Case Study
Working with supply clergy and dedicated lay leaders, St. Michael's in Tucumcari is dealing with the many challenges of being in a small, rural setting.
Fr. Mark Lake, bi-vocational, a re-educated and re-tooled Presbyterian minister, was raised up from within [St. Michael’s, Tucumcari] and served us 10 years, loosely non-stipendiary, before retiring in the gentlest manner possible in February 2023. He was tired. He died June 2023 of a cancer that was discovered a mere 18 days before his death.
Fr. Lake, prior to his retirement (“not knowing he was going to die”!), had sustained, intense conversations with Bishop Michael Hunn and Canon to the Ordinary (CTO) Lee Curtis. They reassured him we’d be looked after. After Mark retired but before he died, Bishop Hunn went on sabbatical. CTO Curtis came to St Michael’s in a rushed visit. (Again, remember the mileage distances here.) He told us candidly that The Clergy Scene was very dim for big churches, much less for our location and size. Some of our group were disillusioned and disappointed. I wasn’t one bit surprised.
What does St Michael’s look like on Sunday morning? In July and August we had THREE celebrations of Eucharist. Unusual. For September we have one priest who can come so far. October? Who knows. The Bishop is scheduled to visit in December.
Our Bishop’s Warden, Kylee, communicates with these clergy and hustles them. It’s no small task, as their schedules prohibit regular times to join us. Except for Fr. Simon, they are out the door immediately after the service. They do not have time to add a formal pastoral role. No doubt any of them would answer the phone were any of us to call them. It is by no means a deliberate neglect of the pastoral role.
We congregants try to do that for each other. This has included serving each other by driving to long distance (120 miles one way to Amarillo, TX ) and local doctors’ appointments, taking food in friendship and crisis, paying bills for some parishioner in need (anonymously), hospital visitation, taking Eucharist to homebound members.
We have two members who conduct lay services and one member who is willing but prefers not to if someone else will (because she already does everything else, from treasurer to trash bearer to bulletin preparer to Parochial Report preparer to reminding us that we probably better have a Bishop’s Committee meeting. A real underachiever, our Margaret!)
One lay reader, Emilie, is Lutheran, ELCA. She is also our church musician, an accomplished organist who lives in Albuquerque, but she and her husband travel two long weekends a month to their lake house at Logan, NM, in our county. She also serves these roles at her long-time ELCA Lutheran church in Albuquerque. (180 miles from Tucumcari, 200+ from her house in Logan. One way) I’m the other lay reader. What can I say!
For lay led services attendance is 5-6. To be frank, there are members who attend only if a priest is present. Numerically, attendance on those “priest Sundays” does not change appreciably – a maybe 8-10. Funerals and baptisms pack the house. Fr. Simon did one funeral in the past 19 months and one baptism in the last year. Blessedly Fr. S has been willing to come on short notice for Anointing at the time of three deaths in the past 2.5 years. From his parish in Clovis (90 miles one way). He was the Roman Catholic priest in Clovis who left the RC to join the Episcopal Church. Words cannot describe his value to us. Our elderly Dean in Roswell (61 miles one way) worries that we are over-extending Fr. S from his full-time duties in at St James, Clovis.
Bishop Hunn seems a person of great dedication, devotion, and kindness. (Listen to his keynote speech from Nov 2024 DRG Convention, Zoomed because of snowstorm.)
At the beginning of his speech he lauds Tucumcari and Clovis. He says We Must Preserve The Episcopal Church in this Eastern Plains rural location. He mentions our Warden Kylee’s little toddler daughter and Fr. Simon’s similarly-aged little girl; he exhorts the Convention body not to neglect small congregations.
We do know he will visit us at St. Michael’s mid-December. I am charmed by the fact that he comes pulling his travel trailer. Very practical. This is a huge diocese not only geographically but culturally.
And St. Michael’s – we’ll keep going. It just amazes me, when there is an intervention that’s obviously divine. Good comes from surprising things.
There was no way we were going to be able to get our 1960’s A-frame church building repainted. Until one day we thought of a former member. We called right then and there. They submitted a bid – underbidding another contractor – and did a great job. So don’t give up hope. Don’t ever quit trying. Sometimes things just come together, and it’s a God thing. It’s loaves and fishes.
We’re God’s instruments. If he wants us to do something, it’ll come together.
Submitted by Jina Vick