News and Information

Episcopal witness in ‘the country’? It’s what Texas used to be — ‘the country,’ and still is in some wondrous measure. Two
‘rural’ Episcopalians talk about what they do, and how.
Chuck Hinton is a life-long member of St. Mark’s, Mt. Pleasant;
the Rev. Jerry Morriss is rector of St. James on the Lake, Kemp.

Hinton: Basically, it is. We have a population of 15,000 in Mount Pleasant. There are
111 churches in the phone book: one Episcopal church, one Lutheran, one Presbyterian, one Catholic, two Methodist, and 105 Baptist churches or Pentecostal. So we are a tortilla factory in Beijing. But we’ve been constant for years and years. The founders of that church in the late ’40s were members all their lives. The same cross I carried as an acolyte, we
carry today.

Esprit: So aren’t all the Christians in town already spoken for?

Hinton: Yes, but then again, it’s no, because there’s a small Cowboy church that started with 16 people. It’s not really well organized, but it’s grown to 160. We have a real opportunity with the Hispanic population. For whatever reason, some local Hispanics are disconnected from the Roman Catholic Church, [although,] with our smallness, we don’t have the budget to hire another priest to come in to start a Spanish [outreach]. Rural churches, basically, spend every dime they collect every year; so there’s no financial wiggle for us to be able to put forth a program. And without the program, we can’t really attract families. The families are going to the big Baptist churches in town that have the big Sunday school programs.

Esprit: So how do you compete?

Hinton: Not very well. The way we can compete here is the with strength of our liturgy. A lot of people who join us have been a member of an Episcopal or Anglican church somewhere else.

Esprit: What makes having an Episcopal church a good thing for the community?

Hinton: We don’t have many funerals, because we don’t have very many members. Our average Sunday attendance is probably 40; so we’ll have a funeral maybe once a year. Every time somebody attends one of our funerals, I get several comments about what a wonderful service that was. And my comment back is, “Well, why don’t you come join us for a regular Sunday service?” We have had a few takers. We had an Alpha program about seven years ago that attracted two families that came, that had a Baptist background, and they joined us, and they were strong. [In] 2003 when [Gene] Robinson was named bishop in New Hampshire, we lost seven members of the church and 18 percent of our budget in one fell swoop. Our folks didn’t know what the Diocese of Dallas meant and certainly didn’t really know [previously] about the national church. And now they’re quite nervous about losing their property.

Esprit: What’s the Trinity Parish that St. Mark’s is part of?

Hinton: We formed Trinity N.E. in the late ’80s, because St. Mark’s, Mount Pleasant, was a mission, and we were yoked to a mission station in Daingerfield known as St. Charles, which has since closed its doors because Lone Star Steel had a major downturn. And there was a new mission [St. David’s] starting up at Gilmer, which is 30 miles south of here, and they were just basically brand new. We strove for parish status because we wanted to control our own destiny; we could not do that on our own without combining these three missions. That gave us enough people and finances to apply for parish status, which we did in ’89. The way we function is, we have a Trinity parish vestry, and their only function is to pay our priest and an assessment to the Diocese of Dallas.

The maintenance for each of our facilities is done by a local council, which is a separate junior vestry. And we make an assessment to Trinity each year based on our budgets. We have separate bank accounts; our property is owned separately. On Sundays, we’ll have a full Eucharist in Gilmer at 9 o’clock, and then [the priest, the Rev. Greg Crosthwait,] will drive back to Mount Pleasant for an 11 o’clock Eucharist.

Esprit: What goes on besides Sunday morning worship?

Hinton: St. Mark’s takes on one day a week at the local food pantry, and we make cash donations to the food pantry. We’re very involved with Titus County Cares, which is the Community Chest of Titus County/Mount Pleasant. We’re looking at an Eastertide Bible study program that we’re trying to kick off and invite the community in.

Esprit: Don’t they work you rural laymen pretty hard?

Hinton: I’ve been senior warden probably six different times. In a rural church, you wear so many different hats, and it’s easy to get worn down if you’re not careful. [But] it’s been a wonderful time. I was a very young child when the founders were middle-aged couples, just like uncles and aunts and grandpas and grandmas, and I’ve grown old with them. We now have members that are in their ’90s. It breaks your heart to say goodbye to them, but that’s part of the marvelous nature of the rural church — it’s family. Seven different priests I’ve seen come and go while I’ve been here, and that’s what’s unique about a rural parish. It’ll always be here.

Esprit: What does the diocese mean to you?

Hinton: [Due to recent diocesan outreach], we know what our role is in this church. In the past we didn’t. We made an assessment to Dallas. The bishop came once every two or three years for confirmation, and we were left alone. Now, because of relationships that have been garnered over these years, you become a part of this family together.

Esprit: How do you see the future of rural Episcopal parishes?

Hinton: That’s a great question. Frankly, our future depends on what happens with the national church. We just want to be left alone to worship together, but we want to be a part of this diocese and help as we’re supposed to, but there’s the fear of someone just coming in and plucking out this little church that we’ve worked so hard to build. And that’s one thing that’s going to hold the ministry back, until there’s a true definition there — who we are, what we are. We’re comfortable in our skin over here, but it’s challenging to see what goes on at [national church headquarters].

Click here to continue to Morriss interview