Amelie Wilmer, the newest pastor of Richmond's St. John's Church (Photo by Jay Paul)
When Amelie Wilmer was an athletic high school senior, a friend asked her for a favor. A big one. That friend wanted to cycle from west Los Angeles to the famous Redondo Beach pier, then jump off the end and swim to shore. And she wanted Wilmer to come with her.
They biked some 30 miles. They walked past the heckling fishermen and the signs that said “No Jumping” to the end of the pier. “One, two, three, jump!” they said.
Wilmer plummeted into the waves and came up for air. “And I looked to the side, and she’s not there. And I looked up —”
There was her friend, still standing on the pier.
Wilmer treaded water for half an hour, she recalls, encouraging her friend to jump. The fishermen joined in. Finally, Wilmer swam to shore, walked back to the end of the pier, and sat with her friend until she was ready to try again. They held hands. She never jumped.
Years later, Wilmer would think back on this experience as a metaphor for ministry. She will gladly go on a journey with anyone who asks. She will sit with them, and hold their hand. But in the end, “you can’t do it for them,” she reflects.
Four weeks ago, Wilmer became the newest pastor of Richmond’s oldest church: St. John’s Church. The iconic white building at the crest of Church Hill was built in 1741, but the congregation traces its founding to 1611.
Now, she’s charged with leading this 400-year-old congregation into the future. In total, congregants number about 300 — fewer than the number of tourists who come to the church to witness the Patrick Henry “Liberty or Death” reenactment on an average Sunday afternoon. About 80 to 100 people attend weekly services.
The trouble is, many people view the church — which retains its 18th-century solemnity and quaint (though not exactly cushy) enclosed pews — as more of an artifact than a living house of God. Visitors say, “Oh, it’s still a church?” according to Sarah Whiting, executive director of the independent nonprofit St. John’s Church Foundation.
Wilmer’s challenge, then, is attracting new souls to a church where some of the same families have been worshiping for centuries.
“You need to retain your traditions and your identity. I think any organization does,” she says. “But we’re always called to look at how we’re excluding and not being welcoming.”
The church already does quite a bit of community outreach: Parishioners volunteer at local public schools, tutor children at the Peter Paul Development Center, minister to people at area laundromats through the Laundry Love program, and host an ongoing racial reconciliation and discussion series called “Conversations in Black and White.” But there’s always more to be done.
“I feel this is a time for churches to be a voice of love and compassion and healing and forgiveness, and not a voice of condemnation and rules and line-drawing,” Wilmer says. “There’s enough of that.”
Wilmer greets a parishioner after services at St. John's Church. (Photo by Jay Paul)
Wilmer’s path to the priesthood was an unusual one. She grew up Episcopalian in Los Angeles — you can still hear the long California Rs in her voice — and earned degrees in the history of art and economics/political science from Yale University. She drifted from the church in her 20s, then while working in finance in Manhattan she began attending mass at St. Bartholomew’s. “It was the first time I ever saw a woman vested and in the pulpit,” Wilmer recalls. “It just stirred me to the core.”
Wilmer married her college sweetheart, moved to Richmond, led a commercial real estate division for First Union (now Wells Fargo), then stepped down to raise her three boys and found a new calling in community service. She joined the Junior League, eventually becoming president, and served on several local boards.
Then came the unexpected — and unwanted — end of her marriage. The church became her solace as she strove to make sense of what had happened. Wilmer embarked on a four-year theological study program and, at the end, discerned a call to become ordained.
The process of conversation, examination and education took another six years. After Wilmer’s ordination in 2011, she became the priest at All Souls Episcopal Church in Mechanicsville, a recently planted church that had a devoted congregation but no building to call home. For 10 years, services had been held in a local school.
Wilmer wasted no time. She worked out an agreement with Messiah Lutheran Church to hold All Souls’ Episcopal mass between the two Lutheran services. In five years, the congregation doubled. “Under her leadership, people came and stayed, because of Amelie,” says Lee Hanchey, senior warden of All Souls. Wilmer also remarried, to Claiborne W. Minor, in 2014.
Occasionally she did unexpected things. In 2016, she served as a priest at Burning Man, the famously bizarre art festival held in the Nevada desert, where she carried All Souls’ combined prayers to the final conflagration. And on Ash Wednesday, Wilmer offered “ashes to go” for busy locals at the Rutland Shopping Center.
Wilmer’s philosophy, according to Hanchey, is, “If you don’t go out and reach people where they are, they’re probably not going to come in your door.”
She brings the same approach to St. John’s, and envisions the church filling a role as a community center. She wants the church to actively welcome people who have been marginalized, and attract people who aren’t necessarily churchgoers but desire to be in a spiritual space.
“My hope is that it’s just a place that people feel comfortable, and they know they’ve been welcomed here. And, if that’s the feeling I offer as a church person, then I’ve done a lot already,” Wilmer says.
All are welcome to attend services at St. John’s, whatever their denomination, at 10 a.m. on summer Sundays.
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