by Bradley Parsons
Staff Writer
As a $250 an hour commercial litigator, Kurt Dunkle almost always came out on the winning side of a dispute. It wasn’t until he ended up in negotiations with Jesus Christ that he realized he’d entered an argument he couldn’t win.
Dunkle’s long road from the law offices of Rogers Towers to his ordination as a priest Sunday night in the Episcopal Diocese of Florida began in 1999 when he says he first heard his calling to God’s service. It wasn’t a message he wanted to hear, and he spent the next two years using his skill as a litigator to argue in favor of keeping his life as an attorney.
“It wasn’t even bargaining. It was just plain old refusal,” said the 43-year-old Dunkle. “I was thinking, ‘Surely you have the wrong phone number.”
But God kept calling. Finally, while listening to a sermon in a California church, Dunkle came to terms with his life’s new direction. The sermon that day recounted a parable of an improperly dressed dinner guest who stands silent when confronted by his host. The message Dunkle took away: he could no longer stand silent.
“I realized that there aren’t a lot of people in the ministry that have my particular background, and there’s a lot of people who share that background outside the ministry. I wanted to make sure the people around me were prepared to meet Jesus,” he said.
So, in September 2001, with the encouragement of his family and boss at Rogers Towers, Dunkle moved his wife and two daughters to Manhattan where he would spend the next three years studying at a seminary.
Going from courtrooms to the clergy is not an unprecedented career move at Rogers Towers. Another had left to become a Presbyterian minister.
Still, Dunkle raised a few eyebrows around the office when he announced his departure and his destination.
“I was surprised,” said Doug Ward, Rogers Tower’s managing partner. “He was an excellent attorney. Very intelligent, a great trial attorney, clients loved him.”
Ward’s initial surprise soon turned to enthusiastic support when Dunkle divulged his reasons for leaving.
“The way he explained it to me was that he felt very much called to the ministry,” said Ward. “I knew that it was a decision he had considered carefully. I’m a believer, my faith is very important to me. The last thing I would ever do is in the way of someone’s calling to God.”
If Dunkle had doubts about the path he had taken, they disappeared two weeks after his arrival in Manhattan when terrorists slammed a pair of commercial airplanes into the World Trade Center, just two miles south of Dunkle’s Chelsea residence.
The world-changing significance of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks was obvious to anyone with a television. But the images Dunkle carries from that day don’t include the slow motion replays of the jets burying into the skyscrapers. Instead, he remembers New Yorkers exchanging empathetic looks on the subway, where eye contact is usually avoided. Just hours after the attacks he remembers a line of thousands stretching out the door of St. Vincent’s Hospital, waiting to give blood. The crowd was splitting itself up by blood type.
“The reaction of the people was what was important for me to see. What I saw was an outpouring of God’s grace following the evil, and I knew it had to come from someplace deeper in ourselves,” said Dunkle.
Those were the first lessons Dunkle learned in New York but his education in the ministry would continue for the next three years. He graduated last Spring but thought he was still being tested when his new boss, Diocese of Florida Bishop John Howard, another former lawyer, asked him to join his staff as Canon to the Ordinary, a position that traditionally calls for a more experienced hire.
“I thought ‘Surely, he’s joking,” said Dunkle. “I thought it had to be a test to see if I was sane. But when we discussed it, I realized my skills were exactly what were called for.”
Bishop Howard described Dunkle’s responsibilities as long-range church planning and said Dunkle will represent the Bishop to the diocese’s congregation.
Dunkle said that translates to “relationship builder” and the job calls for a lot of time on the road. Based in the Diocesan headquarters at the corner of Market and Duval streets, Dunkle has put nearly 3,000 miles on his Volkswagen Passat since he took the job five weeks ago.
He said his first responsibility is to “soothe tensions” and it’s a complete reversal from the role he used to fill as an attorney.
“My job used to be to stir the pot. Now it’s to calm the pot,” he said.
As a lawyer, Dunkle saw himself as a hired warrior and he admits he used to “feel invincible” in negotiations and in the courtroom. His current job may be less confrontational but Dunkle said that doesn’t make it easier.
“What’s difficult in this job is you can’t resort to that. You can’t set relationships against one another, you have to bring them together,” he said.
Those and conversations have never been more important as Florida’s Episcopal Church struggles with its response to the Diocese of New Hampshire’s ordinantion of a gay [Bishop]. In an open letter to his congregation, Bishop Howard encouraged his flock to replace “political grandstanding” with dialogue. Dunkle’s current priority is to carry that message throughout Northeast Florida.
“Very rarely do you change people through battle,” said Dunkle. “I want people to remember that the Church’s focus is not politics or property. When people threaten to break off, they build barriers to relationships. Once you do that, the Devil wins.”