St. Thomas continues its search

AMENIA UNION — When the Rev. Betsy Fisher, the much-loved priest of Amenia Union’s St. Thomas Episcopal Church, left the parish last November, it was with the absolute certainty that the congregation understood its mission, and would be “just fine.” 

In the months since then as they seek a new spiritual leader, her parishioners have done her proud as they have maintained their focus on collaborative efforts and continuing the critical work of the food pantry, which is now serving even more families than it had been before the end of the year. 

Vestry member Anne Vance said that the process of obtaining a new full-time priest is going as planned. 

“It comes down to the thing that in the Episcopal church, the people in the parish have a lot of responsibility and a lot of authority, too,” she said. “We’re not in the position of somebody saying, ‘Here it is. We tell you what it is. You do it.’ It’s a little more, ‘Do it yourself,’  and securing a new priest is the most important thing you can do.”  

As a change is made, she explained, “the parish will tend not to go straight from one priest to another. You have a little of an interim period where you can reflect on who you are as a parish and where you want to be going.” That is usually done with the help of an “expert in that transition period,” in this case, “a wonderful man — The Rev. Dr. Robert Flanagan,” who started in January “and will be with us until we call a new priest.” 

Vance noted that Flanagan’s interim position is “one of the jobs you can have as a priest. People specialize in different kinds of things — maybe it’s an urban ministry maybe it’s a rural parish.” In this specialty, “you go to a parish as it undergoes its transition, and you kind of help guide them through it” in part as a “kind of a connector between us and the diocese on various aspects of the transition.”

Although Flanagan will certainly act as an advisor to the process, he is not the “decision maker” who will make the choice for a full-time priest. Vance explained that task falls to the vestry, which acts as a sort of board of directors. The vestry will appoint a search committee to do a great deal of background work as it examines “who the parish is and what they’re looking for.” 

Vance noted, “They get pretty specific. In a sense you’re looking for the spiritual leader… the person who kind of takes you into wherever you’re going in the future,” something the congregants are particularly interested in as they aim to be active both inside and outside the parish itself.  

She said for a number of years, members of St. Thomas have considered a question from the diocese: “If your church were to disappear tomorrow, what difference would it make in your community?” 

She said at one point, people  didn’t even know if the church “was open or not.” Now, Vance said, “there’s no question we’re open. Now it would make an enormous difference not just because of the parish but because of the outreach,” something the church will wish to continue under new leadership. 

Key to that mission, Vance noted, is the Food of Life/Comida de Vida Food Pantry, which currently provides nine meals per week for approximately 70 families. Flanagan’s transition work includes close involvement with the pantry, which is run by Denis Freeman in collaboration with various groups. Those include the Sharon Congregational Church, which contributes food, and students from the Millbrook School, who volunteer and donate money for Christmas presents for children who come to the food pantry. 

The time needed to select a new priest does vary, Vance said, 

“It’s hard to tell although the average is about a year,” she said. “You always hope you can do it quicker, but people tend to be a little bit reluctant to put an exact date on it” because the process is so complex. 

Whatever the time period, however, Vance concluded that St. Thomas will continue to be important to many who have attended over the years — everyone from adults who remember serving as altar boys to a 100-year-old summer resident who made a point of worshiping at the church. 

People, she said, “have an affection for country churches.”