ASHFIELD — David McLean Jones has worn many hats in his 30 years of life. He’s been a humanities major, an international affairs graduate student, a nonprofit intern, a Canadian Department of Agriculture employee and a UPS warehouse worker.
Come September, McLean Jones will add a new title to the list: minister of Ashfield Congregational Church.
He will replace Kate Stevens, who retired from her post as minister two years ago. The role was filled by interim ministers in the meantime.
McLean Jones’ path to ministry was hardly foretold. Raised by lapsed Christian parents, McLean Jones said he “probably wouldn’t have been in a church more than five times” as a child in Morrisburg, a Canadian town located on the U.S. border.
While McLean Jones said he felt some pull to Christianity growing up — to biblical stories as a child and to conversations about religion as an adolescent — he did not practice as he “had no framework” or “clear understanding” of how to go about it.
“I would drive by a church and stare at it,” McLean Jones said. “I had some sense of faith without any kind of guidance.”
It wasn’t until a college religion class that McLean Jones began to realize that he might want to be a Christian.
“That’s where things started to shift,” he said.
While earning a degree in humanities at Ottawa’s Carleton University, McLean Jones delved into learning and understanding Christianity. A turning point, he said, was when he managed to reconcile some of the “contradictions” between the teachings and values of religion, concluding that the Bible should be “taken seriously but not literally.”
Still, McLean Jones was not a church-goer. But his burgeoning interest in religion seeped into other areas of his life, he said, leading him to enroll in an international affairs graduate program at Carleton. While studying, he took a temporary job in the Canadian Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food, though soon took issue with certain policies the government required employees to support.
Though he finished his graduate program, McLean Jones decided to change course and delve into an interest he’d nursed for many years, enrolling in a master’s of divinity program at the University of Toronto’s Emmanuel College.
While in Toronto, McLean Jones met his wife, Caity Mans, at a university meeting for resident assistants. After graduating, both relocated to Mans’ hometown of Jacksonville, Fla., for three years. There, Jones worked at a UPS warehouse while volunteering at a local United Church of Christ. The church community in the area is small, he said, which limited his opportunities for work.
So, McLean Jones cast his net wider, and before long, caught wind of an opportunity in Ashfield. While neither he nor Mans had been to the region before, the pair were taken by the town’s picturesque scenery and friendly culture while visiting for an interview. He took the job, and the couple found a place to live in Shelburne Falls. They will move in the next few weeks.
This will be McLean Jones’ first time serving as a minister, and he said he looks forward to getting to know the congregation and encouraging the community to grow.
“Obviously it’s a big change, there’s a lot of nervous energy right now,” McLean Jones said. “It’s something that we’ve been looking forward to.”
While McLean Jones isn’t sure what kind of minister he will become, he is certain of one thing: the church will be welcome to all.
“More and more churches are open and affirming,” McLean Jones said. “I think that’s exciting.”
Reach Grace Bird at gbird@recorder.com or 413-772-0261, ext. 280.