A U.S. entrepreneur who owned manufacturing businesses in Mexico and who in 1978 turned to the ministry is pastoring temporarily for the small, English-speaking congregation at St. Mark’s Anglican church in Guadalajara.
Jim Priddy, who lives in the Lake Chapala area with wife Sue and grandson Devon, had preached several times at St. Mark’s before he came to fill in as supply priest at St. Mark’s after the recent resignation of the pastor, Manuel Sonora.
“It’s a real blessing, like a gift from God,” said longtime St. Mark’s parishioner Marcy Matthew. “Everyone likes him and he’s a positive person, always with lots of smiles.”Priddy began his career as a clergyman over three decades ago and was pastor of five churches in Texas, Oklahoma and Georgia. Although he and his wife became Episcopal in 1995, he was just ordained in December as an Anglican priest by the bishop of the Western Diocese of Mexico, which includes Guadalajara.
“I love preaching,” Priddy emphasized, noting that he holds a doctorate in theological studies. He has been teaching a Bible class to Spanish-speaking seminarians at the Anglican seminary in Zapopan and is serving on the bishop’s finance committee.
Perhaps just as remarkable as Priddy’s career as a clergyman is his earlier career in business. As a university student, he received a degree in business administration from the University of Texas and was then sent to electronics school by the U.S. Air Force. In 1971, he owned and operated an electronics manufacturing business, a maquiladora, in Reynosa, Mexico, near the U.S. border, later relocating the plant to Queretaro, Mexico, where he remained until 1978, after a devaluation of the peso in 1976 had decimated the Mexican economy.
After that, he made the decision to go to seminary. “The Lord made me a deal I couldn’t refuse,” he quipped.
Besides living in Mexico when he had his businesses, Priddy has traveled extensively in the country. He retired in the lake area in 2007 and became active in ministry at St. Andrew’s Anglican church.
He will pastor at St. Mark’s for an as yet undefined period, while that congregation searches for a permanent rector.