The following story first appeared in the Spring 1999 Glenmary Challenge.
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Accounting for the Hope That Is in Us
A New Church Is Born in Tippah County
By Polly Duncan Collum

Lay pastoral coordinator Polly Duncan Collum, vested for a Sunday Communion Service, greets members of the growing Tippah County Catholic Community in Ripley, Mississippi.

In September 1997 I moved to Ripley, Mississippi, with Danny and our two children, Christopher (6) and Maggie (2). We were sent to Ripley (population 5,000) in Tippah County (population 20,000) as part of Glenmary’s program to establish mission churches with lay leaders in places where there is no Catholic Church. 

Now, 15 months later, our Church community consists of about 25 English-speaking members and about 50 whose first language is Spanish. (Our arrival coincided unexpectedly with large numbers of Hispanics in Tippah County. A local furniture factory had closed a plant in southern California and began moving Hispanic workers to northeast Mississippi.)

Our community gathers every Sunday for worship—one Sunday in English, the next in Spanish. Bilingual religious education is held twice a month. A visiting priest celebrates Mass when this is possible. On other Sundays I lead a Word and Communion Service.

During this first year, our mission has celebrated two baptisms, prepared three children and one adult for First Communion and begun an adult class on “Our Catholic Identity,” which includes several Tippah Countians who are interested in becoming Catholic. We’ve weathered crises ranging from life-threatening accidents and illnesses to the murder of a Hispanic Catholic. And we participated in the founding of an ecumenical social ministry—the Good Samaritan Center of Tippah County.

Here are a few reflections from this full and rewarding year of mission in Mississippi.  

Starting With People  

On a sunny, early spring afternoon last March about 40 Tippah County Catholics in grubby blue jeans rolled up our shirt sleeves to scrub the two-room, rather run-down storefront we hoped to transform into a beautiful place of worship. The building needs work (no hot water, water stains on the ceiling, a bathroom badly in need of paint), but the rent is affordable for our fledgling community. And the building’s location—right on Highway 15—gives our church great visibility.

To inspire us, we taped a big poster on the wall with these words from Psalm 84: “How lovely is thy dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!” Then the children decorated a sheet of newsprint headed with these words: “Dreams for Our Church/Ideas Para Nuestra Iglesia.” We also taped this sheet to the wall, and folks contributed their ideas for our new church: a bilingual choir, English and Spanish classes at the church, Friday night movies and popcorn.

Next came a sheet of jobs needing to be done: setting up a church phone-tree, visiting shut-ins, planning liturgy, lots of building fix-up. And volunteers were encouraged to sign up. We completed our wallpapering job with big sheets listing “Church needs” (most immediately, 50 chairs and an altar) and “Church assets” (items we had already been given: Mass goods, an organ, a refrigerator).

My six-year-old son, then a beginning reader, was struggling with the sheets of newsprint as we taped them to the walls. “Mama, what does that one say?” he asked, as the final sheet about material assets went up.

“That’s a list of everything our church already has,” I explained, and I read to him the list.

Christopher brightened and exclaimed, “Mama, I want to add something to that list!”

“What?” I asked.

“People! I want to list people!”

And he did. My son shamed me into remembering the most essential element of Church. It is an incredible grace, and a lot of fun, to see a disconnected group of people become a Church community. In our Tippah County Catholic Community, as in the Catholic Church as a whole, we have the rich blessing of a culturally diverse population. So far, we have native Mississippians and “Yankee” transplants, Mexicans and Mexican Americans, African Americans and Filipinos.

At one point this past year I bemoaned to my Glenmary supervisor, Father Frank Ruff, that it seemed impossible to pull together all of those different cultures and languages into one unified community. Father Frank, in his wisdom, replied, “You’re absolutely right. It is impossible—except through the power of God.” 

As we mopped floors and washed windows that March day, I observed adults trying to communicate across language barriers and kids running around and playing with one another, not really caring about language barriers. The words from Galatians 3:28 ran through my mind: “There does not exist among you Jew nor Greek, slave or free person, male or female. All are one in Christ Jesus.”

I smiled, and I thanked God.  

A Different Kind of Minister

Sometimes I struggle with the seeming conflicts between my vocation as a wife and mother and my role as a pastoral minister. Usually this conflict involves time and flexibility. Priests and friends in religious life have more of those things to give to their ministry than I do. Some days it feels as if I, and my other lay-minister friends, are square pegs in the round holes of a celibate model.

Not infrequently I am the cause of confusion on the part of someone, Catholic or Protestant, who has never before encountered a professional lay minister for the Catholic Church. More than once I have been asked, “You mean you’re not a nun?” or, “You are a married woman and you’re allowed to lead a Catholic community?”

I usually respond to such understandable bewilderment by explaining about the shortage of priests in our Church. I emphasize that I cannot perform sacramental functions and that I work collaboratively with priests. I point out that I have a similar education to that of priests, and that I am officially appointed by Bishop William Houck of the Diocese of Jackson. I explain that we’re making the best of a difficult situation—the priest shortage—by calling forth the talents of lay people to serve the Church in pastoral ministry. And I ask the person to pray for more vocations to the priesthood.

There is an irony for me in both my internal struggles and in the puzzled reactions I receive: I know that my experience of marriage and motherhood makes me a better  pastoral minister, a better spiritual director and a better preacher and catechist (for adults and children alike).

