully doesn’t flatten out our uniqueness, but allows all of our uniqueness to come together to make the whole stronger. And then conversely, because we are all unique, that makes my own uniqueness all the more special.

I can’t do this without any of you. And you can’t do this without me or without the person who’s sitting next to you. And that’s at the heart, for me, of “Belonging.” It’s us loving one another to say, “I may not agree with you, but I love you as I love Jesus Christ. And I’m going to trust you to love me as you love Jesus Christ.”

We’ve probably got about ten minutes. This is why I generally try to preach from a text. Because I think a little bit of that evangelical thing I got when I was younger is still there, but I’ll talk as long as you’ll let me. I apologized to our interpreter, Patti, last week because I said, “The sermon is only about an 80% solution…the text I’m sending you is only about and 80% solution of what’s going to be said.” So if you’re reading that online, I apologize to you because and it doesn’t sound nearly like what you might have heard with your ears.

Are there questions? It may be a good time to bring that.

Yes, I didn’t say how I met my wife. It was very straightforward. Annie was a freshman my senior year of college. And we didn’t really know each other, but her best friend was my best friend’s little sister. We kept ending up in the same spaces.

I flew home from Iraq to be at John and Sarah Beth’s wedding. And Annie was at the wedding. And, I mean, I made a bit of a mess of this, because I had literally gotten off the plane an hour before from Baghdad. I’d taken a shower, put my dress uniform on, and walked in. I was a Cavalry soldier. So I’ve got boots with spurs, a Stetson hat. I think I told my mom where in storage my dress uniform was, because I made Sargeant while I was deployed, so she could order my stripes online and take them to a tailor, and get them swapped in.

Well, Annie and I, well, this is funny, too… Her friends thought that I wanted to talk to Anne, which is another friend of theirs. So they spent the entire night trying to get Anne and I to dance together. So there are pictures of Anne and from that wedding, but no pictures of Annie and I from that wedding.

We got up the next morning, not in the same room, but in separate rooms. We went for a walk on IU’s campus because the wedding was Bloomington, and before I went home, I asked her if she’d go out with me. I’m pretty good cook, so I’ll make a picnic dinner and we’ll just go to the park, and we’ll eat at the park, it’ll be lovely. So I made this beautiful chicken and tomato thing, Annie doesn’t like tomatoes, it turns out. I brought a bottle of wine and the corkscrew broke. But here we are.

Attendee: “Other than prayer and wearing name tags, how can we best help you succeed as rector?”

T.J.: Grace. There are lots of things I just don’t know yet. And they may very well be things that you think I already know. So it’s very likely that the thing I’m not doing, that you expect me to do, is just because no one’s actually told me that’s the expectation. When I got to Fort Wayne the early service was Rite One, and I went about three months not using the Prayer of Humble Access until the Deacon pulled me aside and said, “Why don’t you use the precedent Prayer of Humble Access?”

Well, I was coming from a church with no Rite One services, so I didn’t know that anyone wanted it. Nobody had told me it was part of it. I said, “Oh, thank you for telling me.”

So having that grace. One of the things that I’m hoping to do this fall is, if you are in charge of the ministry, whatever it is, I want to sit down and talk just to get a sense of what that ministry looks like, and how I as rector can best support you in that ministry.

We’re going to schedule probably not all of them this fall, but over to this program year, a series of cottage meetings. That will be a chance to have some small group conversation. And there will be a set of questions. I’ll bring someone here to take notes. I know you’ve just done a lot of this work for the CAT Survey, but a lot changes in a year and a half. So when those come out, sign up for one. If a Vestry member or member of staff comes to you and asks, “Would you consider hosting one of these?” Maybe consider hosting one. But, I think that’s the biggest part of it.

This is a beautiful community. Lots of folks have asked me how it’s going, and I say, “It’s kind of like stepping into a river.” Early on, I thought it was like drinking from the fire hose. That’s wrong because it’s not all just coming at me. St. Paul’s is just continuing. Sometimes they are beautiful, little fish swimming in the river, and every now and then, there’s a log that washes by.

I don’t mean that pejoratively. There are big things with momentum around here. For me, these first few weeks just felt like stepping into that river and figuring out where I belong in all of that. There is a process theologian by the name of Catherine Keller, who talks about “the only way to get through God’s grace is to swim like fish.”

You can’t fight God’s way. And a fish can only go against the river for so long before it tires itself out and dies. Eventually you’ve got to give yourself over to the river. Right now, I’m finding myself in this period of looking around and thinking, this place is incredible.

I’m finding my way in this river. Thursday was busy. Most days have been busy, but Thursday seemed particularly busy, and near the end of it, I was standing in the White Gallery. The gallery opening was winding down, and I’ve got a glass of wine, and I just thought to myself, gosh, I love being here.

I had come in, and I said a prayer, and Ruth, Kirsten’s mom, said, “Are you going to get a glass of wine?” I said, “I’ll do that after I pray,” because it seems weird to hold the wine in one hand and pray with the other. I realized as that was getting out, it was about the time that the choristers, St. Cecila and St. David’s Choir, was finishing their rehearsal. I went to see my kids, because I was staying around for a while.

My kids think my office looks a bit like Dumbledore’s office, and that’s cool, especially with the stairs. I bought a stuffed, Dumbledore’s phoenix, Fawkes, I bought a stuffed phoenix. I found a dis-used plant stand. I had put Fawkes on the plant stand in my office. I had about five choristers racing up to my office to see the phoenix. I came back down in the midst of that, the sun is setting, and the light is coming in, and I was so grateful for the chance to minister here with you all.

{Chuck shared words of appreciation that sadly the microphone didn’t pick up}

Chuck: “I want to thank you.”

T.J.: Thank you all for your time. I do want to say, I am awfully busy. But the thing I want to say really pointedly is I’m not too busy for you. One of the refrains that I’ve often heard as rector is “I don’t want to bother you, because I know you’re busy.”

I’m here for you. There’s an administration that needs to happen and that will get done regardless. The trains will run on time with me. I’m not too busy to come to the hospital. I’m not too busy to meet you for a cup of coffee. That may take a couple weeks to get that scheduled. Not the hospital visit, that’s ridiculous, the coffee part! But I’m not too busy for you.

Even though my office is hidden away (I haven’t even locked my doors since I got here), my door is open. If it’s not open, it’s likely because I’m talking to someone else in there. So, just send me an email. Or I figured out last night that I can get messages on Realm.

It’s worth knowing that I generally don’t answer or look at email on Fridays or Saturdays. So if, from like 5:00 on Thursday you haven’t heard back from me, I’m trying to like honor my call as a father as well.

Thank you. Thank you!