Interim rector plays unique role in Episcopal church transition

Marilyn Sanders is a bridge builder. She helps Episcopal Church congregations move from the past to the future with grace.

Rev. Sanders is an interim rector, one of a select cadre of Episcopal priests who serve in the wake of the departure of a priest, as a congregation seeks a new priest to lead it.

That is the role she is playing now at the Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration. She took the post as interim last summer when Rev. Larry Harrelson announced his retirement.

She will serve until the church's search committee finds a new, permanent rector to lead the church.

Interim rectors serve a very specific function in the church.

"The church figured out about 30 years ago that the roughest time for a congregation is when they lose a priest who has been really good for a long time -- or one that's not so hot for any length of time," Sanders said.

Not just anyone can step into a situation fraught with emotion and trepidation and succeed.

"People get scared, people get angry," Sanders said. "They're grieving, really. Any change causes grief."

Interim rectors are specifically trained to act as lightning rods for all that emotion -- and thereby to smooth the way for a new priest to enter the picture.

"They can hate me if they need to," Sanders said. "They can buck and be unhappy -- and they know I'll be leaving. Everybody knows there's a back door."

It's not a job for just anyone, but Sanders felt called to it -- just as she was called to the priesthood in the face of mountains of obstacles.

Her first assignment was as an assistant to an interim rector at a church in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

"It was one of the most bizarre congregations you could imagine," Sanders said.

The church family had been rent by betrayals of trust and bad conduct on the part of a priest and the congregation was a wreck.

The interim position was not a success; both the interim rector and Sanders had to quit in order for the congregation to recognize its own dysfunction.

But, for some reason, Sanders was hooked on interim work.

"I was fascinated by the discipline," she said.

Sanders seems drawn to challenges, although she might not phrase it that way. She has a deep sense of calling and perhaps she simply accepts the challenges required in answering the call.

She was drawn to the church from an early age. She grew up at Christ Church, Cranbrook, in Michigan --then the largest church in the nation. She loved the liturgy and at age six was singing in the choir.

She felt pulled toward the priesthood, but at the time that wasn't an option.

"When I was a kid, we couldn't even have girl acolytes," she said.

Many miles down a winding road, building a family and a career as a speech pathologist, Sanders found herself drawn back to service in the church in the area of religious education, now in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Still, her path to the priesthood was blocked, despite major changes in the church. Her bishop, a conservative southerner, thought the idea of women as priests was "an abomination."

He told Sanders, "'The church may have lost its mind and the church may be ordaining women, but I won't do it.'

"Two thousand years of history in the church was all the rationale he needed," she said.

Sanders left the church for a time and was ordained by the United Methodist Church. She loved her time there and there was no sacrifice of doctrine, but "I missed the liturgy," she said.

She returned to Michigan to care for her dying mother and she decided to stay there and return to the Episcopal Church, where she was ordained as a priest in December 2001.

Sanders acknowledges the dedication of her husband David, who has stayed by her side on each turn of her winding road.

He has worked in a variety of careers as a plumber, purchasing agent, computer store operator and proprietor of a fly fishing shop.

As a fly fisherman, David feels quite at home in Central Oregon. In fact, both of the Sanders have fallen in love with the area, which makes the prospect of moving on a tough one.

Sanders said they are seriously pondering how to keep a foot in Central Oregon when her itinerant calling leads her somewhere else.

Sanders said she loves the Sisters community in general and is happy in the community of the church. She noted that the two communities mesh well, citing as an example the production of a community theater performance at the church's community hall last month.

"It was just fun as blazes," she said. "It was just such a great marriage of church and community. I was privileged and honored to be part of that."

Sanders will be part of the community for a while yet. While a search committee is functioning, the process of finding a new, permanent priest for the Sisters church is really just getting underway.

Sanders said she expects a new priest will be brought into the church sometime around the spring of 2006.