Ohio Church Woman Named UTO Coordinator
Episcopal News Service. January 19, 1984 [84005]
NEW YORK (DPS, Jan. 19) -- Willeen Smith, a member of Trinity Episcopal Church, Hamilton, Ohio, has been named the United Thank Offering coordinator at the Episcopal Church Center, according to an announcement from Presiding Bishop John M. Allin. Smith began her new job on Jan. 17.
Her lay ministries have been as diverse as spending two years with a mission in Liberia and serving as senior warden and stewardship campaign chairman at her home parish. Smith says she has a "very simple philosophy" about lay ministry: "You do what's in front of you to do... you don't worry about how big it is...the Lord will find you and help you."
After over nine years as director of the Butler County Ohio Council on Aging, Smith had nearly finished dissolving the council by placing the programs and workers into senior centers. She was facing the prospect of being without a job when she read about the job opening in the October Interchange, the diocesan newspaper.
She wrote a letter and resume to send to the Church Center, but before mailing it, "took it to my priest, the Rev. Morris Hollenbaugh. I asked him if he thought I should try for the job," or if it should just be thrown away, she said. "He was very encouraging."
Now, just a few short weeks later, Smith is settling at her new desk and her new ministry. Job responsibilities of the coordinator working with the volunteer network which raises the Offering funds each year, developing and supervising the educational and inspirational materials upon which the spiritual dimension of the Offering depends, screening annual requests for funding, and providing staff support to the committee charged with making the grants. The coordinator works as part of the World Mission in Church and Society unit of the Church Center staff. In addition to the development grants for which the Offering is best known, the Fund participates in the Episcopal Church Loan Fund and supports women in ministry and academic work. Offering collections amount to about $2 million each year.
She admits to being excited about the possibility of some foreign and domestic travel as she works with volunteers and visits projects either under Offering funding or seeking such grants. But Smith is no stranger to foreign soil. In the 1960's, she and her family spent two years in Liberia where she once again "found a nest and filled it." She worked in the mission office of the Order of the Holy Cross and the Order of St. Helena in Liberia. She coordinated bookkeeping and management of the mission's school, medical center, church and evangelical work, all as volunteer. Her husband, meanwhile, operated the mission garage and did some construction work, and the two served as the host family for visitors who ventured "that far into the bush", she says. They were accompanied on that venture by two sons, then two and five years old.
One son is now 22 and a junior at Miami University, and the other is a 25-year old Ohio State University and business editor in Columbus. They will give her another incentive to return, though they are likely to visit her in New York too, seeing her fill yet another ministry.