By Melanie P. Moore
Kim McNamara and her fellow Total Common Ministry (TCM) priests, deacons, and lay leaders in the Diocese of Olympia are part of a local formation model that has been effectively serving small congregations for 30 years. A few years ago, when fewer people felt called to serve, they feared their model was no longer working. What they discovered—through reflection, participation in the Iona Collaborative community, and a little intervention from the Holy Spirit—is that they were far from alone.
TCM offered a terrific model where Circles—a sacred shape of community in Indigenous and other cultures—were the recurring rubric for service in the church. A Circle, made up of people who were identified and called to the priesthood, diaconate, and lay leadership, entered a five-year formation process together and then served together for approximately five years. After five years of service, most were ready to retire. They would be replaced by another Circle coming up behind them.
“It took us five years to call a Circle and to have those folks trained and ready to move into their new positions in the church,” McNamara said. “Five years is a long time, and we started losing people before we could get them trained. We found so much evolution in the Circles that this idea of commissioning the whole Circle turned out to be impractical—it was hard to do because they wouldn’t hold still. They were living their lives, aging and having health issues. You know, life happens.”
In 2023, the group of five TCM congregations put together a self-study report outlining their status, challenges, and suggestions. According to the report, “Both the title and the definition of Total Common Ministry congregations have shifted over time, from Ministry of the Baptized to TEAM Ministry to Total Ministry and, in our diocese, Total Common Ministry. Around the country, other dioceses are using terms such as Mutual Ministry and Baptismal Ministry.”
The Episcopal Church describes Total Common Ministry as “the ministry of all God’s people in all areas of life, carried out through the interdependent and mutually affirming ministries of laity and clergy. The Circle moves into and through formation together until specific members of the Circle are called to be clergy. Clergy members have very specific, canonical requirements for education, background, and approval processes that other Circle members are not required to complete. Once ordination is complete, clergy continue to be members of the Circle. The tasks of administering the sacraments, administering the resources of the church, and caring for the congregation are delegated among the Circle members.”
In recent years, the five TCM congregations from the Diocese of Olympia: Christ Church in Anacortes, St. Hugh in Allyn, St. James in Cathlamet, St. Mark in Montesano, and St. Matthew in Castle Rock, began attending Convene learning sessions offered by the diocese, as well as Iona Collaborative’s Thriving Bi-Vocational Congregations workshops. At Iona, “bi-vocational” refers broadly to congregations led by locally trained clergy, deacons, or lay leaders, part-time or non-stipendiary clergy, or clergy serving multiple congregations. In short, ministry models that operate outside the traditional full-time, seminary-trained priest paradigm.
“We did the self-study and then realized this is something other churches around the country are dealing with,” McNamara said. “I think in many ways we thought that we were failing as small churches unable to pay clergy; would the next step be closing our doors?”
“But it turns out we’ve been vital, we’ve been healthy, we’ve been growing! I went to an Iona workshop in Texas a couple of years ago and realized, ‘Oh my gosh, this isn’t just TCM. It isn’t just us in the Pacific Northwest,’” she said.
McNamara, along with St. Hugh members Sherrie Brittig and Linda Niles, returned for Iona’s 2025 congregational workshop, “Doing Church in the Age of Low Energy,” in Baltimore earlier this year.
“Going to those [Iona Collaborative] workshops and seeing that there are churches all around the country dealing with this gave us some energy. It also made us realize that we’re not isolated with our problems. It’s an issue we share. Even though we’re unique, each one of us has our own special issues, and many of them are the same.”
Back home in the Olympia Diocese, “at our Convene Workshop, which is our diocesan day of learning, we talked about the bi-vocational model of clergy and congregations and began pulling a bigger group into conversation. It’s been interesting because those bi-vocational congregations didn’t have a group they could be a part of. I think they felt isolated, like they were failing—‘Why can’t I grow up and be like a real congregation?’—when, in fact, what they’re doing is wonderful work and demonstrates a lot of commitment from the people who are doing the work.
“We had another session about bi-vocational congregations a few weeks ago at Convene 2025, and we thought, ‘We’ll have a little celebration of all these bi-vocational ministries; won’t this be cool?’ What we got instead was, ‘We’re so afraid; please, what kind of answers do you have for us? Where are the resources? What can we do?’
“In the Diocese of Olympia, we’re now talking about what bi-vocational ministry means and that it’s something to celebrate. It’s okay that we’re not traditional, and we have so many gifts to tell people about. We’re expanding our understanding that it’s not just about TCM, we’re only one model of bi-vocational ministry.”
McNamara’s TCM group navigated their self-exploration and expanded understanding while at the same time experiencing transitions in their diocese—from retirement and other transitions to bishops who had differing perspectives and priorities around local formation, as well as a period of time without a missioner to help them in their work. McNamara continued to coordinate communications among the TCM congregations and with the diocese.
The current missioner is also the Dean of the Iona Olympia School, the local school of formation for the Diocese of Olympia, and together they’ve identified a financing model to use the Iona curriculum as the standard training for priests, deacons, and lay leaders. They are now making that transition from their prior model.
“If you had asked me a year ago, ‘How’s the model working for you?’ I would have panicked. I would have said, ‘There’s no one who wants to take our place, there’s no one who’s coming in from the outside community who wants to train for five years and then work for free.’”
But then two people showed up who were interested in formation for the priesthood, both from the Baptist church.
“It turned out that when we called these two women, another person in the church said, ‘I’d like to do that too.’ We went from being afraid there were no resources to now saying, ‘Thanks, Holy Spirit, for sending us these people.’
“That’s one of the things that I’ve seen in this process. I wasn’t really expecting the Holy Spirit to just show up when you needed it and say, ‘Oh yeah, here’s a solution to your problem.’ That was a surprise to me, but boy, don’t discount it! It is amazing where the spirit shows up and the gifts we are given. Staying open to Spirit has been a tremendous opportunity for us to continue to be sustainable.”
