Home > Rector Search & Transition

Announcing St. Luke’s Interim Rector

June 28, 2024
Dear People of St. Luke’s,

I am deeply grateful and very excited for the opportunity to serve you as your Interim Rector. Your wardens, vestry and staff have been so welcoming, spirit-filled, faithful, and fun during the interview process and I am confident that I will continue to be blessed when I meet the whole congregation! For now, I want to introduce myself by way of a brief autobiography. The short version is this: I am a collaborative, prayerful leader with a warm pastoral heart, a creative spirit, and the courage to name and face the challenges.

I preached my first sermon when I was the 12-year-old chaplain of Boy Scout Troop 1776 in Neshanic Station, New Jersey. Almost every Sunday I served as an acolyte at Christ Church, New Brunswick, New Jersey where I first understood that God is love. In the late 70s my mother attended seminary and I poked through her books and went to class with her. My calling was clear from an early age.

At Northwestern University I majored in Religious Studies and earned a Varsity Letter on the Fencing Team. My next stop was on the South Side of Chicago when the University of Chicago offered me a full scholarship for my Masters of Divinity degree which I finished at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. At Union I met my wife of 30 years, the Rev. Dr. Alison Boden.

Alison’s career took the lead and I followed her. We started in Central Pennsylvania where I served as a Hospital Chaplain and a Head Start Teacher while serving four congregations as a Deacon. Then it was back to the University of Chicago when Alison became the Dean of Rockefeller Chapel. In Chicago I served as a school chaplain at St. Edmund’s in Washington Park, followed by Associate Rector positions in Flossmoor and Hyde Park before becoming Rector of St. Mary’s, Park Ridge. During this time, we adopted our children Tim and Martha from Guatemala. They are now 25 and 26 years old and launched! Tim works in Corporate Recruiting and Martha works in guest services at the Clark Art Institute.

Princeton University was the next stop for Alison and I followed, finding work first at a great bookstore and then as the Executive Director of the Crisis Ministry of Princeton and Trenton. Now called Arm in Arm, we were the largest provider of emergency food and homelessness prevention services in Mercer County, New Jersey. From Trenton I was called to Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia where I served as Rector for 11 years and learned that prosperous families shared many struggles in common with less resourced people. We started a major feeding program that spread to four other churches and became heavily involved with our local schools.

My last call was to All Angels’ Church in New York City. After completing some hard interim work at All Angels’ I was thrilled to be contacted by the Canon to the Ordinary of the Diocese of Rhode Island and introduced to St. Luke’s. I was immediately attracted to a church community that seemed to be active in ministry, warm and welcoming, supportive of each other, and full of joyful faith.

My wife and I are empty nesters, but we share our nest with two cats and a dog. We are avid hikers, gardeners, readers, and kayakers. The opera, a play, live music, or a musical is our ideal night out. My hobbies are cross country skiing, running, and forestry (ask me about my chainsaws!). I am a theology nerd who loves to study the bible and lead bible-studies and an Associate of the order of the Holy Cross Monastery following a rule of life. Contemplative Christianity has been central to my faith in Jesus Christ since college. 

In Christ,

Fr. Jarrett Kerbel