NORTH SMITHFIELD – Sean Amato was baptized as a Catholic.
He had stints working in both IT and social services, studied divinity in Chicago, and served as a long-term volunteer for nearly a year with a ministry in Egypt.
Yet somehow, it is back in his hometown of North Smithfield – leading a Protestant church – where he says he has finally found his calling.
Amato was named pastor of Slatersville Congregational Church following a unanimous vote by congregants at a service held on Sunday, August 4. At age 36, he will now take on a role as the church’s first permanent pastor since Rev. Eileen Morris retired in 2021.
“Reverend Eileen was a treasure,” Amato told NRI NOW this week. “These are big shoes to step into.”
A Cranston resident, Amato notes his first home was in North Smithfield, and says that his journey back to where he started, now leading the church where his parents first met, was fortuitous. The pastor’s father hailed from a large, Protestant, North Smithfield family.
However, “My mother was more Catholic than my father was Protestant,” he explained of his upbringing.
But Amato says he never felt fully at home in a church where women could not hold the same roles as men.
“I was not comfortable in a faith environment where I could do something my mother couldn’t,” he said.
And while it seems his path in life never strayed far from his spirituality, religious studies were not Amato’s first pursuit. He earned a bachelor’s degree in history and anthropology at Rhode Island College. It was only after years of difficult work in the social service field that he became an active and engaged member of Unity Church of Christ at Beneficent Congregational Church in Providence. There, he took part in prayer groups, Bible studies, committee work and choir, but says he still felt he could do more.
Amato contacted UCC’s Coptic partners in Cairo and made arrangements to move to Egypt as a long-term volunteer with the organization’s
Global Ministries. For most of 2020 he lived in that country, teaching English classes and working as part of a multilingual literary team headed by the president of the Protestant Community of Egypt.
Upon return to the U.S., Amato began his pursuit of ordained ministry, and spent three years completing a master’s of divinity degree, graduating with distinction from Chicago Theological Seminary.
While completing his studies as a student minister at a church in Rumford, Rhode Island, he learned of the opportunity to serve as a guest pastor in Slatersville. The church had featured a series of guest and interim pastors since Morris’s departure three years ago, and Amato had been recommended by the pastor of another congregational church in Cranston.
It was last July that he first returned to Slatersville as a guest.
“When I put the pieces together and I realized this was the church where my parents met, it all kind of clicked with me,” Amato said. “I realized how nice it was.”
The little church on the common, it turned out, was the same place his father’s 13 siblings attended Sunday school, and the place he delivered a eulogy from the pulpit at his grandfather’s funeral in 2009.
“By divine happenstance, I found myself pulpit preaching before Slatersville’s congregation in 2023 – an incredible ‘homecoming’ experience for me and for my extended family,” Amato noted in a recent church newsletter.
To be approved for ordination in the UCC, a would be minister must first find a church willing to hire them, and it wasn’t long after that first visit that Amato applied for the permanent role in Slatersville. The process requires vetting by the church council as well as the denomination all leading up to a, “candidating sermon,” in which a potential pastor makes something of a debut, before leaving the room to allow the full congregation to vote on the hire.
“I heard raucous applause through the door,” said Amato of Sunday’s vote. “It was actually really nice.”
He notes that a three year or longer process to find a new church leader is fairly common for modern day congregational churches because pastors are scarce. In fact, the Slatersville church’s new hire was the only pastor in the state approved in his denomination this year.
Still, he said he considers himself fortunate to lead the active congregation, an increasingly rare opportunity in today’s churches.
“I’m really impressed with this one,” Amato said.
The only open and affirming church in northern Rhode Island, Slatersville Congregational, Amato notes, is a, “purple,” congregation, attracting worshippers from various political beliefs and backgrounds.
“It’s a surprisingly diverse group,” he said.
The open and diverse ethos, he said, means simply that the church aims to be a local reflection of the community – where everyone is welcome as long as they’re willing to contribute to the whole and share their gifts. Unlike other denominations, he notes that congregational churches will baptize anyone, and says he hopes to help make the church more relevant and accessible.
“We need to do a better job to showing value to parents and kids of time spent here,” he said. “I want people to be able to come in here and have this be a part of their life.”
Asked about the direction he hopes to see for the Slatersville congregation’s future, Amato was quick to point out that the church and it’s membership operate as a democracy.
“I’m going to be walking with this church,” he said. “I’m not the boss here. They are partners in this.”
He said he does hope to create spaces for discussions about faith, and intends to build, “creative relationships,” with the larger community.
Unlike Morris, who lived in a parsonage that the church has since sold, he said he is not yet sure where he’ll settle in locally.
“My intent is to be as close to the church as possible,” Amato said.
His official time at the Slatersville pulpit begins this Sunday, August 11, when he’ll hold his first baptism and give his first sermon as full time pastor. And the young religious leader is clearly excited about the role – and the fate that brought him to it.
“Why have I gone so many places in my life to end up back in Slatersville?” Amato asked. “This is an unusually warm place. I kept going to all of these other places.”
With such a mutually synchronistic start for Amato and the congregation, the future, it seems, looks bright.
“It’s an exciting time for a little church,” he said.
