In Conversation with The Rev’d Eric Phinney, MTS-Canada Regional Director

Jason Zuidema
Hello, friends. This is Jason Zuidema, and I am here with the Reverend Eric Phinney, who has been recently named the Director of the Canada region for the Mission to Seafarers. Previously, Reverend Eric was a chaplain at the Saint John, New Brunswick mission and has lots of other pastoral and executive experience. Eric, thanks for being on the podcast with us today.

Eric Phinney
It’s good to be here.

Jason Zuidema
We’re doing this podcast as we are in Vancouver, British Columbia. We’ve had a NAMMA regional meeting and had a chance to meet with the missions of different places in Washington State and also in British Columbia. What were your impressions of the day together? What were your learnings of ecumenism and institutional work?

Eric Phinney
I guess the opportunity to participate in the training—the suicide prevention sort of sensitivity training—was excellent. And of course, the Mission to Seafarers has mandated a number of courses. This is sort of the first one that has officially hit the ground here in Canada, at least. It was wonderful to have that experience, and I have since sent that information across all our other stations, looking for them to sort of take up the challenge to offer this training, not only to their staff, but to other port workers that might come in contact with seafarers.

Listening to you, Jason, just talk about the local history here was also fascinating. Every station has a story, and I loved how you articulated just a snippet of a few years of an experiment in ecumenism. When we read the histories and the stories of where we come from, it’s an inspiring thing. It helps us to understand why we do what we do, and something about how we should do it.

Jason Zuidema
So you were recently appointed as regional director, but it’s kind of a special appointment. In fact, Reverend Judith Alltree, who was previous to you, likes to joke that it took two people to replace her. There’s some truth to that. Can you tell us a bit about how you were appointed and how you have this teamwork now in the Mission to Seafarers region here?

Eric Phinney
Well, I mean, part of the story is that Judith had expressed a desire to retire a couple years ago, and they advertised—you know, they wrote up a job description—and it had quite a tall order. I mean, they wanted Jesus, I think, and none of us could sort of completely fulfill the role. I didn’t even apply until after it had been advertised for a full year, and nobody applied. I finally went to the AGM, and I said to the chair of the board, “Look, if nobody else, you know, will do this, I will take it on.” I’m a founding director of Mission to Seafarers Canada. I know what needs to be done. I know how important it is, and I’m happy to give a few years to this venture.

So then they reopened the competition, and I was interviewed, wrote some presentations, and I kind of thought at the time, this is an awful lot of stuff to go through for a job that nobody wants. But in my interview, I wanted to be very honest and said, “Look, there are two things that I’m not brilliant at here, and I may have to reach out and get some professional consultation.” I said, “One of them is fundraising for the national organization and helping stations with their own fundraising.” I’ve done little fundraising campaigns, but this is a complex case, because we need sustainable funding for a national organization, where many of the donors would already be engaged with local sources—so you don’t want to step on people’s toes. And it’s not project funding; it’s sustainable funding, which is also, by nature, more difficult. So I just simply said I would want a professional to come in and at least tell us how to do it, not necessarily do it themselves.

And the other thing that I didn’t think I was brilliant at was creating websites and social media tools that had great impact. I know the theory of it. I know, Jason, you’re brilliant at it—you can never be at a meeting with you without getting your picture taken several times. But I thought I would, again, need somebody to just help coach me through that. So those are the two things that I said I might not be the best candidate for. But all the other things—I gather I ticked the boxes.

When it came down to it, they had been interviewing and talking with this other person who was a professional fundraiser and social media person, and they were sort of torn between the two of us. They suggested that the Secretary General interview us both, and after he did that, he said, “Hire both of them. We need both of them.” And so that’s what happened. We’ve got a great team between Marcia and myself, and so much of the early work was done by Judith and others before her to basically get the structure of Mission to Seafarers Canada up and running. Now we have a pretty clear idea of what needs to be done. It’s just a matter of getting everybody read into the various files and projects and doing it. So really looking forward to the challenge.

Jason Zuidema
In past years, you had a chance to visit some of the Mission to Seafarers locations in Canada—maybe some internationally. What do you think are some of the real strengths of the different organizations, and what perhaps are some of the challenges or weaknesses? Where do you think you can help in filling some of the needs?

Eric Phinney
A couple of general things come to mind. One is just the public relations aspect of helping the ordinary public—whether they be in Anglican churches or just general public—helping them to understand and know what seafarers do and who these people are. By and large, as I’ve shared the story of the mission work, people are surprised, and they often just react, “I did not know that.” And the second reaction is, “How can I help?” So there’s a tremendous PR thing that needs to be done. Marcia— that’s actually the reason she applied for the job—when she started to read up on who we are and what we did, she said, “Why didn’t I know about this before?” She said, “This is a story that needs to be told.” So that’s one thing.

The other thing I think we’ve all sort of joked about is—and maybe this has changed; I think it has changed significantly now—but at one time, chaplains to seafarers were old white guys and sort of quickly aging out of relevance. We’ve seen, with the advent of younger people, international people, just a tremendous uptick in efficiency and effectiveness in visiting ships and interfacing with foreign national people. There’s work to be done in recruitment. I love the idea of interns and hope that Mission to Seafarers Canada can develop an intern program, because sustainability and succession planning I do see as critical for long-term survival. We don’t seem to have any sort of real programs that are doing that. So that will be on my list—to develop ways and means of having a sustainable and actively planned succession so we have the right people to do the job.

