Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 1, 1994 TAG: 9312300220
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: HOLIDAY
SOURCE: FRANCES STEBBINS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLUE GRASS LENGTH: Long
It's a workable plan used by other denominations such as the Methodists and pentecostal groups for decades, but represents a "new/old" form of evangelism for the tradition-bound mainstream American group.
Lack of money to buy expensive land, erect buildings and pay the full benefits of a young ordained person have moved the church hierarchy away from the old strategy of deciding on a place to start a new congregation and supporting it for many years.
Consider the newest congregation.
Up here in the top of Highland County near the West Virginia border where the snow lies deep when it's a dusting in Roanoke, the new Church of the Good Shepherd is being born.
Its rector is a 68-year-old former government lawyer, the Rev. Frances Nunn, who has moved -- "not retired, " she emphasizes -- to 40 acres near Hightown. Nunn is now preaching and conducting Communion each Sunday at noon for an average of 20 Highland County folk who formerly had no parish of their denomination within easy driving distance.
Formerly of Arlington, where she worked part time for a large congregation and directed the Episcopal Immigration Center for Hispanics, Nunn left the city 15 months ago. She has since become a literal shepherd to 14 sheep and the continued caretaker of 17 champion-quality poodles and nine parrots.
In a practical way, they brought her to the remote Alleghany Highlands where Staunton, 45 miles over five mountains, is the trading center for such needed items as dog food. After she gave up her law career with the Department of Justice and entered full time Christian service 15 years ago, Nunn decided it was time to explore her lifelong ambition to farm and raise sheep.
It was a strange dream, she admits now with a laugh, for an only child of a Naval officer who grew up in many ports and was even in Honolulu when Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941. Most of her life was spent in Arlington after she graduated from Vassar College and the law school of George Washington University.
But there was something besides the need to get her growing family of dogs out of the city. Episcopalians like Nunn do not often speak of "calls" from God, but "the way things have worked out I can't help but think He had a hand in it."
Nunn, like many senior adults used to a more rapidly changing culture of a big city, knew when she finally found the farm she was looking for in Highland that there was no Episcopal church nearer than Hot Springs, 25 miles and a mountain away. There was a veterinarian. She set about learning how to raise sheep.
It was easier to do that than to adjust to the traditionalist way of doing things at the small Episcopal church at Hot Springs. And having been ordained at 53 in the Episcopal church, she declined the warm offers of United Methodists in Monterey to become part of their fellowship.
She talked with Bishop Heath Light and other staff of the Episcopal Diocese of Southwestern Virginia who gave her the go-ahead to hold a service for Episcopalians and any others living on the mountain farms who might have leanings to the church. Many of her new members, Nunn has found, have been inactive for years but are now enthusiastic about being part of a new church.
The Rev. William Cox, pastor of Crabbottom Presbyterian Church in the village of Blue Grass, and his tiny congregation offered the Episcopalians the use of the 1837 picturesque frame building at noon each Sunday. Nunn drives to it eight miles and many of the members further.
The diocese rents space from the Presbyterians. Nunn's government pension is her main source of income. When she does retire in the mandatory time in four years, she dreams that a way will be found for the work to continue.
"They're a very dedicated people," the Rev. Dr. Edwin Pease, an assistant to the diocesan bishop, told Nunn when he visited Good Shepherd soon after its opening in November.
"The best thing about starting from the beginning is that our people don't carry a lot of baggage from the past," the rector said. As an Episcopalian she fully supports use of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer and follows the practice of celebrating the Eucharist each Sunday as the main service. Some of her members, she noted, have been inactive since before those changes were made and they seem to welcome the chance to start over.
Nunn said she is familiar with other Episcopal growth innovations such as the director of the Alban Institute, Loren B. Mead, supports in a booklet being widely read by denominational leaders, "The Once and Future Church." Mead will speak at the annual convention of the diocese to be held in Blacksburg later this month.
These include ecumenical parishes, cluster congregations and various programs in which lay people are "raised up" from a tiny congregation to serve as leaders of worship and administration. Such innovations for Episcopalians are now working at Smith Mountain Lake, Galax, in Botetourt and Tazewell Counties and at Big Stone Gap.
In a shepherding place -- Highland's main industry is stock farming -- Nunn said she is happy to be trying to shepherd people in a way that points her denomination to its future.
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by CNB