Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 10, 1991 TAG: 9102100219
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE RELIGION WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
That verse from the 133rd Psalm seemed both a reflection of recent months and a hope for coming years as the congregation at Christ Episcopal Church in Southwest Roanoke recited the words together last week.
Just a year ago, members were bleeding away - taking their involvement and financial support with them - as the congregation struggled with the firing of its senior priest.
Last week, a packed church celebrated the acceptance of a new rector with gifts, food and worship.
The Rev. Deborah Hentz Hunley - whose connections to Christ Church go back almost 20 years - was formally installed as rector Tuesday night.
Leading the service was the Rev. Frank Vest, bishop of the Diocese of Southern Virginia and the priest who served the parish when Hunley first visited it as a Hollins College student in the early 1970s.
Other participants in the installation represented a diversity of ages and views in a congregation still recovering from a painful schism over leadership.
Feelings of joy and enthusiasm are widespread - and members consistently express confidence of spiritual and physical growth under their new leadership. But some are still smarting from the controversy surrounding the ministry of the former rector, the Rev. Robert Thacker - and the resulting loss of at least 200 members.
Thacker's five-year tenure at the parish was marked by controversy almost from its inception, members say.
The Rev. Thacker was one of several Episcopal priests arrested after engaging in civil disobedience on behalf of striking miners during the 1989 strike against Pittston Coal Co.
Some parishioners eventually went to Bishop A. Heath Light with what they saw as their rector's pastoral inadequacies. Light had the congregation use outside consultants to try to restore unity.
Despite what both sides said were good-faith efforts to prevent a split, continued misunderstandings eventually led to the imposition of a new segment of church law regulating the removal of a rector against his will.
After months of church legal proceedings, Light ordered Thacker and the entire vestry, or governing body, to resign. A new vestry was elected in January 1990 and Hunley was named priest-in-charge.
Thacker is now rector of a parish in Bermuda, where he is considered "on loan" from this diocese.
As part of the bishop's separation order, the congregation is making a final lump-sum payment of $8,000 to Thacker this year and will pay $7,000 this year and $7,000 next year into a pension plan for the former rector.
Ordinarily, a person serving between the departure of one rector and the hiring of another is not eligible for the permanent position. In this case, Light specifically allowed for the consideration of Hunley, but recommended that no action on the hiring of a rector be initiated for at least a year.
Almost immediately after Hunley accepted the call to be priest-in-charge, John D. Eure said, "there was a sense of relief" at having some conclusion to the controversy.
"As spring and summer wore on, that sense of relief began to transform into a realization that we had an unusually, extraordinarily competent person in charge," Eure said.
Eure, an officer of the vestry, said attendance at worship and lay involvement in church projects grew steadily during the past year.
There were some member losses after Thacker's removal, but others who had stopped coming before the resolution returned afterward.
Eure extends much of the credit for the renewal to Hunley, who systematically sought out those who had been alienated and attempted "to minister to them."
By fall, when it was time to begin soliciting pledges for the new budget, "things were really going again" at Christ Church, Eure said. Hunley named a committee to help plan the stewardship drive that was kicked off with a chili supper in October where the price of admission was a member's pledge card.
During the festivities, the church's top lay official, Senior Warden Orrin Clifton, took the floor to say "what a great job Deborah had been doing," Eure recalled.
That brought a "spontaneous standing ovation . . . a really heartfelt expression" of support," Eure said.
The result was a fall stewardship drive in which last year's pledge total - "admittedly a low point" - was exceeded in the first 10 days, Eure said. This year's $252,000 in pledges was an increase of about 25 percent from the year before. Out of 225 reported pledges, 138 were new or increases from last year; 21 were decreases.
By November it was clear an adequate budget for the coming year would be funded, Eure said, and the vestry held a closed meeting to consider how to respond to the proliferation of requests to make Hunley rector.
Vestry members made known their decision to nominate her for the job, then sought out more comments from parishioners - particularly trying to discover any resistance to having a woman as rector.
". . . It was pretty obvious to the vestry that the congregation was broadly, deeply enthusiastic about calling Deborah," Eure said. "It was not difficult to call her, and might have been suicidal not to call her."
Clifton, the senior warden, said he "did not get a single expression of negative feelings" about the appointment. The confidence of the lay leadership was evident in the unanimous vote of the 18 vestry members to call Hunley, he said.
Bill Elliot, the senior warden during the year of controversy before Thacker's departure, was pleased with Hunley's selection because it avoided a lengthy search. During that process, he said, Hunley would likely have been "snatched up" by another congregation.
Although some members still are uncomfortable with the circumstances surrounding Thacker's departure, healing has been extraordinary in the parish, Elliot said. People who had "become distant" during the controversy are "friendly again."
He said he believes the parish has an opportunity to reclaim the position of leadership and influence it once held in the diocese.
As painful as the process was, Elliot said, the controversy "may have shaken us out of our normal complacency . . . about something we value, that we want to keep and preserve," Elliot said.
by CNB