Hello, St. Bart’s! I am thrilled to be back with you. As I write this, I am taking a break from unpacking the boxes in my new office, and the excitement is really beginning to set in! Though a lot of you have already gotten the chance to meet and get to know me, we thought it would be good for me to introduce myself a little more thoroughly. So here’s a little about me!
As for my interests, I love singing and listening to music, reading, spending time outdoors, and taking walks with my dog to the beach. My wife, Emma, and I often like to try new coffee shops and restaurants and enjoy traveling to different places. Our last adventure, which we just got back from, was to Mexico City.
I was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and grew up in Springfield, Missouri. I enrolled in college as a theatre and music major at Drury University (also in Springfield), but ended up majoring in religion instead, and graduated with a BA in 2018. In high school, I had begun dating Emma by asking her to the prom, and in my last semester of college we got engaged.
Feeling a call to ministry, I applied to study at Westminster Seminary California, a small Presbyterian seminary in Escondido. So after taking a year off for Emma to finish cosmetology school, we drove out to California and got married in June 2019 on Salt Creek Beach in Dana Point, and then moved in at the Seminary. For a while, we attended a Presbyterian church, but I felt increasingly pulled towards the kind of emphasis on liturgy, sacrament, and prayer that I had grown up with, being raised in the Catholic Church. After being handed a Book of Common Prayer by a friend, I realized that The Episcopal Church was exactly what I was looking for! So after discussing it with Emma, we adventured to an Episcopal parish in Carlsbad, where I began an internship and was hired on in 2022. I then began discerning the priesthood with the Diocese of San Diego. While I was doing that, Emma started her own business as a hairstylist, renting a suite in Encinitas.
After graduating seminary in 2023, we moved to Oceanside, where we currently live. Then, this summer, after doing my field education at St. Bart’s for the diocese, Bishop Susan gave me the exciting news that St. Bart’s was interested in bringing me in to do my curacy! So, here we are, and I am so excited to be joining you—I’ll see you Sunday!
Jacob Robling
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