Confirmed in Her Calling
SPU Alumna Lives Life in an Anglican Rectory
In 1977, Carolyn �Pixie� Paris, a Seattle Pacific University junior, visited England on an SPU summer study tour. For the next three years, she helped lead the tours, then decided to spend a year in England to see whether her �love for all things British� would persist. It did. In fact, it blossomed.
  Pixie Rowe with husband David and two of their four children, Jesse and Esther Grace, outside Wilford Church |
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So did her faith. Raised Episcopalian, she came to a personal faith in high school, and her years at Seattle Pacific were formative
in her growth as a �biblical Christian.�
In 1980, working as a hotel barmaid in
Dorset, she decided to pursue graduate studies in theology at Trinity College, Bristol.
There her faith evolved into a passion
to use her creative gifts for evangelism,
and she met a young divinity student named David Rowe. �We fell in love,� Pixie recounts, �but also felt a deep calling to serve together in sharing the gospel and living
out the kingdom of God.�
All told, the Rowes have served together in seven Anglican churches in six cities.
For the last five and a half years, David has been rector of Wilford Church in Nottingham, which was rebuilt in the late 1300s after being destroyed by a flood. Attendance at Sunday worship is between 150 and 250, while the church�s Holiday Club (similar to Vacation Bible School) draws more than 250 children, and its neighborhood barbecue attracts as many as 1,000 locals.
A mother of four children ages 9�21,
Pixie�s daily life is filled with entertaining parishioners and community leaders; arranging
details for weddings and other church events; training lay readers (in the Church of England, lay readers are preachers � Pixie was licensed as a lay reader in 1987); and coordinating events in the two local Church of England schools. Outside the rectory,
she is active with a campaign called �Make Poverty History� and a key contact for a
supporting organization, Traidcraft, which helps poor communities work their way out of poverty by promoting and facilitating fair trade. She has taught part time in a local preschool and runs a catering business known as Grace & Flavour (Nottingham) Ltd.
The former SPU Homecoming queen has now lived half her life in England. A few years ago, the Rowe family considered moving to the United States, �when a job we thought was right came up.� But they decided against it, because, as Pixie explains, �I believe we were confirmed in our calling to serve the Lord here, in this increasingly
secular and unchurched country.�
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