New rector of St. Paul

CHESTERTOWN — The new rector of St. Paul's, Kent Episcopal Church has deep roots in Kent County. His ancestor Michael Miller II donated the land for the original 1713 building. His Miller ancestors lived in Kent County for at least nine generations, and his father was a native of Chestertown.

But his family's connection to the church and county is not why the Rev. Michael Miller Hadaway, Jr., 56, accepted the church's invitation to become their new permanent rector. He said in a letter to the congregation posted on its website, "You are faithful to the past we share … but you are not simply focused on the past." He mentioned the church's outdoor come-as-you-are summer services at Ferry Park Beach in Rock Hall as an example of the church's outreach to its community. "You are reaching out of the churchyard into the world around you," he wrote.

Hadaway was born in Washington, D.C. and he grew up in Prince George's County where his father was a school teacher and his mother a nurse. Active in the Episcopal Church throughout his childhood and youth, he began sensing a call to the priesthood when he was 12. He attended Salisbury University and majored in history and philosophy. He worked at the Holocaust Museum in Washington for several years before entering Virginia Theological Seminary. Had his call to parish ministry not been so strong, he said, he would have considered museum work as a career.

After seminary, he pastored churches in West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, and western New York. Most recently he served for eight years as the rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Buffalo. He also held leadership positions in the Buffalo Episcopal Diocese, helping to develop new ways of doing ministry there.

Hadaway has a particular concern for reaching unchurched generations. "It is one thing to reach out to people who grew up in church, but how do we engage with a very different people, people who didn't grow up in church?" he asks. "It is important for a colonial church [like St. Paul's, Kent] to hold onto its roots but what we build on those roots today may be very different." He added that he does not have a vision for St. Paul's future. "I don't know what I am going to do here yet," he said. He believes the vision will have to emerge from the congregation and the community. The vision will need to be "what God calls us to do together," he said.

Hadaway emphasizes the importance of community, partly as a result of his own experience. He wrote in his letter to the congregation, "I'm neurodivergent. Unable to read until I was 12, through hard work and the support of my parents, sister, the late Dr. Harry Wachs, and Prince George's County Public Schools, I was able to adapt and have not stopped reading since." He believes he would have not been able to overcome his dyslexia on his own.

Hadaway said that his sharing about being neurodivergent has resulted in a number of people reaching out to him to discuss family members with similar issues. "Everyone has challenges," he said. "Challenges are not always visible." He added that his view of Christian ministry is to help and support each other in facing our challenges. "We worship Jesus Christ born in a broken world and who was himself broken for the world," he said.

Hadaway's wife, whom he met in seminary, is also an ordained Episcopal priest. In addition to her priesthood, the Rev. Elizabeth Hadaway is a poet and is currently focused on writing a book-length theological poem as a part of her priestly ministry. A previous book "Fire Baton" won the Library of Virginia Literary Award for poetry.

The Hadaways moved into the St. Paul's rectory in the beginning of July. Hadaway said one of the challenges of the move has been figuring out how to organize both his and his wife's large libraries.

"I have always been first and foremost a parish priest," Hadaway wrote in his letter to his new congregation. "I love parish ministry." One of his favorite verses in the Bible is Luke 9:62 in which Jesus instructs his disciples to keep their hand on the plow and not look back, an appropriate verse for a descendant of an early Kent County settler.

St. Paul's, Kent, is located at 7579 Sandy Bottom Road between Chestertown and Rock Hall. Services are normally at 8 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. except for church at the beach Sundays when services begin at 8:30 a.m. More information is available at www.stpaulkent.org.