Meet & Greet | The Rev. Dr. Jenny G. Montgomery
The Rev. Dr. Jenny Montgomery, joined our staff on July 1, 2022 as Priest-in-Residence. Recommended by Bishop Haynes and Canon Hoffman with the Vestry consenting, Jenny’s priorities during this season in the life of Redeemer are to: exercise administrative oversight, supervise staff, work with the Vestry to identify and execute parish priorities, address and seek to resolve critical issues, address internal conflicts and provide on-going healing for the parish, provide liturgical leadership in collaboration with Grace+, and stabilize and maintain vital parish ministries. As an experienced priest leading congregations to heal from trauma, Jenny will be at Redeemer one day a week plus (most) Sundays during July and August and then, in September, she will be at Redeemer three days each week plus Sundays.
More about me:
One day I might write a memoir of my life. All the unexpected twists and turns have been one great adventure after another—even though I don’t consider myself to be a particularly adventurous person. Case in point: if someone had told me, as a teenager, growing up in the Atlanta suburbs, and thoroughly entrenched in the Baptist Church, that I would one day be an Episcopal priest I would have laughed and said they were crazy!
Marrying my high school sweetheart at the age of twenty, giving birth to my two sons by the time I was twenty-four, and then supporting my husband through seminary, took up all of my twenties. In my thirties, I returned to college, graduated cum laude from Shorter College with a B.A. in psychology, began working on my masters in social work, and then went through a heart-breaking divorce.
At the age of 41, I began seminary as a single-parent, went through the ordination process in the Diocese of Virginia and was ordained a priest two months before my forty-fifth birthday. At the time of ordination, I was living in Richmond, single, and the Assistant Vicar at Christ Church Episcopal in Glen Allen. On January 2, 2000, I was introduced by a mutual friend to the Rev. Dr. Joe Glaze and one year later we were married at Northminster Baptist Church with the Rt. Rev. Peter James Lee, officiating. Over five hundred people attended our wedding and it was a joyous occasion!
With Joe having six children from his previous marriage, much of my fifties were spent navigating life, as a new wife, as a step-mother and becoming a grandmother. Just before turning sixty, I received my Doctor of Ministry degree from Virginia Seminary, and my thesis title was “Speaking the Unspeakable: Leading a Congregation to Recovery from the Trauma of Clergy Misconduct.” I have served five parishes, most recently as the part-time Assistant for Pastoral Care at St. Paul’s in downtown Richmond.
At each and every unexpected turn in my life, God has been faithful to guide and sustain me. I’m very grateful for the journey, and that it now continues with you at Redeemer as your Priest-in-Residence. Joe and I live on the Northside of Richmond with our beloved lab rescue, Charlotte. Between us we have sixteen grandchildren, ages 5 to 18. We’re blessed with a three-season perennial garden the previous owner planted and we spend a small fortune feeding all the birds that flock to our yard. I enjoy writing creative non-fiction, reading memoirs and historical fiction, walking Charlotte, practicing yoga, taking art classes, and traveling. While retirement is not what I expected it to be, nonetheless, it is another wild adventure!
The Rev. Dr. Jenny G. Montgomery will be in the office Monday afternoons and Wednesday mornings as well as Sundays until September. Contact Jenny+ at Jenny@RedeemerMidlothian.Org.