Finally, answering the call

By Susan Gibbs, Record Reporter
Published: August 7, 2008

The Reverend Catharine Guest, new minister at the Stanardsville United Methodist Church, was a military wife who raised four children before responding to her call.
“In my heart, I have wanted to be a minister since I was a baby,“ Guest says.
She means that literally, not figuratively.
“At 15 months I was walking through a department store carrying a Jack-in-the-Box, twisting the handle, watching Jack pop up, and saying, ‘Jesus is coming … Jesus is coming …,“ smiles Guest.
This Fairfax County native says she might have become a minister sooner had she been raised a in the Methodist Church, which admitted women to its ministry in 1956. But her father was an Episcopalian and her mother a Presbyterian and she spent her time between the two denominations.
By the time the Episcopal Church began to ordain women in 1976, Guest had been through Mary Washington University, gone on to work on Capitol Hill, married a young Army officer, started a family, and was living in Colorado.
She had also picked up a bit of a reputation.
“They used to call me Pearl Harbor,“ Guest laughs. “Everywhere I went something happened. “I was working on Capitol Hill while the Watergate investigations were going on. My husband and I arrived in Laos on assignment in January. That spring the country fell and I was sent home.“
The rest of her time in the Army, Guest says, was peaceful, “and fun … we were in Kentucky, Kansas, Rhode Island, Germany, We finally settled in Prince William County.
There, after having attended the Army’s non-denominational chapels while moving from post to post, Guest began to attend Methodist services.
“I love the Methodist doctrine of grace. It’s beautiful. It’s all about God; how God is always reaching out to us,“ she says.
That was about the time, Guest explains, that she experienced her official calling.
Her children were grown - one of her two sons is now an attorney, the other working for the State Department; one of her two daughters is now working in the Green Zone in Iraq; the other is a writer in New York City - and Guest decided to go back to school.
She earned her master of divinity degree from Wesley Theological Seminary - a United Methodist affiliated theological seminary in Washington D.C. - in 2004.
She performed her internship in Lovettesville, Virginia. From Lovettesville she was sent to North Winchester, where she was appointed to two churches. Then she became an associate pastor in Leesburg.
Guest has been pastor of the Stanardsville United Methodist Church for a month.
“I love the church,“ she says. “Usually it takes a while to connect with the congregation, but not here. This congregation’s energy level is very high. They are ready to explode for God.“
And, she is happy with what she has come to know thus far about the community.
She mentions the Greene Alliance of Church and Community Efforts, or GRACE; the local volunteer network that connects County residents with churches and agencies that can offer help.
“Nobody is territorial. It’s all what we can do for God’s grace,“ Guest says. “I could be happy here … for a year … for forever.“