A few years back, the treasurer of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Maryville remarked that the church likely would run out of people before it ran out of money.
That proved true.
In 2019, the few remaining parishioners decided to cease Sunday services. Between deaths and people moving away, membership had dropped to about 10. Recruiting enough people to serve on the Bishop’s Committee had become difficult.
Since then, St. Paul’s has sat idle except for a monthly noonday prayer service.
Now that has ended, too.
The Diocese of West Missouri will deconsecrate the 65-year-old, wood-frame building at 6 p.m. July 24 with a service called “Secularizing a Consecrated Building.” Attendees also will celebrate the long and varied ministry of St. Paul’s, a small church that often showcased a big heart.
Soon the building will begin a new chapter under new owners.
“It got to the point that, with so few of us, it was silly to keep the church open,” said Channing Horner, a longtime St. Paul’s member and leader who started attending with his wife, Louise, after they moved to Maryville in 1967. “It was not wise stewardship of our resources.”
Church services, baptisms, confirmations, marriages, and funerals made up only a small part of St. Paul’s existence. Over the decades, it also developed young choristers, encouraged community involvement, and offered a church home for college students attending nearby Northwest Missouri State University.
Though the current building opened in 1959 at Ninth and Main streets, St. Paul’s history — and its impact on the Maryville area – began nearly a century earlier.
Five years before Maryville incorporated as a city, and a year before the Civil War ended, the Rev. George Turner began holding Episcopal worship services in people’s homes. Later, he preached in the Davis School House south of town.
As the community grew, so did the number of Episcopalians. In 1869, they made the first attempt to establish a mission church. In 1872, they succeeded.
The Rev. S.C. Blackiston, a deacon, became missionary for Northwest Missouri at a time the state still had just one Episcopal diocese. In August 1872, he held the first service in Union Hall. The next day, he had a service in the home of John Edwards and gave the mission the name St. Paul’s.
In the beginning, St. Paul’s had five communicants. Before long, they were able to purchase a small organ from Christ Church in St. Joseph for $50. By the time Blackiston left in April 1874, St. Paul’s had grown to 40 baptized members.
As happens with many small churches in rural towns, keeping a priest for more than a couple years proved difficult. Clergy soon progressed to larger churches in bigger cities. Sometimes the wait for St. Paul’s to get a new deacon or priest stretched for several years. Often during those lulls, services waned or even vanished.
One success story began in 1877, when determined “churchmen” reorganized St. Paul’s and resumed services with the Rev. E. Victor Beales leading them. Beales organized the Ladies Guild of St. Paul’s, which raised money to buy a lot at Fourth and Vine streets for $200. Soon the members had pledged $1,060 to build St. Paul’s first church, a wood-frame structure with a cross-topped apex.
The next year, St. Paul’s became a parish for the first time. Bishop Charles Franklin Robertson visited in May. The vestry called the Rev. George Turner to serve as St. Paul’s first parish priest. It seemed a fitting move, as Turner had been the priest who started services in Maryville homes in 1864. Alas, he stayed only one year.
In 1893, four years after the Diocese of West Missouri was established, the Rev. Lewis Wilkins arrived as the area missionary. He organized a boys’ choir that received rave reviews.
By the next year, St. Paul’s boasted 76 parishioners.
According to church history records in the Diocesan archives, St. Paul’s had a “resident clergyman” about two-thirds of the time from 1878 until 1900. The church had its “ups and downs,” the records say, with membership waxing and waning.
In 1898, St. Paul’s had 65 parishioners, a 12-member women’s guild, and a 21-member choir.
In 1907, the vestry approved the organization of a paid choir, which was “not to cost over $5 per Sunday.” That year, the Easter offering totaled $17.60.
Yet when the Rev. Jay C. Hathaway arrived in December 1908, “he found a heart-breaking and discouraging situation after years of neglect,” a history article stored in the Diocesan archives says. “The church building had been allowed to fall into a state of disrepair; the congregation … was at a very low ebb in numbers, activity and hope.”
In November 1909, Hathaway hanged himself from a railroad bridge trestle.
“His death was greatly mourned for he was beloved by all who knew him,” a handwritten archives document says.
Hathaway had been so well liked and respected that the churches of Maryville produced a memorial booklet in his honor.
But his death made life even more difficult for St. Paul’s. Before long, the declining membership no longer could sustain the building, which closed in 1911 or 1912 and was sold, along with the furnishings, in 1915 for $201.50.
Services gradually were discontinued.
In the church’s first 30 years, it had recorded 38 baptisms, 66 confirmations, 80 marriages and 104 burials, records show.
Then for roughly 30 years, nothing. St. Paul’s fell dormant.
In 1942, during World War II, The Rt. Rev. Robert Nelson Spencer sent seminary student Arleigh Lassiter to survey the diocese’s Northwest District.
“He found that the Protestant Episcopal Church was indeed in sad need of being revived but he also discovered that there were still enough loyal Episcopalians at the old familiar stations to give hope and encouragement for the future,” a history article in the archives says.
After being ordained to the priesthood in 1945, the Rev. Lassiter became missionary for St. Paul’s as well as St. Oswalds-in-the-Fields near Skidmore and St. Mary’s in Savannah.
