Joyously Free!: Belonging to a Small Church

In this episode of Joyously Free!, host Joanie Lindenmeyer talks with Patrick Quivey, a retired clinical social worker and senior warden of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Crescent City, to explore the unique dynamics of small church communities. Patrick shares his journey from aspiring minister to social worker and his eventual connection with St. Paul’s, […]

Episode Transcript

(00:10):
Hi. Welcome KCIW listeners, to one hundred point
seven and kciw.org,
Brookings, Oregon.
Yes. Here I am, joyously free. I am
the author of none better and two more
books as well. And so I've been a
resident for Harbor Oregon for thirty four years.
I'm looking forward to our great show today,
but, of course, we need to start it
off in our normal sense. I think you

(00:31):
might know the routine by now. I say
it's a brand new day it's a brand
new day, and you get to respond with
never been lived before. So here we go.
It's a brand new day. Never been lived
before. Oh, right on. Oh, my guest is
ready to go. My guest is ready to
go. So this is the radio show, the
gay d o show, that talks about LGBTQ

(00:52):
stories and tips along with religion,
church, faith, and spirituality.
Simply put, joy, freedom, courage, confidence, and collaboration.
We'll be talking about joy and that freedom,
hence the title joyously free. It was also
the title of my second book that I
coauthored with Elizabeth Atkins of 2sisterswriting.com,
and we are proud to boast many, many

(01:13):
contributing writers. You will get to hear many
of their voices throughout the podcast that we
do. So today, let's together seek understanding,
think out of the box, knowing that abundant
love and gratefulness is all around us and
with our friends on the Southern Oregon and
Northern California Coast. We like to start with
our prayer, and so today I have a

(01:33):
great reading, but first let's center ourselves.
Let's breathe in
with joy
and out with doubt.
Let's breathe in deeper,
relaxing our entire body
and
out with any fear or anxiety.

(01:57):
Let's breathe in
with total abundant love
for all of our world.
Dear Jesus, dear God, dear spirit, thank you
for being with us here today.
We ask that you guide our thoughts,
guard our hearts,

(02:17):
and be with us in all ways.
The reading today is from Luke. I read
this this morning in my scriptures,
and it says, oh, Luke 24.
Jesus himself stood among them and said to
them,
peace be with you.
They were startled
and terrified

(02:37):
and thought that they were seeing a ghost.
Oh, my gollies.
Can you imagine Jesus saying that to you?
Peace be with you.
Would you be startled?
Would you be terrified?
Would you think you were seeing a ghost?
Well, Jesus has definitely told me that.

(02:58):
Peace be with you, Joni.
There are many times in my life that
I was worried, scared, doubtful,
and I needed to call on my best
friend Jesus. And it was Jesus that gave
me that peace,
that comfort
to know that he made me, God made
me just as I am, and that I
didn't need to worry about anything.

(03:18):
I don't need to be worried about anything,
not troubled, not afraid, not saddened.
And so I always know that my soul
is well. It's alive.
Those are my quick little reflections today, and
I guess it ties into why and how
we do this radio show. Of course, there's
no hate speech, there's no hate behaviors, and
there's no bullying.

(03:40):
We blast the show with the three c's,
courage, confidence, and collaboration.
Our special guest today is sitting right across
from me. In just a minute, you will
get to meet him. But I wanna remind
everybody that
there's so many things going on on the
coast here, so make sure that, yeah, you're
in tune with what's going on. This is
also June pride month, and Crescent City pride

(04:02):
is June 21 from ten to two at
the United Methodist Church in Crescent City. And
I also wanna let you know that Christina's
restaurant in Crescent City, though it's been around
for thirty three years. Do you know that
it's closing?
Yes. After thirty three years, they are closing.
Their last day is June 20, and I
wanna remind everybody
to be patient.

(04:24):
You know, there's four of them that work
in there, mom and and the kids. And
so be patient with them if you're going
in to eat there or to do your
takeout orders, but be patient with them. And
Christina was telling me yesterday that that they're
trying to come up with a game plan
for for maybe in a year or two
of what they can do to, have a
bigger building, a bigger place, and they're not
sure. They're dreaming, dreaming, dreaming, and they're relying

(04:44):
on their Jesus to give them the peace
of what they need to have happen.
So anyways, those are just a couple announcements.
Well, it is time to introduce you to
my special guest. Oh my gosh. I've known
Patrick for a while, and, we have literally
watched football games today together,
had a few beers together. Your wife, Karen,
is a doll. I've seen you at church

