Little church shows 'can do' spirit

SANDPOINT — For the past two years, a tiny group of volunteers has been showing up almost daily to turn a former Kingdom Hall into a new Episcopal church.

Never mind any dogmatic differences — it’s the kind of buildings that house the two denominations that made this such a big job.

“The Jehovah’s Witness hall was basically just one big room,” said Rev. Charles Christopher, who serves as a temporary consulting pastor to the Holy Spirit Episcopal Church congregation that holds 10 a.m. Sunday services at Highway 2 and Rocky Point Road.

“It had no windows and no kitchen,” said church member Cathy Cant. “So we had to Episcopalianize it.”

And what, precisely, does that entail?

“Food,” answered Beau Schilling, who leads a volunteer construction crew of five parishioners in the makeover.

The project began in 2007, after members of the former St. Agnes Episcopal Church sold their 100-year-old building and banked the money while they sought a new and larger location. Church member Susan Wall noticed a “for sale” sign on the Kingdom Hall and the congregation made its move.

She also was responsible for naming the small band of volunteer builders who would tackle the extensive renovation, echoing the Seabees motto to call them the “Can Do Construction Crew.”  The builders include her husband, John Wall, Elwood Werry, Mike Morgenstern, Dick Creed, crew leader Schilling and Cathy Cant’s husband, Geoffrey.

“So I guess he’s actually Cant Do,” Schilling quipped, eliciting a groan from those around him.

About a dozen church women work in rotation to bring lunch to the builders, who raised walls and installed windows to create a brightly lit sanctuary, an adjoining sacristy, a church office and — coming soon — a kitchen.

Holy Spirit Episcopal Church currently has about 40 active members, though the congregation grows when snowbirds return during the summer, Cant said. When the full-time pastor left last May, the church called on the services of Rev. Christopher, who specializes in helping rural congregations get back on their feet.

Demographics have conspired against small town, traditional churches, where stalwart members continue to attend, but also continue to grow older. At Holy Spirit, for instance, those in their mid- to late-60s are the youngsters in the crowd. Across the religious spectrum, church leaders face the same concern: How do you attract young families in order to keep the church mission alive?

“Along with age demographics, you’ve got community demographics,” Christopher said. “In the Northwest, the percentage of people who say they have a spiritual life but are ‘un-churched’ is rather high.

“There are a lot of seekers who wouldn’t necessarily see themselves plugging into a traditional church,” he added. “So if you grow, you steal a Methodist, or a Lutheran.”

Changing times and shifts in church policy have put worshippers in a state of flux, moving from one denomination to the next in search of a doctrine that fits.

“If they don’t like women priests, if they don’t like gay priests, they go someplace else,” said Cathy Cant, explaining that Episcopals used to move to the Anglican Church and, later, on to the Lutheran Church — both of which have since made their own doctrinal decisions female priests and gay clergy that have impacted attendance.

“It’s a phenomenon that’s not limited to the Episcopal Church,” Cant said. “If people can’t run the church, they’ll go someplace else where they think they can.

“But there’s an old saying,” she went on. “As long as Methodists marry Roman Catholics, there will always be Episcopalians.”

The next step for the congregation at Holy Spirit, according to Christopher, will be “exploring what the ministry should look like.”

Once the building is finished — a project that has monopolized the members’ attention — the congregation will need to put it into service, the pastor said.

“There’s a lot of vitality in these small church communities that’s powerful to watch,” he continued. “It doesn’t mean they’re growing in terms of numbers, but they are growing in terms of how they’re living in the world.”

Christopher told the story of another rural congregation where an elderly member had been hospitalized after a fall at home.

“I went to visit her and had to wade through church members who were there to see what they could do to help,” he said. “In the past, it would have been, ‘Oh, the priest will go visit her.’  Now, the congregations are much more active and the model is for them to find their own place in their communities.

“This kind of redevelopment is slow — it takes a long time to go from a pastor-led model to a lay leadership model,” he added. “But this could be a great example for the ‘biggies.’”

The Episcopal Church bishop in Spokane has taken a personal interest in seeing the Sandpoint-area church get off the ground and grow, Christopher pointed out. Growth, however, will probably come from like-minded people in a similar age group.

“Our only likely source for a pastor and for new members will be retirees like us,” Cant said.

Many of those retirees — Cant and Schilling among them — come to this area from much larger cities with much larger churches.

“I’ve been in churches where the choir was bigger than our congregation,” said Schilling.

Why, then, fight the odds and put in so much work to remodel a larger church for what seems destined to remain a small congregation?

“Because here, I have something to say,” Schilling replied. “I have a voice.”

“The point is that this is something the church community chose to take on for itself,” Christopher said. “This is its vision. And that, in itself, is enough.”