Special event will welcome new priest to community

By DEB WUETHRICH

Bishop Wendell N. Gibbs, Jr., of the Episcopal Diocese of Detroit will be in Tecumseh on Tuesday, May 20, to conduct a service welcoming The Reverend Robin Smith to the area, and the community is invited. A 7 p.m. ceremony entitled, “Celebration of Mutual Ministry and Welcoming of our Priest in Charge” will be held at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church that evening.

When Mother Robin, as she is called, was invited to the community last December while being considered as a candidate to minister to Eastern Lenawee Ministries, which encompasses St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Tecumseh and St. John’s Episcopal Church in Clinton, she and her family were greeted with an ice storm. After accepting the position as priest in January, Mother Robin and her family arrived in Clinton during one of this season’s big snowstorms. It will be interesting to see what type of weather greets her during a special event in her honor on Tuesday, but Mother Robin thinks things are looking up.

“The community is becoming more and more beautiful every day,” she said of experiencing spring in her newly adopted home community, having moved from the state of Washington where she most recently served as a Supply Priest at St. Germain’s in Hoodsport as well as Chaplain at Forks Community Hospital in Forks. Because of all the weather problems, she made long-distance arrangements for purchasing her home on Tecumseh-Clinton Road in Clinton, which she now shares with her mother, Elaine, and her daughters, Jocelyn, 11, and Melanie, 7. The girls were internationally adopted with Jocelyn having been born in China and Melanie in Cambodia. Both now attend Clinton Community Schools.

Although she is still experiencing some challenges above and beyond adapting to a new community, such as assisting her mother and getting her resettled in their new home following a recent heart attack, Mother Robin said that she felt a strong call to come to the area.

“It was actually amazing how strong it was,” she said. A Search Committee made up of congregation members from the two parishes worked over a year to find a replacement for Father John Lohmann, who retired after a decade of service to the community. Mother Robin said she was eager to return to parish ministry after serving in a more pastoral setting with the chaplaincy, and knew that she had some experiences that Eastern Lenawee Ministries seemed to be looking for. The two parishes are yoked and Mother Robin had been similarly involved with two parishes in New York State earlier in her career.

“I thought I might bring some particular gifts to this configuration because I had done it before,” she said. “It does create a different psychology in how the congregations relate to a priest.” St. Peter’s and St. John’s each have their own governing boards, but Mother Robin is responsible for ministry at both churches, including conducting three sermons on Sunday mornings: at 8 a.m. and 11 a.m. at St. Peter’s and at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s.
The move has brought a return to the Midwest for Mother Robin, after living on both coasts as well, since she received her B.A. in Humanities from Rosary College, now Dominican University, in River Forest, Illinois. She graduated from General Theological seminary in New York and holds a Master of Divinity cum laude, as well as earning a Master of Sacred Theology in Old Testament Studies. She delivered her first local sermons on Palm Sunday.

She expects to establish office hours soon, spending some time at each church, but in the meantime her calendar has been filling up anyway. She said one of her tasks has been to help evaluate space at St. Peter’s. She is occupying temporary office space there right now and hopes to see some changes that might provide a better work flow as well as accessibility and welcome to the community. Mother Robin’s vision for Eastern Lenawee Ministries includes a view that embraces the larger community as well as the present church congregations.

“I’d like our church to be a place where there are things going on all the time with activities happening every day of the week and many evenings as well,” she said. “I believe in setting your sights high and then reaching for them.” One idea that she might pursue involves providing a connection for youth with the church being a base of operation for a group such as Boys and Girls Club — something she has seen work in another community.

One of Mother Robin’s favorite passages of Scripture describes her approach to ministry. It is the Apostle Peter’s sermon to Cornelius in Acts 10-34, where he says, “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism, but accepts men from every nation…”
“That reminds me that God reaches out to everyone, irrespective of background,” she said. “And it’s sort of the church’s task to do that.”