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06/09/2021 08:30 AMThe voice answering the telephone said everything that needed to be said, and in a just three words: “This. Is Kate.” And Kate is Kate Wesch, the new rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Essex. She assumed her new position in February of this year.
Kate and her family crossed the continent to get here—she came from Settle, Washington where she had served two different churches over a 15-year period.
Kate follows Rev. Jonathan Folts, now the Episcopal Bishop of South Dakota, who served at St. John’s for some 15 years. Rev. Linda Spiers served as priest-in-charge during the interim period between the two ministers.
Kate’s path to St. John’s began two years ago with some decisions about family and family values. She and her husband Joel sat down to list the kinds of things that were important to them as they raised their two children, daughter Avery, now 11, and son Myles, now 7.
They had no idea at that time where their list would lead them.
“My husband and I were from the Midwest, from smaller towns; we rode bikes; we had good childhoods,” she says.
“We loved the big city as newlyweds, but it’s hard for kids to be independent in a big city,” she says. “They couldn’t even go to the park by themselves.”
She heard from a friend in Hartford, another priest with children of a similar age, that Essex was conducting a search for a new rector. Kate and Joel sought information about St. John’s and then she did what a priest would do.
“I prayed about it,” she says. “It had the values we wanted.”
She sent her qualifications to the St. John’s search committee.
Kate and her husband came to visit for four days in November. They stayed at the Griswold Inn. She particularly remembers an evening dinner at St. John’s where everybody stayed talking until 10 p.m. and then Kate and John walked back to the Gris in the darkness.
“We felt it was the place we had been searching for,” she says.
Assuming a new position is always a challenge; doing it during a pandemic presented another layer of potential complication.
“The church was in transition in leadership before the pandemic, and that made it more challenging,” she says.
The church has done a survey, to which it had 120 responses, about how it should move forward in this post-COVID era.
“We want to know how to connect with people, how to serve their spiritual needs and give back to the community,” Kate says.
She is already thinking toward the future. Starting this fall, she has found a solution to the ongoing conflict between Sunday morning services and Sunday morning soccer games. Instead of three morning services, Kate plans to move one to the evening, so young people who have competition in the morning can still come.
“The traditional model was not working. Kids play sports. We need more choices,” she says. “We have to look at traditional models and break out of things that are not working just because they have always been done.”
She recalls one youngster who was scheduled to serve as an acolyte but had a sports conflict. He came to church with his cleats still on in the middle of a service; his acolyte robe was in a corner. Kate was comfortable with the situation and more interested in letting him serve than in worrying about his when he arrived.
“He put the robe on and got to be an acolyte,” she says.
Kate grew up in Ponca City, Oklahoma, and graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a major in classics. She needed on classical language and studied Latin and one modern language. She chose Hebrew and as part of her undergraduate experience studied in Israel.
Growing up, Kate’s family was active in the local Episcopal church.
“Fifth pew on the left every Sunday,” she recalls.
From an early age, as she watched the priest conduct services, she knew that was what she wanted to do.
At present, Kate describes the family as living out of a suitcase. They are in a rented house but plan to move into one they have bought next month. Kate’s husband Joel, an Air Force veteran, was a firefighter in Seattle. She says he is now looking around to determine what kind of a career he will pursue in Connecticut.
The family is anticipating the arrival of a puppy, a Bernedoodle. It is a cross between a Bernese mountain dog and a poodle. It will not be an insignificant addition. Kate says the dogs can weigh as much as 100 pounds, though they think it will be a 10-pound puppy when it arrives. There is already a disassembled crate in Kate’s office for it.
All the Wesches have had a chance to have some of the outdoor experiences they were looking forward to. Kate spoke enthusiastically about a recent hike in Hartman Park in Lyme that included a sighting of a fox and two cubs as well as red salamanders on the trail that the family picked up and put back in the woods. They anticipate visiting both New York and Boston. Kate has been to neither.
“We know the West Coast pretty well, but we are excited to do new things here,” she says.
She looks forward to the opportunity to serve the parishioners at St. John’s.
“I am excited to do new things here.,” she says. Being a minister, she adds, “is endlessly creative; teaching, preach, relationships. It is the best job in the world.”