Finding Passion in Ministry & Liturgy
Meet St. Stephen’s
Throughout our process of discussing who we are at St. Stephen’s, where we hope to go as a congregation, and what qualities we seek in a new rector, many parishioners repeatedly described our congregation as a “family,” with each person playing a unique and valuable role in our church family’s life together. So, in addition to describing the communal aspects of our congregation, we have decided to include several brief personal profiles of various members of St. Stephen’s to illustrate the many ways people of our congregation are living out their faith both within our church and in the world around us.
Some names of the people interviewed for these personal profiles have been changed to protect their privacy.
Growing up in Cheyenne, Wyoming, Clark* attended a Southern Baptist church with his maternal grandmother. Then, as a senior in high school, he started attending a Roman Catholic church that better suited his religious philosophy.
“I didn’t care for the Southern Baptist ‘hellfire and damnation’ philosophy,” he explains. “The message was too punitive. I believed Jesus forgives us if we repent. In the Baptist congregation, we had no lay involvement in the service. The minister preached at you and didn’t involve people in church life. There were no ‘small groups,’ no mingling outside of church, no sense of family. We also did not have any ministry to the surrounding community.”
Clark continued to attend a Catholic church while he was a student at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, as well as after he married his wife in Greeley, Colorado.
“After college, I worked at a retail store in Cheyenne,” he recalls. “They opened a new store in Greeley, so I commuted from Cheyenne to Greeley. I got tired of the commute and moved to Greeley, where I met and married my wife of 45 years.”
Shortly after the couple married in 1973, her sister’s husband helped Clark get a job with an electronics company in Boulder. “I commuted to Boulder from Greeley for three years before moving to Longmont,” he says. “We were attending a Catholic church in Longmont when our daughter met a boy and decided to get married in 1988. His family attended St. Stephen’s, and they wanted to be married there. Father Ralph Evans, who was Rector then, performed the marriage. We liked him, and we felt comfortable with the liturgy and welcomed by the people there, so we went back — and never left.”
Clark later got a management job closer to home in Longmont, finally retiring in 2005, but he has never retired from St. Stephen’s. He taught Sunday School for several years along with his wife, served as Treasurer for five years and was on the Vestry during the building of the education wing. His favorite form of involvement, however, is liturgical.
After one particularly dramatic Passion Play, I finally told Father Max that I was too old to play Jesus anymore. I was 49 then.
“I joined the choir around 1995,” he says. “I had never been in a choir before, but Brenda helped teach me to sing harmonies. I also wrote and directed plays for adults and older kids for special services during Palm Sunday, Easter and Christmas, working with Brenda to incorporate the music. After one particularly dramatic Passion Play, I finally told Father Max that I was too old to play Jesus anymore. I was 49 then.”
Clark continues serving as a singer in the choir, reader, chalice bearer and usher. He also has continued his ministry to communities outside the church, including a breakfast group he joined after retirement. “This group has been part of my ministry of encouraging others to go to church,” he says. “Three of the four other couples in the group are now attending churches.”