(05:06):
before. So without any further ado, I wanna
introduce you to Patrick Quivey, a retired clinical
social worker and counselor.
And our topic today is
belonging to a small church.
Patrick, welcome to the show. Thanks, Joni. It's
good to be here. Good. Good. Good. Good.
Good. So how are you doing today? Well,

(05:27):
it's a it's a as you said, it's
never been lived before. And so, you know,
I always look for
something in the day that's gonna be funny
Uh-huh. Which means there's the precipice of something
odd. And I've never done this,
quite like this before. I, you know Meaning
this radio show? Right. So, you know,
I'm I'm I'm on pins and needles for

(05:48):
what I'm gonna do, and usually it's a
surprise to me too. So Okay. Okay. Well,
we're just gonna have a casual conversation, and
I know the listeners will be in tune
with us, and and they will love it.
They will love it because that's what the
show is all about.
You know, and I've never been introduced to
somebody I drank beer with before.
This is a good start.
Well well, we have been to church together,
so we have drank wine together. Yeah. There

(06:10):
we go. There we go. There we go.
So, Patrick, why don't you tell us a
little bit about who you are and and
how you came to be in our local
area first off? Oh, that's a
gee, I'm 70, so it's a story that
seems to get be getting longer, but
not much better.
So,
I grew up in San Diego Oh. As

(06:31):
you know. We were talking about that in
some of the same corners and same areas
of town.
And, Sixth And Laurel. Sixth And Laurel. Well,
that's That's your father's. One one of the
places. Yeah. And,
so,
I wanted to be a minister, I thought,
when I was in high school. And then

(06:52):
I realized if you're not called, you don't
go. Okay. And I looked around, and there
were a lot of family,
history of people involved in in social work
and including
including my own direct family. And so I
thought, well, at least there's training there
that's probably as good, if not better.

(07:14):
And so I became a social worker,
San Diego State, etcetera, etcetera. Go Aztecs.
Yeah. Yeah.
And
so
a long story short, you know, the
payment, the finances,
the insurances

(07:35):
for mental health care have varied over the
years. Mhmm. And, right about in the eighties,
managed care took over. Mhmm. And in the
nineties, it kind of settled in
and and became the the rule of law.
And,
I found that after a while, it was
harder to make,

(07:55):
a living
doing private practice, which I did for about
eighteen years. Oh, wow. Yeah. So, you know,
in the trenches there, just seeing
mostly normal people with with problems, but, you
know, it gets pretty it gets pretty extreme.
And,
so eventually, I looked at it and said,
well, I think I need to make a
salary because the insurance companies were just throttling

(08:17):
back all their payments. You know? Right. And
and so
somebody oh, Todd. You know Todd. Yes. I
met him Roy. I met him at a,
a conference, and he says, well, we're looking
for people
in Crescent City. I said, where's that? He
said, it's in the Redwoods,
and we have a prison there. I go,
yeah. Right.
But I had been growing redwoods in my

(08:37):
little place
in Southern California. I loved them. Uh-huh. And
I thought, oh, well, I could have a
place in the Redwoods.
And one thing tumbled into another, and three
months later I was up here. And that
was 2,000.
Wow. And I worked for the prison system
for a number of years,
very intense

(08:58):
and very interesting.
And then, I've been retired for about ten
years now. Wow. Yeah. Wow. That that is
serendipitous, how you came here. I I just
think that's awesome. Yeah. And and and I
love it, you know. I I just,
I just absolutely love it up here. Yeah.
And, so I've been an Episcopalian
on and off all my life since childhood.

(09:20):
And,
so I found my way into the
local Episcopal church down in Crescent City, and
that's how I ended up there looking for
community as soon as I moved in in
the area.
And,
you know, I've I've
seen some of the other churches and been
with the other churches, but that's home.

(09:41):
It's funny. It's it's
it's dyed in the wool. You know? It's
it's my parents' religion
and their parents before them. But, of course,
you know, I looked around a bit too.
But She chose it. But I chose it.
Yeah. Yeah. So Yeah.
And so that's how I ended up at
Saint Paul's.
And,

(10:02):
everybody What street is Saint Paul's on in
Crescent City?
That's 220
Mackin, East Mackin. Excellent. Yeah. And if you
know the area, it's across the street from
the ball fields. Mhmm. So, you know, all
the little league games,
and,
we're just across the street from that.
Not far from,
from the Home Depot area. Right. Yeah. Right.