Jason Zuidema
Can you tell me a bit about your connection to the sea? What family connections to seaports? And do you have any personal connections yourself?

Eric Phinney
I guess I can go back to when I was about 11 years old. At that point, anything that would float, I would put a sail on it and try to make it move through the water. I just had a deep, deep attraction to sailing vessels, particularly. I saw that in my own son. I remember one time we were at a family party—there was a rowboat. I tied a long rope to it, put my son in it, and he rowed back and forth for about six hours. And I thought, I’ve got to build that boy a boat.

My father was the port engineer in the Port of St. John, and we’d grown up around the docks, going back and forth and looking at the ships and the facilities. I can remember early on, every time I would cross the harbor on one of our bridges, my heart would sort of skip a beat, and I’d look out to sea. I’m not sure what exactly you call that, except maybe there’s a calling there of some sort. It’s, you know, the call to the sea—“Some go down to the sea in ships.” There was a profound attraction there.

I spent 30 years as a parish priest. One day, the board of the seafarers’ mission called me up and said, “Eric, could we have a meeting?” I thought they were going to ask me to be on the board, because I know quite a lot about governance. But when we had the meeting, they said, “No, no, it’s not that at all. We want you to be the chaplain.” And I said, “That’s easy. I can do that too.”

So for the last 10 years, I’ve been the chaplain in the Port of St. John for the St. John’s Seafarers Mission, and really enjoyed that time. The first day, they handed me the keys to a brand-new van. Over 10 years, I wore it out, and I thought, maybe, okay—the van’s done, maybe I’m done. But then that’s when I got this new calling to help supply the encouragement and some of the needs for the ports across Canada. It’s a great privilege to be called to be the Regional Director for Canada.

Jason Zuidema
The Mission to Seafarers is not just ordained chaplains, but it’s a whole mixture of staff, volunteers, full-time, part-time—people who are giving in many different ways. All of them have special needs and need training and need to be oriented in different ways. I want to just focus on chaplains for one moment, as you have served as a chaplain as well. What’s the kind of training need for chaplains? What are the trends in that, and how do you see Mission to Seafarers Canada helping in that regard?

Eric Phinney
When I came on, my training consisted of going with a previous chaplain and visiting one ship, and then being passed the keys to the van and told, “There. You know how to do that now.” Thanks to NAMMA—your organization, Jason—I became aware that there are ship visiting courses and programs, which I didn’t get the chance to take. I probably should have, but I’m certainly sending people to those sorts of trainings now.

One of the things I discovered early on as regional director is that Mission to Seafarers in London, the international headquarters, has set up a training program with at least 16 courses in it. They’ve designated which courses are for which people—whether it’s for the regional director, a chaplain, station manager, ship visitor, or volunteer. They have this big grid, and the course that we did yesterday was just one of those blocks on that grid. There are courses on how to visit a ship, how to be safe around an industrial facility, how to manage staff—particularly volunteers. There are all kinds of courses that we hope to be able to roll out. That’ll be one of my jobs in the Canadian region—to see to it that we figure out at least who has taken what courses (if any) or equivalents, and what the next course is that we should really actively try to roll out.

I’ve already written to a couple of stations and said, “Hey, we just did this. It’d be a really good fit for your station to sponsor this SafeTALK course.” There’s budget available for it, and we can do it with port workers as well as mission staff, because often port workers will be the first people who come in contact with seafarers. So we could serve the whole industry by making it safer for everybody.

Jason Zuidema
You were a chaplain for a bunch of years, also a pastor in a parish setting. What do you think are the—how do I say—the heart challenges of being a chaplain? What are things that chaplains ought to be aware of going into chaplaincy? What might you wish you had known about being a chaplain—about your heart and your soul as a chaplain? What are the challenges in that regard?

Eric Phinney
I remember one day kind of having a revelation about this and feeling sort of sorry for myself and bad, and I thought, “I’m just a taxi driver. That’s all I’m doing.” I had a battle within—pride. And then as I started to work through that, I realized, okay, I’m not just a taxi driver here—thinking of driving seafarers to Walmart so they can pick up stuff to take home, perhaps. No, it goes much, much deeper than that. As we drive the van or meet with guys on board the ship, the critical thing to do is to learn how to really listen—listen at a very deep level—so that if there is a deeper need, I can act. I can pray for them. I can find stuff for them. I can facilitate. I can open doors. I can minister to their need.

I’ve always thought of ministry as being very, very simple. Ministry is just simply talking with someone: “How can I help you? What is it you need help with?” And as I look through the years of being a chaplain, so many different things have come up that I’ve been able to say, “Yeah, I can help you with that.” Some were deeply internal emotional needs, and some were just purely, “Can you help us get the coffee maker fixed on the ship?” Because the men are going nuts. Every day is new. There’s a new challenge. But I guess you have to be settled in yourself to be a servant—to be a servant of all—and to discern what the needs are and how you’re going to respond to them. And that’s a great privilege to be able to do that. I think it is. It’s something that you can learn on your own, but I think there are ways to really teach that and teach somebody how to be an effective chaplain to a group like seafarers.

Jason Zuidema
Well, Reverend Eric, thank you so much for the time that you spent with us on this conversation. It’s great to catch up, and I wish you all the best going forward in your new position.

Eric Phinney
Okay, thank you.