Pastors of merged parishes share firsthand experiences leading transitioning communities

Metro Detroit — Being pastor of a merged parish comes with its challenges, some more unusual than others.

When Fr. Stephen Rooney, pastor of Our Lady on the River Parish based in Marine City, was vesting for Mass one day, he wondered why no one was in the church.

Then Fr. Rooney received a phone call telling him he was at the wrong church site — Our Lady on the River has three sites and a grade school — resulting in his jumping into the car with his alb and vestments “and running to the other church!”

With a parish stretching across the diverse regions of Harsens Island (St. Mark Chapel), Algonac (St. Catherine Church) and Marine City (Holy Cross Church), Fr. Rooney admits that “just being present” at all three can be difficult.

He is grateful for the continuous assistance of associate pastor Fr. Robert Slaton and senior priest Fr. Sigismund Kowalczyk, who resides at the Harsens Island site.

“Each site has its own personality, that’s very definite,” said Fr. Rooney of the parish, which merged about seven years ago. “Part of the challenge is recognizing that there is not a one-fit for all.”



‘A bit daunting’

When Archbishop Allen Vigneron asked Fr. Rooney to consider taking on Our Lady on the River a little more than a year ago, “the prospects, I thought, were a bit daunting. But I’m not one to shy away from a challenge … I’m 60 years old now, why not?” he told The Michigan Catholic.

Fr. Rooney moved from his previous parish, Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Temperance, joined by newly ordained associate pastor Fr. Robert Slaton, and began to learn about serving a large, merged parish community.

He said some of the helpful ways to make sure all sites are included can be alternating Holy Week services among the different churches, as well as alternating the Christmas Midnight Mass location and the Easter Vigil.

“We rotate the parish council (meetings) from site to site, same with other commission meetings,” added Fr. Rooney.

Fr. Rooney said he has seen great communal efforts of the three sites for parish-wide activities, such as the Oct. 12 annual Harvest Dinner: “Tons of preparation on that; great cooperation of the three sites.”

He said St. Mark Chapel hosts a 16-week Bible study, and parishioners have come up with a unique way of addressing the $8 ferry fee for taking one’s car over to Harsens Island.

Since taking the ferry on foot is free, parishioners can now park their cars on the mainland, travel on the ferry, and be picked up by fellow parishioners who reside on the island.

A pleasant surprise

The merged parish community of St. Vincent Ferrer in Madison Heights has been together “almost two years” said its pastor, Fr. John Esper.

The process of merging Royal Oak’s St. Dennis Parish into the one site at St. Vincent was “a difficult process for all of us, something that none of us wanted to do,” reflected Fr. Esper, but added it was realized to be a necessity.

Looking back over the past two years, “I’d say that we worked very hard to create a spirit and context of unity,” he said.

As there was a significant Vietnamese community at St. Dennis Parish, St. Vincent also focused strongly on welcoming them, too: “The Vietnamese community was pleased to be welcomed and have the Vietnamese culture and programs be recognized and continued,” said Fr. Esper.

Fr. Esper said there is not currently a lot of “active initiative” to help the parish transition further, because it was “a smooth enough transition that there’s not a lot of tension (warranting) a lot of those things right now.”

“I think the people that came from St. Dennis were pleasantly surprised,” he said, describing the St. Dennis community as well-received by St. Vincent’s. “Several have personally expressed satisfaction to me. As difficult as the process (was), they seemed to express positivity and welcome about the St. Vincent community.”

In fact, “the community is frequently described as being very welcoming,” he added; “A good spirit of generosity.”

Worshipping and working together

Fr. Jim Bjorum, pastor of Our Lady of Hope Parish in St. Clair Shores, met with Archbishop Vigneron a little more than a year and a half after the parish’s merger.

“I shared with him that merging was more difficult than anyone thought, because, I said, merging is ‘not changing minds, it is changing hearts,’ — and that’s hard to do,” Fr. Bjorum said.

Our Lady of Hope Parish emerged in 2009 as the result of merging St. Germaine Parish and St. Gertrude Parish. Fr. Bjorum said the decision was originally made that both church sites would be used.

“One of the most exciting developments of the new parish was the music ministry — very quickly it grew into a 60-voice adult choir, cantors, hand bell choir and youth choir,” he said. “Thanks in large part to the music ministry, the two communities were drawn together as one eucharistic worshipping community.”

However, within four years after the merger, “it became evident that a presumption and an assumption that had gone into the decision to maintain the two campuses were no longer viable,” Fr. Bjorum said.

The larger St. Gertrude Church was no longer needed to accommodate the smaller numbers of the new parish community, and it was also becoming financially burdensome to maintain both churches: “It was costing the parish $156,000 a year to maintain the St. Gertrude campus when we used it for six hours on the weekend and for funerals.”

With the approval of Archbishop Vigneron, the parish made the decision to close St. Gertrude in June of this year, and the campus is in the process of being sold, said Fr. Bjorum.

However, he explained, “every effort was made to incorporate significant items from St. Gertrude into the consolidated site at the corner of Little Mack and Martin,” such as the bell being refurbished and placed in the tower, a stained glass window from St. Gertrude in the gathering space and the risen Christ figure installed in the back wall of the church, among other efforts.

Fr. Bjorum said he hopes the move to the consolidated campus will insure Our Lady of Hope “a bright future.”

At last year’s Our Lady of Hope parish festival, Fr. Bjorum was speaking with several people of another parish, one that would itself soon be merging with another. The people expressed their concerns about the transition.

“I pointed to a number of workers behind the counter serving dinners,” said Fr. Bjorum. “I said, ‘Do you see those workers? I can tell you which are from the St. Gertrude campus and which are from the St. Germaine campus, but, you can’t tell because they’re working together.’”