After matriculating, Stubbs studied engineering, before being called to serve the Anglican and Episcopalian Church first as a lay youth leader and eventually as a priest.
Stubbs was forced to relocate to the United States of America in 1980, as a result of the apartheid laws that applied in South Africa at the time which criminalized his marriage to Nommso Ngodongwana.
Whilst Stubbs was in the U.S., he obtained degrees from the General Theological Seminary and Union Theological Seminary in New York, U.S. Stubbs was ordained as an Anglican priest by Archbishop Desmond Tutu in 1984, under whom he would later serve in the Anglican Church of Southern Africa.
Whilst working as dean and archdeacon of Cape Town and Grahamstown, respectively, he obtained a Ph.D. from the University of South Africa.
He returned to the U.S. after his second stint in South Africa,[2] where he became the Incumbent Rector at Trinity Episcopal Church, Whitinsville, Massachusetts.