By Charly SHELTON

For nearly a month now, St. Luke’s of the Mountains Episcopal Church in La Crescenta has been preparing for and adjusting to life without a vicar. The Rev. Kirby Smith left the church to take a position as the chief financial officer of the Episcopal Diocese in San Diego, and the congregation began preparations to find a new vicar.

“The head pastor of the church is the Bishop of Los Angeles, John Taylor, and any clergy who is put at the church is a vicar. And then there is a board, called the Bishop’s Committee, and the bishop’s warden is chosen [from the committee]. In the absence of a vicar, that is the person who is in charge of the church,” said Donna Machado, bishop’s warden at St. Luke’s.

Since Smith’s departure, and even before when any of the former vicars were absent on Sunday for vacations, sick days or training days, the supply clergyman, or substitute vicar, has been the Rev. Hartshorn Murphy – a retired priest who formerly worked with the diocese helping mission churches like St. Luke’s. Murphy has taken over regular Sunday service until the new vicar is chosen, a process which could take some months.

“I’d say three-ish months, depending,” Machado said. “[But] we’re willing to take as long as it takes. I think it’s a great opportunity right now for us to find our way and find the ownership of the congregation as we prepare for bringing on another person.”

The process involves three stages: discernment, selection and choosing. The first stage, discernment, is the most hands-on and self-reflective stage for the congregation. Then the bishop will select possible candidates for vicar, and the congregation will choose one. Right now, St. Luke’s is in stage one.

“We are in a discernment process where we’re doing a congregational survey to get down on paper our identity so we can present ourselves to the bishop about who we are, our identity – this is a profile really. And that will go to the bishop and to the people involved in heading up the mission and the clergy of the diocese and they will choose three people and present them to us to consider,” Machado said. “Then hopefully one of them will be a match; otherwise, we may go back and ask for another slate, but basically that’s how the process goes.”

The congregational survey will be held during a mini-retreat for the church in mid-March, and this will be the basis of the profile presented to the bishop. But the survey itself will need specifics about St. Luke’s as it’s being written, so members of the committee are putting ideas to paper already, prior to the retreat.

“In the meantime, we’re going to be writing up things that we know about ourselves and the kind of ministries that are coming out of St Luke’s, particularly probably focusing on The Fire House, which is one of the most visible ministries to the community. We don’t have a deadline or a timeline, we have to put one together, but I would like to think by early April we will have this in the hands of the bishop.”

This time is also being used to spruce up the church and its grounds, to begin everything fresh, from the internal workings of the church’s day-to-day to the community involvement and interaction.

“We’ve spent a lot of time and effort in getting our campus refurbished and we have a lot of rooms and meeting rooms available now, and we really want the community to use our facility,” Machado said. “So we have someone [on the church staff] who really focuses on helping people to connect to our calendar and to determine the kind of fees that are involved in that. So that’s important for people to know.”

  Charly Shelton