Will Spong dies at 70
Spong known for listening skills, innovative theology


By Eileen E. Flynn

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Thursday, February 5, 2004 -- copyright Austin American-Statesman

Every memory of longtime Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest professor the Rev. Will Spong reveals another layer of the man: soldier in the Civil Rights movement, musical entertainer, theological innovator, brother of famous Bishop John Shelby Spong.

But it was Will Spong's quiet sincerity, friends say, that distinguished him. They'll remember the way that Spong always focused entirely on them in conversations.

"You were the most important thing if you were in front of him," said the Rev. Greg Rickel, rector of St. James Episcopal Church in East Austin.

Spong, professor emeritus of pastoral theology and director of the seminary's Pastoral Education Center, died in his sleep early Wednesday. He was 70. Funeral services are pending.

The unexpected loss stunned the seminary community, friends said. "What he's done for the seminary is really incalculable," said Bob Kinney, seminary spokesman. "He's just a very, very special person."

A native of Charlotte, N.C., Spong joined the seminary faculty in 1972 and retired from full-time teaching in 2001. He held degrees from several schools, including the University of North Carolina, Duke University and Virginia Theological Seminary, and held an honorary degree from the seminary in Austin.

But he was careful not to detach himself from the nonacademic and secular world, instead seeking spirituality in pop culture and in every person he met, Rickel said.

Spong loved to entertain on the piano, playing show tunes and offering a theological deconstruction of Rodgers and Hammerstein for audiences.

"People ate it up because he was so good, it was so entertaining," said the Very Rev. Durstan McDonald, retired dean of the seminary. He said Spong addressed themes of racial inequality in musicals such as "Showboat" and "South Pacific."

As a priest in North Carolina, Spong worked with other clergy toward racial reconciliation. In Austin, he served as interim vicar on multiple occasions at St. James, a racially diverse church that he affectionately called St. Jimmy's, Rickel said. "On Sunday morning, we look like the kingdom ought to look," he said. "He loved that."

Concerned about working people who could not afford to give up their jobs to attend the seminary, Spong helped to create the Master of Arts in Pastoral Ministry program. The effort, Kinney said, "opened up theological education seriously to lay people."

Spong, who had worked as a chaplain in a children's hospital ward in North Carolina, also had a special gift for counseling parents grieving over lost children, McDonald said.

Spong's brother, Bishop John Shelby Spong, an author, gained notoriety in the church for his unorthodox interpretation of Christianity and stance on homosexuality.

"He labored under that because he was always asked: Was he Jack Spong's brother," McDonald said. "He worked very hard to establish his own identity, and I think he succeeded."

In a sermon he gave when he retired, Spong talked about his love for the seminary as well as the trials he faced there during his career. In leaving the seminary, he urged faculty and students to remember that "this place has a personality and needs to be cared for, and we need to be proud of it, not because it's perfect, but because it isn't. No individual faculty, student, staff or administration, dean or trustee should ever place their needs above the school, just as no parishioner should ever place their agenda ahead of the church, because a servant is not greater than the master, nor is the one sent greater than he who sent her."

Spong is survived by his wife, Nancy Whitworth, and five adult children.

eflynn@statesman.com; 445-3812

ON THE WEB: For more information about Will Spong's life and his farewell sermon, go to http://www.etss.edu/Spong.shtml