After five minutes with the Rev. Christian Tutor, it's difficult to imagine he spent 11 years in a monastery. It's not Tutor's prayerfulness or reverence you'll question. It's his gabbiness and that easily triggered laugh.

Surely, he was ssshhhed a lot? Tutor, 39, has heard that question before.

"Have you seen The Sound of Music?" Tutor asks, laughing. "And the nuns ask, 'How do you solve a problem like Maria? . . . She sings! Well, I was like Maria in the cloister."

Tutor believes God asked those same questions of him 10 years ago and answered by calling Tutor out of his quiet West Coast Augustinian monastery and into busy parish work. After challenging assignments elsewhere, Tutor arrived in Concord about a month ago to lead the All Saints Anglican Church, a new congregation that formed in 2003 after Gene Robinson, an openly gay man from Weare, was elected New Hampshire's Episcopal bishop.

The parish is part of the Traditional Anglican Communion, which is distinct from the Anglican Church that includes the American Episcopal Church. The worldwide divide began years ago, long before Robinson's election. Other divisive issues have included the ordination of women and revisions in the liturgy, which traditional Anglicans oppose.

In Concord, All Saints doesn't have its own church. The congregation uses the Concordia Lutheran Church on North Main Street on Sunday afternoons. And Tutor doesn't have much privacy: His office is the second bedroom at his Concord apartment, where it seems his phone and doorbell ring constantly.

But Tutor has no complaints.

"When I am with a person in crisis, I know God wants me there," Tutor said. "This is what my whole life is." That same dedication prompted Tutor to renew his monastic vows after leaving the monastery, thereby giving up the opportunity to marry and have a family like other priests in the church.

"I didn't want to be pulled in two ways," Tutor said. "I thought if I retain my vows, I will be able to serve all of God's people all of the time. I will give God that sacrifice and be his and his alone."

Living that sacrifice may mean leading his congregation on Sundays or stopping by the Barley House in his full religious garb - layers of black robes that resemble a cape. At just over 6 feet tall, Tutor does not blend in. And he's happy about that. He just wishes he got more hellos than curious stares.

That enthusiastic and public approach for his ministry is winning over Tutor's congregation of about 45 people, said senior warden JoAnn Samson of Concord.

"I really feel like we get a message each week, and it's not just, 'You went to church,' " Samson said. "It's really about what would Jesus be doing and who is out there that we can touch?"

Samson left an Episcopal parish she'd attended for 20 years to join All Saints a couple of years ago. It wasn't Robinson's election that prompted the switch, Samson said. She felt herself yearning for more Bible-based sermons and a more traditional approach to worship.

"The sermons were different (here)," she said. "They didn't talk about current events. (The church) was really ready to talk about Jesus and what he did."

Tutor believes that is why he, someone who spent 11 years in a monastery praying and discerning God's will, was assigned to the young Concord congregation. "A new parish must be grounded in prayer," he said. "We are leading an intense spiritual life." One of Tutor's first efforts has been to begin a "prayer crusade," showing his congregants the value of daily prayer.

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