An article for the Cathedral Times
by Dean Sam Candler
It is my great honor to announce that I have called a new priest to serve as Canon of the Cathedral of St. Philip. With the advice and counsel of a wonderful Advisory Committee, the Chapter, and the senior staff of the Cathedral, I have asked the Reverend Lauren R. Holder to join our community as Canon for Outreach and Congregational Life. I am thrilled that she has accepted the call of our parish.
Lauren Holder serves presently as the Associate Rector for Outreach with our good neighbors at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, in Atlanta. Her ministry there has been distinguished by her excellent pastoral skills as she has coordinated nearly twenty outreach programs in the parish and connected with mission and justice organizations around the city of Atlanta.
Before her ministry at St. Luke’s, Lauren Holder was Priest and Senior Program Officer for Community Engagement at Trinity Church, Wall Street, in New York City. She had happily stayed in New York after her receiving her Masters of Divinity degree from the General Theological Seminary, in New York.
Lauren is originally from Texas; but after her family moved to Lexington, Virginia, she stayed there to attend Washington and Lee University, from which she graduated with a BA degree in politics, and a concentration in environmental studies, in 2003. Her life and curiosity and ministry then took her to St. John’s College, Annapolis, Maryland, for a MA degree in liberal arts. Then, she travelled to Benin, West Africa to serve as a missionary for a year. From there, she served three more years as Youth Minister at another great church, Christ Episcopal Church, in Charlotte, North Carolina; and it is from there that she went to seminary in order to become a priest.
I am thankful to look forward to a priest of Lauren’s caliber and experience joining our fine staff here at the Cathedral. She knows, as I hope we all do, that each of the senior canons of the Cathedral is really called to be an excellent generalist. As colleagues, we share together the pastoral and teaching and preaching responsibilities of this busy and wonderful parish. In a way, each of us is a Canon for Koinonia, each of us a priest committed to God’s holy community here at the Cathedral. I am excited to be welcoming Lauren to that community! She is joined by her husband, Jay, who works with the Atlanta Track Club; and they have a 2.5-year-old son, Charlie, and a nearly one-year old daughter, Lucy Rae. Welcome them! The Reverend Lauren Holder begins her ministry here at the Cathedral on January 22, 2018. Thanks be to God!
The Very Reverend Samuel G. Candler
Dean of the Cathedral of St. Philip