Mission-Mindedness Brings Old Congregation and Young Minister Together

Finding a fit: Older St. Joseph congregation welcomes young pastor
by Erin Wisdom
Saturday, December 12, 2009
St Joe News

The Rev. Heather Walchar didn’t grow up going to church all that regularly.

Born in Las Vegas, she didn’t grow up around here. And she certainly didn’t grow up picturing herself as a pastor in a relatively small Midwest city.

But she didn’t picture herself as an actuary or a math teacher, either — which ended up being a first step in this direction.

“I was a math major, but careers math majors end up in didn’t interest me,” says Rev. Walchar, who three months ago became the pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church, 1108 S. 33rd St, St Joseph, Missouri.

A summer she happened to spend as a counselor at a church camp motivated her to change her major to religion, but even then, she wasn’t planning to become a pastor. And as surprised as she might have been then to know what she’s doing now, meeting a young woman serving as pastor of a largely older congregation is perhaps just as surprising to people.

“We have few female ministers in town and even less at her age, in the mid-20s,” says the Rev. Chase Peeples, pastor of First Christian Church in St. Joseph. “For that matter, nationally, ministers that come straight through college and into seminary are becoming more and more rare; most people entering the ministry today do so in middle-age or later, as a second or even third career.”

He adds that Rev. Walchar “is very sharp and could have chosen to go to many other places” — and until relatively recently, other places were the only ones on her radar.

After graduating with a degree in religion from a college in Chicago, Rev. Walchar went on to Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey with plans to someday be a youth minister. She eventually decided against this, however, and considered pursuing a Ph.D. in order to have a career in academics — but this began to change during a summer internship at a church in Texas.

“What I enjoyed most was visiting people, which really surprised me, because I’m an introvert,” she notes, adding that during an internship a few years later in Laurel, Md., she realized how much she liked the idea of combining this kind of pastoral work with preaching and teaching.

It was last January, while she was still at that internship, that Rev. Walchar had a phone interview with Trinity Presbyterian in St. Joseph that stuck with her, even as she interviewed with other churches. She says that she kept comparing those churches to what she’d learned about Trinity; especially, that although the congregation is older, it’s open to change and to the community.

The church — which formed in 2005 through the merging of Westminster Presbyterian and Second Presbyterian — has been very involved with The Haven and Judah House, she says, and has also expressed an interest in somehow reaching out to the Hispanic community.

“For me, the fact that they were even using this as an example of their interests showed me that they were not afraid of opening up the church to try programs that might be out of their comfort zone,” Rev. Walchar adds. “ ... A lot of churches can get a bunker mentality when the neighborhood around the church changes, but they’re open to anyone coming.”

Barb Ranner, chairperson of the committee that called Rev. Walchar, notes that being mission-minded is a quality that’s always been important to Trinity and that Rev. Walchar especially — out of more than 100 applicants — fits the church well in that it’s also important to her.

“We kept e-mailing her (during her internship and job search), saying, ‘Are you still available? We’re still interested,’” Ms. Ranner says, adding that when Rev. Walchar indicated she did want to move forward with the interview process, “the committee gave out a big war whoop.”

This likely doesn’t come as a surprise to Rev. Walchar, who notes that what her church lacks in size — with a membership of about 90 and a Sunday attendance usually between 35 and 55 — it makes up for in enthusiasm.

“I think they’re excited to have someone come in with new ideas,” she says, adding that while the tendency for some older congregations seems to be to snuff out ideas they feel have been tried and failed before, she doesn’t think her congregation will — even if one member did comment to her that she’s “all of 12 years old.”

“I’m new to this,” she notes, “so I haven’t tried anything before that hasn’t worked.”