St. Stephen’s welcomes new rector

MILLBURN, NJ — St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Millburn welcomes Rev. Paula J. Toland as rector. Toland comes to St. Stephen’s from Grace Episcopal Church in Oxford, Mass., where she was serving as priest-in-charge.

In 2013, Toland earned a master’s of divinity degree with special competency in pastoral theology from the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass., and was ordained to the diaconate in June 2013 by the Rev. Thomas Shaw, Bishop of Massachusetts. Toland was ordained to the priesthood by Shaw in January 2014. Before entering seminary, Toland worked for more than two decades in social services, primarily in the fields of family and sexual violence, and child welfare, both in direct service and in program management.

Married in 1983, Toland and her husband, Ron, who is now retired from the U.S. Navy, lived for six years in Virginia and then moved to New England, where they remained until moving to Millburn. They have three children: Sean, a Fulbright Scholar who is now a doctoral student in German studies at Princeton University; Kevin, a graduate of William and Mary who has just completed two years in Peru serving in the Peace Corps; and Kathleen, a first-year student at Smith College, where she is majoring in computer science.

Toland will be the 21st rector of St. Stephen’s.

  St. Stephen’s Church