AIDS work leads to the call

Pastor Phyllis reflects on her 10-year ministry at St Paul’s, and how she got there

By MARY GREENE

NARROWSBURG, NY — At the end of a long and winding road, a woman found a church to fulfill her vision. And the church, Saint Paul’s Lutheran in Narrowsburg, found a pastor.

Like so many women clergy, the furthest thing from Phyllis Hayne’s mind as she finished school was joining the ministry.

She was no stranger to the faith, however. Phyllis attended the same church, Bethlehem Lutheran in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, from the time she was four years old until she was ordained there three and a half decades later.

Phyllis is one of seven children, and she has an identical twin sister. She graduated from Hunter College in the early ‘70s with a degree in teaching. She taught sixth grade for three years at the same Lutheran School she attended as a girl, but “that didn’t seem to work. The teaching was okay” but the administration left much to be desired.

She began working for May Bender Design Associates, a package designer in Manhattan. She stayed seven and a half years, and then became a secretary clerk in an optician’s office. “That was neat because I got to meet some famous people, like James Earl Jones,” she said. Jones went to the office to get fitted with contacts for movie roles.

After three more years, Phyllis went back to teaching, “this time in the public schools,” in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. This decision grew out of her increasing involvement with what was then a mysterious health crisis sweeping New York—the AIDS epidemic. “Teaching gave me more time for my AIDS work,” she said.

Phyllis began as a volunteer with Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC) in 1984. In ’85, she and some other Lutherans co-founded the Momentum Aids Outreach Program, a weekly meal program for people with AIDS.

“We wanted to do something,” she said. “We decided one way was to ‘extend the table,’ as we saw it. We knew so many people from GMHC who’d been turned away from family, from friends, from church.” In 1988, Momentum became a full-service agency with multiple programs. And Phyllis became a full-time staff member.

What drew her to the AIDS crisis?

“I’m a people person. Even when I was younger and very shy, I was good with people. I said to myself, ‘Why shouldn’t I help?’

“I didn’t think GMHC would want a straight white woman volunteering. I had a friend who was volunteering there and he said, ‘Of course they want you! They don’t care whether you’re gay or straight.’

“It was heartbreaking. Some of the clients never had a break, and others had lots of money, but lost their jobs. And others managed the money pretty well, but they had family and friends that didn’t want to have anything to do with them.

“Back in the mid-80s,” she said, “everybody was afraid.”

So how did she find her way into the ministry?

“Doing the AIDS work made me realize I might be called,” said Phyllis.

She feared her shyness might make her unsuited for the ministry. But through the AIDS work she’d grown accustomed to speaking in front of groups and advocating for clients. “I learned to relate to people on many levels,” she said. “And people allowed me to be me,” which bolstered her confidence.

She still harbored doubts. “I wasn’t sure I’d been called,” she said, “because my clergy friends talked about feeling hands on their shoulders, and all that.” She told a friend about a visualization where she was driving down a road. Sometimes she’d be on one detour, or two at the same time, but they always came back to the same road. “At the end of the road,” she said, “there was always me as a pastor.

“And you have to understand,” she said, “I’m from Brooklyn. People in Brooklyn don’t drive.”

Phyllis entered the seminary in 1991, when she was 40 years old. The church at end of the road turned out to be St Paul’s, which she joined in December 1995.

It was a good choice. She learned to adjust to “living in a big old house and driving in the country, dealing with spiders and dead mice.” She misses the city’s ethnic restaurants, but appreciates the library in Narrowsburg, the choral groups and the opera and the Delaware Valley Arts Alliance.

What are the issues facing the church?

“It’s an old congregation,” said Pastor Phyllis. “One challenge is keeping it active. A lot of the old timers have died or gone to nursing homes, and it’s hard losing folks. And hard to bring in new members. Young families find it hard to live here. Where do you get a job?”

St Paul’s is involved in the ecumenical food pantry with several area churches. Each church contributes food, money and volunteers. For a while, said Pastor Phyllis, the churches were running their own pantries. “But why do it alone, when we can do it together?”

For information about the food pantry and to reach Pastor Phyllis and St Paul’s Lutheran, call 845/252-3919.

[This is the second installment in a series about women in the clergy.]