W.Denman Zirkle [chairman of the Board]
In the last issue of The Mandate [available on line at www.episcopalian.org/pbs1928] I wrote about the six-year Presidency of Peter Toon, who has now become a Vice President and Emissary-at-Large of the Society.
Here I want to commend to all our members and friends the new President of the Society. He is the Rev'd Fr. Wayland Coe, Rector of St.Thomas Church [Episcopal] in Houston.
The Board voted with enthusiasm and in unison for his appointment and all the members feel happy that a young man is now leading the Society.
It is my privilege as Chairman of the Board to work with Fr Coe for the cause that we hold dear - the public AND private use with understanding of The Book of Common Prayer.
Fr. Coe is a cradle Episcopalian and thus has experienced personally what the Episcopal Church has been through over the last forty or so years. He grew up in Amarillo in the Texas panhandle. After graduating from the University of Texas (1983) he worked for a while in the oil and gas industry. Then he went to Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, near Pittsburgh, where he gained the Master of Divinity Degree.
His churchmanship may be described as evangelical high church or high-church evangelical; but he respects the genuine comprehensiveness of the Anglican Way and thus embraces persons of both low-church and anglo-catholic persuasion.
After ordination he worked for three years in the parish of Christ Church, Nacogdoches, in Texas, where he also served as chaplain to students at the Stephen F. Austin State University. Then he was called to St Thomas' Houston, first as assistant to the then Rector and then from 1995 as Rector.
St. Thomas' is an important parish for several reasons. First of all, it is a dynamic traditional parish which uses the classic Book of Common Prayer for all its services. In the second place, it has a large school (about 650
students) where excellence is pursued and where the same BCP is used daily for school worship. And, in the third place, it has within its membership gifted laity who are ready to use their talents for the kingdom of heaven and for the work of the Prayer Book Society.
Fr. Coe's wife, Janet Lynn, teaches at the School where also their two children, Andrew (13) and Abigail (11) attend.
Please pray daily for Fr.Coe, his family, the parish and school and for the prosperity of the Society under his leadership.
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The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon
Minister of Christ Church, Biddulph Moor,
England & Vice-President and Emissary-at-Large of The Prayer Book Society of America
www.episcopalian.org/pbs1928
www.christchurch-biddulph.fsnet.co.uk
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