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	Vestry members from the two Episcopal churches in Cowley County -- Trinity, Arkansas City and Grace, Winfield -- look over reports during a recent joint meeting.

Cowley County now has one church in two places

By Melodie Woerman
Editor, The Harvest

Two churches in towns south of Wichita have done something people say is nothing short of amazing — and they did it in less than a year. Trinity, Arkansas City, and Grace, Winfield, have begun a joint ministry in which members see themselves as part of a single church family.

This new united venture has prompted parishioners to give themselves a new name, too — they are the Episcopal Churches of Cowley County. They are one church in two places, and members say this makes them better than ever before.

“We are stronger together than we are apart,” said Sharon Taylor, Grace’s senior warden. “This has helped provide new life,” said Richard Erickson, a co-senior warden at Trinity. “We play off each other’s strengths,” noted Trish McMains, Trinity’s other co-senior warden.

Their priest-in-charge, the Rev. Betty Glover, says it all has happened through divine guidance. “I think things can happen if committed people believe in God,” she said. “I always believe things are possible.”

It’s also led to increased attendance in both churches and a new-found spirit of hope and excitement.

Transition leads to new ideas

Earlier this year, both congregations — just 13 miles apart on Highway 77 — were in transition. For the past 10 years they had shared a priest, but when their most recent one left last year, parish leaders had to start thinking about options.

Taylor said the two places had talked in recent years about joining resources but hadn’t found a good way to do it. Yoking — with each parish served by the same priest but as separate entities — wasn’t working well. “Each church and each vestry had a different direction to move,” she said. “It wasn’t easy for a priest to do one thing in one church and another thing at the other.” There also was suspicion that he was spending more time in one church than the other. The congregations didn’t mingle much, either. “We were friends, not family,” she said.

In visits to the two vestries early in 2007, Bishop Dean Wolfe and Canon to the Ordinary Mary Siegmund suggested they work together in a new kind of joint ministry. Taylor said, “The bishop put words to it. He asked, ‘If you do this, how great could you be?’”

Glover said the encouragement these two gave was crucial. “Part of the reason folks have been so willing to try new things is that they were told early on, by both the bishop and the canon, that they had a lot to offer the wider community and that they were capable of doing great things together.”

They also met with the Revs. Steve Mues and Jim Mitchell, who last year helped create a merger between St. Alban’s and St. Stephen’s in Wichita. Those two told them to take their time, and to think and pray about what they might do together.

Making it work

So how does this new venture work? It starts with a combined vestry. The two governing bodies come together monthly for a joint meeting, with the senior wardens alternating months leading it. Some of what they discuss involves joint matters, while some relates just to one church. But everyone listens to everything, and then the entire group votes on everything, too.

It’s a big group — usually about 20 people — and meetings can run long, McMains said. But a proposal to speed things up by having each body discuss their specific business separately and then come together only for joint items was roundly defeated. “We want to meet together,” she said. “We learn from each other.”

Glover also was hired not as a part-time priest for each church but as a full-time priest for the Episcopal churches of Cowley County. “This means we don’t have to make sure I spend 50 percent of my time at each church but rather spend 100 percent of my time taking care of the two churches and their parishioners,” she said.

The vestries began having some combined meetings in May, and one of the first things they did was call Glover as priest. She was fresh out of Virginia Seminary but with 10 years of pastoral experience as a deacon in Topeka and a career as a hospital and police chaplain.

Glover said they asked her an unusual but intriguing question. “They wanted to know if I could think outside the box.” Her background told them she could, and she started work in August.

The exact form of a union was still in flux then, Taylor said, until Glover suggested the joint vestry format. They were spurred on when Kenny DiVall, a member of Trinity’s vestry, asked, “We can talk about this forever. When are we going to do it?”

So they just did it.

Taylor said everyone knew the idea of joint governance would require lots of explanation so parishioners could embrace the idea. Each church had meetings this fall to explain what was happening. “I think people got tired of hearing me every week during announcements,” Taylor said. Glover said transparency and communication were keys to the venture’s success.

There also have been lots of opportunities for fellowship, with monthly potluck suppers this fall that have drawn 60 to 70 people. A joint September luncheon raised money for flood relief in Coffeyville, and one in November netted funds for Heifer International.

As people have gotten to know each other, the lines have started to blur between the two places. Glover said parishioners are encouraged to attend services at the church that best meets their needs (Grace at 9 a.m. and Trinity at 11 a.m.), and people from one city routinely now are seen worshiping in the other.

Trinity’s Erickson said all this has had a cohesive effect. “The people at Grace are just as close to me as the people of Trinity,” he said.

McMains agrees. “It’s very comfortable to go back and forth between the two locations.”

Grace’s Taylor said the two congregations now remind her of larger churches with two services, where all are members of one body but worship at different times.

This new cooperation soon will extend to financial matters, too. A joint finance committee in 2008 will keep parallel sets of books — one will reflect things exactly as they have been, while the other will show what it would look like if all the finances are joined. This information will help the vestry decide whether to combine this, too.

Road bumps quickly smoothed

This new venture has been mostly free of snags, although there have been challenges to overcome. Taylor said part of it was inevitable. “It’s a challenge because it’s strange and different. We’re out of our comfort zone. It’s unusual.”

Erickson noted there had been some early opposition to the plan in both locations. “There doesn’t seem hardly any of that now,” he said. “We are very close to being one body.”

Taylor noted the question of how to handle endowments was challenging, but the decision not to make any changes with them for at least five years solved the problem.

It’s hard to figure out exactly what to call this new joint ministry venture. It’s not a merger, and it’s more than cooperation. When asked if it’s a bit like a blended family, Glover chuckled. “There is yours, mine and ours,” she said. “It’s a bit like a marriage in that way. But the lines between yours and mine are getting blurred.”

She also notes that each church still maintains its own identity. “They aren’t becoming exactly the same,” she said. “It’s about having options.”

Glover said no one is sure what this ministry will look like in a year, but leaders are committed to it because it works so well. Erickson, who has been a member in three other Kansas parishes since 1957, said, “I have never been a part of anything like this. It is a true blessing.”

Glover said it’s easy to do the math. “You bring Christian people together in community, and what greater things can you do with 100 people than 50 in one place and 50 in another?”

The new path these churches are following is a story that is “fun to tell and fun to live,” Glover said. “It’s an exciting time to be an Episcopalian in Cowley County.”