By ANGELA CAVE
This, plus the congregation's five-minute Peace process involving hugs or handshakes for all, makes for a unique place in the Episcopal world, parishioners of North Bellmore's St. Mark the Evangelist said on a recent Sunday morning. And they do it all without the guidance of a permanent rector.
Parishioners have to wait until the first Sunday of each month to receive Communion from the Rev. Paul Woodrum, a visiting priest who ministers weekly to them during Lent and Easter. In the summer of 2007, there was no Communion at all. Only about two or three congregants have left because of this reduction, parishioners said.
"Communion is supposed to cleanse your body," said Merrick's Magda Squillacioti, a parishioner since 1991, when Merrick's Redeemer Church, her former parish, closed down. This is also when St. Mark received parish status after being a mission for 78 years. Squillacioti is moved to tears even without the rite. "I come for myself," she said. "I just sit there and I meditate and I feel the warmth of the church, and it starts my week off."
She said the parish provided her strength when Vincent, her husband of more than 56 years, had a heart attack in 1994. The priest at the time visited him in the hospital. Magda was diagnosed with fibromyalgia in 2006 and also needed open heart surgery. "If it wasn't for St. Mark's, for their prayers here, I don't know," Magda said. "As soon as we walked in this door, their arms were around us. The love here is just incredible."
There are pluses and minuses to the parish's situation, Woodrum said. "It sort of forces people to really be a part of a community and work hard toward it," said Woodrum, a 42-year priest who did supply work for 20 years in Queens and now ministers across Long Island and New York City. "It forms a very solid congregation, but then it's very hard for them to grow."
One of the church members, Walter Fuller, is studying to be a deacon at the Mercer School in Garden City. Fuller got his preaching license at least four or five years ago and was on St. Mark's vestry for about 10 years. Becoming a deacon would allow him to give Communion, but his assignment is up to the bishop. He is currently serving at Christ Church in Manhasset. His wife, Chris, has been the St. Mark organist for 10 years.
The Very Rev. Christopher Hofer, dean of the South Nassau deanery of the Diocese of Long Island, agrees that a leader's absence can prevent growth.
"It's one more struggle for a parish," Hofer said. "There is not that sense of continuity." St. Mark is not alone in worshiping without a leader, he said. In his deanery, only eight out of 16 parishes can afford full-time priests. Nationwide, 7 percent of the 7,155 parishes had no priest when a survey was taken in 2005, according to the Episcopal Church Web site.
Hofer said parishes will survive as long as they can pay bills. "If our main purpose is to spread the Gospel, then we have a mission."
St. Mark's membership is declining: There was a 75 percent decrease in average holiday service attendance and an 80 percent decrease in average Sunday service attendance between the 1990s and today, according to the church's documents. Death and relocation are two possible reasons, said Mineola resident Betty Nicolai, one of two wardens responsible for operations and managing finances in the roughly three-year absence of a pastoral leader. "Anything can set people off," Nicolai said. Youth seem to be disappearing because of sports and activities on Sundays, she said.
The sex abuse scandals prominent in the Roman Catholic Church also seemed to affect St. Mark's parishioners, said church secretary Jennifer Henning. "It really hurt a lot of faith," said Henning, whose unfaith is unmarred. She knew how special the parish was when parishioners brought food to her house after her father's death two years ago. "I didn't even have to ask - they were just there," she said. "It's genuine. Nobody's looking for a payback. It's what God intended us to do - to take care of each other."
Henning became more active in the parish when she saw how much help it needed. "People don't realize that it takes people to labor in the church to keep it going," she said. "We're running on low fuel as far as people fuel, and we have very little doers, and we're surviving somehow."
The parish has lost its thrift shop and its soup kitchen meal-delivery program. It has sustained blows to its Sunday school and Altar Guild: Participation in both has decreased by half in the past 10 years. And while the parish used to offer two Sunday services in the church and daily weekday services in the basement chapel, it now offers just one service each week.
When there were more parishioners, volunteers were able to paint chipped doors, fix gutters and clean the roof. They also converted a stage into a kitchen in the parish hall, which has stood since 1929. Now, deep puddles show that the parking lot needs fixing and weathering shows that the roofs and gutters need to be replaced. The church itself has stood since at least 1923 - the parish started as a mission in the Newbridge Road firehouse in North Bellmore - and has not been renovated since 1960. Money is tight when vandals repeatedly knock down the front fence and the county gives the church a $5,500 bill for sidewalk repairs.
But the $50,000 that a base of about 50 active parishioners donates each year - as well as the money collected from renting out the parish hall to community groups - pays the organist, secretary, utility bills, insurance and ten percent tithe to the diocese. It's also enough to maintain an outreach program that fed five families during Thanksgiving and Christmas in 2007.
"We're not hanging on. We're moving forward," said warden Michael Brolly. "It looks like things are slowing down and grinding to a halt, but they're not, and people are very supportive."
Brolly said a priest's salary is about $25,000 - and will increase to keep up with Long Island's cost of living - and includes housing, health insurance, life insurance and a housing equity fund. St. Mark's donations peaked at $78,000 in 2001, according to the diocese. "We'd love to see more people here because that's really the bottom line," said Brolly, a parishioner since 1992. "As much as a church is a religious and spiritual thing, it's also a business."
A group of about 12 people was formed last year to keep the church alive, the wardens said. They studied local churches and found that many with low attendance - sometimes five people - had a full-time priest thanks to endowments. St. Mark has no endowments, but it also has no mortgages or indebtedness.
The modest church, with members hailing from such places as Bellmore, Mineola, Wantagh, East Meadow, Freeport, Seaford and Merrick, is big in spirit.
Woodrum, the visiting priest, said he is impressed with the congregation's enthusiasm and presence, especially when singing a capella. "They'd much prefer to have someone there every Sunday, but they make me feel almost superfluous there when I arrive," he said.
Kitty Romano, one of six board members and a Wantagh resident, was away from the Church for at least 20 or 30 years before she found St. Mark 10 years ago. "I never thought I'd go back to the Church. Never," said Romano, who found comfort from the sanctuary when her ex-husband had open heart surgery. "It's just a feeling. It's a very caring church. You just come as you are. I think the nice thing is that if doesn't really matter what church you're coming from, or if you're even coming from a church."
St. Mark serves several ex-Catholics and even people who didn't have a religion prior. "Try us-you may like us," warden Nicolai joked. "There is an intangible feeling of a presence of God. There's a certain peace that you feel. It's worship."
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