Conversion Conversations in Koon: The Road to Ordination for Aaron Friar and Ray Phelps
For Hillsdale roommates Aaron Friar, ’94, and Ray Phelps, ’94, conversation and debate with friends in Koon Hall started a spiritual journey that led both to their ordinations in the Orthodox Christian Church 25 years later.
Friar, a native of northwest Ohio, considered himself a fundamentalist Protestant but attended a Catholic high school. He was drawn to the Christian principles of Hillsdale College and believed that its lack of denominational affiliation would offer the freedom to explore various faith traditions and find the spiritual answers he was seeking. Phelps belonged to the Protestant reformed church in Talkeetna, Alaska, where his father served as pastor. Although Phelps had sensed a calling to the ministry since his early teen years, he began at Hillsdale as a physics major.
During the 1991-1992 school year, Friar, Phelps, and two upperclassman friends—Tim Heckenlively, ’92, and Jon Corombos, ’92, who were both drawn to Greek Orthodoxy—lived in Koon Hall and spent considerable time discussing theology. “I remember looking at Tim’s copy of Chesterton’s Orthodoxy,” Friar says. “Chesterton argued with compelling images that I couldn’t expunge from either my head or my heart.” Phelps, however, argued against Orthodoxy at first. “I couldn’t agree with [the others] until my perspective changed,” he says.
One of their guides was former College Chaplain Duane Beauchamp. “Fr. Beauchamp is one of the most unselfish pastors I have ever met,” Friar says. “The fact that he would reach across denominational lines without judgment meant the world to me.” “He took me under his wing,” says Phelps, “and showed me that there was more to the Christian faith than what I knew.” When Phelps decided to pursue ministry, Beauchamp arranged a meeting with the local bishop. He subsequently changed his major from physics to religion.
Friar joined the Orthodox church in 1993 and began his career as a teacher at St. Herman of Alaska Orthodox Christian School in Allston, Massachusetts. He then served as a parish administrator at an Episcopal church in Boston, while also earning his master of divinity degree from Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in 2011. Last June, he was ordained as a deacon and assigned to serve as a pastoral assistant at Holy Transfiguration Orthodox Church in Syracuse, New York, where he moved along with his wife Anna and their five children.
Phelps joined the Orthodox church in 1993 as well. He began working as a software engineer for a telecommunications company, but felt drawn to ministry. In 1996, he visited an Orthodox monastery in New Mexico to explore the monastic life. After two weeks, “my entire life had changed,” he recalls. “As much as I loved monasticism, I realized I was not called to be a monk.” That fall, he got married and began his ministry at St. Herman Orthodox Church in Wasilla, Alaska, first as a reader, then as choir director and sub-deacon. During that time, he completed the St. Stephen’s diaconate course through the Antiochian House of Studies. In 2013, he was ordained as a deacon and given the name John. Two years later, he was assigned to pastor a fledgling Orthodox mission, Saints Joachim and Anna, in Goldendale, Washington, and in March, he was ordained a priest. He and his wife, Anna, have seven children.
Friar and Phelps agree that their time at Hillsdale played a pivotal role in their lives. “I felt very cared for in my spiritual quest at Hillsdale,” Friar says. Phelps adds: “I wouldn’t be where I am today had it not been for Hillsdale.”
Printed in the Winter 2018 Alumni Magazine