(10:25):
And I love that church. I think that
must be a historic building as well. It
came off an army base from World War
two,
up the coast in Oregon. I think it's
just a bit past Florence.
And in '19,
'46 or '7,
they
allowed it to be sold off. So the
members went up, big trucks, from what I

(10:46):
understand,
and they they took that
building. Wow. It was built out of,
very traditional looking, but you go inside, and
it has glulam
rafters and and beams that start at the
floor and go all the way up to
the ceiling, which was
not at all unusual these days.
But

(11:07):
modern architecture,
the war effort, all kind of got going
together. And so that was new,
relatively new kind of technique for construction back
then. So
these guys,
gals,
I wasn't there, 1947.
They put it on trucks, brought it down,
set it up. And

(11:27):
it has a very
traditional kind of feeling inside,
stained
glass, murals. Oh, it's so beautiful. Yeah. High
ceilings.
I I call the buildings
the the secret sacrament. Mhmm. You know, the
outward visible side of inward spiritual grace.
Buildings
shape us. You know, like, was it Churchill

(11:50):
said, we shape our buildings and then they
shape us. Of course, he was talking about
parliament where people yell back and forth at
each other. Right. It's a little different. So
we're we're on Mackin Street there. So, you
know, we meet on Sundays,
10:30,
and,
occasionally, other times, but mostly, it's just Sundays.

(12:10):
And you do not have a full time
vicar or priest.
So what is your role then, Patrick? Okay.
We have
mostly lay led,
church services.
In the Episcopal church, as in Catholic and
many others,
we don't have,

(12:32):
we we have the,
the role of the Eucharist or communion
is usually reserved
for
someone through apostolic succession has been blessed by
the by, you know, the the whole training
of going through seminary and all the rest.
So we do not have a
ongoing regular priest there. We have at different

(12:53):
times over the years, we have visiting,
what we call supply priests who come once
or twice a month,
and they do the Eucharist. And the rest
of the time,
we have,
something that probably actually fits the feeling of
what we're doing
interpersonally and as a congregation. We have morning

(13:14):
prayer.
And,
the process of morning prayer,
being lay led,
it's we follow the book.
What's the book? Well, it's our liturgy.
Okay? And liturgy
is ritual.
And ritual is everything from how you tie
your shoes without thinking.

(13:34):
It's
been there since I was four. I'm still
getting it.
Or it's something that's carefully and processed and
developed with lots of hashing back and forth.
See, when you say this, when you say
that. But it is a
process of
moving people
through a very complex set of ideas and

(13:57):
emotions
and and movement towards a towards a place
of being
that's hard to get to on your own.
And isn't the purpose of prayer so much
listening,
not just saying or doing something, but listening
to the spirit, listening to a divine voice?
The pacing
of a liturgical service

(14:22):
to
the uninitiated
feels boring,
because it's a little slow.
It goes at the speed of turning pieces
of paper.
It goes at the speed of people
kneeling
in physical contrite
positions,

(14:42):
standing up,
proceeding
in endless so it it moves at a
at a passage that's closer to where our
our normal discovery thinking is.
So we have a chance to do that
as a group.
And
that ritual,
because we're all been doing it for not

(15:04):
all of us, but we've been doing it
for
weeks, months, years, lifetime,
it
sort of picks us up and carries us
like a wave. Mhmm. So
being that we don't usually have a a
an assigned pastor to us,
this is our
group think. Mhmm. Our,

(15:25):
our group dance,
and it it moves us. And and and
that's the purpose of ritual. You know? It
it it actually moves us slowly and directly
and
and
and in a in an orderly way where
you can kind of
sense where it's going. And,
you know, I've been doing a lot of
thinking about this since we talked about going,

(15:45):
you know, doing this interview. Mhmm.
You're I'm sure you're familiar from from Catholicism,
and
that there's this one central piece that, you
know, the the the Protestants will call it
an altar call. You know? We'll we will
talk about it as a communion rail, the
sharing of a cup, but it's it's like
a journey to a center. Mhmm. Mhmm. And
it's a physical kind of thing. You don't

(16:07):
you don't do it from the back of
the church.
Right.
And to me,
each person is meeting themselves as well as
meeting each other there. And so it's a
constrained kind of way to where you you
get to slowly go up to this place
of great honesty. You know, they used to
have sayings where they say, you know, if

(16:28):
you have thing something,
against your brother, leave it before you come
to the communion rail. Mhmm. People used to
take that really seriously. Mhmm.
But I look at it as a form
of of great personal and and corporate honesty.
Absolutely. You know? And,
so,
yeah. We are we are basically a lay

