MONTANA: Laurel parish starts 'new church on old foundations of faith'

St. Alban's, part of the Diocese of Montana, has been worshipping in Laurel since the 1960s and is one of four congregations belonging to the diocese's Yellowstone Episcopal Ministries cluster. The other three, all located southwest of Billings, Montana, are Our Saviour in Joliet, Calvary Church in Red Lodge and St. Paul's of the Stillwater in Absarokee.

The Laurel Outlook, the local newspaper, reported that although St. Alban's congregation has dwindled in recent years, those who remain are committed to continuing the community's ministry.

"Those people are not ready to give up though," the Rev. Jane Schmoetzer, the priest who ministers to the cluster of congregations, told the newspaper. "Instead, energetic and trusting in God's leading, they made the decision to sell their building and surrounding property and to start over. They consider themselves to be starting a new church on old foundations of faith."

"We spent a lot of time praying and planning before we made the choice to move," Schmoetzer said. "We see it as an opportunity to begin again, and to spend our time and energy on being the church, rather than in just maintaining. We believe in resurrection, you know."

The Crossings, the new senior-living facility in Laurel, is a ministry of St. John's Lutheran Ministries, Billings-based social-services agency founded in 1960. The agency offered the Episcopal congregation use of its chapel.

"They have a real commitment to caring for both the residents and the community," Schmoetzer told the newspaper. "This commitment is part of the reason that they have been eager to welcome St. Alban's. They see it as one way of supporting faith and Christian witness. The Lutheran (ELCA) and Episcopal Churches are also in full communion with one another, which makes the cooperation a good fit."

Even though they consider themselves as a new church organizing at The Crossings, the members' roots run deep. Parishioner, Ruth Weinfurter noted proudly that she is a fifth-generation Montanan, and the Episcopal Church has been part of the history of the state since Bishop Daniel Sylvester Tuttle established the first mission congregations in the 1860s, back when the state was still a territory.

"The church is not the building," parishioner Mary Field told the newspaper. "It's us."

Schmoetzer said the congregation is "looking forward to new opportunities to reach out to the community from a new home, and to see where else God might be leading us."