Trinity Episcopal Church finds new ways to embrace local community
SHEPHERDSTOWN — After its first leadership change in 40 years in February, following the retirement of its rector, G.T. Schramm, Trinity Episcopal Church has been looking for new ways to integrate itself into the fabric of the Shepherdstown community.
Evidence of this could be found during Street Fest on Saturday, as volunteers from the church offered passersby a little relief from the heat with free water and popsicles, as well as the option to take a look around their air-conditioned building. One of those volunteers was its new rector, Rev. Gethin Wied.
“We decided we wanted to do something, just to be out and present in the community,” Wied said. “We’re not trying to proselytize or anything like that but just be present and visible and so people can see us outside doing good and doing outreach in the community.”
Initially, the church had planned on renting a booth at the festival. When that proved impossible, it pivoted and came up with a new way to still participate.
“I reached out to them, and they’d already sold all of the booths. So, somebody came up with the idea for us to do a booth on our property. We reached out to them to make sure they were OK with us piggybacking onto the festival, and the Shepherdstown StreetFest people said that was great, and we should do that,” Wied said. “They loved our idea to hand out water and popsicles — especially the popsicles — so they asked us to become an official cooling station for StreetFest. We said, ‘Absolutely.'”
The funds the church had allocated for renting a booth were instead used for another good cause.
“When we talked to the Street Fest people, we told them we’d like to still support them somehow. They said that they still needed a sponsor for the Charles Washington Symphony Orchestra, so that’s how we ended up sponsoring that musical act,” Wied said, regarding the orchestra’s noon performance on the festival’s main stage. “It was a nice way to promote music and arts in the area, while also reminding people that we’re here.”
After seeing his congregation’s enthusiastic support for this outreach opportunity, Wied was all the more enthusiastic about his plans for the future.
“I’d like to continue doing this every year at StreetFest,” Wied said. “I’d like to have us doing more, to put ourselves out there in the community. We want people to see us, to not be invisible.”
Wied’s fear of the church becoming invisible in the community was inspired by the many other historic churches that have had to close their doors in recent years, including the 2023 closure of Christ Reformed United Church of Christ in Shepherdstown.
“When I got here at the beginning of the year, I was hearing about the reformed church that closed — that was the oldest continuous congregation. I had heard people saying, ‘That was too bad,’ but I didn’t hear anyone saying anything about Shepherdstown having really lost something when it closed,” Wied said.
For Wied, being proactive to avoid seeing a similar fate come to Trinity Episcopal Church is paramount. Getting the church more involved in the community and improving its appeal through rebranding will hopefully ensure the church will continue to thrive for years to come.
“Churches, in general, are in kind of an interesting place. Coming from California, I think I’ve seen it more there than here, but the pandemic did a lot of damage to attendance,” Wied said, in reference to his home state. “We have to absolutely ask ourselves, ‘Will people actually care if we closed?’ Being here and living out the Gospel here, is being present so that we matter in the community. That if, God forbid, something happened to us, people would be like, ‘You know, Shepherdstown really lost something when they had that happen to them.'”