A successful businesswoman and lecturer at the ANU, Jean Shannon found herself looking for something more in her life.
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She had reached that point where money didn't have to be the primary driver and started questioning what it was she really wanted to do.
"You get to a point where you say where and who do I want to be. It's about getting in touch with yourself, something spiritual," Jean said.
After meeting the chaplain at Canberra Hospital and asking him about his work she discovered he was just one person trying to visit a large number of patients and decided to put her hand up to help.
But it was with caveats; that it would only be on Fridays when she booked herself into a meeting and went to the hospital.
What she discovered in herself and the people she visited sent her on a completely different path away from the world of management consulting and legal practice workshop sessions at ANU.
"After two weeks my husband told me I had changed. These incredible people, often with terminal illnesses were welcoming me to their bedsides and it was their dying wish to make me a good chaplain; the generosity was staggering," she said.
Jean decided to study for a theology degree at the Charles Sturt University and it became a tipping point in her career.
"It was like the hardest degree, especially for someone who thinks they're a little bit clever," Jean said.
"The deeper I got in, the thought of giving up the business, the prestige attached to it, was traumatic but at the same time easy.
"It wasn't about what I was giving up but what I was choosing to take on."
The degree put Jean on a course to to ordained in the Uniting Church in Australia and then to take on the role of Head of Chaplaincy and Pastoral Practice at Uniting NSW.ACT working with 110 chaplains and pastoral care staff in areas such as mental health and aged care.
"It really is a big job and you don't go into the ministry to be an executive but I had a mission and gave that time to the church."
I've never met a community so warm and welcoming. The neighbours all introduced themselves, some even brought casseroles as we were moving in.
- Reverend Jean Shannon
Now Reverend Jean has returned to her original path of choice and in doing so has become the new Uniting Church minister at Merimbula after induction on Sunday, September 27.
"I've never met a community so warm and welcoming. The neighbours all introduced themselves, some even brought casseroles as we were moving in. The congregation redid the manse, replanting the garden and repainting. They were a team who worked like demons for a couple of months," Rev Jean said.
And she is delighted to have joined "a congregation which is active and committed, more so than many".
The Uniting Church of Australia is a major social service provider though Uniting and its involvement in emergency and homeless care, aged care, Barnardo's, Lifeline and the Wayside Chapel.
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The church was a coming together of the Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregational Churches through a constitutional-like agreement which put equality and inclusiveness as fundamental tenets.
"We have always had men and women in the ministry and it's never been a black or white church, it includes the Aboriginal Congress, not as an adjunct but as an integral part of the church," Rev Jean said.
Its inclusiveness means it celebrates and has a liturgy for same-sex marriage.
UnitingCare Merimbula runs the federal government funded Community Visitors Scheme which provides voluntary visitors for socially isolated residents living in aged care facilities or their own home. There is no specific church connection as it is purely a community service.
It also runs the Op Shop at Tura Beach but Rev Jean has plans to do more such as seminars and workshops which would be more secular, covering subjects such as poetry, learning different spiritual practises or providing different skills for those who are under-employed.
