Episcopal Diocese forms new church

Via TitusOneNine:

Takes over building of group that left

By Jay Tokasz
NEWS STAFF REPORTER

One friend told her, “Run away and run quickly.”

But the Rev. Sarah E. Gordy decided not to retreat from the intriguing task of establishing a new Episcopal congregation in the church building of her youth — a sanctuary that a thriving congregation packed up and left slightly more than a month ago.

On Sunday, Gordy, an Episcopal priest, will celebrate her first liturgy as vicar of Holy Apostle Episcopal Church in the Town of Tonawanda.

The mission parish was created by the Episcopal Diocese of Western New York following last month’s departure of most members of the former St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church, a large, conservative congregation that had been at odds for years with the direction of the national church.

The church split from the diocese, which owns the church property, and relocated into a former synagogue less than a mile away, calling itself St. Bartholomew’s Anglican Church.

Now Gordy has the job of trying to pick up the pieces for the Episcopal Diocese.

She begins with a parish of four people and a determination to get past the past.

“We’re not St. Bartholomew’s, and we’re not a restart of St. Bartholomew’s.We’re something completely different,” said Gordy, who at age 30 is one of the youngest priests in the diocese. “I don’t see it in relationship to St. Bartholomew’s. It’s a church plant. I don’t see this as in contrast to them.”

The Rev. Arthur W. Ward Jr., rector of St. Bartholomew’s, doesn’t see any competition, either.

“God bless them. We wish them well,” Ward said. “But, realistically, I don’t know how they’re going to keep it open for more than a few months.”

The move by St. Bartholomew’s followed years of theological differences between the liberal Episcopal Church and some of its conservative congregations, which object to the denomination’s inclusion of gay people as clergy and adhere to a more literal interpretation of the Bible.

Sunday, Gordy said goodbye to her current congregation, Trinity Church on Delaware Avenue, perhaps the diocese’s most theologically progressive parish, where she has been serving as curate since 2006.

At the same time, St. Bartholomew’s was hosting a visit by Archbishop Robert Duncan, an outspoken leader in a nationwide network of conservative parishes and dioceses forming a new North American Anglican Province that would rival the Episcopal Church and could create greater fissures within the worldwide Anglican Communion of 77 million members.

Duncan, who was head of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh for many years, led a two-hour confirmation service in St. Bartholomew’s Church’s new home on Eggert Road, less than a mile from Holy Apostles at Brighton and Fries roads.

In an interview afterward, Duncan said St. Bartholomew’s departure reflects what has happened across the nation, to the point that the North American province claims 100,000 members and growing.

The diocese, he said, was “not unusual in having its largest congregation being completely out of step with where the Episcopal Church is headed.”

With regular weekend attendance of more than 500 people, St. Bartholomew’s was easily the largest Episcopal parish in the Western New York Diocese and one of the largest in the state.

Holy Apostles is so tiny it relies on financial support from the diocese to go forward and significant participation from members of other parishes.

Gordy said diocesan officials have given her about a year to establish a self-sustaining parish.

She called the assignment “an adventure” and said she hoped to establish a “vibrant community that is open and welcoming to all people” — one that fosters relationships “with God, self, community and environment.”

No matter how long the congregation continues, “there will be success in people’s lives,” said Gordy, who is moving into the Tonawanda rectory. “The rest I can’t predict.”

The Rev. R. Cameron Miller, rector of Trinity Church, figures that Gordy will be fine but will need time.

“I think she’ll handle it very well,” he said. “Is the diocese going to give enough time? I don’t know. Sarah, if given enough time and support, can do the job.”

Miller, too, insisted the story no longer was about St. Bartholomew’s departure.

“It’s about starting a new congregation that happens to be in that location,” he said.

And yet, Gordy’s own past reveals just how intertwined the two churches are.

Gordy grew up in St. Bartholomew’s parish, where she was confirmed in the early 1990s. She even remembers being denied the opportunity to assist the priest at the altar because of the church’s long-standing tradition of allowing only boys to serve as acolytes.

After being rejected for acolyte duty, Gordy recalled that she and her mother left St. Bartholomew’s in favor of an Episcopal church in Amherst where she could be an altar server.

Her mother, who was known as “Kitty,” was “very happy and proud that I was able to become a priest,” said Gordy, who remembers experiencing a mystical call to the priesthood as she dozed off during a sermon at church one Sunday morning.

Kitty Gordy passed away in December and didn’t get a chance to see her daughter lead her own congregation. But she would have appreciated the circumstances under which Gordy will be returning to the church building of her youth.

“She would have been thrilled,” said Gordy, “with the irony of the situation.”