(16:49):
led
church. I'm what's called a senior warden. Oh.
And the last person I said that to
said, Oh, you work at the prison? No,
not that kind of warden.
It's one of these English terms of which
there
are multiple little derivations of.
It's
sort of like
a person who's responsible for the corporate

(17:12):
business of the church. Yes.
And for your local church. Yeah. And in
the place of not having a
direct spiritual leader,
then I've gotta stretch to do that too.
But I don't do the preaching.
Uh-huh. Occasionally, I'll get up and make announcements
about big sales and stuff. But,
I make sure that our committee that runs

(17:34):
things, our board, we call it a mission
committee,
that they're overlooking everything
and
gradually guiding things around.
And so it's it's actually very active in
all those all those fronts, both spiritual, the
the building.
And ministerial for the community. Oh my gosh.
You do so many things for the community

(17:55):
as well.
It's
it's part of the DNA of the membership
of this church.
They've been doing it for a long time.
It's the middle name for some of the
people there. Yes. You know, in terms of
service to the community.
Can you talk more detail about what those
services include, pastor? Well, if if you were
to walk in on on some Sunday mornings
after church, you would see the ladies,

(18:18):
and some of the some of the men,
making lunches,
sack lunches.
We used
and and then they take those over to
another organization that that gives them out to
the homeless. We keep a few on the
on the bench there for people who just
walk by. Mhmm.

(18:38):
We used to do,
pre COVID,
a
shower ministry
and
soup kitchen and stuff. You know? And things
change. Things evolve.
So we're not doing that now. There's another
group that does that that whole thing much
much larger scale, much better. But we we
contributed to through doing, like, sack lunches and

(18:59):
stuff. But that's that's just kind
of what we're doing now in this great
continuum. We when we were a larger church,
we used to have, community dinners all the
time. You know? And people from the neighborhood,
whether it was for a sense of community
or they were just hungry, would
would stop in.
So,
that's that's one thing we do.

(19:20):
And I have been there and witnessed and
seen the the wonderful unhoused people
very easily and casually coming up to your
your
your your area between the church and your
community room, and the bag lunches being presented
and or they take a load off their
feet and they sit or they lay down
there on the bench, and and that's their
safe space. I've also seen your church do

(19:42):
a fantastic trans remembrance day in November where
you combined other churches,
and it was all inclusive. And I'm so
impressed
with the lay leadership that you all do
to make all of this happen. I'm just
so impressed with that, Patrick. And, you know,
somewhat that's been
a slow development in the sense of of

(20:03):
the acceptance
in
our own community church
for that has been longstanding.
And then
there's,
a bit of a catalyst,
whereas the community development of the the issue
of LGBTQ
rights
has has gained ascendancy.

(20:24):
One of our people said,
I'll get I'll get involved. And that's that's
Karen Wirt. And and so
she became our liaison
for that, and
it is a part of
who we are now.
We don't really have a strong membership
at this point. We get lots of visitors
who are of of the
of the LGBTQ community,

(20:46):
but they usually feel comfortable there. Mhmm. And
we're quite open to that. Mhmm.
And
probably over the years, we've probably had lots
of people who were members that we just
didn't know.
Right. It doesn't matter. And that's the way
that you operate at your church in the
entire Episcopal faith. You accept and celebrate everybody
who walks in that door. And whether it's

(21:07):
for somebody to look at the building, the
gorgeous building, and or they're gonna partake in
a service. Mhmm.
I I remember,
back in San Diego,
in about,
I wanna say, about 1969
or '70. So I was in high school.
One day from the from
the the pulpit of the church,

(21:28):
they said,
look, we we have this issue. It's not
here yet. Get ready.
Oh. Yeah. And they were introducing it slowly
saying,
We're going to be looking at alternate
identity sexually.
They didn't say it that way, but they
said, you know, basically what I remember was,
We're gonna be dealing with gay and lesbian

(21:51):
and
transgender issues. Right. And that was like, what?
Are these people from Mars? You know, it
was so out, but they but they knew
it was coming. Uh-huh.
And I'm not sure if this was
someone from the diocese, but there was a
guy,
or someone from the, you know, the organizational

(22:13):
structure was was kind of arranging this. But
we had a person come in who was
transitioning.
Mhmm. 1970.
Mhmm.
And they came in,
presenting
kind of neutral.
But as time was going by, wearing
a pinstriped suit, you know, just sort of,
you know, let's just say icon a masculine