To single out motherhood: There is no room for abstract or didactic sermonizing with children. Being with children, I learn to listen more than to speak; to call forth rather than to put in; to wonder together at God’s awesome presence in creation; and to revel in the tangible, sacramental, mysteries of our faith: the water of baptism, the light of the Easter Vigil, the fire of the Spirit at Pentecost, the feel and smell of the holy oils, and the Bread and Wine that are so much more than bread and wine.

My experience of mothering has helped me lead others to God.  

Reaching Out to the Unchurched

One weekend a devout Catholic friend of mine from the Washington, D.C., area came to visit us in our new home in Mississippi. She was very interested in our efforts to call together a Catholic community for Tippah County. On Saturday afternoon I settled her at our kitchen table with some reading material while I put my rolodex on the counter and began my usual round of reminder phone calls about worship the next day. (Even many of the Catholic folks in this county are not in the habit of going to church. Some have not attended church for 15 or 20 years or more, so gentle reminders and encouragement are sometimes necessary.)

After overhearing a few of these calls and my enthusiastic “I hope to see you tomorrow!” my friend grinned. She said that my job was just like that of her husband, a successful insurance salesman. “You just sell a different product,” she joked. “How about offering them a two-for-one special if they come to Mass and bring a friend?”

A central facet of the Glenmary mission is to reach out to the “unchurched”—that is, people who attend church twice a year or less. In Tippah County that is about 30 percent of the population! Many of the Catholics here have not attended regularly because the nearest Catholic Church has been 30 to 45 miles away. My role is to encourage people to make Church a part of their lives again.

I spend a lot of time visiting people in their homes—listening to them talk about their lives, telling them about our budding congregation, praying with them when appropriate and, yes, inviting them to worship. And I have to admit my friend was right. When it comes time in the conversation for “the pitch,” I frequently feel like a salesperson. Maybe that’s because Catholics aren’t known for their evangelization techniques.

Many times driving home through the country, I think about the person I’ve just visited. Many of these people’s lives are overcrowded with work and family responsibilities; some of their lives are, quite simply, chaotic. I think about what I have learned about the person’s relationship with God, which is sometimes quite profound despite the lack of a faith community. And I ask myself a hard question: Why should this person make room in his or her life for church?

Why do people go to church? Every Christian might give a slightly different answer, but for us, as Catholics, our experience of God both in the Eucharist, and in the gathered community, will be primary. In that experience we find something that makes sense of our daily chaos. The challenge is to communicate that “something” to potential newcomers.

The First Letter of Peter urges, “Be ready at all times to account for the hope that is in you” (3:15). That is what we are trying to do here in Tippah County, little by little, from week to week.  

Ecumenical Relationships

Recently I presided and preached at a Sunday Communion Service at St. Christopher’s, the Glenmary parish in Pontotoc, Mississippi, while the pastor, Father Steve Pawelk, was in Mexico learning Spanish. “Why do you suppose some Catholics don’t go to church?” I asked those gathered. After liturgy, a parishioner fervently responded, “A lot of people don’t go to church because they see the in-fighting among Christian denominations and are disgusted.”   

Maybe he has a point. Part of my role as a Glenmary lay missioner is to build bridges of understanding with the other Churches in our county. I visit their services and attend their revivals. I participate in community prayer services and serve on the board of the ecumenical Good Samaritan Center. All of this is aimed at extending a friendly hand to our sisters and brothers in Christ. I know my conscious campaign to build relationships is worth the effort when I experience that friendliness in return and feel the good will that ecumenical outreach engenders for our Catholic community.

At a recent meeting for the Good Samaritan Center, the facilitator, a strong Pentecostal, warmly introduced me, noting how wonderful it is to now have a Catholic Church in Tippah County; she then asked “Sister Polly” to open the meeting with prayer. This fall the youth group at Ripley’s First Methodist Church tutored some of our Catholic Hispanic children in English every Wednesday.

The first Mass celebrated in Tippah County in 15 years was held last December in Trinity Assembly of God Church. We use the lectern and copy machine of Ripley Presbyterian Church. The Protestant ministers with whom I meet weekly to share ministry struggles and successes have given me invaluable support and advice.

I imagine God grinning in delight at cross-Church partnerships such as these.

Catholic Gifts to the South

This ecumenical outreach also reminds me of the particular gifts the Catholic Church brings to Mississippi and the South. The incarnational and sacramental emphasis of Catholic theology can be an antidote to the harsher, more dualistic theologies that abound in Southern religious culture. At our best, we Catholics don’t pit this world against the next or flesh against spirit; instead, we see grace and nature intertwined and find holiness in all of life. The primacy of the Eucharist and the urgency of the Church’s social mission, both of which flow from our incarnational theology, are other important Catholic offerings.

So are the beauty and contemplative quiet of Catholic prayer, liturgy, rituals and “sacramentals”; the rich notion of “tradition”; the psychological and spiritual healing provided by the Sacrament of Reconciliation; the connectedness our litany of saints brings to the biblical “communion of saints.” Catholicism also uniquely imparts a strong sense of a universal, global Church and exudes a certain feminine touch from the honor we show our Blessed Mother. These are all good gifts of our faith.

This is why a handful of us Catholics are trying to start a new Church in a county that already has 187 other ones. Please pray for our missionary effort in our second year!

Polly Duncan Collum returned to full-time motherhood in July 2000.  Sister Kate Regan is the new lay pastoral coordinator in Ripley, Miss.