Melany Cox reports for the Temple Daily Telegram in Texas:
Rebecca Sparks wears two very different uniforms.
The first includes the clerical collar she donned as the new deacon at Christ Episcopal Church in Temple. The second uniform is the one she wears while sitting in the cockpit of a Boeing 737 as a pilot for Southwest Airlines.
Because of her family’s dedicated involvement, Sparks grew up going to church.
“I tell everybody I’ve been everything between Catholic and Church of Christ,” she said. “I’ve probably been every denomination in between, but I grew up in the panhandle Baptist.”
… “Essentially a deacon is the best place to be because you’re the one trying to get the church out into the world and get the world into the church,” she said. “To get the dynamics that are involved with the spiritual dimension that we find in our life in Jesus Christ, but to have it be lived out where we are and then out into the world. So that’s why I truly love that.”
Matthew Townsend is a Halifax-based freelance journalist and volunteer advocate for survivors of sexual misconduct in Anglican settings. He served as editor of the Anglican Journal from 2019 to 2021 and communications missioner for the Anglican Diocese of Quebec from 2019 to 2022. He and his wife recently entered catechism class in the Orthodox Church in America.
