By Lucy Chumbley April 01, 2004 ( Volume 73 , No. 5 )

Back in 1954, things were looking bleak at St. Mark’s, Capitol Hill.

Following a post-war migration to the suburbs, the inner city parish had lost most of its members, and just 30 or 40 people were attending Sunday services in a run-down building that could seat 800.

Fast forward 50 years, and St. Mark’s is a thriving congregation with 700 members on its roster and an average Sunday attendance of more than 300.

What happened?

In their self-published book, “Building Church; Memories and Myths,” the Rev. Bill Baxter, rector of St. Mark’s from 1954 to 1966, and his wife, Jean, tell of the church’s rejuvenation.

When Baxter arrived at St. Mark’s with Jean and their three young children, he had a mandate from Bishop Angus Dun to turn things around or shut the parish down.

Standing in the church building for the first time, he decided it was too beautiful to die. But how could he begin to save it?

At first, Baxter did all the usual things parish priests do to bring people into the congregation – he wrote to members whose attendance had lapsed to invite them back and knocked on neighborhood doors to introduce himself to potential parishioners.

But nothing seemed to work.

After a number of these efforts resulted in little change, Baxter received some advice from his mentor, Charles Penniman, that set the parish firmly on the path to recovery.

According to Penniman, director of the Education Center in St. Louis, Mo., the way to build a church was to build Christians, not churchmen, Baxter said.

“If you’re making churchmen out of people, you assume they’re Christian and you just give them the manner of the church – the Episcopal tradition,” Baxter said. “Penniman really disavowed me of that, and got me focused on how to make a Christian.”

Baxter set out to address one central question with his congregation: What is a contemporary Christian, and how does a person living in today’s world make peace with what the Bible says?

“That was my pilgrimage certainly, and it was the pilgrimage of many of my colleagues,” Baxter said. “The truth about sin and faith and the cross and tragedy and redemption are not that easy – are painful – and some people become uncomfortable. The danger is that clergy keep diluting their message and create these well-mannered churchmen.”

Baxter discovered the best way to bring people together to examine life’s big questions was in his regular adult confirmation classes. And that’s where the seeds of St. Mark’s rebirth took root.

“That develops a cell which develops its own energy,” he said. “[Participants] began to press congregants to try it, even if they’d been confirmed before.”

The vitality of the confirmation class soon spilled out into the regular services, where Baxter encouraged people to ask questions after – and sometimes during – his sermons.

The eventual removal of the church’s pews allowed more flexible use of the building’s space, and revolutionized the way services were conducted.

The altar was moved from the chancel down into the nave, and new linking chairs were arranged so that people were seated on all four sides of it.

“There was no fight about the changes. We were ready for it,” Baxter recalls in the book.

This change in particular allowed the church to be used in new ways that enriched the life of the congregation, Baxter said – for plays and musical performances, suppers and services – and ushered in a new and vital time in the life of the parish.

“I’d heard some of the stories,” said JoEllen Hayden, a longtime parishioner of St. Mark’s, who got the idea for the book after hearing Baxter preach about his time at the church one Sunday in 2001. “Some of the stories had become somewhat apocryphal – the story of the pews and the baby being healed.”

Baby Miriam – daughter of parishioners Gwyn and Ronnie Thomann – was diagnosed with cancer shortly before she was to have been baptized and seemed sure to die. In deep distress, her parents brought her to St. Mark’s, where she was wept over, prayed over and ultimately – and miraculously – healed. She lived for 28 years, and her tale has become part of the story of St. Mark’s.

But even with the best of stories, Hayden said, details become blurred and begin to fade with time and retelling.

A historian by training, Hayden recognized that some of St. Mark’s most important memories would be lost if they weren’t recorded, and decided that someone should set them down for future generations.

That someone ended up being her.

On a September weekend in 2002, Hayden took the train to Maine to sit down with the Baxters and record their memories of St. Mark’s.

“Bill just opened the floodgates of his stories,” Hayden said, adding that the resulting book, which she edited, is “almost word for word the way he told it.”

“I find myself wondering – any historian does – what would it have been like to live there during that time?” she said. “I couldn’t have imagined a more wonderful way to grow up. I kind of placed myself in that time.”

While Hayden said getting to know Bill and Jean Baxter was the most meaningful part of the experience of editing the book, she also began to see her church in a new light.

“There’s no question that the thread of what Bill was trying to do is still alive,” she said, “Particularly the Christian education. I’d say that the thread of it is still there but we’ve evolved into a mainline church with a lot of families. A lot has changed.”

“A couple of strong pieces of that legacy that still exist I would say are our educational approach – what we call functional education,” said the Rev. Paul Abernathy, rector of St. Mark’s for the last six years.

Functional education is an experiential approach to life’s questions, he explained: “It’s really much more about who you are and what your issues are. What that produces and yields in terms of process is, people become accustomed to sharing their lives stories. It creates a bonded, close-knit, active community where people tend to say what they think and feel.”

That closeness is also reflected in the style of worship at St. Mark’s, he said – thanks in no small measure to Baxter’s decision to remove the church’s pews.

“When we gather in community, we are looking at the faces of our sisters and brothers,” he said. “We are not looking at the backs of heads. It both communicates and inculcates that value of shared experience.”

Abernathy said the Baxters’ book also provides a shared experience for the present-day parishioners, offering them a sense of both history and continuity.

“It reminds us who we were – what we did as a community many years ago,” he said. “It’s something we can put into the hands of new members. It’s invaluable.”

Times have changed since the Baxter’s left St. Mark’s in 1966, Abernathy said, but some of the same questions remain.

“How does the Christian church evangelize when the aim shifts a bit?” he said. “It’s less about conversion and more about conversation. How do we do that?”

The Baxters’ St. Mark’s offered a home to everyone: skeptics, doubters and believers, Abernathy said.

“To a great degree, we’re still that,” he said: “Whatever you believe about God or whatever you don’t believe, you’re welcome here.”

* “Building Church; Memories and Myths,” by William and Jean Baxter, edited by JoEllen Hayden, costs $12 and is available to purchase at St. Mark’s, 301 A Street SE, Washington, D.C. 20003. Proceeds from the sale of the book will go to the church’s Building and Grounds Fund.

Contact Lucy Chumbley at lchumbley@edow.org