The Rev. Andrew Brislin Makes Mentone His Home

The Rev. Andrew Brislin, full-time rector at St. Joseph’s on-the-Mountain Episcopal Church in Mentone, didn’t begin his professional life in the pulpit. He began it with balance sheets, loan portfolios, and long conversations across a banker’s desk. But it was there that his unexpected call to ordained ministry quietly took shape.

Known to friends and parishioners simply as Drew, he grew up in Selma, Alabama, a place whose history and complexity helped shape his understanding of community, suffering, and resilience. After graduating from The University of Alabama, he built a career in finance, working in banking, mortgage lending, software services, and even traveling the country with a mobile trade show before settling into nearly a decade at a Tuscaloosa bank. On paper, it was a stable and successful path. In practice, it became something else entirely.

The turning point came in 2011, in the aftermath of the devastating Tuscaloosa tornado that claimed lives and wreaked havoc in several areas of the state. After Brislin was away caring for his mother, who was battling pancreatic cancer, he returned to find a shaken community searching not just for financial help, but for someone to sit with them, to listen. Customers came to his desk not only to cash FEMA checks or manage damaged financial affairs, but to talk — to tell their stories, to process what they had survived.

“I realized, consciously or not, that I was providing pastoral services,” Brislin said. At the time, he didn’t see it as ministry. He saw it as listening, as being present, as helping people navigate moments when their lives had been turned upside-down.

That instinct only deepened as he helped clients manage estates after the deaths of loved ones. His work required empathy as much as expertise. Money, he came to understand, is often intertwined with grief and vulnerability. “Using pastoral skills,” he reflected, “that’s what I was doing. I just didn’t know it at the time.”

The question of ordained ministry emerged gradually, during a season already marked by loss. After his mother’s death later that year, Brislin entered counseling with an Episcopal priest who asked a simple but life-altering question: Had he ever considered entering the seminary? His answer was an immediate no. But the question lingered on his heart.

At nearly 40 years old, the idea of returning to school — and entering such an intense field of study — felt daunting. The classroom was a couple of decades in the past. Yet despite how big a life shift he would face, a divine path continued to reveal itself. “Here I am throwing up obstacles, and God’s starting to knock them down.” His wife, Allison, met the possibility with calm resolve: “If you’re ready to move the mountain, I’m ready.”

It helped that Brislin knew several in the clergy who had begun as attorneys, insurance brokers, and other professions. It was doable. And the life experience he’d gained thus far would only add to his skills in ministry. In fact, his employer was in full support of his exploration of the priesthood. “They continued to invest in me as an employee, even though I was discerning this other call.”

What followed was a long period of discernment, consisting of years of prayer, study, preaching, and serving at the church he already attended — all while he continued working full time in banking. The Seminary of the Southwest eventually led the couple to Austin, Texas, where Brislin graduated in 2020, carrying with him not only theological training but also a deeply formed sense of what pastoral presence looks like in real life. In sitting with people in need, Brislin, a soft-spoken man, learned the value of silence in addition to spoken prayer. “Sometimes you have to make space for silence. God speaks to us in Holy silence. That’s His language.”

His first call took him to the Church of the Ascension in Montgomery as associate rector, where he served through the upheaval of the pandemic years. There, he honed the rhythm of parish leadership: preaching; visiting the sick, ministering to those in mourning, and other types of pastoral care; church administration; and youth ministry, including working closely with the Scouting program (Brislin is an Eagle Scout himself).

Part of the training he received is what Brislin calls “learning to enter well into a community and leave well,” meaning to serve each community according to its distinct needs, and if you leave, leave your congregation and the community having served with grace.

When Brislin first received the invitation to talk with St. Joseph’s, he knew little about Mentone other than a visit decades earlier as a teenager attending a Scouting event at Camp Comer. But as conversations unfolded and visits followed, something clicked. What stood out immediately was the church’s commitment to hands-on service, especially its food ministry. “Feeding people is boots on the ground — the hands and feet of Jesus in the community,” he said. Just as compelling was the wider community itself: a place rich with artists, musicians, storytellers, and people who arrived by winding paths, each carrying their own history.

Mentone, he discovered, is quietly alive with creativity and connection. “You’d never know it driving down I-59,” he said, “how much is going on up here.”

The move to Mentone represents more than a new position; it marks a personal homecoming of sorts. The Brislins are embracing the slower pace, the foggy mornings, and the closeness of the natural world. They are rediscovering some old loves. “Allison and I used to hike a good bit, and that’s something we’re excited about,” he said. They’re also interested in fly fishing, working outdoors, caring for their Brittany spaniels, and simply finding joy in a community where retirement somehow makes people busier than ever.

Professionally, Brislin sees Mentone as fertile ground for collaboration. He is eager to build relationships across denominations, to explore ecumenical worship and shared service, and to ask, together, what the churches in the area can do to meet the needs of their neighbors.

For Brislin, the journey from banking to the priesthood has never been about abandoning one world for another. It has been about recognizing that the skills formed in one — listening, empathy, presence — were always pointing toward the other. Mentone, with its layered history and close-knit community, feels like the right place to continue that work.

“This whole process has never been what we expected,” he said. “It’s been way better.” And now Brislin begins the next chapter of a calling that started long before he ever stepped up to a pulpit — one conversation at a time.