Showing up somewhere new is, for most, intimidating.
Like the first day of school way back when, there is that inherent feeling of the need to run in the opposite direction. Either that or walk head long into the first group and start making friends.
This was the case for Rev. Dr. Jessica Hetherington, who started her first day in the Pontiac on July 1, 2017. Setting out, she attended the Bristol Canada Day ceremony, simply shaking hands and letting others know she’d be the new student minister with the United Church in town.
Now, one year later, she bids farewell for now as the newly-ordained minister begins her work closer to home. But in the short time that Hetherington has been here, she readily admits to falling in love with the beauty of the land, the support from the locals, and the opportunities she’s been offered, all here in the Pontiac.
Her journey to the area all began with the need for more experience in the field. While excelling within urban churches as she studied out of Montreal, it was decided that she’d need more hands-on work with people.
The best way to learn? Send her out to a rural ministry, of course. So, ever the eager student, she gratefully accepted the opportunity to conduct her internship in Bristol and started on her way, husband and children in tow.

“I had never been up in the Pontiac at all before that,” said Hetherington, on first arriving. “I might or might not have gotten lost the first time I drove here.”
While an intern with the Bristol Pastoral Charge, she would spend her weekends, plus Tuesday through Thursday, working with both St. Andrew’s Knox United Church and Stark’s Corners United Church. Living in the manse across from St. Andrew’s, she quickly came to start experiencing life in the area while making herself familiar with locals.
“We don’t just stay in the house, we go to town, we go to the library … we have lunch at Hursty’s, we were at the Shawville Fair … being out in the community is something I love and find so important,” she said.
Hetherington explained that she quickly learned what it meant to be a rural minister and the importance of faith and church to the congregants, as well as the extended community. In comparison to an urban church, she said her role in the Pontiac has been more focussed on earning trust by not only being there for people in times of need but becoming a regular face out and about.
“You know, you’re not this silo church – very much what happens in the community affects the people in the church,” said Hetherington. “At events, you’re not just going to get church people, you get folks from all over the community.”
As well, she came to realize just how connected the area is through not only shared experiences, but blood, too.
“These are family churches, it’s generations of [families] who go,” she said. “I’ve made the assumption [the congregation has] joked that’s it’s safer to just assume people are related than that they’re not. Those are deep ties to the land and the community that if you want to understand your people, you need to understand that.”
Having come from Carleton Place, however, many of these lessons are more comforting to her than revelatory. She credits this familiarity, the sense of a small community, as something that helped her truly know she’s been on the right path in her journey to ministry.
This community, she shared, was the ideal place for her to learn. The people were both generous with their time and forgiving of a misstep. While trying something new, her congregants would let her know what worked and what didn’t, or what they’d enjoy seeing more of in a service.
That’s how Hetherington was be able to feel her way along, knowing she made a right decision even without others openly saying so.
She fostered this ability to better understand the community’s reaction by simply putting her face out there, meeting more people and giving her time, as freely as she could afford.
“Respect is a huge piece – and slow down,” she said. “I don’t mean just on roads, slow down and talk to people to hear their stories, it’s been a lot of that and it’s been amazing.”
Still, there are some parts of rural living – and driving – that have taken her a bit longer to adapt to.
“There are times when the fact that I’ve lived in the city for however many decades shows, but I have to laugh at that,” said Hetherington. “I backed my car into so-and-so’s ditch in the winter and they had to get the tractor to pull it out and I went, ‘Oh there goes the city minister with her little Honda Civic.’”
But like those winter roads, her path to ministry was not always so clear, especially when she had spent most of her life a part of the Catholic church. It wasn’t until she was with her husband that Hetherington would begin her foray into the United Church of Canada.
Even then, it was just five years ago that she knew she had received the call to ministry.
“I always like to say, it’s not what I was turning away from but what I was turning to and that this was a tradition in which I could fully answer God’s call and be with God’s people,” she
said, of the turn from Catholicism.
Experiencing more of what the United Church had to offer her, there was a quick connection between many of her passions, including theology, public speaking and her relationship with God.
“I had a job as a lay chaplain … and as part of that job I got to preach,” said Hetherington. “I got to go to the churches that supported the chaplaincy and be the guest preacher. I’ve always loved public speaking and preaching took that to another level.”
However, it wouldn’t be until Pentecost 2013 when she’d experience her true calling to ministry. As it was the celebration of the
birth of the church, when the disciples were set forth to share the word of God, it was a fitting time for the calling to arrive.
“I was sitting there in church and realizing very much that God was calling me to [preach and lead] as an ordained minister in the United Church of Canada,” she explained. “As a theologian, it was very much hair raising on the back of my neck.”
She said for the United Church, it’s important in the step towards ministry to not only feel this calling, but for oth
ers to see it, too. Her desire to preach, coupled with her PhD in theology and her willingness to consistently play an active part in services was soon recognized.
Which led her, eventually, to Bristol – to the relationships she’s forged, countless new
experiences and an exposure to a community that she had to, at one point, GPS every address in order to get
around.
Hetherington laughs every time she throws in the detail of getting lost so often when first arriving in the Pontiac but comes to realize the metaphor behind this. As much as she needed guidance when she began here, she’s learned how to navigate not only the roads but the bumps and turns that come with them.
Which is to say, she has finished her studying and internship, and was proudly ordained at a service in Hudson, Que., on May 26. Following that, she just wrapped up her time in the Pontiac, too, as she gave her last service on June 24.
Admittedly, she said, it’s a hard move. She’s grown attached to the beauty of the landscape and the authenticity of the locals. She’ll miss how she can open the back door of the manse and let the children run down to the creek or be invited over to a neighbour’s home for them to see farm animals up close.
Even just the honesty of the congregation in helping her learn and the trust she’s built, helping in times of crises, will be difficult to move on from easily.
Hetherington said she has a colleague who shared a practice with her, of explaining to young ones how they’re precious in their relationship with God and others. In this exercise, pins with the word “beloved” would be gifted to children, with the explanation that they give and take a little bit of themselves with every relationship they form in life.
She realized that this simple symbol was one that had a lot of meaning as she prepared to move on in her spiritual journey.
“I’m going to be definitely taking bits of the Pontiac and of these folks with me,” she said.
However, there’s one upcoming weekend she knows the whole family will have to return to the Pontiac for.
“And of course, I’ll be back for the Shawville Fair,” she continued, with a laugh.