The. Rev. J Edson Way will be our Assembly opening keynote speaker for our 2025 Assembly. He will be speaking on the history of the Panhandle region and how Christianity was brought and spread through the region. The Assembly will then spend time in discussion with their conferences about their stories and how we can grow our ministries in our varied but united contexts.

Read below to learn about Rev. Edson.

Way was born May 18, 1947 in Chicago, Illinois. He attended Beloit College, Wisconsin, for a Bachelor’s Degree in Anthropology and the University of Toronto, Canada, for his Masters and Ph.D. in Biological Anthropology, his dissertation subject being on protohistoric Inuit (Eskimo) migrations across the Canadian High Arctic. Returning to the United States he taught anthropology in Wisconsin for thirteen years from 1972 to 1985.

In 1969, after graduating from college, he married Jean Ellwood Chappell (Jenny), daughter of a historic West Texas ranching family, at Saint Paul’s-on-the-Plains Episcopal Church in Lubbock, Texas. In 1985 he was invited to become the Director of the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe, New Mexico. After five years at the Wheelwright, he became a “trouble-shooter” for the State Museum system in New Mexico, serving as Director of the New Mexico Natural History Museum, Albuquerque, the Space Center Museum, near White Sands Missile Range in Alamogordo, and was the founding Director of the Farm and Ranch History Museum in Las Cruces. In 1997 the Governor of New Mexico appointed him Cultural Affairs Officer to lead the agency (541 employees, $34 million annual budget) overseeing eight State Museums, the NM Endowment for the Arts, NM Historic Preservation, the State Library, and five State Monuments for New Mexico. He served ex-officio on the Boards of Directors of all those museums and Divisions of the Office of Cultural Affairs. He left the agency in 2003 to answer a calling to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church, attending the Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas, from 2005 to 2008. He was called to become Rector of Saint Christopher’s Episcopal Church in Lubbock, Texas. He retired from full-time parish ministry in 2015, joined the staff at Hospice of Lubbock for six months, and works as a hospice chaplain on call.

In Lubbock he serves on the Executive Board of the Texas Tech Museum Association and is a Past- President. He is Secretary-Treasurer of the Robert Burns Society of West Texas and is instrumental in obtaining grant support for the nine past Robert Burns Suppers in Lubbock and engaging Celtic Musical talent from across the US, Scotland, and Canada. He is on the Board of the Lubbock Symphony Orchestra and is a ten-year member of the Board of the Lubbock Arts Alliance.