“He was the one to start on the great adventure and bring it to pass!” the history article says. “He went up to Maryville May 10th, contacting the few Episcopalians in and around there. They rejoiced at the privilege of regular services, a resident minister, and St. Paul’s being revived and active once more.”
Albert Kuchs, who had been in the 1893 boys’ choir with his brother, returned as a member to the reactivated St. Paul’s.
Initially, the revived church held services in a rented upstairs room in the rear of the local bus station at Fifth and Market streets. Christ Church in St. Joseph once again aided St. Paul’s, this time by donating an antique walnut altar, some pews, a communion set, and altar linens.
Getting the altar upstairs proved troublesome until a carpenter cut out a square section from the back of the altar so that it could turn a corner on the stairs. The section was tucked back into place after the move.
“Sunday morning, Sept. 2, 1945, at 8:00 o’clock, the Holy Communion was celebrated,” the history document says. “The first service held in those many years. It was a great thrill and a great joy.”
Confirmations resumed the next month. Following a 37-year absence, baptisms resumed the next year.
When Lassiter left in 1948, St. Paul’s once again was left without a priest – this time for about a year.
His replacement lasted about four years, until June 1953, when “unfortunately he was seen on the highway south of Maryville with no clothes on enticing truck drivers and was ordered out of town by the county prosecutor,” according to a letter written years later to the Rt. Rev. Robert R. Spears Jr., who served as a suffragan bishop of West Missouri from 1967 to 1970. “He was a victim of a mental disorder and not in any way responsible for his actions BUT he didn’t do the Church any good – at least not its image in town.”
Some folks contend bad things happen in threes. That became the case for St. Paul’s.
The next priest previously had served on Native American reservations in California. He brought along a new wife 20 years his junior.
“Well, they hit town in August 1953 – he 5’2” in a ten-gallon hat and she 5’8” with red hair flowing down her back to the extreme bottom of her spine,” said the letter to Bishop Spears. “Local gossip has it that the ‘business on Main Street’ has only stopped three times: (1) when the Episcopal priest hanged himself; (2) when the Episcopal priest ‘exposed’ himself; (3) when the Episcopal priest they dubbed Cowboy and Red hit town. After two years of near chaos, at a meeting of the then Women’s Auxiliary, at which this priest was present, a motion was made and seconded that their minister leave town, which he did after the motion passed unanimously.”
In 1955, Charles Sanders arrived as a lay leader with his wife and three children. At the time, St. Paul’s had 32 members.
Sanders, who became a priest in 1956, joined numerous civic committees and served as chairman for some. He spoke at high school and college graduations. He invited college students to worship with his flock. Gradually, St. Paul’s grew.
Within three years of Sanders’ arrival, St. Paul’s began looking for a place to build a church. In 1959, the new building opened with enough pews for about 65 people. By 1962, it boasted 100 members overall and a year-old vicarage next to the church.
In 1973, Sanders entered semi-retirement and moved to Kansas City, ending an 18-year tenure at St. Paul’s.
Good things continued to happen. In 1978, the congregation added a Kilgen pipe organ. In 1984, when the building needed renovations, members provided the labor and raised $9,175 to purchase the materials.
By March of 1998, St. Paul’s called the first woman priest, Julianne Sifers. From there, the list of priests who served St. Paul’s continued to grow. The Rev. Julianna served from 1998 to 2001, who was then preceded by the Rev. Bonnie Malone. The Rev. Mike Kyle later served from 2004 to 2007. Finally, the Rev. Sidney Breese led the congregation from 2010 to 2019.
Gradually, though, the number of worshippers dwindled.
By 2019 – the year before the Covid pandemic struck – members agreed the time had come to shutter the building. They donated their remaining church funds to charities the congregation previously had supported.
Since St. Paul’s had reorganized in the 1940s, it had recorded at least 124 baptisms, 185 confirmations, 45 marriages and 64 burials.
For years now, Louise Horner has continued to change the altar colors to match the liturgical season despite the absence of Sunday services.
The Horners fondly recall St. Paul’s popular Lessons and Carols services, the Red Door choir, the annual chili supper, the church roller skating parties at Grant City, the Sister Diocese relationship with Botswana. They also remember the young foreign student nicknamed Sam who became a Christian because of St. Paul’s and his time spent at the Cliff Springs church camp. He learned to play the piano while in Maryville, too.
“There are some great stories involved with this little place,” Channing Horner said.
Yes, the Horners will miss it.
“The oddest feeling about closing is that it never occurred to me that if we are still residents in Maryville when we die, that our funerals will not be in that little church,” Channing Horner said.
The altar recently was returned to Christ Church in St. Joseph.
The pews, pipe organ and steeple will remain with the building as it begins a new chapter under new owners. Lori and Ron McKinney, who lead the Children’s Ministry at Calvary Chapel in Maryville, are brainstorming future uses.
Lori McKinney said her nephew had planned to put a business in the building. But the day she first visited it, she realized that plan felt wrong.
“I walked in, and the smell of it reminded me of an old church I went to as a child,” McKinney said. “It was just gorgeous on the inside. I was like, ‘You can’t make this into anything except a church!’”
She envisions Bible studies and perhaps weddings and other events taking place there. But nothing is set in stone. Yet.
“We are still praying about that,” she said.
Article was written by Donna McGuire.
