Deaconesses and Home Missioners are theologically trained lay women and men who dedicate their lives to full-time lay ministry as part of the United Methodist Church. They live out their call to lay ministry in the vocational field to which the bishop appoints them.
Deaconesses and Home Missioners embody their calling in many different ways: some are social workers, some are firefighters, others are therapists, nonprofit workers, advocates, or hospital chaplains. Wherever they serve, their aim is to express the love and concern of the believing community for the needs of the world (Paragraph 1931.1 in The Book of Discipline).
They are called to make Jesus known in the world by following his commands. Wherever a Deaconess or Home Missioner serves, they are called to “alleviate suffering, eradicate the causes of injustice and all that robs life of dignity and worth, facilitate the development of full human potential, and share in the building of global community through the universal church.”
There are many deaconesses and home missioners serving across EPA and GNJ. I sat down with Yvette Diaz and Barbara Skarbowski, both from EPA, to learn about how they experienced their call to ministry and how they are living out that calling today.
Experiencing the Call
Sometimes we imagine that only clergy have vocations and experience God’s call to service. However, by virtue of our baptism, all Christians are called to make God’s love real in the world through the way we live our lives. Deaconesses and Home Missioners are lay women and men who have heard God’s call to intentionally live out a life of love, justice, and service and then sought theological and vocational training. Here are their call stories.
“As long as I’ve been alive, I’ve sang. One day in prayer to God I said, ‘I want to live my life as a song.’ I know the connection I feel when singing, and I want to feel that… I felt tugged to go to seminary. After one credit of CPE, I felt tugged to pursue Hospital chaplaincy.” Through prayer, Deaconess Yvette Diaz discerned a call to ministry and gained greater clarity about her call one day through a chance encounter on the bus. “My calling came the old-fashioned way. I was literally on a bus with someone who was a deaconess, who told me about it, and then I pursued it. What pulled my heart was love in action.”
Deaconess Barbara Skarbowski also discerned her call in conversation with others. Her journey towards life as a deaconess began with a conversation with Helen McCahill, a deaconess who ministered to unhoused persons. Barb happened to sit down next to Helen at a UMW meeting. Helen introduced herself, not as a deaconess, and asked, “What do you do?” Barb told Helen about her work at Interfaith Neighbors in Asbury Park, working with adjudicated youth. Then Helen asked, “What did you do before that?”
That simple question led Barbara to reflect on her journey. She realized, “Everything I have done has been with people with disabilities, and even when I try to take a different path, God would put people with disabilities in my path… It’s a calling similar to pastoral ministry. You have to answer the call. You can’t not answer it. One of the questions that I was asked somewhere in the discernment process was, ‘What would you do if you can’t become a deaconess?’ I knew that I’m still going to do this.”
Deaconess Darlene DiDomineck shared, “I am a born and baptized United Methodist. Connectionalism is woven into the very fabric of my being. One summer in college while chaperoning a middle school mission trip I met a US2 missionary (now called Global Mission Fellows) who was leading our work and felt nudged by the spirit to explore mission as a vocation. While later serving as a US2 young adult missionary myself, I met alumni who continued their vocational call to a lifetime ministry of love, justice and service as deaconesses. I knew God was calling me to do the same. I felt called to live out my faith on the street caring for my most vulnerable neighbors while working to dismantle the intersecting systems of oppression that made my ministry necessary. And I was called to do it in covenant community. That’s who deaconesses and home missioners are. We are a covenant community, called to make sacred change possible wherever we find ourselves.”
Embodying the Call
Deaconess Yvette Diaz served for a season as a hospital chaplain and now embodies her calling by serving in the field of mental health, specializing in grief and loss. In her own words, “I stand alongside individuals and families, facilitating the development of full human potential while helping to alleviate suffering one person at a time.”
Deaconess Barb Skarbowski lives out her calling as a pediatric nurse. She works with children at home or in school, specifically with students who couldn’t attend school unless they had a nurse to accompany them. “My job is to help kids who need more intervention—kids with GI tubes, kids who need help with oxygen and suctioning. I provide their ADA accommodations.”
Deaconesses and home missioners live out their callings in a variety of settings. In the wake of the devastation from Hurricane Helene, Deaconess Darlene DiDomineck shared a story about how deaconesses and missionaries from their retirement home, Brooks-Howell in Ashville, NC, who were themselves without water and electricity, would travel daily to Lake Junaluska to care for the first responders and staff, who were showing up to work even while navigating their own trauma and loss.
Deaconess DiDomineck reflected, “Without access to electricity or water, they still figured out a way to show up for each other and be the feisty, fierce deaconesses and missionaries that this denomination trained them to be. They were well-trained and ready to care for each other and support the staff who had lost their homes in the region, even while they were experiencing trauma themselves.”
Everyone Has a Call to Ministry
This is just a small glimpse of the work of a deaconess and home missioner. “Those stories of love and care and grace and justice are really what it means to be United Methodist,” shared Deaconess Darlene DiDomineck. These stories are part of the United Methodist story and the larger narrative of God’s work, inviting ordinary people to serve in extraordinary ways. It’s a story that includes every single one of us. All of us have a part to play in the story that God is telling the world about Godself.
Deaconess Barbara Skarbowski passionately believes that everyone has a call to ministry. “Don’t hesitate to discern that calling, that inner feeling that you have. Take a look at your life, look at your life journey. What’s the one thing you’ve always been called to be present at? That’s probably your ministry area. I didn’t recognize it until I spoke to Helen.”
Indeed, everyone is called to embody Christ’s ministry of love, justice, and service in the world, and some are specifically called to do it as a deaconess or home missioner. If you are sensing a call to vocational lay ministry, you can click here to learn more about deaconesses and home missioners or register to attend an upcoming discernment event on February 6, 2025 at 8pm.
**Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash**