What a Chaplain Looks Like

FEATURED PROFILE: Ann Kansfield

For so many people, 9/11 was a life-altering experience.  Ann Kansfield is one of those people.

On the morning of September 11, she was at home preparing for an interview that afternoon at the World Trade Center.  After graduating from Columbia, she had worked as a broker in the financial industry, a role she enjoyed but found somewhat empty.

The interview was an opportunity to continue on what Ann refers to as “the hamster wheel.”  While grateful to have been spared on 9/11, Ann admits she entered “an empty time of feeling un-useful” as along with the twin towers, all of her immediate prospects for work had been destroyed as well.

Never one to tolerate being “un-useful,” Ann reached out to a former professor and in the space of a phone call found herself rocketed onto the path for a Master of Divinity from New Brunswick Theological Seminary.

On 9/11, another life was also changed.  Father Mychal Judge, a much beloved chaplain of the Fire Department of New York, was the first official victim of 9/11.  He left a hole in many FDNY hearts and brought national attention to the importance of the role of chaplains in police and fire services, in the FDNY and elsewhere.  One of the people made aware of the role of FDNY chaplain and moved by the impact of his work was Ann Kansfield.

Today, Ann is the pastor of Greenpoint Reformed Church in Brooklyn, New York and, for the past five years, she has also been fulfilling a dream that was seeded in Father Mychal’s death.  Ann is the first female and first openly gay chaplain in the FDNY.  She readily shares that “Father Mychal is my mentor in this work, even from beyond the grave.

He had an incredibly joyful faith and a deep capacity to love people. That is what I want to bring to the FDNY in my work. The stories of his work are also helpful to me in filtering out what is unimportant and helping me to focus on what is most important in this ministry.”

Read the full story on Ann Kansfield here.