(22:34):
dress at the time. Uh-huh.
And then finally stood up and said,
I was raised a woman.
I'm becoming a man. And next week, I'm
gonna introduce my fiancee.
You know, and it's like there was this
trial run going on. Right. You know? What's
gonna happen here? Right. So we're talking, what,

(22:54):
55
ago. Exactly. You know? Exactly.
I What a joyously free moment for that
person and for your church, the congregation. And
that has been the heart of the Episcopal
church. Yeah. It took some courage. And now
you're a senior warden, which means that you
are basically in charge of of making sure
that everything and all the cogs in the

(23:15):
wheel are working the way that you as
a community wanna work. And I'm so proud
of you for that.
You know, a person who thinks they're in
charge
is kinda mistaken. Yeah. You're right. But Yeah.
You have to have a leader somewhere in
there. Yeah. And and that's it. That's it.
Yeah. You know, you're just making sure nothing
goes bad.
And we have run things so long, so

(23:36):
well
by ourselves that sometimes we forget that there's,
you know, there's more going on,
some leadership necessary,
and the diocese will tell us, hey, you
need to do this. Oh, yeah? We're on
our own. No. We're not. We are not.
We are not on our own. No. No.
You know? And the Episcopal church works from
the grassroots up, don't they? You know? I
I think that they're just so strong centered

(23:58):
on the needs of the community and the
people that that your lay group is fabulous.
Yeah. You know, people don't
recognize this or remember it, but the
model of
of local government in The United States
was based on what was the
structure
of the,

(24:19):
church parish,
governance that came down through what would have
been the English Anglican church Mhmm. Prior to
the revolution. Mhmm. All that stuff,
came through that structure right there. Right. And
so we're talking about three hundred years ago.
Yeah. So let's get back to Saint Paul's
because I know that we're gonna run out
of time. I can see this conversation is

(24:40):
gonna go forever. Talk to me about the
power or the the beautifulness of a small
church community. What is your membership
in terms of numbers? What what is what's
the small part of your church? Because it's
really not small. You do mighty things.
Well,
you know, I I I don't know on
paper who's
how our official count is. There may be

(25:00):
40 or so. Mhmm. But on an average
Sunday,
give or take a few, it could be
20,
it was close to 30 last Sunday.
And
probably around 15 to 20, of which
a high majority of those people are active.
You know, we we have probably about a

(25:20):
70%,
inclusion of people who are actively doing something
to for the running of the church from
vacuuming to,
to preaching,
Music. Music. Reading
Yeah. Services.
Yeah. We do. They're not just butts in
the seat at Saint Paul's. That's for sure.
But if you wanna be a butt in
the seat, you can be a butt in

(25:41):
the seat. Yep. So we're down to about
two minutes. Can you believe that? So that
that's a little bit about Saint Paul's. Anybody
is invited to come. Right. Yep. Yep. Will
you talk a little bit about that as
some of your final comments too then, Patrick?
Anybody,

(26:02):
has been everybody.
Oh, that's a mic drop. Yeah. Yeah. And
we get a lot of people who
have been born Episcopalians
remain such. Mhmm. This is who they are.
And then we get a few people
for whom this is new.
And, we we try to make it a

(26:23):
little easier for them.
Used to be you had to skip around
this prayer book to figure out which page
you're on. Now we put it in a
pamphlet. Uh-huh. So you start off and get
get to the bottom.
We
we oh, have you You got about thirty
seconds here, Patrick. A lot of the work
a lot of the work is done
at coffee afterwards

(26:43):
because
that's when people sit and talk to each
other. Yes. You know? And
that runs for a
while.
And there there is a sense of people
reaching out to each other and helping each
other, you know, whether it's doing their lawns
like one guy does or or,

(27:04):
taking somebody else out to the store, picking
them up because they, you know, can't drive.
It's just small churches are more like families
than they are like institutions.
And small churches, they have troubles. They fight
like families too. It's kinda funny. You know?
There you go. I'm sorry. I'm gonna have
to cut you, but, oh my gosh. We
could just keep going with this conversation. So
show up at Saint Paul's, 10:30 on Sunday,

(27:26):
everybody, if you want a place to hang
out like a family and have coffee and
or just be together. We wanna thank all
the listeners here in at KCIW one hundred
point seven FM. Tom, Mike,
Candice, and Rose, the entire team makes this
happen. We appreciate everything that everybody has done.
Have a beautiful day. Wear bright colors and
have big smiles.