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Thomas Blake
Nominee for: Standing Committee, Canonically resident clergy person
Please describe your current involvement in the Episcopal Church in Connecticut using first person, narrative language.
I serve as Rector of Trinity Church in Branford, where I am now in my fifth year of ministry. I am beginning the second year of a three-year term as Dean of the South Central Region. In addition, I mentor a newer rector in the diocese, which has given me an opportunity to support a colleague whist also learning from the experience myself.
Through these roles, I have been involved in the life of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut at the parish, regional, and diocesan levels, and I value the opportunity to work with clergy and lay leaders across the diocese.
My involvement in the local community has taken a number of forms. I serve as Chaplain to the New Haven chapter of the American Guild of Organists. I am a founding member of the Shoreline Racial Justice Alliance, and I currently serve on its Steering Team. Together with my congregation, I am also involved in community organising through CONECT (Congregations Organized for a New Connecticut). I particularly value the collegial and collaborative relationships I share with interfaith and ecumenical clergy within Branford and across the shoreline.
I am in my twenty-seventh year of ordained ministry in The Episcopal Church, during which I have served five parishes in four dioceses, including as Rector and/or Priest-in-Charge in three.
For two years, I served as Executive Director of the Capital City CIRCLES Initiative in Carson City, Nevada, an organisation working to break cycles of generational poverty by building healthy, supportive relationships across class lines. That experience broadened my understanding of community organising and deepened my conviction that the Church is at its best when it brings people together across the boundaries that can otherwise divide us.
I have been elected five times as a Deputy to General Convention, where I have served on legislative committees addressing matters ranging from liturgy to social justice. Earlier in my ministry, I served on the Standing Committee of the Diocese of Indianapolis. In that diocese, I also served on the Executive Council, on a Bishop Transition Committee, and on the Convention Resolutions Committee, eventually serving as its chair. These experiences exposed me to the breadth of the Church’s common life and to the complexity of making decisions that affect congregations, clergy, and lay people across a diocese or the wider Church.