It seems nearly everyone knew the Very Rev. Kate Moorehead was destined for a career in the church.
Everyone except Moorehead.
She wanted to be the next Meryl Streep. Even attending the legendary actress’ alma mater, Vassar College.
It’s not that Moorehead didn’t love the church. It had been an important part of her childhood in New Haven, Conn.
Church was a safe place, as she watched her father struggle with depression and thoughts of suicide.
And as she often worried if her sometimes unpredictable family — whom she called “good, good people” — was going to get through the day.
The church was where she was surrounded by adults who loved her and whom she trusted.
“Even to this day when I go to church, I sort of feel my blood pressure go down,” said Moorehead, who has been dean at St. John’s Cathedral for nearly seven years.
She does the same for parishioners.
Moorehead leads the church with a strong, comforting presence. She delivers her sermons without note cards, allowing her to have a more intimate conversation with parishioners.
The entire community saw her leadership in 2012 as she became the leader of healing after the tragic murder of the head of The Episcopal School of Jacksonville.
A revelation that didn’t surprise many
While at Vassar College, Moorehead traveled to Russia, where she worked in orphanages and studied Russian Orthodox liturgy. She also started praying in a more disciplined way.
“It was like pieces of a puzzle falling together,” she said.
During her junior year in college, Moorehead finally realized her true calling.
“I didn’t hear a booming voice,” she said. “But there was this clarity that just came upon me.”
When she shared that with her friends, their reaction was, “Yeah, so what? We already knew that.” Her family wasn’t surprised either, she said.
That moment of clarity, of knowing what her future would hold, was peaceful and joyful.
It also was the first step down the path of pursuing a new career on a different stage than she had planned.
A path that brought her to Jacksonville — twice.
A first trip to Jacksonville
Being ordained in a liturgical church requires years of discernment and training, including getting a masters in divinity.
“Isn’t that a preposterous title?” Moorehead, 46, asked. “Like anyone could master divinity.”
And the calling can’t just be between the person and God, she said. A congregation has to endorse the person, to lift him or her up.
For Moorehead, that congregation was Trinity Church on the Green in New Haven. The church that had been in her life from when she was baptized at age 5 to when she and her husband, J.D., were married there.
“Almost everything in my life happened at this one church,” Moorehead said.
She and her husband met while she was attending Yale Divinity School and he was at Yale Law School. After he graduated, he got a clerkship with Judge Gerald Tjoflat, now of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.
Moorehead and her husband had been married a month and she didn’t think it was a good idea to be apart that early in the marriage, so she came to Jacksonville with him.
She said Tjoflat, who was on the vestry at St. John’s Cathedral, helped get her an internship there — in a way only he can.
“He doesn’t ask. He tells people stuff,” Moorehead laughed. “He said, ‘You guys are going to have an intern’ and they said, ‘Oh, OK.’”
Leading community through tragedy
One requirement of the unpaid internship for seminary credit was Moorehead had to give a sermon in front of the congregation. Something the 24-year-old had never done before.
The dean asked her to preach about Mary on the Sunday before Christmas. “I was a really young woman preaching about a really young woman,” she said.
She preached her sermon without note cards, which she credits to having an “amazing” short-term memory. She still doesn’t use note cards today.
“It’s very hard for them to just fall asleep or something when someone is looking right at them,” she said, with a laugh.
When her husband’s clerkship ended, he accepted a job outside of Washington, D.C., and Moorehead completed her degree at Virginia Theological Seminary.
Their path took them to churches in South Carolina and Kansas. Her husband stopped practicing law and became a psychotherapist. And they had three boys — Luke, Jake and Max.
Though she was enjoying her time at St. James Episcopal Church in Wichita, Kan., it was at a crossroads. The growing church was hosting five Sunday services in its sanctuary.
Moorehead was talking to church officials about expanding the building but they didn’t want to change the architecture of the beautiful stone sanctuary.
She believes one of her gifts is welcoming people in. “But if there’s no more room, you get to feeling sort of like, ‘Well, what am I supposed to be doing next?’”
She had heard about the opening in Jacksonville but didn’t pursue it.
But someone — and Moorehead still doesn’t know who — put her name in the search.
Stephen Busey, who served on the church’s search committee, said Moorehead exhibited a quiet style that was comforting during the search process. He said he was impressed by her “substance, grace, peace and sense of presence of the Lord.”
She exhibited those qualities, and more, as she led the church and the entire community after Episcopal head of school Dale Regan was killed at the school by a teacher who had been fired.
Busey said Moorehead was “extraordinarily strong” on the day of the shooting and beyond. She joined the undersheriff of the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office at the first news conference after the shooting.
“She brought a sense of dignity, grace and peace” to the news conference, Busey said.
Her strength continued when she led Regan’s memorial service under the Great Oak on the campus. “She was just a real comforting presence to everyone,” said Busey.
He said he would not be surprised to see Moorehead become a bishop one day. “She has the ability,” he said.
Building community
St. John’s Cathedral's location in the urban core is one of the elements that was attractive to Moorehead, who grew up in the inner-city of New Haven.
She said urban development work is new for churches, but is very much of interest to the Episcopal Church. In Jacksonville, it will be through developing The Cathedral District, which is about a mile radius around the cathedral.
The church began development discussions six years ago, walking through The Cathedral District to listen to people about what was there and what wasn’t.
But, as hard as they were working to develop a plan, they didn’t get far, only buying a little nearby house.
“A church with a priest and a bunch of volunteers who had other jobs trying to figure out this huge project?” Moorehead said. “Of course we didn’t get anything done.”
Luckily, Ginny Myrick, a member of the church, knew how to help. She is on the board of the Urban Land Institute, which conducted a Technical Assistance Panel.
The group’s report outlining a path to follow was issued this year. “Now all of a sudden this thing has got teeth and it’s moving,” Moorehead said.
They’ve received their first grant — $85,000 to help fund a master land development plan — and they’re interviewing companies to develop that plan.
Another effort Moorehead will help lead with her signature dedication, grace and love for her community.
@editormarilyn
(904) 356-2466