Dutton-Gillett’s frist response to Search Committee:
“I’m Happy Where I Am”

by David Smart

The Rev. Matthew Dutton-Gillett was out on an errand when the phone rang. Katherine, his wife, took the call. The voice asked to speak with Fr. Dutton-Gillett. No, she did not want to leave a message or her name; she would call back in 30 minutes.

This type of phone call is not unusual for a priest to receive. “It’s someone needing some type of help,” he thought when he received the message.

However this time it was different. The caller was Nancy Wicks, a search committee member from St. Elizabeth, Knoxville.

Then the rector of St. Peter in Sycamore, Ill., Dutton-Gillett said, “Half an hour later the phone rings and a distinctly southern accent says, ‘My name is Nancy Wicks, and I’m on the search committee of St. Elizabeth’s Church in Knoxville. We have your profile from [the Church Deployment Office in] New York and we would like to know if you are interested in participating in our search.’ I didn’t know what to say. This is the last thing in the world that I expected to hear. I said, ‘Not really, I’m happy where I am. I’m not looking to move right now, but, if you want to, send me your profile, and I’ll be happy to look at it and respond to you.”

“That,” he said, “was the extent of our first conversation.”

At the time, Dutton-Gillett had been serving the small parish west of Chicago about three and a half years. When he was called to be rector at St. Peter, Dutton-Gillett had been serving as an associate priest at St. Peter in Ladue Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. Unlike the one in Illinois, this St. Peter was a large parish with more than 1,200 parishioners.

Dutton-Gillett, is a graduate of Episcopal Divinity School (EDS), Cambridge, MA. Explaining why he chose this seminary, he said, “EDS is a far more liberal place than I am most of the time, theologically at least. I figured that the purpose of seminary was to really challenge one’s beliefs and make you say why you believe the way you believe, and EDS did that very well.” “After 3 years, I was sufficiently challenged and was glad to move on,” he said with a chuckle.

It had been almost a month since his unexpected call from Wicks. “Nothing happened after that and I kinda forgot about it” he said. “Then I got an envelope in the mail from them with a copy of the profile in it. The profile looked very interesting.”

Having never lived in the South, he found himself asking his wife, “Could we live in Tennessee?”

“I thought about it and I prayed about it and I remembered what [Presiding Bishop] Frank Griswold told the clergy after he was nominated for presiding bishop,” said Dutton-Gillett. When Griswold was asked if he wanted to be presiding bishop, he is reported to have said, “I needed to make myself available for whatever God wanted me to do. So I decided to make myself available to God and whatever would happen would happen.” “I thought about that and decided that I have the same responsibility. If this is what God wants then I should open myself to the possibility of it,” Dutton-Gillett recounted.

So, his response to Wicks was that he would be happy to participate in the search. A phone interview with the search committee was conducted.

Soon after that, Wicks called and said they would like for him to visit St. Elizabeth’s. November 3 was set as the date for the visit.

“I came and looked and interviewed with the search committee. It seemed like a wonderful community. I went away from that weekend saying that the parish would be great. The only question that remained in my mind was, did we want to live in Knoxville?” Dutton-Gillett said.

On his return home, he and his wife talked for hours about the possibility of moving to Tennessee.

Both he and his wife were invited to visit St. Elizabeth’s in December. During that trip, he interviewed with the vestry. As they were leaving to return home, Stuart Lewis, who was senior warden at the time, told them that the search committee would be meeting that evening to determine where they were in the process. On the trip back the Dutton-Gilletts talked and made the decision that if called to be rector of St. Elizabeth’s he would accept the call.

“We got home at about 6 p.m. and about 2 hours later Lewis called and said, ‘We would like you to come and be our rector,’” he said.

The Dutton-Gillett family moved to Knoxville in February. Katherine is now manager of the museum shops at the Knoxville Museum of Art. They have a 4-year-old daughter named Madeline who is in pre-school.

Can they live in Knoxville? “After 4 months here, we are sure that we made the right decision,” said Dutton-Gillett.

Photo by Canon Alice Clayton

The Rev. Robert K. Gieselmann (left) and the Rev Christopher L. Epperson (right) were the first candidates to be ordained by the Rt. Rev. Charles vonRosenberg since he became bishop in February.

Bishop Charles vonRosenberg ordained Robert K. Gieselmann and Christopher L. Epperson to the diaconate in a service at St. John’s Cathedral, Knoxville on June 19.

Gieselmann is a graduate of the School of Theology, University of the South, Sewanee and is deacon at St. Luke’s, Cleveland. His home church is Ascension in Knoxville. Epperson is a graduate of General Theological Seminary in New York City and is deacon at St. John’s, Johnson City. His home church is St. Luke’s, Cleveland.

The Very Rev. Ward Ewing, Dean and President of General Theological Seminary was the preacher.